[Okgrantsmanship] Obama Rewrites No Child Left Behind

[Mason, Linda]

Obama rewriting Bush's No Child Left Behind law 

By Dorie Turner, Tulsa World and The Oklahoman
3/14/2010 

 

ATLANTA - President Barack Obama is promising parents and their children
that with his administration's help they will have better teachers in
improved schools so U.S. students can make up for academic ground lost
against youngsters in other countries. A plan to overhaul the 2002
education law championed by President George W. Bush was unveiled by the
Obama administration Saturday in hopes of replacing a system that in the
past decade has tagged more than a third of schools as failing and
created a hodgepodge of academic standards among states. 

 

"Unless we take action - unless we step up - there are countless
children who will never realize their full talent and potential," Obama
said Saturday. In the proposed dismantling of the No Child Left Behind
law, education officials would move away from punishing schools that
don't meet benchmarks and focus on rewarding schools for progress,
particularly with poor and minority students. Obama intends to send a
rewrite of the law to Congress on Monday. The proposed changes call for
states to adopt standards that ensure students are ready for college or
a career rather than grade-level proficiency - the focus of the current
law. The blueprint also would allow states to use subjects other than
reading and math as part of their measurements for meeting federal
goals, pleasing many education groups that said No Child Left Behind
encouraged teachers not to focus on history, art, science, social
studies and other important subjects. 

 

And, for the first time in 45 years, the White House is proposing a $4
billion increase in federal education spending, most of which would go
to increase the competition among states for grant money and move away
from formula-based funding. The blueprint goes before the House
Education and Labor Committee on Wednesday as Obama pushes Congress to
reauthorize the education law this year, a time-consuming task that some
observers say will be difficult. Committee Chairman George Miller,
D-Calif., praised Obama's plan. "This blueprint lays the right markers
to help us reset the bar for our students and the nation," Miller said
in a prepared statement. Education Secretary Arne Duncan briefed a
handful of governors, lawmakers and education groups on the plan Friday,
including Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican. "The governor is very
supportive of the direction the secretary is going," said Perdue's
spokesman Chris Schrimpf. 

 

A few other highlights from the blueprint: 

*By 2020, all high school graduates would need to be ready for college
or the workplace. That's a shift from the current law, which calls for
all students to be performing at grade level in reading and math by
2014.

*Give more rewards - money and flexibility - to high-poverty schools
that are seeing big gains in student achievement and use them as a model
for other schools in low-income neighborhoods that struggle with
performance.

*Punish the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools using aggressive
measures, such as having the state take over federal funding for poor
students, replacing the principal and half the teaching staff or closing
the school altogether.

*Duncan has said the name No Child Left Behind will be dropped because
it is associated with a harsh law that punishes schools for not reaching
benchmarks even if they've made big gains. He said the administration
will work with Congress to come up with a new name. 

Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of
School Administrators, said he is pleased with the plan. "We're
delighted over that," he said. "We have not been a fan of No Child Left
Behind." 

 

 

 

Linda Mason, Ed.D.

Coordinator for Grant Writing and External Funding

Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education

655 Research Parkway, Suite 200

Oklahoma City, OK 73104

405-225-9486

lmason at osrhe.edu

IP: 164.58.250.178

 

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