US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings made an appearance on Comedy Central's The Daily Show late last week, and received strong reviews for her performance. As one of the highest ranking members of the current administration to spend time with Jon Stewart in a long, long while, Secretary Spellings deserves high praise for her courage, candor, and comfort-level during the interview. A few major take home points from the interview, though we recommend you check it out yourself:

First, the Secretary continued to hold a strong line on the administration's chief education law, No Child Left Behind. In response to questions about teaching to the tests and other common criticisms of the law, Secretary Spellings pointed relentlessly to the need to teach all students how to read and do math before other curricular subjects. Indeed, when asked to point to the one change that she would make in the system if she had the power to change anything, she pointed to the President's stand-by line, the "soft bigotry of low expectations". In other words, until we expect more of all children (and measure whether they are meeting our new, higher expectations), any effort to improve schools will be high on form and good-will, but low on impact.

Second, there were a couple moments where Stewart tried to slip one by Secretary Spellings, but she was able to react gracefully. At one point she was asked if her one change to the system would be to "smite the teachers union", and after a playful smirk she said that she wouldn't (a response that her predecessor Secretary Paige was unable to give). There was also a telling moment in the beginning of the interview where federal inefficiency was underscored, and where Spellings could have easily passed the buck and blame local and state government for more of the problems in our schools - but she was quick to share responsibility.

The end of the interview brought on a serious question about the college loans scandal that the department of education and many of our nation's universities have been involved in with "preferred lenders". Spellings dodged on a bullet on this one, as her non-answer answer was cut short by the TV commercial break (anytime you hear a politician say, "well that's not the only problem, what we need is comprehensive reform" you're getting more spin than substance).

Perhaps the most interesting observation to be made about the Secretary's appearance was what it indicates about the administration's strategy to reauthorize No Child Left Behind and ensure that the President's primary domestic achievement of note remains in place beyond '08. The Ed deparment recognizes that NCLB is not the most popular law in classrooms across America, and it realizes that to win the PR battle it will have to turn to channels like Comedy Central. The Secretary also had a very important line about how the discomfort that adults are showing over NCLB owes somewhat to the fact that they are indeed, "peeling the onion" and showing that we really just aren't serving low-income and minority children with the quality of education they deserve. To fix a broken system--and there is little doubt that the education system in America is in need of fixing--it should be taken as a given that the system itself will groan under the weight of corrective action. The question is whether the groaning that we're hearing about NCLB stems from this necessary backlash, or whether it's because the new law is actually worse for the students than the status quo.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a rare, unanimous decision yesterday, the US Supreme Court ruled yesterday in favor of parents who wish to file lawsuits on behalf of their children for relief in accordance with the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA).

The issue in question was whether parents could sue a school district that they felt was not providing the educational support required by IDEA, without the representation of an attorney. Most federal laws do allow individuals to represent themselves in court, but until now most federal courts have disallowed parents from representing their children under IDEA. The basis for this practice had been the position that IDEA only confers specific rights unto disabled children and not to their parents, and since children cannot represent themselves in any federal court, they must hire an attorney to do so. But all nine justices disagreed with this position on the basis that the parents do indeed have rights guaranteed in IDEA, with Justice Kennedy writing on behalf of the court, “The parents enjoy enforceable rights at the administrative stage, and it would be inconsistent with the statutory scheme to bar them from continuing to assert these rights in federal court. It is not a novel proposition to say that parents have a recognized legal interest in the education and upbringing of their child.”

While the nine justices agreed on the rights of parents in this matter, there was some disagreement over the extent to which parents had the right to sue districts in accordance with IDEA. Though all nine found common ground on the parents' right to represent their children directly in cases seeking redress over procedural rights and to force a local district to pay for the costs of private tuition if the public school cannot provide appropriate education, two justices--Scalia and Thomas--dissented as to whether parents should be allowed to sue school districts without an attorney on cases challenging the basic question of whether their child’s free, appropriate public education was “substantively inadequate.”

The Court's decision is seen universally as a victory for special education advocates, particularly those parents who have disabled children but who are without the means to pay for attorneys and other advocates. In this case, the two parents in question, Jeff and Sandee Winkelman from Parma, OH, had already paid over $30,000 in legal fees without much success before seeking to represent their child directly. While there was some concern that allowing such parental representation would lead to more frivolous lawsuits and an increased burden on the courts, in the end it was found that equal access to the courts was more important.

It is an open question how much this decision will affect non-disabled children in the public education sphere. Because IDEA guarantees qualified children a free, appropriate public education, it actually secures for these children on a federal level something that other children do not possess - a substantive entitlement about the kind of educational opportunity the government must provide. Since there is no such federal right for non-disabled children, the question of whether their parents can sue without an attorney is moot. But there are state level constitutional claims which could be affected here, and I'd be eager to see whether more parents now decide to file lawsuits without attorneys challenging state governments for improved educational opportunities.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A slow week in education news this past week, but one positive development was the House's approval of a funding bill for the long-standing federal program, Head Start, which provides pre-kindergarten services to three - five year olds in low income families. The program, which was funded at $6.9 billion in 2007, will receive $7.4 billion if the Senate agrees to the proposal and it is signed by the president.

The most contentious issue to come up during the debate on the bill was a measure inserted by GOP representatives to change the current ruling on religious organizations that participate in the program and receive federal funds for their pre-K offerings. Currently, in accordance with Civil Rights and equal employment opportunity provisions, religious organizations that accept federal dollars to provide pre-K via Head Start are not allowed to take the religious beliefs of potential employees into consideration when making employment decisions. An amendment was offered but voted down by Democratic representatives that would have changed that to allow faith based pre-K headstart programs to hire individuals based on their religious views, even if other applicants are equally or more qualified. The argument submitted by the GOP representatives was that faith based organizations were being unduly restricted by the law and therefore prevented from being an asset in increasing pre-K access for low-income children. In contrast, the opponents of the amendment said that the religious pre-K providers were free to use religion as a factor in hiring decisions if they wanted to fund their programs privately, but could not do so with federal dollars, as allowing this would jeopardize precedent and long-standing equal employment practice.

As the Head Start bill makes its way through the legislative process, it's an important time to reflect on the incredibly intertwined way in which the nation's education system works, and the comprehensive nature of the reforms that are needed. While the failures of our schools do not manifest themselves until the very end of the pipeline--in the form of dropout rates, teen drug use and crime rates, poverty rates and unempoyment among young adults--the causes of these symptoms take place all throughout the pipeline. Pre-K is one such source, exacerbated by the fact that by some estimates 97% of eligible 3 year olds do not have a head start slot. But even if this problem were solved, it would not guarantee success for the millions of low-performing American students, since additional risk factors take place in elementary, middle, and certainly high school. In other words, while we have learned that it's important to start early in ensuring quality educational opportunities to young children, we have learned an even more important lesson at the same time: we can't afford to stop early with our supports, either.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sarah Sparks captures some of the highlights from Wednesday's Silent Epidemic Summit hosted in DC by the folks at Gates, Time Magazine, and MTV here, but I'll go ahead and add some observations as well (as promised).

First of all, the most highly referenced moment that took place during the course of the event (I guess I could have written that more simply as, the 'most talked-about thing that happened') was the discussion among current students and recent high school dropouts about their motivations, ideas for change, and thoughts on high school reform in general. Jynell Harrison, the winner of MTV's Be The Voice Contest, gave a rousing opening speech in which she talked about the critical need for high schools where there are more teachers and counselors who establish genuine, quality connections with the students; more challenging classes; and higher expectations. Lyle Oates, a high school student in Boston, MA who had dropped out of school to sell drugs before going back to a charter school called YouthBuild where he rededicated himself to education, talked about the importance of a shared community of success and caring in high school, where kids don't drop out because they actually feel like their peers and teachers are in it together for the same purposes.

The rest of the conference was full of research experts, local and state politicians, activists and philanthropists, and even federal representatives in First Lady Laura Bush and US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, each of whom put their own unique spin on the dropout problem. It was an urgent feel in the room, if also a predictable one; no one questioned the need to make progress in increasing high school completion rates, but debates between business representatives from the Chamber of Commerce and teacher union leaders like Reg Weaver were straight out of the book.

For Our Education's part, we did get a chance to ask Secretary Spellings a question that she artfully dodged. The question was, "Given that she and the other summit speakers were quick to cite the stories told earlier in the day by Jynell and Lyle as critical factors and valuable insight into how to address the dropout problem, would she and the US Department of Education consider creating a permanent, structural role for actual students to help inform the discussion and decisions made in Washington, DC about issues facing their schools?" Her answer was, in sum, "that is a very interesting idea."

The title of this post is, 28 Weeks Later. It's not a shameless plug for a even more shameless horror movie, but rather an allusion to a critical time frame in which the impact of Wednesday's summit will be measured. 28 weeks later, will anyone have done anything differently because this week's summit on the Silent Epidemic? Will you? The speakers at the event struggled to provide clear and easy ways for people to take action for change, other than through the new Gates / Broad funded Ed in '08 campaign, an ambitious and worthy undertaking. Hopefully that, and the current work in the field, will be enough to spark movement between now and the start of 2008.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MTV, Time Magazine, and the Gates Foundation are co-hosting a major conference in DC tomorrow on what has been termed the Silent Epidemic, or the nation's staggering high school dropout rate. We here at Our Education have been in discussion with the folks at MTV about the planning and agenda of the conference for several months now, and are pleased to report that the result has been to include a significant agenda item in which a number of current high school students will take the stage in a roundtable to discuss their views and experiences with dropout problems prior to all of the experts.

What remains to be seen, of course, is how effective the summit is in leading to actual change on the key issues in play. We've been to enough conferences now to know that they are prone to consensus conversations without action, and empty chest pounding without progress. This will be a unique moment to get lots of smart people in the same room talking about a crucial problem, but will there be an impact on school systems in the way that students need? I'll post back on Thursday after the event to share some impressions from the event.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)