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--Your AASA Policy & Advocacy Team

Today, AASA sent the following statement to support the House bill to reauthorize the child nutrition act.

AASA, The School Superintendents Association, is pleased to support the Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016 (H.R. 5003). Providing healthy meals and snack options for school children is critical. AASAs’ members are proud of their strong nutrition programs and are looking for a reauthorization that provides districts with increased flexibility from certain elements of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. The nutrition study, as prescribed in this bill, takes the politics out of the standards and keeps the focus where it belongs: on what is best for our nation’s schools and students.

David R. Schuler, AASA president and superintendent of High School District 214 in Arlington Heights, Ill, and Daniel A. Domenech, AASA executive director, issued the following statements:  

“I strive to serve my students nutritious meals, but the current nutrition standards, as written, are so burdensome that I had to withdraw from the federal nutrition program and find other ways to feed my students. The flexibilities allowed and the changes that may come through this bill will provide some much-needed relief to districts around the country struggling to balance the needs of their students and the regulations from DC.” – David R. Schuler

AASA has deep concerns over the changes to the Community Eligibility Provision eligibility threshold and the increase in verification of free and reduced price lunch eligibility.

“This bill is a step in the right direction and we look forward to working with the committee to make further improvements to the legislation. We are pleased to see the continued investment in school meals and focus on supporting schools and districts over politics, and hope to work with the committee to pass a bill we can continue to support.” – Daniel A. Domenech 

AASA joined more than 265 other national organizations in a letter to Congress opposing any balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution. AASA has blogged about this effort previously, and you can refresh your memory here.

AASA remains opposed to efforts related to a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution for the damaging impacts on the economy and implications for future economic stability. As written in the letter:

A balanced budget constitutional amendment would damage the economy, not strengthen it. Demanding that policymakers cut spending and/or raise taxes even when the economy slows is the opposite of what is needed to stabilize a weak economy and avert recessions. Such steps would risk tipping a faltering economy into recession or worsening an ongoing downturn, costing large numbers of jobs while blocking worthy investments to stimulate jobs and growth and address urgent needs in infrastructure and other areas...Our Constitution has served the nation well in part because it has focused on enduring principles of government, rather than attempting to dictate fiscal policy for current and future generations. Policymakers should be providing leadership on fiscal policy, rather than avoiding doing so and seeking to cover themselves by writing a highly ill-advised, economically damaging balanced budget amendment into the Constitution.

Read the full letter.

On Tuesday, April 19 AASA joined the Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the School Nutrition Association (SNA), the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) for a Congressional briefing on the Community Eligibility Provision. This program is a powerful federal option that enables high-poverty schools and districts to provide breakfast and lunch to all students at no charge.

Enacted in the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 and available nationwide since school year 2014–15, Community Eligibility has been adopted in more than 18,000 high-poverty schools in nearly 3,000 school districts, reaching more than 8.5 million students, according to a new report from FRAC and CBPP.  As it considers reauthorizing the child nutrition bill, the U.S. House of Representatives has proposed to change the rules for eligibility for CEP. Currently, schools and districts with more than 40 percent of students identified for free and reduced price lunch eligibility through direct certification (such as through SNAP or TANF) are eligible. The House proposal is to change that threshold to 60 percent, which would cause 7,000 schools around the country to lose eligibility.

The briefing kicked off with a welcome from AAP President Benard Dreyer and Ranking Member Bobby Scott (D-VA), House Education and the Workforce Committee. Both expressed the extreme need for CEP, and how we can move it forward, instead of going backwards on school meals for students.

“CEP is helping schools, it’s helping teachers and, above all, it’s helping address child poverty and reduce the stigma associated with being a child who is food insecure,” said Dreyer.

Congressman Scott, a CEP champion and a leader for access to quality early-, secondary- and higher-education for all of America’s children, said “If you have [CEP], you don’t have the stigma of people having to qualify for free and reduced lunch and produce paperwork at the checkout counter that identifies them as low or moderate income and it just makes it much better.”

“We have a report that goes into detail about the good of the Community Eligibility Provision and why it needs to be maintained – and maybe even improved – but certainly not go backwards because education is at risk and the wellbeing of millions of children,” said Scott.

In addition to providing an overview of the Community Eligibility Provision, a panel of education leaders was also there to share their experiences with the program, and what it would mean for the enrolled schools if the program was taken away. The group included Vonda Cooke, director of child nutrition programs, Pennsylvania Department of Education; Lisa Kyer, business administrator, Lansingburgh Central School District (N.Y.); and Morris Leis, superintendent, Coffee County School System (Ga.).

AASA member Superintendent Morris Leis implemented the program in his district in 2014 and has provided students in 11 of his 12 schools with free breakfast and lunch since. If the proposed eligibility changes are made, six of his schools will no longer be able to remain in the program.

“The CEP is changing lives in a positive way in our community,” said Leis. “The things that are happening because of this program are amazing.”

The community in Coffee County is made up of 43,000 people, which includes 7,700 students that are being educated in the district’s 12 schools. 75 percent of those students are considered economically disadvantaged.

“We’re finishing our second year of CEP and if these changes go through, six of our schools will no longer be eligible,” said Leis. “We’ve got a lot of [students] who fall above the threshold for free and reduced [lunch], but if we didn’t have this program their children wouldn’t eat.”

According to Leis, in the middle school, prior to this program, students simply would not eat because they didn’t want the stigma of being a student eating a free lunch.

Since implementation of CEP, Leis said that students are going to the cafeteria to eat and that the entire school atmosphere has changed tremendously.

“Kids are eating and the whole strata of ‘free,’ ‘reduced’ and ‘paid’ is gone. They’re all the same,” said Leis.

The mission of Coffee County School System is to provide an equitable and excellent education for every student – which is being done through CEP.

“We provide [students] books, we provide them with transportation, we have nice buildings for them to come to, we have good teachers to teach them - and under the old system we’d get them here and make them pay for lunch,” said Leis. “Well now with CEP, we don’t classify. We have equity in our school system.”

For more information on the Community Eligibility Provision, visit frac.org.

AASA Executive Director Daniel A. Domenech shared the following message with the entire AASA membership via email. We cross post it here for your reference.

Dear Colleague: 

I write today to relay critical information related to the FY16 E-Rate application window. 

We have heard from school superintendents across the country about difficulties their districts are having navigating and completing the revamped application for the E-Rate program. In response, AASA joined 17 other national organizations—as part of the broader EdLiNC coalition—in sending a letter to the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), requesting an extension of the E-Rate application. 

The letter reads as follows: "EdLiNC's members, E-rate beneficiaries in schools and public libraries across the country, have shared they are having difficulties specifically with navigating and successfully completing the revamped application portal. Thus, we ask that the application deadline be extended. With the E-rate application deadline of April 29, 2016 fast approaching, additional time to complete the application process would greatly benefit potential beneficiaries." Read the full text of the letter. 

On Friday, USAC announced that it was, indeed, extending the application deadline. You can read the full statement here, and here are some highlights: 

• USAC is extending the window for all applicants by four weeks, and the new closing date is May 26, 2016. 
• USAC continues to roll out additional updates to the online portal and application. You can read an explanation of the additional changes here. 
• When the extended window closes on May 26, USAC will open a second filing window for consortia and libraries, closing on July 21, 2016. 
• Neither the extension nor the second window are expected to delay application review or funding decisions. 
• USAC analysis shows there should be sufficient funding for all plausible demand scenarios for this application year. Filers should not worry about losing funds as a result of the second window. 
• Please direct any application-related inquiries to the Client Services Bureau at 1-888-203-8100. 

Please let us know if you have any questions. Direct any inquiries to Noelle Ellerson, AASA associate executive director, policy & advocacy at nellerson@aasa.org. 

Thank you. 

Today's guest post comes from Chelsea Straus, Policy Analyst for the K-12 Education Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

During the recent signing of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), President Barack Obama remarked that the new education law “focuses on a national goal of ensuring that all of our students graduate prepared for college and future careers.” To help meet this goal, ESSA requires that states and districts take action in their lowest-performing schools to dramatically improve student outcomes.

While No Child Left Behind (NCLB) prescribed specific actions for every struggling school, ESSA gives district leaders significant flexibility in selecting school improvement strategies. However, the law does require that district leaders implement “evidence-based” practices in these schools. 

Unfortunately, there are a limited number of school improvement strategies supported by substantial evidence. The key question is: Now that districts are in the driver’s seat, where should they look for help when crafting school improvement plans and selecting effective intervention strategies? The answer is fairly simple: follow the lead of districts that have successfully turned around low-performing schools. 

A new report from the Center for American Progress investigates how three districts – Houston, Texas; Denver, Colorado; and Lawrence, Massachusetts – improved their schools using a specific set of evidence-based practices. These practices include data-driven instruction, excellence in teaching and leadership, a culture of high expectations, frequent and intensive tutoring, and an extended school day and year.

All three of these districts were able to improve student achievement in many underperforming schools. Through strategic preparation and perseverance, these districts overcame barriers associated with allotting sufficient planning time, recruiting and training exemplary teachers, financing the reforms, and securing stakeholder investment. These districts were able to achieve success through increased planning time, school-level budgeting, aggressive recruiting tactics, and word-of-mouth around the effectiveness of these practices. 

As other districts contemplate how to improve low-performing schools under ESSA, they should use CAP’s report as a guide to help ensure a smooth and effective school improvement process. 

ESSA gives districts a new opportunity to take on the challenges of turning around their lowest-performing schools, without the restrictive mandates of NCLB. Although this flexibility can be overwhelming, district leaders can and should follow in the footsteps of their peers in places like Houston, Denver, and Lawrence. These three districts help shed light on the types of practices that have evidence of effectiveness and they have created a path forward for other districts. 

Now districts should seize ESSA implementation as an opportunity to infuse these practices into their low-performing schools. Improving underperforming schools with evidence-based practices will help move us closer to ensuring that all students graduate college- and career-ready. 

AASA joined 17 other national organizations in a joint letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting an extension to the E-Rate application filing deadline.

"EdLiNC has long championed the E-rate and supported the recent modernization and overhaul of the program, recognizing the positive impact on our members’ ability to provide high-speed broadband connectivity. EdLiNC recognizes such significant changes to the program require applicants to also navigate and respond to changes to both the application and the application process. EdLiNC’s members, E-rate beneficiaries in schools and public libraries across the country, have shared they are having difficulties specifically with navigating and successfully completing the revamped application portal. Thus, we ask that the application deadline be extended. With the E-rate application deadline of April 29, 2016 fast approaching, additional time to complete the application process would greatly benefit potential beneficiaries." Read the full letter.

Groups signing the letter:

• AASA, The School Superintendents Association
• American Federation of Teachers
• American Library Association
• Association of Educational Service Agencies
• Association of School Business Officials International
• Consortium for School Networking
• International Society for Technology in Education
• National Association of Elementary School Principals
• National Association of Independent Schools
• National Association of Secondary School Principals
• National Catholic Educational Association
• National Education Association
• National PTA
• National Rural Education Association
• National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition
• National School Boards Association
• State Educational Technology Directors Association
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

AASA, in collaboration with the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, has released a guide on the new ESSA provisions focused on transportation for students in foster care. In contrast to the majority of assessment, accountability and funding provisions in ESSA which are effective beginning the 2017-2018 school year, ESSA’s foster caretransportation provisions are effective December 2016. This guide willhelp you understand the responsibilities both child welfare agencies and school districts have for transporting children in foster care, specifically which aspects are optional and which aspects are requirements. In addition, we provide a series of questions to guide the development of local transportation procedures.  This is the first of many ESSA resources we will producing for AASA members.

In response to Tuesday's Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on ESSA implementation, AASA released the following statement in the press release below.

--

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
James Minichello
703-875-0723
703-774-6953 (cell)
jminichello@aasa.org

Alexandria, Va. – April 12, 2016 – AASA Executive Director Daniel A. Domenech released the following statement in advance of the April 12, 2016 Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing, ESSA Implementation in States and School Districts: Perspectives from the U.S. Secretary of Education.
 
“AASA, The School Superintendents Association, is proud of its endorsement of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and remains committed to working with both Congress and the U.S. Department of Education as we move forward to support successful ESSA implementation. Our organization represents the nation’s more than 13,000 school system leaders and we are watching closely to ensure that the regulations and guidance that will further shape the law remain aligned and consistent with the underlying statute.
 
“Congress acted very deliberately in its broad, bipartisan work to make changes in certain areas while leaving others untouched. With a bill so clearly focused on positioning state and local educational agencies as the drivers of policy decisions, while ensuring the role of the federal government to support and strengthen the nation’s schools, it is critical that the U.S Education Department (USED) refrain from defining terms and aspects of the new law that Congress gave communities the flexibility to determine.
 
“To the extent that ESSA establishes definitions and requirements, there are policy decisions crafted with significant input from broad, diverse constituencies, including educators, the civil rights community and the disability community. To the extent that ESSA refrains from a national definition or requirement should remain a state and local decision, unless there is consensus that federal clarification is needed. ESSA anticipated and addressed this very tension, and ‘prohibit[s] any such regulation that would create new requirements inconsistent with or outside the scope of the law.’ New federal definitions through regulation would represent new requirements and would be outside the scope and intent of the law.
 
“In particular, we are deeply concerned that the proposed regulations represent a serious overreach in the areas of ‘supplement, not supplant’ and alternate assessment.

• Supplement Not Supplant: Supplement, not supplant is one of three federal provisions aimed at preserving the integrity of Title I funding. Maintenance of Effort evaluates the dollar amount; supplement not supplant addresses the construct/methodology of allocation; and comparability addresses equitable allocation. They are distinct statutory provisions, and ESSA changed only one: Congress was as deliberate in its move to modify supplement not supplant as it was to leave both maintenance of effort and comparability unchanged. We are concerned that the proposed regulations reflect a ‘mission creep’ focused on getting changes that Congress denied in statute through regulation. Further, the proposal will unnecessarily burden schools, impact day-to-day operations, result in forced transfers of teachers, and disrupt various methods of school budgeting, including weighted student formulae.

• Alternate Assessments: The alternate assessment language in ESSA represents a very carefully negotiated compromise between the various groups represented in the negotiated rulemaking committee. We are concerned that the proposed regulations change ESSA statute before it has even been implemented. Echoing a sentiment listed above, we are also concerned with an effort to establish a national definition for students with the most severe cognitive disabilities. The previous law, No Child Left Behind, represented a much more prescriptive role for the federal government in education and did not define the term. To see a definition in the proposed regulation runs counter to the intent of the underlying ESSA statute, which is clear in its focus on state and local decision making and was deliberate in not defining the term. It is a term that has, to date, been defined at the state and local level, and this is an approach that is appropriately deferential to the role of the individualized education program team in crafting these decisions.  The 1 percent cap on alternate assessments remains in place and is a guiding mark. Under ESSA, it remains a litmus test that strikes an appropriate balance between ensuring that students are not disproportionately identified for alternate assessments; preserving the role of the IEP team and the significance of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in driving alternate assessment decisions;  and providing limited flexibility to those schools who may find they have an atypically high rate of students who need to take an alternate assessment. We remain optimistic that USED can and will revise its regulations to more closely reflect statutory intent.”

###

For specific questions about ESSA implementation, please contact Noelle Ellerson, AASA associate executive director, policy and advocacy, at nellerson@aasa.org.

About AASA
AASA, The School Superintendents Association, founded in 1865, is the professional organization for more than 13,000 educational leaders in the United States and throughout the world. AASA’s mission is to support and develop effective school system leaders who are dedicated to the highest quality public education for all children. For more information, visit www.aasa.org.

AASA has joined eight other national organizations on a letter to the U.S. Department of Education regarding negotiated rulemaking and the regulatory process for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). 

Read the full letter here. 

Joining AASA on the letter: 

• National Governors Association 
• National Conference of State Legislatures 
• National Association of State Boards of Education 
• Council of Chief State School Officers 
• National School Boards Association 
• American Federation of Teachers 
• National Association of Elementary School Principals
• National Education Association

File this under 'things I didn't think I would advocate on' as I was preparing for a career in education policy: AASA joined four other national organizations in a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), responding to its proposal to establish a deductible for its public assistance program.

FEMA’s proposal is considering the establishment of a disaster deductible, requiring a predetermined level of financial or other commitment from a recipient (grantee) before FEMA would provide assistance under the public assistance program when authorized by a Presidential major disaster declaration.  FEMA believes the deductible model would incentive recipients to make meaningful improvements in disaster planning, fiscal capacity for disaster response and recovery, and risk mitigation, while contributing to more effective stewardship of taxpayer dollars.

AASA, in coordination with the Association of Educational Services Agencies, the Association of School Business Officials International, the National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition, and the National Rural Education Association sent a response urging caution and restraint. The public assistance program has historically been a federal program and this policy would shift federal responsibility to the state and local level, arguably at a time (post-disaster) that they can least afford it. Further, as sub-grantees, school district's ability to receive FEMA disaster funds would be impacted by their state's willingness/ability to meet or address the deductible. The groups expressed concern that this proposal stands to disproportionately and negatively impact the neediest.

Read FEMA's proposal.

Read the full letter here. 

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to consider changes that would modernize it's Lifeline program. (Quick background: Lifeline is a sister program to E-Rate, one of the four programs funded through Universal Services Fund. Lifeline helps provide phone connectivity to low-income people, and the proposed changes include allowing the program to provide broadband home access. AASA supports this effort, as it provides an opportunity to address the homework gap, and ensure that more students have access to internet connectivity at home.)

AASA advocates for the E-Rate program in close coordination with EdLiNC, the Education and Library Networks Coalition. As part of EdLiNC, AASA supports the proposal to include broadband as an eligible and supported Lifeline service because we believe it an important step in assisting students to gain access from their own homes to online homework and other digital resources necessary for their education. AASA joined 17 other national organizations in a letter to the FCC outlining our support and identifying areas within the proposal for further improvement. 

You can read the full letter here.

Joining AASA on the letter:  

• American Federation of Teachers
• American Library Association
• Association of Educational Service Agencies
• Association of School Business Officials International
• Consortium for School Networking
• nternational Society for Technology in Education
• National Association of Elementary School Principals
• National Association of Independent Schools
• National Association of Secondary School Principals
• National Catholic Educational Association 
• National Education Association
• National PTA 
• National Rural Education Association
• National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition
• National School Boards Association
• State Educational Technology Directors Association
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Today's guest blog post comes from Michael Petrilli,President of The Fordham Institute. He writes today about his most recent publication, a book where he and a dozen leading scholars and policy analysts address the questions "How can we help children born into poverty transcend their disadvantages and enter the middle class as adults? And in particular, what role can our schools play?"

Poor and working class Americans have gotten hammered. Here’s how to help their children do better.

Whatever you think of this year’s presidential election, it’s undeniable that Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ populist messages have struck a chord, particularly with poor and working class voters. As Charles Murray put it in the Wall Street Journal, “For someone living in a town where the big company has shut the factory and moved the jobs to China, or for a roofer who has watched a contractor hire illegal immigrants because they are cheaper, anger and frustration are rational.”

None of this is news to educators, who work with children and families every day who face the challenges that decades of economic upheaval have brought.

State and national leaders have warned since at least the 1980s against leaving people behind, and the need to “build a bridge to the 21st century.” Then-Governor Lamar Alexander said in 1986, “What has suddenly riveted everyone’s attention on our education system is that our standard of living is threatened…we’re not going to have the jobs and the good incomes in America if we don’t have the good skills.” That was thirty years ago.

And to be sure there have been lots of school reform efforts over the years, most well-meaning, and some even effective. But it hasn’t been nearly enough. While NAEP scores have risen at the 4th and 8th grade levels, they remain stubbornly flat at the end of high school. Fewer than forty percent of our graduates leave school ready for college—not just four-year universities but community colleges too. The numbers are much, much worse for kids growing up poor and working class. We saw the challenge coming—the need to equip a vastly larger number of people with stronger skills—and we didn’t get the job done.

So here we are, with low-income and working class voters who have gotten hammered, and are falling further behind their college-educated neighbors, and are letting their anger be heard.

The question for us is whether there’s anything our schools can do to reverse these trends. What can we do to make sure that the next generation develops the skills they need to compete for middle-class and high-wage jobs?

Our schools can’t do it all, or all by themselves, but there’s a least a handful of actions we can take which would do a world of good. For example: balance our obsession with four-year college degrees with renewed attention to high-quality Career and Technical Education; make sure we remember the “strivers”—the low-income, well-behaved, higher-performing students, who are rarely made a top priority; and teach the “success sequence”—finish high school, work full time, and get married before having children. 

While our education system alone cannot solve the stubborn, tragic problem of persistent poverty and the growing gaps between working class and college-educated Americans, there’s much it can do for the children entrusted to it. But first we have to change the way we think about the problem and its possible solutions.

Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. This essay is drawn from his new edited volume, Education for Upward Mobility, which was released this week.

AASA joined ten other national organizations in a letter addressed to the House and Senate appropriations committee, urging strong support for increased funding for Title I, with an assurance towards avoiding any decrease in local level allocations:

"Without action by the Appropriations Committee, virtually every school district in the nation will unexpectedly find their local Title I allocation cut in school year 2017-18 just as they begin to implement the new law. The Education Department’s proposed Title IA funding levels for federal fiscal year 2017 (FY17) along with the requested proviso language would merely mitigate the severity of these local Title I allocation cuts...President Obama proposed a $450 million ‘increase’ for Title IA in FY17. We are deeply concerned that, for reasons outlined below, this amount is insufficient and will actually result in a projected cut of at least $200 million at the local level ([1]).  The proposal does not reflect an actual increase in the full context of statutory changes in ESSA related to program consolidation, state set aside, and the hold harmless provision. 

ESSA consolidates the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program into Title I. SIG was funded at $450 million in FY16, accounting for the full amount of the President’s proposed increase. More succinctly, these dollars are already in schools, and proposal is merely shifting the funding from SIG to Title I. 

The effective cuts to school districts come from a change in state set aside for school improvement. ESSA raises the state set aside from four to seven percent for school improvement and removes the Title I state set-aside hold harmless requirement for FY17. Under No Child Left Behind, the hold harmless provision ensured that local level allocations would not be reduced as a result of the state school improvement set-aside. States had to ensure level funding for school districts before taking the set aside, and recent funding realities created a scenario where the money that remained available for the state set aside was below four percent. Increasing the set aside to seven percent, in coordination with lifting the hold harmless, will create a funding vacuum, whereby dollars flow first to the state and then to the local level. The fiscal pressure of meeting the increased set aside under ESSA and backfilling funds for states that were operating with less than a four percent set-aside will result in significant cuts to local Title I programs. The Education Department’s Title I budget request at best would translate into a $200 million shortfall for local level allocations and at worst a significantly greater shortfall...

We strongly urge Congress to fund Title IA at a level $450 million above the President’s proposed level, an aggregate increase for school districts in their local level subgrant allocations for school year 2017-18, and ensure that no school district receives less Title I funding to implement the first year of ESSA."

Read the full letter.

Groups signing the letter include: 

• AASA, The School Superintendents Association
• American Federation of Teachers
• Association of Educational Service Agencies
• Association of School Business Officials International
• Council of Great City Schools
• National Association of Elementary School Principals
• National Association of Secondary School Principals
• National Education Association
• National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition
• National Rural Education Association
• National School Boards Association

The U.S. Secretary of Education (Secretary) invites interested parties to submit nominations for individuals to serve on the Regional Advisory Committees (RACs).

Purpose of the RACs: The Secretary is seeking nominations to serve on the RACs in order to collect information on the educational needs of each of the ten regions[1] served by the Regional Educational Laboratories as part of the Comprehensive Centers program.  The RACs will seek individual committee members’ input regarding the need for the technical assistance activities described in section 203 of the Educational Technical Assistance Act (ETAA) and how those needs would be most effectively addressed.  In order to achieve this purpose, the RACs will seek input from chief executive officers of States; chief State school officers; educators, including teachers and administrators; local educational agencies (LEAs); librarians; businesses; State educational agencies (SEAs); and other stakeholders within each region. 

The process for the RACs outlined in this notice is different from the process used to convene the RACs in prior years.  Specifically, we are no longer seeking consensus recommendations and instead are seeking the technical advice of each individual RAC member.  Not later than six months after each RAC is convened, it will submit a report based on this needs assessment to the Secretary.  This report will contain an analysis of the educational needs of the region and each individual’s technical advice to the Secretary regarding how those needs might be most effectively addressed.  The RAC members will not attempt to reach consensus on their recommendations and will instead submit their individual technical advice.  The Secretary shall establish priorities for the next cohort of comprehensive centers, taking into account these regional needs identified by individual RAC members and other relevant regional surveys of educational needs, to the extent the Secretary deems appropriate.  

RAC Membership: Section 206(b) of the ETAA requires that the membership of each RAC contain a balanced representation of States in the region and include not more than one representative of each SEA located in the region.  The membership of each RAC may include the following:  Representatives of LEAs, both rural and urban; representatives of institutions of higher education, including individuals representing university-based education research on education and university-based research on subjects other than education; parents; practicing educators, including classroom teachers, principals, administrators, school board members, and other local school officials; representatives of business; and researchers.  Each RAC will be composed of no more than 25 members.

RAC Member Responsibilities: The Secretary will appoint members for the life of the committee, which will span approximately five months.  Each committee will meet no more than three times.  Any member appointed to fill a vacancy occurring prior to the expiration of the full term for which the member’s predecessor was appointed will be appointed for the remainder of such term.  Members will serve without compensation.

Nomination Process: Any interested person or organization may nominate one or more qualified individuals for membership.  If you would like to nominate an individual, including yourself, for appointment to one of the following RACs, please submit the following information to the Department’s School Support and Rural Programs, Technical Assistance Group listed in this notice:

• A copy of the nominee’s resume; 
  • A letter that provides the reason(s) for nominating the individual;
  • Contact information for the nominee (name, title, home and business address, phone number, and email address); and 
  • The group(s) the nominee may qualify to represent from the following categories (list all that apply):
    • SEA
    • LEA
      • Rural LEA
      • Urban LEA
    • Practicing educator
      • Classroom teacher
      • School principal 
      • Other school administrator
      • School board member
      • Other local school official
    • Parent
    • Institution of higher education
      • University-based research on education
      • University-based research on subjects other than education
    • Business
    • Researcher

In addition, the cover letter must state that the nominee (if you are nominating someone other than yourself) has agreed to be nominated and is willing to serve on one of the RACs.  Nominees will be appointed based on technical qualifications, professional experience, demonstrated knowledge of issues, demonstrated experience, integrity, impartiality, and good judgment.  

Nomination Deadline: Nominations for individuals to serve on the RACs must be submitted by April 20, 2016.

Process for Submissions: You may submit nominations, including attachments, by any of the following methods:

• Electronically:  Send to OESE.RAC@ed.gov (specify in the email subject line, “Regional Advisory Committee Nomination”).
• Mail, express delivery, hand delivery, messenger, or courier service:  Send to the following address:  U.S. Department of Education, School Support and Rural Programs, Technical Assistance Group, 400 Maryland Avenue, SW., room 3E206, Washington, DC 20202, Attn: Britt Jung.  Express mail or hand delivery is encouraged to ensure timely receipt of materials. : 

For more information: If you have any questions regarding this process, you may contact Britt Jung, Group Leader, School Support and Rural Programs, (202) 205-4513 or email questions to OESE.RAC@ed.gov.

Earlier today, AASA joined 23 other national organizations in sending a letter to Congressional appropriators, urging them to prioritize investment in IDEA. You can read the full letter.

In urging increased federal investment above and beyond the President's proposed freezing of IDEA, the groups write: "Since its inception in 1975, IDEA has protected students with disabilities by ensuring access to a free appropriate public education.  At the time the statute was enacted, Congress promised to pay 40 percent of the National Average per Pupil Expenditure. While special education funding has received significant increases over the past 15 years, including a one-time infusion of funds included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, federal funding has leveled off recently and has even been cut. The closest the federal government has come to reaching its 40 percent commitment was 18 percent in 2005. This means that the President’s proposed funding level for FY 17 is below that of more than a decade ago. The chronic underfunding of IDEA by the federal government places an additional funding burden on states and local school districts to pay for needed services.  This often means using local budget dollars to cover the federal shortfall, shortchanging other school programs that students with disabilities often also benefit from." 

Other groups signing the letter include: 

• American Art Therapy Association
• American Council for School Social Work
• American Counseling Association
• American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
• American Music Therapy Association
• American Occupational Therapy Association
• American Psychological Association
• American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
• Association of Educational Service Agencies
• Association of School Business Officials International
• Council for Exceptional Children
• Council of Great City Schools
• National Association of Elementary School Principals
• National Association of Pupil Services Administrators
• National Association of Secondary School Principals
• National Association of School Nurses
• National Association of School Psychologists
• National Association of Social Workers
• National Association of State Directors of Special Education
• National Education Association 
• National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition
• National Rural Education AssociationNational School Boards Association

This guest blog post comes from our friends at Regional Educational Laboratory West (REL West) at WestEd.

Some states that evaluate teachers based partly on student learning use the student growth percentile model, which computes a score that is assumed to reflect a teacher’s current and future effectiveness. However, a recent study conducted in Nevada by the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) West finds that half or more of the variance in teacher scores from this model is due to random or otherwise unstable sources rather than to reliable information that could predict future performance. Even when derived by averaging several years of teacher scores, effectiveness estimates are unlikely to provide sufficient reliability for high-stakes decisions, such as tenure or dismissal.

The report, Analysis of the Stability of Teacher-Level Growth Scores From the Student Growth Percentile Model, shows how the methods and findings of this study can be used to judge the accuracy of different designs for teacher evaluation systems. It concludes that states may want to be cautious about using scores from the student growth percentile model as measures of teacher effectiveness for high-stakes decisions. The report, authored by Andrea Lash, Reino Makkonen, Loan Tran, and Min Huang by REL West at WestEd for the Institute of Education Sciences.

The full report can be seen at this link.

This guest blog post comes from Rebecca Arnold, of Transforming Education.

We are in a moment where practice, policy, and research have aligned to highlight the importance of developing and measuring students’ non-cognitive/social-emotional skills.  Survey data indicate that 88% of teachers are in schools that are working to develop students’ social-emotional skills. At the same time, under the newly enacted Every Student Succeeds Act, states must include at least one indicator of school quality or student success in their accountability and continuous improvement systems, which shows that the definition of student and school success has broadened.  Moreover, a compelling longitudinal research base now shows that non-cognitive/social-emotional skills are critical for students’ academic, career, and life outcomes.

Our organization, Transforming Education (TransformEd), supports educators and education systems to develop and measure students’ non-cognitive skills. In order to contribute to the knowledge base in the field regarding the impact of non-cognitive skills on academics, career, and life outcomes, we recently issued a paper entitled, “Ready to be Counted: The Research Case for Education Policy Action on Non-Cognitive Skills.”  The paper synthesizes multiple longitudinal and well-controlled studies that have demonstrated that non-cognitive competencies in childhood are important predictors of long-term outcomes, including high school and college completion, employability, earnings, financial stability, avoidance of criminality, and physical and mental health.  In several cases, the data show that these non-cognitive skills matter as much as or even more than cognitive or academic skills in predicting positive life outcomes.  Below is a sample of the key findings in the paper, which are from the landmark Dunedin Study. 

• Academics: Even at the first major milestone in academic attainment—completing high school—differences among Dunedin Study subjects were large. While about 95% of the top quintile in self-control earned a high school diploma, little more than half (58%) of those from the lowest quintile did so.
• Career: The level of childhood self-control was also powerfully predictive of socioeconomic status, income, and financial stability in adulthood. For example, while 10% of the high-self-control group was categorized as “low income” (below ~$15,000 US per year) at age 32, more than three times as many (32%) of the low-self-control group had low incomes.
• Well-being: Children in the lowest quintile of self-control were 2.5 times more likely (27% versus 11%) to suffer from multiple health problems by their 30s. Low self-control also strongly predicted recurrent depression and substance abuse. By age 32, almost half (43%) of those in the lowest quintile of self-control had been convicted of a crime, while barely more than one in 10 (13%) of those in the top quintile were convicted criminals.

TransformEd is the lead strategic advisor on social-emotional learning to the CORE Districts – a group of school districts that serve more than one million students in 1,500 schools across California. Six of the CORE Districts chose to act on the research showing the importance of students’ social-emotional skills by systematically measuring these skills alongside academic outcomes and school climate/culture in their federally approved accountability and continuous improvement system. 

In partnership with the CORE Districts, TransformEd has administered common measures of four social-emotional competencies (growth mindset, self-management, self-efficacy, and social awareness) through a field test with nearly 500,000 students. The ultimate goal of this effort is to provide educators with the data they need to make informed choices in systematically adopting scalable, evidence-based approaches to develop students’ social-emotional competencies.  

The data from this field test shows that these skills are statistically significantly predictive of students’ GPA, test scores, attendance, and suspension rates.  We will be issuing a policy paper highlighting these findings in more detail in spring 2016, as well as releasing open source social-emotional measures, so follow us on Twitter (@Transforming_Ed) to ensure that you receive the announcements.

For more information

• Read the full “Ready to Be Counted” paper to learn more about the impact of social-emotional skills.
• Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, which curates social-emotional research, practice, and popular press articles. Check out our website, which includes resources for educators on strategies to develop students’ social-emotional skills.

Sources

Bridgeland, Bruce & Hariharan (2013) The Missing Piece: A National Teacher Survey on How Social and Emotional Learning Can Empower Children and Transform Schools. 

Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., Houts, R., Poulton, R., Roberts, B. W., Ross, S., Sears, M. R., Thomson, W. M.,& Caspi, A. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(7), 2693–2698.

This guest blog post comes from AASA member Brandon Palmer, Vice Principal of Little Rock High School in Littlerock, CA.

Although the school principal’s role has been growing in importance, the methods used to select principals have changed little since the 1950s. Moreover, researchers have seldom scrutinized principal selection methods; yet, significant procedural issues exist. The concept of fit has been used within principal selection for decades, but researchers appear to disagree on whether fit is an effective criterion and whether its use may foster discrimination. This primarily qualitative study explored the perceptions and practices of top-level district administrators regarding the use of fit within principal selection processes through a conceptual framework of cloning cultures which raise significant equity issues for non-Caucasian selection participants. Results of this study indicate participants define fit both similarly and differently, they believe fit is an important attribute sought in selection, using fit within selection has both advantages and disadvantages, and selecting principals based on fit does not guarantee that a principal will fit the school and district community. Therefore, the concept of fit should be clearly defined and operationalized. In addition, objective assessment criteria should be developed if fit is to be used within principal selection processes to promote equality within selection practices.

In a recent study published in the 2016 CLEARvoz Journal (Center for Leadership and Equity Research), top-level school district leaders were asked a variety of questions concerning their use of “fit” as an attribute to select school principals.  “Fit” is considered to be of great importance to top-level school leaders when selecting school principals.  Interestingly, principal selection researchers disagree on its use.  Despite its perceived importance, researchers have also described “fit” as a means to exclude on the basis of race, gender, or other factors real or imagined.  

Results of this study indicated top-level school district leaders described “fit” in one of three ways: 1) some type of congruence between the principal and school-community, 2) specific character traits, or 3) a candidate’s understanding of the school-community.  While most top-level school district leaders deemed “fit” as important or very important, they also admitted the difficulty in ascertaining “fit” during selection.  

The use of “fit” was cautioned in favor of other attributes such as raising student achievement.  However, if “fit” is to be used, the specific traits that make-up “fit” should be assessed such as knowledge of curriculum and instruction or the ability to build relationships.  It was also suggested the use of “fit” may undermine equity concerns and that more objective methods should be used instead of solely relying on intuition to match school principals with the school-community.

The full research article can be accessed here:  http://journals.sfu.ca/cvj/index.php/cvj/article/view/22/27 

IDEA Regs to Address Significant Disproportionality Proposed by Department

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education released a notice for proposed rulemaking that would make substantial changes to how significant disproportionality is identified and remedied in states and districts.

Almost two years ago, the Department asked stakeholders to submit information on how the Department could ensure states appropriately identify districts with significant racial and ethnic disproportionality in the identification, placement and discipline of special education students.  Much of the feedback AASA provided appears to be incorporated as we read through their proposed regulation. While AASA did not suggest regulation was necessary, we would prefer a statutory approach in the IDEA reauthorization to amending these provisions, we do think that the Department’s proposal has some merit.

For example, AASA has stated that it is unfair to districts and students to prohibit those identified as having significant disproportionality to have to set-aside 15% of Part B funds for early intervening services that can only be used for students not yet identified for special education. We urged the Department to allow districts to spend less than 15% if they could prove they were adequately using funds to address significant disproportionality or to ensure the funds could be used on students in special education as well as students not yet identified for special education. The Department chose to propose the latter option and now CEIS funding is not limited to non-special education students. While this does not address the concerns we have with how maintenance of effort provisions are impacted when districts do set-aside funds for CEIS, this is a step in the right direction.

In our comments, we also acknowledged that there needed to be more stringent parameters to ensure states were identifying districts for significant disproportionality. We acknowledge the current system of measuring significant disproportionality must be reconsidered, as only 356 districts were identified as having significant racial or ethnic disproportionality in the 2010-2011 school year. As a result of this data, we supported the conclusion drawn by the Government Accountability Office that “the discretion that States have in defining significant disproportionality has resulted in a wide range of definitions that provides no assurance that the problem is being appropriately identified across the nation.”

We asked the Department to issue guidance on states’ development of a definition of significant disproportionality that ensures they identify districts which have significant disproportionality, but have never been required to take action to address it. While the Department has chosen a regulatory approach, we believe their attempt to ensure significant disproportionality is remedied is somewhat appropriate. The Department proposes requiring states to use a risk-ratio method to compare disproportionality among racial and ethnic groups. Most states are already using risk-ratios, but they aren’t required to set reasonable risk ratios, which leads to few districts being identified for significant disproportionality. In determining a risk ratio, the state would have to work with stakeholders and analyze the data sets helpfully provided by the Department to analyze what an appropriate risk-ratio would be for the state. States also have the flexibility to choose to identify an LEA as having significant disproportionality only after an LEA exceeds a risk ratio threshold for up to three prior consecutive years. This is another positive change.  Finally, a state need not identify an LEA with significant disproportionality if the LEA is making reasonable progress in lowering its risk ratios, where reasonable progress is determined by the State. The Department’s wisdom to provide states with flexibility to honor the progress a district is making in addressing disproportionality is very appreciated by AASA.  We do have concerns by the requirement to use a standard national “n” size of 10 across all racial and ethnic subgroups as this “n” size is not used for ESSA or other federal accountability provisions, but at first glance the proposed regulations generally appear to be a positive development in ensuring significant disproportionality is identified and addressed with district and state flexibility and superintendent input.

AASA will be reviewing the regs once they are formally published on the Federal Register and inviting all members to join us in commenting on the proposed regs. 

The U.S. Department of Education is engaged in the early stages of the regulatory process related to implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. The first round of regulation and rulemaking will engage current education practitioners and leaders, and USED is accepting nominations to fill out their roster. AASA is submitting two nominations to represent the nation’s public school superintendents and local system administrators in this very important process. AASA will ask that Dr. Gail Pletnick, Superintendent of Dysart Unified School District in Arizona and AASA President-Elect, and ASAA Executive Director Dan Domenech serve on the rulemaking body.

Please see the endorsing statements below that will be submitted to the U.S. Department of Education to support Gail Pletnick and Dan Domenech’s nominations for the ESSA rulemaking committee and then complete the two short forms to endorse Dan and Gail.  

You can read Dan’s qualifications here and Gail’s qualifications here.

Endorsing Statement for Dan Domenech:  I support the nomination of Daniel A. Domenech to the US Department of Education's negotiated rulemaking committee, representing local administrators and local boards of education. Dr. Domenech has a proven track record in education, with a career spanning more than 40 years, 27  as an administrator. Dr. Domenech is well-equipped to represent the nation's public schools, whether urban or rural, small or large. His work experience enables him to relate directly to the topics under consideration in the committee, including assessment and the use of Title I funds. It is for these reasons, among others, that I endorse Daniel Domenech's nomination to the rulemaking committee.

To endorse Dan, please click here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1h9jV8bL7RQ3XClI2ieZquaGdxz2kjOfQ9pHn2ciJ4C0/viewform?c=0&w=1&usp=mail_form_link 

Endorsing Statement for Gail Pletnick: I support the nomination of Gail K. Pletnick to the US Department of Education's negotiated rulemaking committee, representing local administrators and local boards of education. Dr. Pletnick has a proven track record in education, with a career spanning more than 9 years as a superintendent and nearly 30 years as a school administrator. Dr. Pletnick has worked in public and private school settings and in both suburban and rural communities. Her federal education policy knowledge and work experience enables her to relate directly to the topics under consideration in the committee, including assessment and the use of Title I funds. It is for these reasons, among others, that I endorse Gail Pletnick's nomination to the rulemaking committee.

To endorse Gail, please click here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1tc5TumkSx4e7neopFZfKKdNVv6gc2f9jQEqO9TLtUE0/viewform?c=0&w=1&usp=mail_form_link

Thank you! 

Last week, the AASA Governing Board adopted the 2016 Legislative Agenda. Last year's successful reauthorization of ESEA brought about a significant change in the structure of the legislative agenda. In previous years, we have organized our positions by topic area: ESEA, IDEA, student data and privacy, etc. This year, we reorganized our legislative agenda into sections around policy goals rather than topics. Since many of our goals are shared among different topics, we were able to streamline the legislative agenda through this reorganization. 

Our positioning remains steady throughout this agenda. Some of the main priorities continue to be equity, an appropriate federal/state/local balance, adequate funding and a focus on the total child. 

Find the new legislative agenda here, and a tri-fold summary which is perfect for sharing with your legislators here, with a printable version here. 

AASA filed comments in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for Impact Aid. Many of the Impact Aid regulations hadn't been updated since 1995, and AASA welcomed the opportunity to weigh in. AASA applauds the multiple positive proposed changes within the NPRM, including those that would expedite the payment process for both Federal Property and Basic Support school districts. Department staff and school administrators share the burden to ensure timely payments. As school administrators adjust to the Final Rule and explore opportunities to improve the timeliness of payments, the Department should also explore ways to improve its own systems and communication with school districts. 

You can read our full comments here.

It was great seeing so many of you at NCE last week! In case you missed it, the presentations for all of the policy team’s sessions are available here:

• ESEA and Appropriations: So Close Yet So Far 
• Presidents,Congress, and the Public Schools: The Politics of Education Reform 
  • And if you have not yet, buy Jack Jenning’s book here
• Getting Past ESEA - AASA PolicyPriorities for IDEA, Perkins, Child Nutrition and FERPA Reauthorizations
• AASAAdvocacy Outreach: Beyond Email, Leveraging the Voice of Superintendents

USED has announced a set of three webinars focused on rural education, being held this week.

The team responsible for the Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP) is focused on increasing communication and collaboration among professionals at the Department of Education, and is hosting these stakeholder webinars as an overview of the rural education grant programs.

They have scheduled 3 separate one-hour webinars: 

• February 16th, 1 pm ET
• February 17th, 10 am ET
• February 18th, 10 am ET

The logon information for each webinar is listed below.  To join a session, please click on the hyperlink listed below the session date. To hear the session, you will need to call in using the toll free number.  If you experience any problems or need additional information prior to the session date, please contact LaToya Harper-Williams (latoya.harperwilliams@ed.gov).

2016 REAP Kickoff Webinar Session 1: 
Date: Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Time: 1:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (New York, GMT-05:00)
Session number: 747 774 951
Session password: 12345

To Access the Webinar:

1. Go to https://educate.webex.com/educate/k2/j.php?MTID=td47f8f1ed43f61c954c6e2feb3370ab4
2. Enter your name and email address (or registration ID). 
3. Enter the session password: 12345 
4. Click "Join Now". 
5. Follow the instructions that appear on your screen. 
6. Please join the training session and call in to the number below and enter the Attendee access code.
   Call-in toll-free number (Verizon):1-877-951-6686 (US)
   Attendee access code: 582 801 1

2016 REAP Kickoff Webinar Session 2: Date: Wednesday, February 17, 2016 
Time: 10:00 am, Eastern Standard Time (New York, GMT-05:00)
Session number: 742 091 740
Session password: 12345 

To Access the Webinar:

1. Go to https://educate.webex.com/educate/k2/j.php?MTID=td47f8f1ed43f61c954c6e2feb3370ab4
2. Enter your name and email address (or registration ID). 
3. Enter the session password: 12345 
4. Click "Join Now". 
5. Follow the instructions that appear on your screen. 
6. Please join the training session and call in to the number below and enter the Attendee access code. 
   Call-in toll-free number (Verizon):1-877-951-6686 (US) 
   Attendee access code: 582 801 1

2016 REAP Kickoff Webinar Session 3: 
Date: Thursday, February 18, 2016
Time: 10:00 am, Eastern Standard Time (New York, GMT-05:00)
Session number: 749 021 177
Session password: 12345

To Access the Webinar:

1. Go to https://educate.webex.com/educate/k2/j.php?MTID=td47f8f1ed43f61c954c6e2feb3370ab4
2. Enter your name and email address (or registration ID). 
3. Enter the session password: 12345 
4. Click "Join Now". 
5. Follow the instructions that appear on your screen. 
6. Please join the training session and call in to the number below and enter the Attendee access code. 
   Call-in toll-free number (Verizon):1-877-951-6686 (US) 
   Attendee access code: 582 801 1

AASA, The School Superintendents Association joined 19 other national organizations on a letter in response to the Department of Labor's (DOL) proposed changes to the exemptions to the Fair Labor Standard Act's (FLAS) overtime pay requirements for executive, administrative and professional employees (the 'white collar' exemptions).

As a reminder, the DOL proposes more than doubling the salary level required to qualify for the "white collar exemptions". You can read more background in our previous blog post. 

Signing groups represent state and local governments, public schools, public institutions of higher education and other pubic sector entities. You can read the full letter here, and we have excerpted the public school-specific section below:

These costs would be imposed at a time when many public entities have not recovered from the last economic downturn. Our nation's public colleges and universities are still attempting to mitigate the impact of recession and post-recession reductions in state funding to higher education. During the six-year period from 2006-2007 to 2012-2013, after adjusting for inflation, four-year public universities experienced state funding cuts of $2,370 per student, while tuition and fee revenues increased by only $1,940, resulting in a shortfall of $430 per full-time student. Increasing costs of public colleges and universities at the levels proposed by the rule would put significant pressure on tuition levels and/or educational services. Municipalities face similar budget challenges. According to the National Association of Counties, only 65 of 3,069 county economies have recovered to their pre-recession levels. A similar reality for cities is evident in the National League of Cities 2015 City Fiscal Conditions Report, which shows that, while fiscal conditions continue to improve, they remain weakened nearly eight years after the start of the recession. This has government services already stretched thin. Despite a growth in population, government employment today is less than what it was prior to the recession. For school districts, which collectively are the largest employers in the nation, these thinly stretched state and local budgets translate to fixed school district budgets that cannot absorb unpredictable cost increases. Combine that with implementing the recently authorized Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which returns autonomy and flexibility to the state and local level, and state and local education agencies will be dealing with a myriad of regulations at the exact time they face the fiscal impacts of these DOL rules. The result will be reduced staffing at state education agencies and/or budget cuts at the exact time resources prove most critical to ensuring ESSA success.

Today, AASA released the fourth edition of the Superintendent Salary and BenefitsStudy. Some of this year’s survey's key findings included: 

• Base salaries ranged from $55,000 to $322,171, with a median of $131,000 and an average of $140,021.
• Respondents are predominately male (80 percent), White (92 percent) and from intermediate-sized districts (300-2,499 students, 52 percent) regardless of their gender.
• Female respondents were, on average, older than male respondents (55 to 53 respectively).
• A four-year trend of improving economic conditions continues. Slightly more than half of the respondents (53 percent) reported their districts’ economic conditions as stable, which holds steady from 2014; this has increased from 50 percent in 2013 and 45 percent in 2012.

This year saw an increase in benefits, including contribution to retirement plans or annuities, medical coverage, and family medical coverage as well as a marked increase in the payment of national organization membership.

The use of legal counsel also increased this year. Legal services are used by boards 60 percent of the time, and by superintendents 25 percent of the time. Both of these are increases from previous years.

AASA members will receive a full members-only report, including a rich list of unique contract provisions via email today. A public version of the survey is available here.

Please contact Leslie Finnan, AASA senior legislative analyst, at lfinnan@aasa.org with any questions.

Today, AASA joined nine other national organizations representing states, school districts, educators and parents to announce our commitment to work together to ensure the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) accelerates student learning in every classroom. The groups will also work to make certain that congressional intent is honored throughout the implementation process.

In an attached letter to Acting U.S. Education Secretary John King, the organizations wrote: “Although our organizations do not always agree, we are unified in our belief that ESSA is a historic opportunity to make a world-class 21st century education system. We are dedicated to working together at the national level to facilitate partnership among our members in states and districts to guarantee the success of this new law.”

The letter marks the beginning of a partnership, the State and Local ESSA Implementation Network, that will:  

• Work together to ensure a timely, fair transition to ESSA; 
• Coordinate ESSA implementation by governors, state superintendents, school boards, state legislators, local superintendents, educators and parents; 
• Promote state, local and school decision-making during implementation; and
• Collaborate with a broader group of education stakeholders to provide guidance to the federal government on key implementation issues.

AASA: The School Superintendents Association | American Federation of Teachers | National Association of Elementary School Principals | National Association of Secondary School Principals | National Association of State Boards of Education | National Conference of State Legislatures | National Education Association | National Governors Association | National School Boards Association

On February 9, President Obama released his federal fiscal year (FY) 2017 budget proposal. FY17 runs from October 1, 2016 through September 30, 2017 and those federal dollars will be available to school districts for the 2017-18 school year.  The FY17 request for education includes $69.4 billion in discretionary funding, an increase of $1.3 billion over the 2016 appropriation. The Department's elementary and secondary programs annually serve nearly 16,900 school districts and approximately 50 million students attending more than 98,000 public schools and 28,000 private schools.

AASA has reviewed the budget and completed an analysis. Here are some top-line take-aways as they relate to the FY17 education proposal:  

• AASA commends President Obama for the consistency with which he continues to prioritize investment in education. Throughout his Presidency, education was a constant budget highlight, recognizing the important work and role of our nation’s schools and colleges in preparing our students for college and career readiness and success. His FY17 budget proposal continues this push. We in particular commend the proposed increase to Title I, Title III and teacher supports/investments. 
• We have concerns with the President’s willingness to level fund IDEA and exacerbate the constant fiscal pressure local school districts face when left to cover more than half of the federal government’s commitment to educating students with disabilities. The FY17 proposal freezes the IDEA allocation at FY16 levels, meaning the federal government would be at 16%, less than half of its commitment to fund 40% of the additional cost associated with educating students with special needs.
• Just two months ago President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act into law.  A bold reauthorization of the nation’s flagship federal K12 statute, the law embodies the return of authority and flexibility to the state and local level. We commend the $450 million increase to Title I of ESSA, but must flag some concerns with Title I and Title IV proposals, in particular:
• We are concerned that the proposed $450 million does not reflect an actual increase in the full context of the ESSA statute, which includes a significant one-year change to a hold-harmless provision. We encourage the President or Congress to release data to demonstrate that the proposed funding level is high enough to offset the impact of changes to the hold harmless provisions as it relates to the state set aside for innovation/turn around. While lifting the hold harmless provision works to ensure that states are not underfunded from the get-go as it relates to state innovation, it creates a potential funding vacuum where the state set aside is funded at the expense of local district allocations. Title I must be funded at a robust enough level to ensure not only funding for the state set aside, but to also preserve at least level funding for local level allocations. 
• AASA acknowledges that the President’s $500 million proposal represents a $147 million increase over FY16 funding levels for the remaining programs consolidated in Title IV under ESSA. This increase, though, is just one-third of the authorized Congressional amount of $1.6 billion. The Title IV block grant now represents the 3rd largest program in ESSA and was strongly bipartisan as the bill moved through Congress. It is the program by which school districts can implement programs related to well-rounded education, school safety and education technology, among others. The overall success of ESSA will be shaped in part by the successes (or stumblings) of Title IV. While the funds in Title IV are significantly more flexible in FY17, a prohibitively low budget request like this sets the stage for an overall funding level that not only mitigates flexibility, but is in direct conflict with Congressional intent. In addition to our concern with the prohibitively low funding level, AASA is opposed to the requested appropriations language that would allow states to limit or target the allowable uses in Title IV. By more adequately funding Title IV, the administration can eliminate the perceived need for this prescriptive language and can instead provide a funding level that more closely aligns with Congressional intent and the spirit of the legislation that President Obama himself signed into law.

Related Resources: 

• AASA’s overview and analysis.
• USED FY17 landing page
• FY17 Education Funding Fact Sheet
• FY17 Education Budget Summary and Background Information
• FY17 Budget for the Full US Government
  • FY17 Budget
  • Office of Management & Budget Fact Sheet

Your AASA Policy and Advocacy team members are getting excited to fly out to (warm!) Phoenix for NCE this week! We will be busy with presentations on a myriad of topics. Be sure to find us at the following presentations:

• Thursday at 9:00 - ESEA and Appropriations: So Close Yet So Far (Noelle Ellerson)
• Thursday at 10:15 - Presidents, Congress, and the Public Schools: The Politics of Education Reform (Jack Jennings)
• Thursday at 12:00 - Federal Relations Luncheon with David Berliner (be sure to buy tickets, if you haven't already!)
• Thursday at 2:00 - Why Rural Matters
• Thursday at 3:00 - All Politics is Local: A State Policy Perspective (Bruce Hunter, Mike Lodewegen, Ryan Owens, Leslie Finnan)
• Friday at 10:45 - Getting Past ESEA - AASA Policy Priorities for IDEA, Perkins, Child Nutrition and FERPA Reauthorizations (Sasha Pudelski, Leslie Finnan)
• Friday at 2:45 - AASA Advocacy Outreach: Beyond Email, Leveraging the Voice of Superintendents (Deanna Atkins, Leslie Finnan)
• Saturday at 8:00 - Mid-Decade Update of the Decennial Study of the American Superintendency (Bob McCord, Leslie Finnan, and a team of scholars on women in the superintendency)

Our materials will all be made available here. Just to whet your whistle, here is a sneak peak of two of our sessions:

• ESEA and Appropriations: So Close Yet So Far
• Getting Past ESEA - AASA Policy Priorities for IDEA, Perkins, Child Nutrition and FERPA Reauthorizations

Come find us all at the conference, and be sure to follow us on Twitter! @AASAHQ @Noellerson @SPudelski @LeslieFinnan and use the hashtag #NCE16

We look forward to seeing many of you there!

With the recent re-authorization of ESEA, attention on Capitol Hill is beginning to focus on another long-overdue federal education statute: IDEA. For the winter edition of the AASA Legislative Trends Report, we decided to examine whether there were any state legislative trends pertaining to special education students, programs and personnel since 2013. Specifically, we wanted to trace whether there were any trends related to dyslexia and IEP processes that could potentially impact discussions on these issues at the federal level during IDEA reauthorization. Our findings are here: http://aasa.org/uploadedFiles/Policy_and_Advocacy/files/DisabilityStateTrendsWinter2016.pdf

The Education Department (ED) has posted a notice of intention to establish a negotiated rulemaking (sometimes called "neg reg") committee to prepare proposed regulations in issues related to two topical areas: 1) assessments, and 2) supplement/not supplant, and it can be found here. The notice will be published in the Federal Register on Thursday, and that direct link is here. 

What will be covered in "neg reg"?

• Prepare proposed regulations that would update existing assessment regulations to reflect changes to section 1111(b)(2) of the ESEA, including:
  • Locally selected nationally recognized high school assessments, under section 1111(b)(2)(H);
  • The exception for advanced mathematics assessments in 8th grade, under section 1111(b)(2)(C);
  • Inclusion of students with disabilities in academic assessments, including alternate assessments based on alternate academic achievement standards for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities, subject to a cap of 1.0% of students assessed for a subject;
  • Inclusion of English learners in academic assessments and English language proficiency assessments; and
  • Computer-adaptive assessments.
   
• Prepare proposed regulations related to the requirement under section 1118(b) of the ESEA that title I, part A funds be used to supplement, and not supplant, nonfederal funds, specifically:
  • Regarding the methodology a local educational agency uses to allocate State and local funds to each title I school to ensure compliance with the supplement not supplant requirement; and
  • The timeline for compliance.
   

2014 was a big year for the E-Rate program, bringing both a program modernization and an increase in the funding cap. The updated program came with a new application process, and USAC is currently in the middle of migrating the E-Rate information technology system and forms to a new platform.

Last year (2015 application window), applicants expressed frustration with the new application forms and portals. While USAC has tried to remedy these shortcomings, there may still be some hangups. We encourage you to give us feedback as you work through this year's application to submit your E-Rate forms. Tell us what worked and what didn't; let us know what went according to plan and where there is room for improvement. 

Share these comments with us by filling out this form. You can also submit your feedback to USAC via EPCfeedback@usac.org. 

You can read USAC's announcement on the 2016 application window here.

Administrators in public schools are well aware of the fact that the Department of Education issues "Dear Colleague" letters on many issues from time to time. Often these create controversy and confusion. One of these, the November 16  Letter about a free appropriate public education, is discussed below.

November 16, “Dear colleague” Letter by the US Department of Education about a FAPE: A school attorney’s response

By Miriam Kurtzig Freedman

 The seven-page Letter tells educators—presumably, general and special educators—that holding students with disabilities to “rigorous academic standards and high expectations” is a “shared responsibility for all of us,” and that these students should be taught the “same challenging academic content and achievement standards [as] all children in the State”… at the “grade level in which the child is enrolled” The Letter raises many concerns.

 First, it is unclear whether the general education teachers and administrators’ perspective was taken into account.  Their voice and leadership in this “shared responsibility,” especially as most services are provided in general education classrooms, is vital. Two special education Department offices authored this Letter—OSEP (Office of Special Education) and OSERS (Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services). Where is general education’s OESE—Office of Elementary and Secondary Education?  While this Letter presumes to be about special education, it is also very much about general education.  OESE needs to be at the planning table especially since the Letter urges the same standards for all students “regardless of nature or severity of the disability.”  Without input from general education, this Letter is simply a one-sided approach—like the tail wagging the dog.   

 Second, while no one disagrees about the importance of holding all students to high standards and expectations, I fear that the Letter downplays the cornerstone of special education law—individualization.  The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provides services to meet eligible students’ unique needs. Yet, this Letter appears to gloss over the reality that, even with similar curricular standards, students’ rate of learning and ability to master skills and concepts will differ, as they are impacted by the nature and severity of their disability.  The concept of “closing the gap” (Letter, at page 5), while prominent in this Letter, is inconsistent with the IDEA!    

Special education focuses on whether students make gains in their areas of need—not on how they measure up against others. For some students with disabilities, the gap between them and their non-disabled peers will widen over time.  That does not mean per se that they are failing to learn, or that their teachers are failing to teach them. Sadly, this Letter leads us to see failure even when students succeed—in direct contrast to the law’s mission and good education practice.

Third, in order to include students with disabilities in general education settings, this Letter favors the use of modifications of assignments, audio and other aids—inadvertently creating a trap for schools. Such methods often bypass the student’s unique needs and entitlement to a FAPE (free appropriate public education). The sad reality is that schools that follow this Letter’s approach may lose at due process hearings and in the courts because the approach can be viewed as a way to get students to “pass” and get “through” school—without providing the individualized benefit the law requires.   

In sum, general education teachers and administrators who currently work in our schools need to lead the effort and be at the table to build schools that truly educate all students—from the most needy to the most advanced.  Their input is especially vital now, given the Department’s push for inclusion to occur in general education classrooms.  The Department should aid schools in their efforts to comply with current legal mandates, not divert them to paths that contradict the law. 

 Miriam Kurtzig Freedman has written six books (including the influential Fixing Special Education) on law and education and has spent her career in public education as a teacher, hearing officer, and an attorney representing public schools.

Today USED released guidance to States to help reduce and hopefully eliminate redundancy, unhelpful, or low-quality assessments for students.  It’s important to note that this guidance addresses the use of current federal dollars under NCLB during this school year and next school year, and that ED will be working to provide further clarification in the coming months regarding how funds under the new legislation—ESSA—may be utilized in the unnecessary testing arena.

Acting Secretary John King addresses this guidance in a short video also released today.

Politics K12 (EdWeek) has a good write-up on the guidance. Check it out.

Over the past three years, many states have passed or implemented new student data privacy laws affecting schools, state departments of education, and school service providers. As this policy area continues to move at the state level and starts to gain traction at the federal level, this free webinar is a primer for policymakers, educators and school officials. It will highlight trends of requirements on schools, teachers, and service providers and privacy considerations for schools when adopting new technology.

This webinar is co-hosted by SIIA’s Education Technology Industry Network (ETIN), AASA, The School Superintendent’s Association, and the National Association of School Boards (NASBE).

The webinar will be held at 4 pm on Thursday February 18. Register today! 

Today, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter from Senior Advisor Ann Whalen to Chief State School Officers that addresses pressing questions concerning the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  Specifically, the letter articulates the flexibilities available to states in the 2016-2017 school year designed to ensure an orderly transition to the ESSA.  The letter is below for your reference.

For the latest information from USED on ESSA, visit www.ed.gov/essa.

Dear Colleague:

I appreciate the work you are doing to transition to the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which the President signed into law on December 10, 2015, and which reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA).  The ESSA provides an extraordinary opportunity to secure educational equity for all children. and I look forward to working closely with you and your team to ensure that this promise is realized.  Last month, I wrote to you about some of the most time sensitive transition questions for the 2015-2016 school year.  Today, I am writing to address some additional, pressing questions concerning the 2016-2017 school year.  Specifically, I would like to take this opportunity to articulate the flexibilities available to you in the 2016-2017 school year designed to ensure an orderly transition to the ESSA.

As the U.S. Department of Education (ED) continues to analyze the ESSA, we will provide additional information at www.ed.gov/essa.  Additionally, I encourage you to sign up to receive updates on ESSA transition guidance by clicking here.  Please also know that specific information about the School Improvement Grants program in fiscal years (FY) 2015 and 2016 will be provided in the coming weeks.

In General: Use of FY 2016 Formula Funds in the 2016-2017 School Year

Under the ESSA transition provisions, as clarified by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, FY 2016 formula grant funds will be awarded and administered in accordance with the ESEA as in effect on the day before the date of enactment of the ESSA (i.e., the requirements promulgated under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB)).  This means that ED formula grant allocations to States and local educational agencies (LEAs), as well as State subgrants allocated by formula to LEAs under ESEA formula grant programs, will be made in FY 2016, for the 2016-2017 school year, in the same manner and using the same allocation formulas as for the 2015-2016 school year.  It also means that, with the exceptions described below, formula grant recipients will continue to operate in the 2016-2017 school year under the plans, procedures, and requirements that are in place for the 2015-2016 school year. 

Exceptions: Ensuring an Orderly Transition to the ESSA in the 2016-2017 School Year 

Consistent with the transition provisions in the ESSA, including our authority to ensure an orderly transition to the ESSA, ED is and will endeavor to enable States, LEAs, and schools to focus resources on continuing and refining the activities that remain most relevant during the transition.  To this end, during the 2016-2017 school year, there are certain exceptions to the general rule, described above, regarding formula funds; these relate to school and LEA interventions and supports; interventions for English learners; and additional information regarding orderly transition from NCLB provisions that are not in the ESSA.  

1. School Interventions and Supports in the 2016-2017 School Year
   • For States Operating Under ESEA Flexibility
     For States currently operating under ESEA flexibility, ESSA section 5(e)(2)(ii) requires that, in the 2016-2017 school year, a school that is identified as a priority or focus school in 2015-2016 must continue to implement interventions applicable to such school.  In my letter last month, dated December 18, 2015, I explained that, consistent with ESSA’s orderly transition provisions and in order to support States during this transition year, States have the option to choose between (1) freezing their existing priority and focus school lists as of December 10, 2015, for use in the 2016-2017 school year or (2) refreshing their lists by March 1, 2016.  Please refer to that letter for additional detail.  As described in that letter, each State with ESEA flexibility should inform ED, through an e-mail to its State e-mail address, OSS.[STATE]@ed.gov, by Friday, January 29, 2016, of which of the above options it has selected.
     
     In order to ensure that LEAs in States that are implementing ESEA flexibility in the 2015-2016 school year are able to comply with the ESSA transition requirement to continue to implement interventions applicable to priority and focus schools during the 2016-2017 school year, ED will not require those States or LEAs to comply with the requirements in the following sections of the ESEA if they impede a priority or focus school from being able to continue to implement appropriate interventions in 2016-2017: 1003(a), which requires an SEA to distribute at least 95 percent of the funds it reserves to LEAs for use in Title I schools in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring; 1114(a)(1), which requires that a school have at least a 40 percent poverty rate to be eligible to operate a schoolwide program; 6213(b), which limits the amount of certain federal funds an LEA may transfer between programs; 6224(e), which requires an SEA to permit an LEA that fails to make adequate yearly progress to continue to receive a Small, Rural School Achievement grant only if the LEA uses funds to carry out ESEA section 1116; and 1113(a)(3)-(4) and (c)(1), which requires an LEA to rank and serve eligible schools according to poverty and allocate Title I funds to schools in rank order of poverty.  Again, this allowance under the orderly transition authority is consistent with the flexibility allowed under ESEA flexibility to enable States to support intervention in priority and focus schools.
     
     
   • For States Not Operating Under ESEA Flexibility
     For States not operating under ESEA flexibility in school year 2015-2016, ESSA section 5(e)(2)(i) requires a school or LEA that was identified in 2015-2016 by the State as in need of improvement, corrective action, or restructuring under ESEA as it existed prior to the enactment of ESSA (i.e., under NCLB) to continue to implement the same interventions in the 2016-2017 school year.  During the 2016-2017 school year, these States may, but are not required to, ensure that LEAs are providing supplemental educational services, public school choice and the related notice to parents for the 2016-2017 school year.  If these States choose not to require that their LEAs provide supplemental educational services and public school choice in the 2016-2017 school year, they must, in order to ensure an orderly transition to the ESSA, develop and implement a one-year transition plan for ensuring that their LEAs provide alternative supports for the students eligible for supplemental educational services and the schools with the greatest need (e.g., schools with large numbers or percentages of students eligible for supplemental educational services).  I am sending an additional letter with more information to the eight affected States in the coming days.
     
     
2. LEA Interventions and Supports for English Learners in the 2016-2017 School Year
   In my letter on December 18, 2015, I explained that, in order to facilitate an orderly transition to the ESSA, States will not be required to hold LEAs accountable for their performance against Annual Measurable Achievement Objectives (AMAOs) 1, 2, and 3 under Title III of the ESEA, as reauthorized by NCLB, for the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years.  Accordingly, States must freeze district accountability under Title III based on the most recent AMAO calculations, and continue to provide those LEAs with the corresponding supports and interventions in the remaining months of the 2015-2016 school year and the 2016-2017 school year.
   
   
3. Additional Orderly Transition from NCLB Provisions Not in ESSA
   In addition to the AMAOs mentioned above and the annual measurable objectives (AMOs) mentioned in my letter of December 18, 2015, there are additional provisions of the ESEA, as reauthorized by NCLB, along with their implementing regulations, that States are not required to implement in the 2016-2017 school year in order to facilitate an orderly transition to the ESSA.  These provisions are as follows: section 1119, which requires all teachers of core academic subjects in the State to be “highly qualified”1,2; section 2141, which requires LEAs not making progress toward all teachers being “highly qualified” to create and implement an improvement plan and requires the State to provide technical assistance to such LEAs; and section 1117, which requires States to provide certain types of school supports and recognition.   

Please note that the State Plans to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators that States submitted in spring 2015 to address ESEA section 1111(b)(8)(C), which requires that States ensure that poor and minority children are not taught at higher rates than other children by inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers, remain in effect for the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 school years.

Thank you for your ongoing commitment to improving educational outcomes for all students.  I look forward to our continued partnership as we move ahead with this critical work. 

Today, the Senate Agriculture Committee unanimously passed the Improving Child Nutrition Integrity and Access Act, a bill to reauthorize the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, through markup. The bill is expected to be fast tracked to the Senate floor, as they are hoping to pass the bill quickly before election season makes action difficult on the Hill. 

AASA opposed the bill as introduced. While it does provide some additional flexibility, these do not outweigh the increased administrative burden placed by other changes in the bill, and many could be better done through regulation. We hope to save the reauthorization process for a more comprehensive compromise.

On March 14^th and 15^th, rural education leaders will assemble in Washington, D.C. for a series of meetings with leading federal policymakers to discuss issues of great interest and concern to rural schools and communities. The Rural Education Policy Summit is convened by the National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition (NREAC) to outline the policy and funding priorities for rural education leaders in Congress.  During the day and half long gathering, attendees will meet with leaders on Capitol Hill to discuss areas of policy and funding importance for rural schools. In addition, the group will meet with officials from the U.S. Department of Education to discuss regulations for the Every Student Succeeds Act, the Rural Education Achievement Program and the impact of recent policy changes issued by the Department on rural schools. The group will also meet with nationally recognized policy experts to discuss recent research on improving rural teacher recruitment, graduation rates and efficiency of state and local resources. After these meetings, the group will gather to develop the 2016 Legislative Agenda and discuss how to best support their policy goals over the next year. 

There is no cost to participate in the Washington D.C. convening for rural education leaders. Registration will close on February 5, 2016. For the complete schedule and accommodations details, please email, me, Sasha Pudelski (spudelski@aasa.org) or call (703)-875-0733. 

Last week in the blog we relayed information about a recent joint effort by the US Education Department and Department of Health and Human Services to highlight impact opportunities to support healthy students. You can read the full post here.

When USED and HHS started the process, the contacted a variety of groups and organizations to solicit input and regulations. AASA's Children's Programs department provided information related to AASA's health insurance work, work ultimately identified as a high impact activity.

In the final toolkit, Mountain View School District (Calif.) is cited as an example of how school districts can identify uninsured children and increase their capacities to link eligible students with the proper health insurance coverage. The district participates in AASA Children's Programs' and the Children's Defense Fund's Children Health Insurance initiative. 

The AASA/CDF collaboration on enrolling eligible children in health coverage is an example in High-Impact Activity #1. As a result of working with AASA and CDF, the Mountain View Superintendent reports that over 1,200 uninsured children were referred and that the number of students with health insurance has increased dramatically, that attendance increased, and that attendance has consistently been above 96 percent (district wide) for the past three years.

In a new letter sent today to governors, chief state school officers, state health officials and state Medicaid directors, the U.S. Departments of Education (ED) and Health and Human Services (HHS) recognize the critical role that healthcare coverage and health services play in ensuring all students are ready and able to learn, and recommend action steps to better coordinate health and education services for all students and their families.

ED and HHS also released a new toolkit that details five high impact opportunities for states and local school districts to support stronger communities through collaboration education and health sectors, highlighting best practices and key research in both areas.  

The letter and toolkit are available at www.ed.gov/healthystudents. For additional enrollment information visit: www.healthcare.gov. 

• High-Impact Opportunity #1: Help Eligible Students and Family Members Enroll in Health Insurance
• High-Impact Opportunity #2: Provide and Expand Reimbursable Health Services in Schools
• High-Impact Opportunity #3: Provide or Expand Services That Support At-Risk Students, Including Through Medicaid-funded Case Management
• High-Impact Opportunity #4: Promote Healthy School Practices Through Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Health Education
• High-Impact Opportunity #5: Build Local Partnerships and Participate in Hospital Community Needs Assessments
• Federal Laws Protecting Student Data and Privacy

Today, the U.S. Department of Education held the first of two public hearings on regulating the Every Student Succeeds Act. Education Week summarized the responses here. Speaking for AASA, Dan Domenech gave the following statement: 

"Good afternoon. I am Dan Domenech, Executive Director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association. AASA is the national professional organization representing the nation’s 10,000 public school superintendents. As I recently penned in a thank you note to the Congress members who led the effort to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): 

'I started at AASA in 2008, when Congress was just one year (in what would prove to be an 8 year effort) into ESEA reauthorization. Reauthorization has long been a priority of our members, who were focused on revising No Child Left Behind and delivering a comprehensive and updated piece of legislation that provided federal parameters while returning autonomy and authority to the state and local level. Our members prioritized an approach that preserved a federal focus on equity that strengths and supports—rather than prescribes and dictates to—our nation’s schools. In ESSA, Congress delivered both.'

AASA looks forward to working with the Department as you move forward with ESSA regulation. We appreciate the expediency with which the Department is undertaking the regulation process and strongly encourage the Department to move regulations that are in line with the spirit of the ESSA statute and that reflect the input and feedback of stakeholders. By focusing the federal role on strengthening and supporting public schools, and avoiding any tendency to unnecessarily prescribe and dictate, the Department can and must work to implement ESSA in a manner that reflects the expanded authority and flexibility now granted to the education experts at the state and local level.

ESSA makes clear Congress’ intent that states be solely responsible for the development and implementation of, and decisions regarding, all aspects of their State accountability systems.  Section 1111(e) clearly states the Secretary may not add any requirements or criteria outside the scope of this Act, and further says the Secretary may not take any action that would “be in excess of statutory authority given to the Secretary. This is an idea with broad bipartisan support, as the conference report itself writes, 'While it is the intent of the Conferees to allow the Secretary to issue regulations and guidance to clarify the intent and implement the law, Conferees intend to prohibit any such regulation that would create new requirements inconsistent with or outside the scope of the law.'

The Department kicked off the regulatory process with a pair of public hearings and a quick 30-day comment period on Title I regulations. Title I is where many of the onerous, punitive elements of NCLB originated. ESSA represents the first time in 15 years that state and local education agencies can demonstrate what they can do in the accountability and assessment arena absent federal overreach and prescription, while preserving student-sub group accountability and graduation rate data. AASA urges the Department to start its regulatory process by remembering that state and local educators are in the business of education to serve children, that they are professionals much better positioned to know the intricacies of local systems and implementation, and to practice restraint in designing their regulations to ensure that USED efforts do not overstep the intent of ESSA or move to recreate elements of the broken NCLB.

This is also an excellent opportunity for the Department to assume a leadership role in advocating for the transformative changes that technology and personalized learning can bring to education. By re-examining the rules and regulations that, for example, tie credit-bearing courses with seat time requirements, perpetuate the agrarian school calendar in the twenty-first century, and ignore competency based accountability systems in favor of standardized testing, USED can lead by empowering school districts to implement critical technology and personalized learning opportunities in flexible ways that best meet the needs of the schools and students they serve.

Thank you for convening this public hearing, and I appreciate the opportunity to share these comments today. We look forward to working with USED on, and ensuring the involvement of our nation’s public school superintendents in, the many facets of ESSA implementation. "

Please enjoy this week's edition of the Legislative Corps newsletter. In this newsletter, we keep you updated on activities on the Hill and the Department. If you are a member and are not receiving the newsletter, email me at lfinnan@aasa.org to get added to the list. 

The Every Student Succeeds Act is Signed into Law

On December 10, President Obama signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This marks the end of the No Child Left Behind era. We have written extensively of the new law here and will continue to provide updates as more is released through regulations and as more is known in implementation. For more information, you can also check out an AASA presentation and a webinar on ESSA implementation.

Obama Signs Omnibus Spending Bill

Last week, President Obama signed a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill for Fiscal Year 2016, officially avoiding a shutdown this year. The bill includes slight increases to education – a $1.2 billion increase overall. It includes a $500 million increase to Title I and a $415 million increase to IDEA as well as increases in Head Start, charter school grants, NAEP, rural education and others. School Improvement Grant funding was cut and Investing in Innovation (i3) was flat-funded. The Committee on Education Funding put out a table of the spending levels, available here.   

While not funding-related, the bill also included a two year delay for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act Excise (“Cadillac”) Tax and an extension of the E-Rate Anti-Deficiency Act exemption through 2017.

Tax Extender Bill

Along with the Omnibus bill, Obama also signed a law extending several tax breaks. This law includes three education-related tax cuts. First is the allowance for teachers who spend their own money on supplies for the classroom to take a $250 deduction. Also made permanent is the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which provides up to $2,500 a year in tax credits for eligible college students. Finally, the tax package includes a two-year extension of the Qualified Zone Academy Bond program providing $400 million in QZAB bond allocations per year in 2015 and 2016 to the states and school districts for school renovation and repair.

AASA Reports

Economic Impact Survey: Education Cuts Have Yet to Heal: How the Economic Recession Continues to Impact Our Nation’s Schools

AASA Releases 5-Year Study on the American School Superintendent

Education Groups Applaud 1-Year Anniversary of FCC Vote to Modernize E-Rate  

Looking Ahead to 2016

While Congress got a lot done in the last month of 2015, they are promising an eventful 2016 as well. The Senate HELP Committee is expected to introduce a bipartisan proposal to reauthorize the Perkins CTE Act in January. AASA's Perkins reauthorization recommendations can be accessed here.   

The Senate Agriculture Committee is also expected to release a child nutrition reauthorization in January or early February.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will likely shift attention to the Lifeline Order (related to closing the homework gap, with activity expected in Feb/March) and the Education Broadband Services (EBS) program, though that likely falls low on the totem pole.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has emerged, once again, on the issue of regulations related to PCBs in light ballasts, which would impact municipal buildings, including schools. Want a refresher? Check out this blog post from March 2014.  

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has indicated an interest in reversing course on seat belts on school buses, pushing regulation through if districts don’t abide by their recommendations.  We are concerned about this for a number of reasons, which we will make known.

We look forward to keeping you updated on these and any other issues in the New Year. Happy holidays from the whole AASA advocacy team!

AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech pens a monthly article for the Executive Directors of our state affiliates. We periodically share them on the AASA blog, especially when they have a strong advocacy bend. The December 2015 edition details AASA's advocacy successes in the Every Student Succeeds Act.

You have no doubt heard that Congress passed—and the President signed into law—the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). It is the first iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to reach the President’s desk since December 2001.

ESSA represents a significant improvement over current law. The legislation takes the pendulum of federal overreach and control, and returns it back to state and local education agencies. 

ESSA reauthorization was no small feat. The effort started (August 2007) shortly before I did at AASA (July 2008). It plodded along, like the Little Engine That Could, moving forward ever so slowly through Congress, and picked up with a particular vigor early this year. While the politics and momentum seemed against us, the effort persevered. And it is with a happy smile that I can write this post, and detail our advocacy efforts and victories. 

As a small sampling of our advocacy effort, I want to highlight what we featured in the letter we sent to the conference committee as they worked to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate bills, and what the final ESSA included. You can read our priority position in the letter. I use the remainder of this article to detail the final verdict. 

• Accountability: Despite repeated efforts to create AYP 2.0, the final version of ESSA does NOT include 100 percent proficiency, adequate yearly progress or annual measurable objectives. We had compromised and accepted the mandatory identification of and intervention in low performing schools, but drew a line at mandatory intervention based on sub-group performance targets. Unlike NCLB where subgroup accountability triggered labels of ‘failing’ and triggered intervention, ESSA requires states to establish and report on—but not structure as a trigger—subgroup targets. 
• Portability: There are neither vouchers nor portability in ESSA. As we like to say at AASA, “Public dollars. Public schools. Hard stop.” And, “When the question is vouchers, the answer is no.” 
• Expanded Data Collection: The final Title I reporting includes a reasonable compromise between the House and Senate versions. We were able to push back on the expanded Title IX collection to the extent that NONE of it made it into the final ESSA. 
• Title I Formula: While the formula change we pushed through did not make it in the bill, we did get legislative language requiring Congress to evaluate the existing four Title I formulas, the role of number and percentage weighting, how those weights impact small/large/urban/rural schools, and how the current formulas address/exacerbate the inequitable allocation of dollars in a way that allows larger, less poor districts to receive more Title I money, per pupil, than smaller, poorer schools. 
• Alternate Assessment: ESSA includes a state-level participation cap (1 percent) with language to explicitly forbid the secretary or state to translate the state level cap into a local cap. IEP teams are free to determine alternate assessment as driven by IDEA, without fear of repercussion. Should a state breach its 1 percent cap, it can pursue a waiver. 

Today's guest blog post comes from Michael Leachman, Director of State Fiscal Research, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

As state legislative sessions begin, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and related groups are ramping up a nationwide  campaign to convene a  constitutional convention that would propose amendments stripping the federal government of much of its power and leading to damaging funding cuts for the nation’s schools and other priorities.

Here’s the background.  Under Article V of the Constitution, Congress must call a convention to propose constitutional amendments if two-thirds of the states formally request one.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s, many states passed resolutions calling for a convention to propose a federal balanced budget amendment.  At one point, 32 states had passed resolutions along these lines, close to the 34 states required.  But over the next 25 years, no more states passed resolutions and half of the states that had passed resolutions formally rescinded them, fearing that a convention would throw open the Constitution to harmful changes. 

The tide turned in 2010 as ALEC and its allies began pushing anew for state resolutions.  Since then, 11 states have adopted new resolutions calling for a convention to propose a balanced budget amendment.  Some proponents claim that 27 states have “live” applications, including those passed in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s but never rescinded.  They’ve targeted another 13 states for the coming year.  If they succeed in seven of these states – a real possibility – they could claim to have met the 34-state threshold that forces Congress to call a convention. 

In the past year, a separate but similar effort to use Article V to call a constitutional convention also has gained momentum.  It’s being pushed by the Convention of States Project, whose model resolution calls for a convention to propose amendments “that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress.”  Alabama, Alaska, Florida, and Georgia passed this sort of resolution in the last two years, and the Convention of States Project is targeting other states. 

The movement has the vocal support of some well-known hard-core conservatives.  ALEC claims that legislative leaders in some 30 states are committed to the effort.   

These unfolding events are highly alarming.  The Constitution provides for no authority above that of a convention, so once a convention is called it’s not clear that anyone could stop it from proposing any number of drastic changes to our system of government. 

Indeed, constitutional experts from the late Chief Justice Warren Burger to Justice Antonin Scalia to Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe have warned that a constitutional convention would place the nation in uncharted territory, putting the Constitution up for grabs.  Delegates could even choose to alter the rules for ratifying amendments — just as the 1787 convention that drafted the Constitution did — such as by calling for ratification by national referendum rather than approval by three-fourths of the states. 

Further, no rules have been established for conducting this sort of convention.  How would delegates be selected?  Would each state get the same number of delegates?  How many votes would be needed to approve a proposed amendment?  With so much at stake, these issues would likely be fought out in a highly partisan atmosphere heavily influenced by large political donors.  And with Congress and 31 state legislatures under full Republican control, the rules could be set in a way that helps ALEC and its allies advance radical changes they’d never get through normal legislative procedures. 

At the very least, these changes likely would include balanced budget amendment, which alone would be a disaster for the nation's schools and the economy more broadly.  During a major recession, this sort of amendment would likely lead to massive cuts in federal support for schools and other public services delivered at the state and local levels.  Large cuts in federal spending, in turn, would worsen job losses during recessions, causing unnecessary pain for families across the country – pain that would add to stress and other difficulties for children in school. 

Even if the effort to call for a convention fails, it could build momentum for Congress to propose a balanced budget amendment or other harmful amendments directly to the states. 

ALEC and its allies are working hard to convince state lawmakers that a convention is safe and that states can easily control it.  That’s simply not the case, and a large number of groups are gearing up to educate state lawmakers about the dangerous realities of a constitutional convention. 

With state legislatures in session over the next few months, now is a good time to connect with others concerned about these resolutions in your state.  You can do so by contacting the group in your state belonging to the State Priorities Partnership (our network of state fiscal policy organizations) or the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.  There’s a great deal at stake. 

New procurement rules from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will impact schools and districts around the country. In an effort to streamline processes, improve cost effectiveness, and reduce waste/abuse, OMB consolidate 8 previous procurement guidelines into a single set of requirements. This new process will apply to any federal, state or local agency, including school districts, spending a federal grant, such as Title I or Perkins CTE Act.

While the new rules are slightly more specific in detailing specific procurement procedures, for the most part, the new rules will not be a huge change from current practice as many states already require some of these practices in place. The U.S. Department of Education provided clarification on a few of the changes that school procurement officials should be aware of:

1. All contracts for products or services equal to or greater than $150,000 must be put through a competitive bid – eliminated sole-source contracting except when necessary and documented.
2. RFP’s may not specify product brand names but instead must utilize product specifications to allow for equal competition. However, there are limited exceptions where a school or district’s existing technology or infrastructure requires specifying a brand name.
3. Pilot programs also must follow the new rules on competition and be put through a competitive bidding process if the cost is equal to or greater than $150,000.
4. School employees who “select, award, and administer” contracts may not receive any “tangible personal benefit” from the service provider. Tangible benefits include improved employment opportunities which may in some cases impact the level of professional development a provider may offer such employee.

For more information, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) has made its fact sheet on the procurement rule changes available to AASA and its members. Please reach out to Brendan Desetti, SIIA’s director of education policy, with any questions.

AASA's Associate Executive Director, Policy & Advocacy, Noelle Ellerson presented on ESSA at the annual conference for AESA. At the request of the members, those slides are available with an audio narrative.. The presentation is 44 minutes long.

Powerpoint presentation, only (no audio)

Full recording (slides and audio):

• https://knowledgecenter.webex.com/knowledgecenter/lsr.php?RCID=d97519f204053c4eadcab69a7f24d2ca
  OR
• https://goo.gl/bqBsbW

AASA is once again pleased to partner with our friends at Project Tomorrow as they administer the Speak Up survey, which gives education stakeholders the opportunity to share their viewpoints about key educational issues, particularly concerning digital learning and the use of technology to support future ready schools. The 2015 survey closes this Friday, December 18, meaning this is the last week for you to participate. 

Here are the participation numbers as of COB Friday December 11:

Speak Up 2015 Counts to Date: 401,034 total surveys
Students: 329,261 Teachers: 33,286 Administrators: 3,791 Parents: 29,242 Community Members: 5,454

Update – Quick Facts

• Online surveys open now for K-12 students, parents, teachers, librarians, school site administrators, district administrators, technology leaders and community members. New this year, special surveys for Science Teachers and Communication Officers.
• Surveys opened on Oct 1 and will remain open until Dec 18
• New questions this year include topics such as: Homework gap, ultimate science classroom, print vs. digital, videos and movies within instruction, communications and engagement, and data privacy.
• Speak Up is all over Twitter this year – follow us @SpeakUpEd or follow Julie @JulieEvans_PT for updates and news about all things Speak Up
• Our Speak Up America Campaign was a huge success with over 80,000 surveys taken during the weeklong promotion and celebration event. At the request of many we have extended our social media campaign and book giveaways into next week.
• Check out our new online interactive map with real time updates on state by state participation:  http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/participationmap.html - is your home state on the map? 

Sneak peek at some preliminary Speak Up 2015 data! 

In celebration of our Speak Up America campaign, we have pulled a special snapshot of preliminary data for students, parents, teachers, administrators and community members. Click on the links to view each of our special snapshots.

• Monday, December 7, 2015 — Parents
• Tuesday, December 8, 2015 — Teachers
• Wednesday, December 9, 2015 — Students
• Thursday, December 10, 2015 — Science Teachers
• Friday, December 11, 2015 — Community Members and Communication Officers

Two things that you can do today to support Speak Up

1. Complete a Speak Up survey yourself as a parent or community member.  With our community member survey, everyone who cares about K-12 education has the opportunity to share his or her ideas about digital learning.  Take your community member survey or the parent survey here:   http://www.speakup4schools.org/speakup2015.   Share this link within your organization and through your social media networks as well.   I have attached some sample text to share out as well.
2. Promote school or district participation in Speak Up to your customers and partners.  Our biggest challenge is getting the word out about Speak Up to school and district leaders.  Speak Up is a service to them – but they cannot take advantage of it if they don’t know about it.  Here are some ways that you can help with that:

• Put Speak Up information and the survey link on your website  
• Send out information in newsletters, listservs, emails about Speak Up 
• Include Speak Up information in your webinars or at your meetings and conferences all next week
• Reach out to key influencers in your organization to help spread the word about Speak Up

Today, AASA, The School Superintendents Association, released the Study of the American Superintendent:2015 Mid-Decade Update to follow up on The American School Superintendent: 2010 Decennial Study, a comprehensive study on the demographics, background and experiences of American school superintendents. 

This year’s report includes a supplementary section on gender and the superintendency. Some of the report’s key findings include:

• The pattern of an aging superintendency continues from the 2010 study; one-third of superintendents plan to retire within five years.
• While increases have been made throughout the years, females only make up 27 percent of the superintendency, up only 2 percent from 2010. This stands in direct contrast to the female-dominated teaching force.
• Superintendents most often see politics as inhibiting their performance, with school board members, staff and community as the greatest contributors.
• Career satisfaction remains high; over 80 percent of present superintendents would choose to be a superintendent again. This number is lower for female superintendents, at 78 percent.

A summary of findings is available here. Members can access the full report here.

Any questions can be directed to me at lfinnan@aasa.org.

This blog post comes from our friends at Future Ready.

Dear AASA Member:

As a national coalition partner of Future Ready, we appreciate your interest in helping your schools transform teaching and learning with the effective use of digital learning strategies. 

We encourage you to join the movement by signing the Future Ready District Pledge. As you know, by signing the pledge, you’ll join more than 2,000 superintendents who have committed to foster and lead a culture of digital learning in their district and to share what they have learned with other districts.  Upon signing the pledge, you are provided free access to summits, an interactive planning dashboard, and will gain access to ongoing professional learning opportunities through virtual events, mentoring and free resources.

With your help, we hope to reach the goal of more than 2,000 pledge signers by December 9, so we can announce that this one-year goal for FRS has been met. To see who has already signed the pledge in your area, click here. Please also help us spread to word by forwarding this note to at least five superintendents and encourage them to pledge.

Sincerely,

Future Ready Schools Team (Sara Hall and Tom Murray) 

The Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education Team (Richard Culatta and Katrina Stevens)

UPDATED: The Senate voted on cloture (ending debate and moving forward on a final vote) for ESSA. The vote will be at 10:45 on Wednesday December 9. The cloture vote was 84-12. Here is a list of the no votes (all Republican): Senators Ted Cruz (TX), Lee (UT), Paul (KY), Sasse (NE), Vitter (LA), Crapo (ID), Moran (KS), Shelby (AL), Blunt (MO), Scott (SC), Daines (MT), and Risch (ID).

Following up on last week's House action to pass the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the Senate is set to vote--likely today--on the bill, which would then proceed to the President's desk to become law.

Read AASA's letter of endorsement.

The Association of Educational Service Agencies, National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition and National Rural Education Association issued their own endorsement letter, calling attention to specific provisions in the bill that address the unique opportunities and obstacles facing rural schools. 

Earlier this week, AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech issued a statement of support for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). As the House is slated to vote on ESSA later this afternoon, Dr.Domenech and AASA President David Schuler submitted a formal letter of support. 

"AASA, The School Superintendents Association represents 13,000 school system leaders across the country and strongly SUPPORTS ESSA. The federal government has a critical role to play in federal education policy, and that is to support and strengthen—not dictate and prescribe to—our nation’s public schools. ESSA is a strong representation of this policy, preserving very important federal policy cornerstones such as equity, accountability, standards and assessments, but doing so in a way that empowers state and local education leaders to more effectively operate the systems for which they are responsible. 

ESSA provides our nation’s schools and the students they serve with a modernized, flexible approach to federal education policy.  We strongly support ESSA and urge swift passage in both the House and Senate." 

Full text of the letter available here.

Congress is poised to vote on the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) as early as Wednesday, December 2. As such, AASA is issuing this call to action to ensure that members of Congress have the voice of school superintendents on record. For further information, you can read AASA’s ESSA overview  or endorsing statement.

CALL TO ACTION: When it comes to advocacy on this proposal and the related legislation, we subscribe to ‘better safe than sorry’. We strongly encourage you to reach out to the entirety of your Congressional delegation (your Representative and both Senators) to urge them to support the conference proposal to reauthorize ESEA. Top-line talking points are embedded below, and we can share a Congressional Directory with email addresses for the education staffer in each office as well as phone numbers. When it comes time for the final rush, it is important to email not only the education staffer (they are the ones who inform the boss of the policy) but also to call the front desk (the interns are inundated with calls and are merely tallying Yes and No). 

WHAT TO DO: 

• Contact each of your Congressional offices. Urge them to support ESEA reauthorization. You can use the Congressional Directory shared by AASA or find your member of Congress here: http://aasa.org/legislative-action-center/# (Scroll to “Find Your Elected Officials”) 
• Talking Points: You can craft your own talking points or a summary of the proposal based on AASA ESSA overview memo. You can also refer to some of these more general talking points: 
  • Reauthorization is crucial to providing the nation’s schools with relief from current law, which is both broken and lacking in the flexibility states and local school districts need to support student learning and achievement .
  • This proposal is a strong step in the right direction because it restores a more proper balance between federal, state and local government in public education. 
  • This framework takes the pendulum of federal overreach and prescription and places it more squarely in the area of state and local expertise and autonomy. 
  • This effort recognizes the importance of empowering state and local leaders to use their professional knowledge and proximal location to make the decisions necessary to successfully adhere to their educational missions. 
  • This is not a perfect bill, but it gets far more right than it gets wrong, and our nation’s schools and students deserve a complete reauthorization and to be free from the limited, conditional nature of ESEA waivers.   
  • We are hopeful that the federal government is now prepared to take the next steps based on our experience with the current ESEA to restore more authority (or shared authority) to local government. 
  • We are encouraged to see proposed needed changes to ESEA.  We are prepared to build upon the original intent of the ESEA authorization while reducing the excessive testing and mandates that have limited the creative local solutions to improving student achievement. 
  • We encourage our legislators to take the necessary steps advocated in the recent proposed re-authorization language for ESEA. 

Stay tuned to the Blog! We will have additional talking points and sample social media items. AASA’s The Leading Edge (www.aasa.org/aasablog.aspx)  

Late last month, AASA’s Policy & Advocacy team shared a summary of the framework and preliminary call to action related to the proposal to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In the two weeks that have since passed, Congress has released the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) a bipartisan, bicameral proposal to reauthorize ESEA that reconciles the differences between the House and Senate proposals voted on earlier this summer.

We are pleased to report that the summary of the framework was overwhelmingly accurate in its depiction of what would be in the actual bill. This memo is an overview of the legislation and is designed to both inform you and support any outreach you may do to your Congressional delegation as both the House and Senate are expected to consider ESSA before adjourning in the middle of the month. Do not be fooled by the similarity in format to the previous memo. While there is a lot of the same information, there is enough new information (including further detail and clarification) to warrant a complete read of the memo. 

TOPLINE: ESSA is a significant improvement over current law. It takes the pendulum of federal overreach and prescription—rampant in current law—and returns autonomy and flexibility to the state/local level/ With this flexibility comes great responsibility, as state and local education agencies will have a much more explicit say in the structure—and ultimate success—of their accountability workbooks. ESSA is the epitome of compromise, reconciling differences between the very partisan (Republican) House bill and the bi-partisan Senate bill. In reconciling those differences, a very basic way to look at this framework is as ‘somewhere in between a very conservative House bill and the moderate Senate compromise’. As AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech said in his press release about the framework, “We applaud Congressional leaders for moving such a bipartisan framework. One of the biggest benchmarks of bipartisan legislation may be when everyone is a little unhappy, because nobody got everything they wanted. By that metric alone, this framework lays a solid foundation for a successful conference process.”  

AASA has endorsed ESSA, which you can read about in our endorsing statement. Domenech addressed the critical balance in ESSA, “The federal government has a very critical role to play in federal education policy, and that is to support and strengthen—not dictate and prescribe to—our nation’s public schools. ESSA is the embodiment of this very policy, preserving very important federal policy cornerstones like equity, accountability, standards and assessments, but doing so in a way that empowers state and local education leaders to more effectively operate the systems for which they are responsible.” EdWeek did a great write up on how various groups are responding to ESSA, and cited AASA Past President David Pennington (Ponca City Schools, OK). 

Timeline and Next Steps: The House of Representatives could vote as early as this Wednesday, and the Senate could vote as early as next week. This sets up the possibility of President Obama signing the bill into law before the end of 2015.  “Next steps” are outlined in the AASA call to action, available here. 

You can read the full ESSA analaysis and overview here.

Earlier today, Congress released the Every Student Succeeds Act, the conferenced bill to reauthorize ESEA, reconciling the differences between the House and Senate versions from this summer. AASA is pleased to endorse the bill and sent a letter of support to the hill today. Here is the press release detailing our support:

AASA, The School Superintendents Association, strongly endorses the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Representing the nation’s more than 13,000 school system leaders, AASA has been deeply engaged in efforts to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). AASA is pleased to see Congress advance such a comprehensive, bipartisan piece of legislation that focuses on policies that support and strengthen our nation’s schools and the students they serve.

As the sole organization to oppose No Child Left Behind from the beginning, AASA has long endorsed an approach to federal education policy that takes the pendulum of federal overreach and prescription and returns it to state and local control. ESSA strikes a very appropriate balance of power between the federal, state and local levels.

“The federal government has a very critical role to play in federal education policy, and that is to support and strengthen—not dictate and prescribe to—our nation’s public schools,” said AASA Executive Director Daniel A. Domenech. “ESSA is the embodiment of this very policy, preserving very important federal policy cornerstones like equity, accountability, standards and assessments, but doing so in a way that empowers state and local education leaders to more effectively operate the systems for which they are responsible.”

ESSA is a significant improvement over current law. “In sharing bill text of ESSA, Congress demonstrated its commitment to seeing ESEA reauthorization to completion. This legislation builds on 8 years of momentum, and carries forward the very strong bipartisan sentiment of more recent efforts,” said David Schuler, AASA president. “Our nation’s schools and the students they serve want and deserve more than the broken, outdated remnants of No Child Left Behind. It is imperative Congress not only pass ESSA, but do so in an expedient manner and deliver this bill to the President’s desk before the New Year.”

In addition to the summary from last week and updated in a blog post this morning, here’s what you need to know about what happened in ESEA Land last week, and what to expect moving forward.

• First, please note there were clarifications re: SIG and ed tech funding in the memo. The memo was updated to reflect that the state set aside in Title I (when SIG and Title I are consolidated) is 7%, a sum of the current 4% set aside and the approx. amount of the SIG allocation. Also, the memo is updated to reflect that the cap on education technology device purchases within the Title IV block grant is 15%, not 5% (typo, apologies).
• The highly qualified teacher (HQT) provisions are eliminated.
• You can access the AASA summary here. You can also access a handy run down of the programs included with in the ESEA framework and their authorized funding levels.
• The conference committee met on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, before voting to move forward with the conference report. Legislative language for the bill, called Every Student Achieves Act (ESSA) will be available Nov. 30. There is a leaked version currently available (here) and that is a good place to start in terms of reviewing the bill.
• The Conference Committee considered nine amendments. Seven were adopted and two were rejected. AASA had weighed in on the amendments (read our conference committee letter) and the two we supported were adopted.
• Rep Thompson Title I Study Amendment – Rep Thompson (PA) is the long-time champion of the Title I formula rewrite on the House side. His complete rewrite was filed and not offered, and instead, he advanced this study, which would require the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Director to complete a study of the effectiveness of the formulas and weighting of formulas under Title I within 18 months. The goal of the report is to provide information on if funds are going to the neediest students, and evaluating the efficacy and equity within number and concentration weighting.
• Sen Mike Enzi Early Childhood Amendment – The amendment would require a review and report to Congress within two years from enactment on possible elimination, overlap, and duplication of early childhood programs.
• Other Adopted Amendments:
  • Rep Bonamici STEM Amendment – To expand the list of allowable activities under Title IV, including allowing an integration of STEM and the arts and support for other interdisciplinary programs.
  • Sen Bennet Overtesting Amendment – To allow states to place a target cap on the amount of time spent on testing. It is important to note that this is permitted, but not required.  
  • Rep Messer Title II Amendment – To allow Title II funds to be used in support of educating teachers in the use of student data.
  • Rep Wilson DropOut Amendment – To help schools improve dropout and prevention programs by creating an additional use of Student Support and Academic Enrichment (SSAE) funds to provide schools funding for dropout prevention.
  • Rep. Polis ELL Amendment – To add an allowable use of Title III funds to provide dual enrollment and concurrent enrollment opportunities for English Language Learner (ELL) students to take college courses or earn an associate's degree. 
   

This blog post is longer than usual and is two-fold: The first half details what we know about the framework and the second half is a call to action. At this point, the proposal is something that AASA would endorse, should the outline mirror what is in the statute. The call to action is designed to support your advocacy—your outreach to your entire Congressional delegation—as a way to educate them on the importance of supporting an ESEA reauthorization and why this proposal is a very strong starting point.

You can access a printable version of this summary here. (WORD)

AASA has worked with hill staff, reporters and advocates to piece together what we know about what is (and isn’t!) in the proposal. The summary here within is subject to change, given that this is based on conversations and summaries, and there is not yet an actual bill. 

TOPLINE: This conference framework is an improvement over current law. It takes the pendulum of federal overreach and prescription—rampant in current law—and returns autonomy and flexibility to the state/local level/ With this flexibility comes great responsibility, as state and local education agencies will have a much more explicit say in the structure—and ultimate success—of their accountability workbooks. The framework represents a compromise between the very partisan (Republican) House bill and the bi-partisan Senate bill. IN reconciling those differences, a very basic way to look at this framework is as ‘somewhere in between a very conservative House bill and the moderate Senate compromise’. As AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech said in his press release about the framework, “We applaud Congressional leaders for moving such a bipartisan framework. One of the biggest benchmarks of bipartisan legislation may be when everyone is a little unhappy, because nobody got everything they wanted. By that metric alone, this framework lays a solid foundation for a successful conference process.” 

DETAILS:  

• Assessment: The framework maintains annual assessment, meaning testing every child in grades 3-8 in math and ELA each year and once in high school, and three assessments in science (one per grade span). 
• Standards: You have to high standards. The state and locals make a decision. There is no federal role or incentivization for a specific set of standards. The state can choose Common Core, can use Common Core but call it ‘UnCommon Core’, can acquire another set of generated standards or can work to make their own standards.  
• Accountability: This is where a lot of the ‘whittling back’  of federal overreach can be found: 
  • These plans would go into effect for the 17-18 school year. The 15-16 school year would be the last year states and LEAs would have to submit data as currently required. This means that the 16-17 year could serve as a soft/trial run for all or pieces of the new/proposed state accountability workbook. 
  • States must continue to disaggregate data by student sub group and must continue to calculate graduation rates using the adjusted cohort graduate rate as established in the 2008 regulations. 
  • There are two additional buckets in accountability that will trigger action:
    • States must identify and intervene in schools in the bottom 5% and in high schools that graduate less than 67% of their students. States will generate this list every three years, and states will establish the exit criteria (meaning if you can improve student learning/achievement in one year, you could—if the state structures it this way—be off the list in one year, rather than being stuck there for three). 
    • States must include provisions related to intervention in consistently underperforming schools. For LEAs in this bucket, as determined by the state the LEA will come up with a plan for improvement. The state will determine the number of years an LEA with this designation can go without showing improvement, and then the state will require additional supports/intervention. There are NO prescribed turn around models; states and LEAs determine those options/combinations. 
  • The state accountability plan must include sub-group performance targets. This is NOT annual measurable objectives in that the data on these targets is merely reported; it triggers no action. That is, a school that struggles to meet these targets will NOT trigger intervention. These targets will be long-term and interim, and must include targets for graduation rates, reading and math scores and English Language proficiency for English Language Learners.  
  • The accountability construct empowers state and local education agencies to shape their accountability workbooks in a way that diminishes continued overreliance on high-stakes, one-time standardized testing. In designing an accountability workbook, academic factors must represent more than half (at least 51%)  of all indicators, meaning that up to 49% of the accountability construct can be focused on whole-child and other critical, non-academic, indicators.  
• Title I:  
  • School Improvement Grants are consolidated into Title I. The funds previously available under SIG will flow through the regular Title I formula. There will be a set-aside of approx. 7%, representing the current 4% set aside for school improvement under Title I PLUS the state's SIG amount. States must move at least 95% of that 7% to schools for innovation. States can choose whether to allocate these innovation dollars through competition or formula.  
  • Portability IS OUT. 
    • The framework does include a weighted student formula for Title I. This proposal will allow an LEA to aggregate its state and local dollars with its federal dollars (From Titles I-IV) This pilot program will apply to 50 LEAs, who can use these pooled dollars and design their own allocation formula in a manner that allows them to better target dollars to the neediest schools. This is NOT portability. This pilot will NOT change allocations at the state or district level. Rather, it allows districts greater authority over where the dollars flow in their schools. There is a requirement LEAs participating in this pilot demonstrate that needy schools receive at least as much under the weighted formula as they did before the pilot. 
    • We anticipate Republicans will tout this as ‘backpack funding’ or portability. While this is an increase in local control of spending, it is at the district level. True portability would have the money follow the child to the school of their choice regardless of actual need or levels of concentration, and the placement of that child would be determined by the family. In this pilot, the LEA is the entity allocating the dollars and will factor in concentrations of poverty with the added caveat of ensuring that the neediest schools don’t see an exodus of funding. This is in stark contrast to actual portability, where dollars would be diluted to a per-pupil level and allocated blindly to the schools based on enrollment, not concentration of poverty.  
  • Maintenance of Effort is IN. The House bill had eliminated this critical element and we are pleased to see that state and local education agencies will continue to have to invest at least 90% of what they did the year before in order to receive federal dollars. 
  • The Title I formula will be unchanged. Both the House and Senate proposals included formula rewrites, neither of which made it through. This means that Title I dollars will continue to be allocated in a manner that allows larger, but less poor, districts to receive a higher allocation of Title I dollars per child than their actual concentration of poverty would indicate. That said, we are OK with the status quo because we had reservations about what a compromised formula rewrite would look like. 
    • We are fairly confident the bill will include a requirement for Congress to do a study of the Title I formula, taking a very critical look at the issue of number and percentage weighting, and its impact on small, large, urban and rural schools. This is the exact research we have been advocating with in our efforts on the Title I formula and we are pleased to see formal movement by Congress. 
    • Precedent in ESEA reauthorization would include an update of the quintiles in the Title I formula. The quintiles are the enrollment ‘buckets’, where each threshold represents approximately 20% of the nation’s students. We had deep reservations about updating the quintiles without reworking the formula, because the threshold for the upper bound would have fallen by 10,000, meaning that more larger (bot not necessarily poorer!) districts could max out under number weighting, further exacerbating the impact of inequitably allocating dollars away from smaller, poorer schools. No update of the quintiles reinforces the pressure to accurately address the very real, but unintended, consequences of the current formula. 
  • Rural Education: 
  • AASA helped pen the original Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP) in 2001, and we are pleased to see that the changes we have long advocated are reflected in this bill. In a reauthorization that consolidated and eliminated many programs, it is wonderful to see REAP remain as a stand-alone program.  
  • The US Education Department will have to do a study to evaluate how they are <not> serving rural schools. 
  • Also, Rural School Consolidated Grant Applications are in, meaning that small, rural schools can coordinate to submit consolidated applications. This may be through their local education service agency.  
• Funding Caps: The bill includes funding caps, though those numbers are written to the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, which would be there is room for small increases in the years of this authorization. This authorization is for four years.
• Early Education: ESEA will now include an early education component. This will be administered jointly through the Health/Human Services Department and US Education Department, with HHS acting as the fiscal agent. This program is in addition to Head Start and Child Care Development Bloc Grants. 
• Alternate Assessment: AASA’s preferred position was no cap on alternate assessments. That is, we think that the local IEP team is best positioned to determine which students qualify for/need an alternate assessment. We are pleased with the compromise in the framework. Alternate assessments will be capped at 1% at the STATE level. Local IEP teams will work to make their determinations as driven by IDEA. There are explicit prohibitions on both the Secretary and the state from forcing a local cap (as in current practice). LEAs will have an alternate assessment rate determined by need and the state is responsible for monitoring LEAs individually to determine the overall state level. Should a state find it has an alternate assessment rate above 1%, the state can pursue a waiver.  
• Student Privacy: FERPA is out. The proposed commission to analyze/study student data and privacy is also out. That is, no student data/privacy reauthorization reference in this bill. 
• School Climate: Programs in Title IV are consolidated into a bloc grant. This bloc grant will be formula to state and formula to local. LEAs must use at least 20% of this allocation for well-rounded education and at least 20% for safe/healthy programming.  Technology is an allowable use in this title. Spending on technology devises/equipment/software would be capped at 15%, but LEAs could use up to 60% of their grant under this program for technology-related activities, including  training teachers to use technology, blended learning, personalized learning, buying content, etc. 
• Foster Care: Foster care provisions are what was included in the Senate bill, which in my understanding is that any additional transportation costs to be incurred would be assumed by the LEA only if they were being reimbursed by the child welfare agency, agreed to share the costs with child welfare or if the district decided to cover those costs.  
• Expanded Data Collection Under Title IX (Gender Equity): Eliminated. 
• Title II Formula: The Title II formula WILL be revamped. It uses the Senate-adopted version, with tweaks to  change the poverty population to a sliding scale, and to include the ramp down/hold harmless.  
• Background Checks: The framework includes language related to the unfavorable practice of ‘pass the trash’ but stops short of the high level of prescription and redundancy with current state/local practice that had been considered. This is language we are ok with. 
• Comparability: Maintained current law (We were opposed to a proposal to include teacher salary in the calculation).  

CALL TO ACTION: When it comes to advocacy on this proposal and the related legislation, we subscribe to ‘better safe than sorry’. We strongly encourage you to reach out to the entirety of your Congressional delegation (your Representative and both Senators) to urge them to support the conference proposal to reauthorize ESEA. Top-line talking points are embedded below, and we can share a Congressional Directory with email addresses for the education staffer in each office as well as phone numbers. When it comes time for the final rush, it is important to email not only the education staffer (they are the ones who inform the boss of the policy) but also to call the front desk (the interns are inundated with calls and are merely tallying Yes and No). 

You can see, based on a quick review of our conference letter alone, that this proposed framework includes many AASA priorities. This proposal is a significant improvement over current law and we are comfortable with supporting it moving forward and anticipate that we will be in a position to support the legislation, pending final review (The devil is always in the detail). 

• WHAT TO DO: 
  • Contact each of your Congressional offices. Urge them to support ESEA reauthorization. You can use the Congressional Directory shared by AASA or find your member of Congress here: http://aasa.org/legislative-action-center/# (Scroll to “Find Your Elected Officials”) 
  • Talking Points: You can craft your own talking points or a summary of the proposal based on the content in this memo. You can also refer to some of these more general talking points: 
    • Reauthorization is crucial to providing the nation’s schools with relief from current law, which is both broken and lacking in the flexibility states and local school districts need to support student learning and achievement 
    • This proposal is a strong step in the right direction because it restores a more proper balance between federal, state and local government in public education. 
    • This framework takes the pendulum of federal overreach and prescription and places it more squarely in the area of state and local expertise and autonomy. 
    • This effort recognizes the importance of empowering state and local leaders to use their professional knowledge and proximal location to make the decisions necessary to successfully adhere to their educational missions. 
    • This is not a perfect bill, but it gets far more right than it gets wrong, and our nation’s schools and students deserve a complete reauthorization and to be free from the limited, conditional nature of ESEA waivers.   

AASA Priorities

• When contemplating any updates to the Perkins program, it is essential to consider the federal funding context for Perkins first and foremost. To propose extensive new mandates for districts when there is little likelihood that Perkins will receive an influx of new federal funding would be foolish and unfair.
• While AASA appreciates the funding needs of post-secondary institutions, critical partners in fulfilling the career pathway partnership, we firmly oppose any efforts to mandate funding set-asides for post-secondary at the federal or state level or allowing regional entities the discretion to determine the secondary/post-secondary allocations.
• AASA strongly supports greater efforts to engage business and industry sectors in our CTE programs. Employers must be critical partners in evaluating the areas in which district CTE programs must improve and to assist districts in ensuring they are using the relevant standards, curriculum, industry-recognized credentials and current technology and equipment necessary to align with skills required by local employment opportunities.
• AASA supports encouraging districts to direct greater funding to providing career planning and counseling to all students. Greater career counseling and planning would ensure that local CTE programs effectively reach traditionally under-enrolled students and assist them in understanding their options, creating a plan for coursework, laying out goals, and accessing the information they need to make knowledgeable decisions about their future career plans.
• In light of the funding dynamics, AASA believes it is essential that a reauthorized Perkins law place less emphasis on compliance and reporting and instead focus on incentivizing best practices and relevant secondary program performance goals. We caution the committee from considering new accountability measures that are neither easy for districts to collect nor easily comparable between districts and states.
• Perkins is an education program, not a jobs program. The goal for our CTE programs is undoubtedly to have as many students complete programs of study as possible, but any attempts to frame the Perkins accountability system in a way that discourages students from taking one or more CTE classes is educationally unsound. 

On October 19, 2015 a report was issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) examining the functionality of the current “maintenance of effort” provisions in IDEA. You can access the report here: http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/673183.pdf 

There were many important takeaways from the report that support the adoption of legislation such as HR 2965—the BOLD Flexibility in IDEA Act--that we highlighted in an earlier blogpost. Below are a few examples from the GAO report of how the current IDEA MoE provisions are negatively impacting students. 

•  A Michigan district said that when they had difficulty hiring a staff psychologist they had to contract for psychologist services, which turned out to be less costly than what the district spent on those services previously, causing challenges in meeting MOE. 
• An official in one Texas district said that although their special education director recommended expanding their integrated athletics program for children with disabilities, they chose not to because they did not want to commit to the increased costs in an environment of ongoing budget uncertainty. 
• A Virginia state education official said that districts feel penalized for complying with IDEA’s directive to serve more students with disabilities in general education classrooms since this more inclusive model can be less costly than placing all these students in special education classrooms; yet the MOE requirement is not flexible enough to allow for this without putting districts at risk of failing to meet MOE. 
• Several district officials noted that protecting special education funding does not necessarily equate to protecting or improving special education services. For example, a Minnesota district official said the 100 percent MOE requirement may discourage districts from striving to make students with disabilities as independent as possible if such actions would reduce special education spending. He was concerned that not enough attention was being given in the IEP process to encourage greater independence and inclusion and that the process was being driven by maintaining expenses rather than responding to the evolving needs of students. 
• A New Jersey district official said his district failed to meet MOE after reorganizing to share the cost of a special education director with another district. 

MOE can discourage efforts to implement efficiencies that could help reduce costs and can lead to unnecessary spending to comply with the requirement. For example, one Wisconsin district official commenting on the U.S. Department of Education’s 2013 NPRM said that because of state legislative changes that required reductions in their contributions to teacher benefits, they had to find other ways to spend money on special education to meet MOE regardless of whether the expenditures were needed. 

AASA joins the National School Boards Association (NSBA) and six other state, national and international organizations in signing an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Fisher vs. the University of Texas case. We are hopeful that it will assist the Court in making a positive decision for America’s school children. Read the filing.

Organizations joining AASA and the NSBA on the brief include:

• Texas Association of School Boards Legal Assistance Fund
• American School Counselors Association
• Associations of School Business Officials International
• National Association of Secondary School Principals
• PDK International

AASA has also signed on to an earlier iteration of this amicus brief.

Today's blog entry comes from AASA's Deanna Atkins, online technologies and advocacy specialist, the newest member of the AASA advocacy team.

Policy influencers, EPFP alumni and educators tuned in to EPFP’s Twitter chat on federal education policy on Tues., Oct. 27. The conversation was led by EPFP alumni Noelle Ellerson, associate executive director, policy & advocacy, AASA, The School Superintendents Association and Mary Kingston Roche, director, public policy, Coalition of Community Schools, IE, and additional tweeters chimed in during the discussion from a variety of organizations using the hashtag, #epfpchat.

Questions were based around ESEA reauthorization, education funding and the 2016 presidential campaign season, which made for an exciting and extremely important conversation detailing what House Speaker John Boehner's departure means for ESEA reauthorization; why Education Secretary Arne Duncan's departure is less consequential when it comes to ESEA reauthorization; what the next big federal education policy topic will be after ESEA; why education issues have a limited role in the presidential debates; and more.

If you missed the Twitter chat, you can view the archived conversation here and check out highlights from the discussion below. Should you have any further questions, please contact Noelle Ellerson.

#epfpchat A3: Departure of Boehner > departure of Duncan when it comes to #ESEA reauth. One of the biggest impacts of Admin on #ESEA... 1/2

— Noelle Ellerson AASA (@Noellerson) October 28, 2015

#epfpchat A3: ..was waivers + that disrupted reauth.Boehner is key architect of NCLB, and he and Paul Ryan are both on good terms w/ Kline

— Noelle Ellerson AASA (@Noellerson) October 28, 2015

.@jlindle_c good Q.. Kinda gets to the question: what is purpose of ESEA? if we agree it's a civil rights bill, it should not fade #epfpchat

— Mary Kingston Roche (@kingston_m) October 28, 2015

#epfpchat A5: The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA) is a good step in the right direction. It breaks apart funding cap and rider convos

— Noelle Ellerson AASA (@Noellerson) October 28, 2015

#epfpchat A6: Educators are heroes to many. Groom the pipeline or recruit prospective educators all around u, especially students.

— Delores (@DeloresPAli) October 28, 2015

In the last few weeks, USED has flexed its paper-pushing muscles, releasing a variety of ‘Dear Colleague’ letters/resources/documents. We’ve captured a handful of them here in an effort to get them on your radar:

• Chronic Absenteeism: The administration announced Every Student, Every Day: A National Initiative to Address and Eliminate Chronic Absenteeism. It is designed as a joint effort among the White House, U.S. Departments of Education (ED), Health and Human Services (HHS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Justice (DOJ) to combat chronic absenteeism. It will call on states and local communities across the country to join in taking immediate action to address and eliminate chronic absenteeism by at least 10 percent each year, beginning in the current school year (2015-16). The available resources include a Dear Colleague letter, a resource toolkit, and a fact sheet. Read related press release.
• Testing: In a rather unanticipated move, the Administration release its Testing Action Plan, a push for ‘fewer and smarter assessments’. Keeping in mind that this is the same administration that had a line in the sand over maintaining annual assessment in ESEA reauthorization discussions, they are now messaging about ways to reduce over-testing. USED will review its policies to address any places where the Administration may have contributed to the problem of overemphasis on testing burdening classroom time. They encourage state and local education agencies to work in a similar manner, and message on ESEA, suggesting a cap on testing time, better information for parents, use of multiple measures and supporting state/local assessment audits.   Read AASA’s response to the proposal. You can read full detail and the fact sheet here.
• Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Resource Guide: USED released this set of resources to help educators, schools leaders and communities/community organizations better support undocumented youth. The effort is aimed at debunking misconceptions by clarifying the legal rights of undocumented students. The reality is that the action of K12 schools here is pretty clear: you cannot ask a child their legal status. The impact of this resource guide is more notable for higher education actors. Read the Superintendent Dear Colleague Letter. Read the DACA Press Release.
• Graduation Rates: USED released updated graduation rate information, showing that states continue to increase high school graduation rates and narrow the gap for traditionally underserved students, including low-income students, minority students, students with disabilities and English learners. States that saw the biggest gains include Delaware, Alabama, Oregon, West Virginia and Illinois. Through the press release, you can access the provisional data files for 2012-13 and 2013-14.
• USED Statement on Learning Disabilities: In a blog post, released guidance to state and local education agencies clarifying that students with specific learning disabilities — such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia — have unique educational needs. It further clarifies that there is nothing in the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that would prohibit the use of the terms dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia in a student’s evaluation, determination of eligibility for special education and related services, or in developing the student’s individualized education program (IEP).  We read this as ‘You are neither mandated to do this, nor forbidden from doing this. As you were, unless you want to change.’ If anything, it gives cover to those IEP teams who wanted to go further in clarifying/identifying these specific disabilities in an IEP, and clarifies when that is appropriate.
• Pell Grants for Dual Enrollment: The department also released information about an experimental dual enrollment project today. In this pilot, the Department would allow students to use Pell grants for dual enrollment courses while in high school. The courses must apply toward a potential post-secondary (Bachelors or Associates) degree to be eligible. This is part of the administration's efforts to keep college costs down and increase access to post-secondary opportunities.

On October 19, 2015 a report was issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) examining the functionality of the current “maintenance of effort” provisions in IDEA. You can access the report here: http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/673183.pdf

There were many important takeaways from the report that support the adoption of legislation such as HR 2965—the BOLD Flexibility in IDEA Act. Here are a few we wanted to highlight: 

• To promote innovation and efficiency while safeguarding special education funding, GAO suggests that Congress consider options for a more flexible local MOE, such as adopting a less stringent maintenance requirement.  
• GAO believes districts need more exceptions for reducing MOE. GAO identified various circumstances related to cost reductions—such as local actions to implement efficiencies—as key challenges in meeting MOE. 
• GAO found stringent MOE requirements can have negative consequences for all students. Prioritizing special education spending to meet MOE during a period of budget constraints can result in cuts to general education spending that affect services for all students, including the many students with disabilities who spend much of their days in general education classrooms.  
• The GAO report revealed that some district officials found that MOE can discourage efforts to implement innovations or expand services. For example, some leaders said that because of MOE, they did not want to commit to a higher level of spending to implement innovative services, despite other provisions in IDEA that are intended to encourage innovation.  
• The GAO investigation uncovered that in the 2014-2015 school year, 9 states believe almost half of all districts in the state will struggle to maintain special education funding levels, and 25 states acknowledged that some districts will face challenges in meeting the MOE requirement in 14-15.  
• The GAO found that at least some districts faced challenges in meeting the requirement, despite exceptions intended to help in such situations. Specifically, the current exceptions do not address the key challenges that districts face, including factors that are outside of their control and that do not affect the level of services provided to students with disabilities. In these situations, it was unclear whether funds spent on special education to comply with MOE resulted in enhanced services for students with disabilities. 
• In their survey, GAO found that districts cited reductions in state funding of K-12 education and reductions in the state contribution to funding for special education as a major factor in not meeting MOE. State funding for elementary and secondary education has been slow to recover from the 2008 recession and long-term budget challenges are likely to persist. 
• In addition, rural districts are disproportionately struggling to keep up funding for special education. Of the districts surveyed by GAO, 57.8 percent of districts that had anticipated having trouble meeting MOE were rural. 

You'll recall that when it comes to FY16 funding, AASA has three priorities: replace/repeal sequester, advance a short-term continuing resolution to buy Congress more time to negotiate raising the caps, and then provide appropriations bills that invest in (Rather than cut!) education. To date, Congress had adopted a clean continuing resolution through December 11. In announcing the BBA, Congress replaces sequester for two years and raises the caps, putting Congress on a path to more adequately invest in education. 

What do you need to know about the deal? 

• AASA supports the BBA. Read our letter of support. AASA is a member of the Committee for Education Funding, and I serve as President. CEF also endorsed the BBA; read their letter of support.  
• The deal replaces sequester caps for two fiscal years (FY16 and FY17). In raising the caps, the deal maintains the very important principle of parity between defense and non-defense discretionary funding, raising caps for each by $33 billion in FY16 and $23 billion in FY17.
• Raises the debt ceiling through March 15, 2017
• This represents, potentially, the last budget negotiation of the Obama administration. 

What are the next steps?

• The House is set to vote today on the bill. Once the Senate votes and it is signed into law, the next step is a return to the appropriations process.
• Appropriations committees will receive their respective allocations (presumably with an increase, given the raised caps). These allocation numbers could be available later this week, and would give us an idea of what additional funding is available for education.
• This process is far from over. The debt ceiling won't be breached, the funding caps were raised and the government shutdown was avoided. The negotiations for specific programs, though, can still be contentious and we have to see the extent to which policy riders (most recently best embodied in the debate over Planned Parenthood funding and the continuing resolution) rear their heads and threaten to 'disrupt the apple cart'

Today, the National Center on Education Statistics (NCES) released The Nation’s Report Card: 2015 Mathematics and Reading The results from the 2015 assessment are compared to those from previous years to describe change in fourth and eighth-grade students’ performance in mathematics and reading over time. Performance results are presented as NAEP scale scores and as percentages of students at the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced achievement levels. The report also includes information about the performance of different student groups, as well as performance gaps by gender and race/ethnicity. NAEP results date back to the early 1990s.

Generally speaking, the trend in NAEP performance has been one of significant growth since the early 1990s. There are small variations each year, and this year’s data is garnering a lot of headlines over a potential stalling in student growth. In mathematics, the 2015 average scores were 1 and 2 points lower in grades 4 and 8, respectively, than the average scores in 2013. These small declines remain well above initial scores, as scores at both grades remain  higher than those from the earliest mathematics assessments in 1990 by 27 points at grade 4 and 20 points at grade 8. In reading, the 2015 average score was not significantly different at grade 4 and was 2 points lower at grade 8 compared to 2013. As was the case in mathematics, scores at both grades were higher in 2015 than those from the earliest reading assessments in 1992 by 6 points at grade 4 and 5 points at grade 8. 

We must be responsible in our consumption of this data and resist the urge for drastic changes. This could be a one-year anomaly or it could be something more significant. However our students perform, we must remain focused on supporting their growth and learning, and resist the urge t point fingers and shift blame.

AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech released the following statement: 

“The headlines today write themselves and cover all the usual angles: Our schools are failing. Our students are failing. We need more tests. We need fewer tests. We need better tests. Common Core is working. Common Core is failing. We need more school choice.

“We have had—and continue to engage in—these conversations, all of which have their time and place. But today, in this moment, when NAEP—widely regarded as the Nation’s Report Card—indicates that our students aren’t making the growth and achievement we would expect, perhaps the conversation isn’t about what we are doing as much as what we are not doing. And in this instance, we must consider the extent to which this set of NAEP data was impacted by the significant cuts to education investment at the local, state and federal level stemming from the great recession and held in place by continued poor policy.

“When it comes to our nation’s schools and the students they serve, we know that education cuts do not heal. Though we’re past the end of the great recession, education investment has yet to reach pre-recession levels. That means that our nation’s K-7th graders have spent the entirety of their K-12 educational experience to date under a post-recession funding climate, and that our 12th-graders have spent half of their educational experience in that underfunded environment.

“In a broader context, the federal share of discretionary spending dedicated to children has dropped by 11.6 percent (adjusted for inflation) since 2010. And while AASA doesn’t advocate unfettered spending as a silver bullet, we also do not deny that investment matters. Adequate funding is a critical component of any serious conversation about boosting student learning and closing achievement gaps, and today’s NAEP data might be one of the first times we are seeing a clear, national narrative highlighting the consequences of our recent education funding policy decisions.”

Yesterday, AASA, along with the School Nutrition Association, sent a letter to the Hill urging members to reauthorize the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act to provide schools with much-needed flexibility. The letter illuminates the higher costs associated with the new standards and the challenges found in a recent GAO report. 

The letter is available here. 

Earlier this week, we sent out this year's survey for our annual Superintendent Salary and Benefits Study. This year will mark the fourth annual survey and report. Find previous reports here. We hope to get our highest response rate yet this year, strengthening our long-term analysis. 

Please help us out and take a few minutes to complete the survey before Friday, November 6. If you have any questions or need to receive the link again, please email or call Leslie Finnan (lfinnan@aasa.org or 703-875-0738).

Thank you so much to those of you who have completed the survey. I look forward to providing you with the next report, and hope it serves as a valuable resource.

While it’s great that Congress wants to continue working to reauthorize overdue education bills, it’s unfortunate that they are rushing to reauthorize the D.C. voucher program known as the “D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program” by the close of the year. Speaker Boehner, the champion of the D.C. voucher program, is retiring and eager to ensure that one of his critical priorities—propping up financially depressed parochial schools in the D.C. area with federal funding—is maintained before his departure. There will be mark-up held in the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee tomorrow morning to continue the program despite the fact that reports by the Department of Education in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 found the program had no impact on student safety, satisfaction, motivation, or engagement, and no statistically significant impact on overall student achievement in math or reading. This week the D.C. Council sent a letter to the Committee stating that it is not the will of the people of D.C. to maintain this program and the funding for the program should be redirected to the public school system. Over $190 million of taxpayer funds have been directed to D.C. private schools since the program began in 2003.

AASA is proud to co-chair the National Coalition of Public Education, a coalition of over fifty national education, civil rights, religious, secular and disability organizations that sent a letter opposing thereauthorization of the D.C. voucher program. The group also sent a letter this week urging the ESEA Conferees to keep Title I portability out of ESEA. 

UPDATE: Tomorrow the House will vote on HR10, the legislation to continue the D.C. voucher program. AASA strongly opposes any effort to expanded the voucher program to new students. You can read the letter we sent to the House here. 

As part of our ongoing advocacy related to ensuring increased and appropriate federal investment in education--and against the preservation of the draconian cuts and fiscal pressure under sequestration--AASA remains committed to the idea that Congress can and should replace/repeal sequester. That means they need to #RaiseTheCaps, starting their annual appropriations discussions from a dollar amount that is not arbitrarily capped at post-sequester levels.

You'll recall that we have shared two toolkits related to #RaiseTheCaps: one for non-defense discretionary dollars (the broader portion of the budget that includes education funding) and one more specific to education. You should also check out the latest #RaiseTheCaps infographic, courtesy of our friends at the Committee for Education Funding.

• The federal share of discretionary spending dedicated to children has dropped by 7.2% since 2010. Accounting for inflation the discretionary spending on children has decreased by 11.6% due to harmful sequestration cuts.
• $80 billion: The amount federal education programs have been cut since 2010
• $75 billion: the amount student financial aid has been cut since 2011
• 11.6%: The decrease in federal spending on children, adjusting for inflation, since 2010
• 50: The number of education programs that have been cut since 2010
• American student rank well behind those in economically competitive countries on international tests: 17th in reading, 20th in science, and 27th in mathematics among the 34 Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).
• $579 million: Cuts since 2010 to IDEA, which serves students 3-21 with disabilities, due to sequestration
• 57,000: The number of children who lost Head Start services due to 5.7% cut thanks to sequestration
• 60,000: The number of students in 18 states that could lose access to pre-school entirely as a result of defunding die to sequestration
• 12%: The amount federal spending is down for Title I, the major assistance program for high poverty schools
• Unless the cap on non-defense appropriations is raised, it will be virtually impossible for Congress to approve increases to vital education programs.
• Bottom line: Congress must raise the federal spending caps in order to make necessary education investments to support a high-skills workforce and grow the economy.

Now that Congress has averted a shutdown (At least until December 11), they are free to work on a more comprehensive approach to funding that MUST raise the caps for FY16. To that end, you are invited to participate in a Rally to Raise the Caps, in person or over social media, on Wednesday, October 7. The rally is being held at the US Capitol, East Front (the grassy area on the House side between the Capitol and the Library of Congress). 

Featuring House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and other Members of Congress from House and Senate (TBD).

This is a rain or shine, more the merrier event so please forward this invitation far and wide to your colleagues, friends, and family. Our goal is to have at least 300 advocates in attendance!

To help us ensure we’re reaching our goal, please RSVP here.

NDD United will produce a limited amount of signs for ralliers, but feel free to bring your own. Can’t join us in person? Rally with us online via Twitter by following @NDDUnited and #RaiseTheCaps! Sample tweets are available in the toolkits linked above.

With the future of budget negotiations hanging in the balance, it’s critically important that our community send a message to Washington that sequestration is unacceptable. Together, let’s tell them to work and Raise the Caps!

Today's guest blog post comes from Jean Ronnei, SNS, President of the School Nutrition Association and Chief Operations Officer, Saint Paul Public Schools, MN

View an infographic from SNA here.

Since new federal nutrition regulations took effect in 2012, school meal programs have been working hard to improve menus. However, a new School Nutrition Association (SNA) survey of meal program operators nationwide reveals that the cost of meeting the rules threatens school meal programs and their efforts to better serve students.

The survey revealed that despite widespread efforts to promote healthier choices to students, 58% of respondents reported that student lunch participation declined under the new standards. Nearly 93% of those respondents cite “decreased student acceptance of meals” as a contributing factor to this decline. 

Meanwhile, 74% of districts with a la carte service report that this revenue has decreased under new Smart Snacks in School rules, with 43% citing a strong decrease. This loss in revenue can cripple school meal programs, already struggling to manage higher food and labor costs due to the new rules. 

Alarmingly, nearly eight in every ten school districts have had to take steps to offset financial losses since the new standards were implemented, such as reducing staff, cutting reserve funds, canceling equipment investments and limiting menu choices. Schools are losing necessary resources to invest in innovative recipes using fresh, whole ingredients. 

The survey also revealed substantial benefits for schools participating in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows schools with a higher percentage of low income students to serve all students free meals.  About one in five districts report having at least one school that used CEP, and about two-thirds of those report that CEP participation has helped their program’s overall financial health. Districts participating in CEP were least likely to report a decrease in lunch participation.

SNA supports the overwhelming majority of the new rules, including caps on calories, saturated and trans fats and mandates to offer larger servings and a wider variety of fruits and vegetables. To address challenges under the new rules, SNA is calling on Congress to increase the federal reimbursement for school meals by 35 cents and provide flexibility on a few of the new rules (see www.SchoolNutrition.org/PositionPaper).

Congress is back in session and working full tilt on avoiding a government shutdown. Beyond that, there is still strong momentum for completing ESEA reauthorization this fall. AASA is fully supportive of ESEA reauthorization and is engaged with hill staff on both sides of the hill and both sides of the aisle to reiterate our position of support and our priorities within conference.

Earlier in the week, AASA reconvened with 9 other national education organizations to send a joint ESEA conference letter, urging Congress to advance a bipartisan ESEA reauthorization to the President's desk this fall. Read a related news article. Joining AASA on the letter:

Earlier today, the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC, the entity overseeing E-Rate) released a letter to the E-Rate comm with an update on the pace of E-Rate funding and the new E-Rate portal. For FY2015, USAC is ahead of any previous funding year, but there is still work to do. USAC continues to see interest in the portal and remains focused on improving its functionality and being customer-friendly.

In the opening of the letter, Mel Blackwell (Vice President of the Schools and Libraries Program) writes:

"This is an exciting and important time of year for the E-rate Program as we move toward completion of all FY2015 applications, continue to implement the E-rate Productivity Center (EPC) and mark the beginning of the 2016 funding year with our in-person training efforts. These coming months are particularly important given the changes brought by the modernization orders and the implementation of EPC. We fully understand that change brings both opportunity and challenge to all of us in different ways. I want to assure you that we will do everything we can to mitigate the challenges and deliver on the FCC’s goal of a faster, simpler, and more efficient E-rate Program. Transparency is a critical component of these enhancements and of managing through the change. Thus, I would like to discuss with you a couple of areas that are currently of particular interest --- the pace of FY2015 funding decisions and the status and performance of EPC."

You can read the full letter here.

Today, I was at the AESA legislative meeting and PDK Executive Director Josh Starr was there as a keynote speaker. His presentation was compelling, but one slide in particular resonated with me.

He had a poster with the text of Woody Guthrie's "I Hate a Song". In particular, he excerpted:"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good....I am out to fight those songs to my last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing the songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work."

And he challenged us, in the context of education thinking and policy, to replace the word 'song' with 'policy', and to recognize just how intimate the impact of policy can be on students.

Just something to think over.

Today's guest blog comes from Jocelyn Bissonette, Director of Government Affairs for the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools (NAFIS). For more information on Impact Aid: 202/624-5455 or Jocelyn@nafisdc.org.

Headlines in recent Washington Post articles include: “Get Ready: Experts Say a Government Shutdown is Likely,” and “The Time to Dust Off Shutdown, Furlough Plans is Approaching.” Each year begins with optimism that Congress will complete its Appropriations work on time, by the beginning of the October 1 Fiscal Year (FY). But since 1996, Congress has resorted to a stopgap measure, known as a Continuing Resolution (CR), to buy time to finish its work. On several occasions, this inability to complete the process or agree on a CR has led to a government shutdown, as was the case in 2013 following sequestration. For most public school districts, the posturing, brinksmanship, CRs and shutdowns are par for the course and do not immediately impact a school district’s financial situation. Impact Aid is a major exception. 

Impact Aid, ESEA Title VIII, was signed into law in 1950. The program’s purpose is to offset the loss of local revenue for school districts that have nontaxable Federal property within district boundaries, such as military installations, Indian Trust or Treaty lands, national grasslands or laboratories. Roughly 1,200 school districts receive funding from the $1.2 billion program each year. Unlike other Federal education programs, Impact Aid funding goes directly to school districts, bypassing the State, and can be used for any general fund purpose. At NAFIS, we often describe Impact Aid as Uncle Sam’s tax bill to federally impacted school districts.

Another difference from Federal education programs: Impact Aid is not forward-funded. FY 2016 funds for programs like Title I and IDEA are for the 2016-2017 school year, but for Impact Aid they are for the 2015-2016 school year. This means a CR has an immediate impact on Impact Aid-recipient school districts. To date, the U.S. Department of Education has received over 100 “early payment requests” in anticipation that limited Impact Aid funds will be available under a CR. Impact Aid may comprise upwards of 30-percent of a school district’s operating budget. Without a payment early in the school year, these districts may face a cash flow shortage, meaning they would have difficulty funding day-to-day operations, instructional expenditures, utility payments, or payroll. Occasionally, due to cash flow deficits, school districts must defer payroll, dip into their fund balances, or borrow money while they wait for Impact Aid to arrive. This issue is acute for school districts with limited reserves or those where State aid or county tax revenues are not allocated until December.

This situation is exacerbated during a government shutdown, since the Impact Aid payment timeline is further delayed. In addition, this is the time of year when school districts are collecting and compiling data for the Impact Aid application due each January. During a shutdown, U.S. Department of Education staff cannot report to work, and therefore cannot provide valuable technical assistance. 

In the end, Congress must complete its Appropriations work, even if it means relying on the temporary solution of a CR. Avoiding a government shutdown in that process would prevent a gap in important government functions, including funding and technical assistance for federally impacted school districts.

NAFIS is a nonprofit, nonpartisan association of school districts from throughout the United States. Founded more than 40 years ago, NAFIS works to ensure the needs of federally connected school districts, and the students they educate, are met through adequate Federal funds. (P) 202/624-5455 (W) www.nafisdc.org (T) @NAFISschools

We are in September and it is looking increasingly likely that Congress will not only NOT complete its appropriations work on time, but that we will also have a shutdown. Shutdown politics and implications aside, it is important to understand how a common funding mechanism (the continuing resolution or CR) can translate into a sequester cut for our portion of the budget.

When the government does not complete its work on time, it can use a CR to keep government running by simply level funding all programs at their current level. We are in FY15 and the fiscal year that needs to be wrapped before it starts October 1 is FY16. A long-term (or year-long) CR would level fund government for the full fiscal year. A long-term CR, whether to avoid a shut-down or as a resolution to end one, is problematic. Level funding for our portion of the budget (non-defense discretionary, or NDD) would actually be above the FY16 sequester caps, meaning we would face an across-the-board cut of 1.5% While the Congressional Budget Office has yet to officially release these numbers, the Center on Budget Policies and Priorities has indicated this very real threat.  

Like our previous post supporting the NDD coalition and resources supporting #RaiseTheCap indicated, we now have education-specific resources you can use in communicating with your members of Congress. Thank you to our friends at the Committee for Education Funding (www.cef.org) for putting these together:

Access as a word document.

General Overview of the Appropriations Caps and Sequestration

• While total non-defense appropriations will increase slightly in 2016 even if sequestration is fully implemented, that increase will fall far short of what would be needed just to keep up with inflation or address high-priority needs, let alone make up for any of ground lost over the past several years. 
• The Budget Control Act of 2011, which established the appropriations caps and sequestration, specifies that sequestration cuts in 2014 and all subsequent years are to be implemented by reducing the caps that would otherwise apply (rather than by across-the-board cuts as in 2013).  For 2016, the pre-sequestration caps were scheduled to increase by 1.9 percent, but sequestration will eliminate almost all of that increase. 
• Without sequestration relief, the cap on non-defense appropriations for 2016 will be just 0.2 percent ($1.1 billion) above the 2015 level.  That’s $8.6 billion less than what would be needed just to keep up with even the modest level of expected inflation.  The defense situation is similar:  an increase of just 0.3 percent or $1.8 billion. 
• With the spending caps essentially flat, 2016 will be the sixth year of austerity in non-defense appropriations.  In four of the previous five years, the total has either decreased in actual dollar terms or increased only slightly. 
• By 2016 the cumulative effect will be substantial.  When adjusted just for general inflation, the 2016 cap on non-defense appropriations will be 17 percent (or $103 billion) below the 2010 level.  The cumulative reduction in defense appropriations is only a little smaller: 15 percent or $94 billion.  These are, of course, only averages.  Within both categories some things have been cut considerably less and other things considerably more.   
• The effects of the caps and sequestration are even more dramatic when measured relative to the size of the economy.  Outlays for non-defense appropriated programs are projected to be 3.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016—equal to the lowest percentage recorded at any point since 1962, which is as far back as data go on this basis.  With the caps and sequestration fully in place, the percentage is expected to then set a new record low in 2017 and to continue dropping in subsequent years. 
• One result of these limits is that increases even for high-priority needs become difficult to accomplish, as almost any increases require offsetting cuts or savings.  After five previous years of cutting, feasible and acceptable cuts are getting harder and harder to find.  And even for things that haven’t been cut in dollar terms, the cumulative erosion of purchasing power is growing. 

Appropriations Caps and Sequestration as it Affects Education Programs:

• Sequestration cuts resulted in a loss of $22.54 million from Individuals with Disabilities Act’s Part C program, which serves infants and toddlers with disabilities. Because of mounting fiscal pressure over the last two decades, States have narrowed the eligibility requirements for this voluntary program and any funding reduction means fewer children served.   
• Last fall, Congress passed the reauthorization of the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG), which provides needy families across the country with child care services.  Currently, sequestration levels mean that CCDBG provides services to about 1 in 10 eligible children. However, with the additional requirements brought about by this bill, even fewer eligible children will be able to receive these services unless the sequestration caps are lifted.   
• Due to 5.27 percent cut in funding thanks to sequestration, Head Start, the federal pre-K education service for low-income families, was forced to eliminate services for 57,000 children last fall.  HHS data says that Head Start will have administered 1.3 million fewer days of service nationwide because of sequestration cuts.    
• Sequestration could de-fund preschool programs in 18 states, causing 60,000 children to lose access to preschool entirely 
• The federal share of discretionary spending dedicated to children has dropped by 7.2 percent since 2010, accounting for inflation the discretionary spending on children d has decreased by 11.6 percent (First Focus: Children’s Budget 2015) 
• Federal education programs have been cut by more than $80 billion since 2010 with the elimination of more than 50 education programs
• Unless the cap on non-defense appropriations is raised, it will be virtually impossible for Congress to approve important increases in the President's budget such as  
  • $1.5 billion to expand Head Start for low-income children; 
  • $1 billion increase for Title I education funds to improve services for students in high-poverty schools; 
  • $1.8 billion over the 2015 level for the Housing Choice Voucher program to expand access for affordable housing; and  
  • New investments in research and development throughout the government (including additional funding of $1 billion for the National Institutes of Health and $379 million for the National Science Foundation).  
   
• Discretionary funding for education programs—excluding Pell grants—has been cut by over $3.714 billion since FY 2010 and non-Pell grant funding for the Department of Education is below FY 2008 
• The suggested level of nondefense appropriations for FY 2016 is similar to the amount appropriated in FY 2006, when adjusted for inflation, despite that there has been a consistent rise in enrollments of children attending K-12 public schools and institutions of higher education coupled with the increase of more low-income children attending school since FY 2006 (link) 
• Federal funding for Title 1 of ESEA—the major federal assistance program for high-poverty schools—is down 12% since 2010, after adjusting for inflation, and funding for education for students with disabilities is down 11%.  
• Sequestration resulted in approximately $579 million in federal funding cuts to IDEA special education services for children ages 3 to 21.   
• Congress has never lived up to its commitment to cover 40% of the average per pupil expenditure for special education. After sequestration, Congress is only meeting 14% of the cost to educate students with disabilities, the lowest level since 2001.   
• Both the House and Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bills cut funding for Pell grants, which will likely jeopardize the maximum award starting in Fiscal Year 2017. The Senate bill also cuts Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants and Federal Work Study. 
• Since Fiscal Year 2011, funding for student financial aid programs have been cut by $75 billion.  

 Sample Tweets to Use After September 10th:

• We need to invest in education, public safety, medical research, & infrastructure [insert member twitter handle]. #RaiseTheCaps 
• Our economy depends on increasing fed funding for education. We need to #RaiseTheCaps in order to create opportunities for every child 
• #EduCutsDontHeal. Investment in education matters and the time to act is now. #RaiseTheCaps 
• [insert member twitter handle], over 2,500 groups want you to #RaiseTheCaps for discretionary investments! 
• National #security means investing in kids, education, public health, & infrastructure. [insert member twitter handle] make sure to #RaiseTheCaps! 
• A secure #America needs more than #military might! [insert member twitter handle] make sure there to #RaiseTheCaps for #education! 
• Our government spends less on NDD programs & is the lowest share of the economy since the Eisenhower Admin #RaiseTheCaps 
• (MOC), don’t put your own interests ahead of America’s children. Raise the spending caps so we can better fund our #Education programs 
• US population has grown over the last decade, esp. in school enrollment, but our spending on education has NOT. #RaiseTheCaps 
• Tell your Congressman to vote to #RaisetheCaps today. Our children’s #education shouldn’t be a political chess game. 
• Continued sequestration could de-fund preschool programs in 18 states, causing 60K children to lose access to preschool entirely
• Fed #education programs have been cut by $80+ billion since 2010, eliminating 50+ education programs #RaiseTheCaps
• 50+ education programs have been eliminated since 2010. It’s time to #RaiseTheCaps
• Since FY 2011, funding for student financial aid programs have been cut by $75 billion. Time to #RaiseTheCaps 

Twitter  Hashtags and Handles:

• #RaiseTheCaps 
• #Education 
• #EduCutsDontHeal 
• @edfunding 

AASA is pleased to once again be partnering with our friends at Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) on a school infrastructure survey. We're working together to gather data from school districts around the country on E-Rate, broadband, and internal network infrastructure in order to communicate district needs to Congress and the FCC. We urge you to complete the survey and to tell us: What are your future bandwidth needs? How is the E-Rate program working for you? Is there anything else we should know?

Federal fiscal year 16 (FY16) starts October 1, and all signs point to Congress (once again) failing to complete its appropriations work on time. We won't have a shut down, but we will likely have a series of continuing resolutions and omnibus bills to patch us through the interim, until a final appropriations bill is adopted. 

I've written before, and it holds true, that the delay of the currently considered but not adopted appropriations bill (and the LHHS appropriations bill, in particular, which includes funding for education) is a good thing. A good thing? To not have federal funding on time? Yes. The overall funding levels in place are very bad. The overall level funding scenario translates into cuts at the education program specific level and the opportunity for Congress to rethink its proposals gives an opportunity for them to raise the overall funding level (or cap).

The current funding caps were established in 2011, as part of the Budget Control Act. Comprehensive and bipartisan, it is law, and was passed as a way to raise the debt ceiling, avoid a government shutdown, and to catalyze a conversation on spending caps and cuts. This piece of legislation also triggered the process of sequester, and set the caps that we are currently operating under. The sequester cap for FY16 represents a third year of level funding. To people running schools systems, level funding paired with growing enrollment and increasing costs mean the perfect storm of truly having to more with less, and that is without reference to your state and local funding realities.

The portion of the federal budget that includes education funding is non-defense and discretionary. Put together, it is the far less than catchy 'Non Defense Discretionary' (NDD) slice of the pie, and our appropriations advocacy has included efforts to support broader NDD funding as a way to support broader education funding. Read more about the NDD Coalition.

Earlier this week, the NDD Coalition hosted a webinar and released a toolkit, both focused on a call to 'Raise the Caps'.  The preface of the toolkit sums it up best: "NDD United is the only organization speaking out on behalf of all of the thousands of programs funded by discretionary funds that have been decimated by budget cuts over the past five years. It’s critical that every NDD United member know where the organization stands. United, we can raise our voice on behalf of the public services Americans rely on. But budget cuts and sequestration are difficult topics to message around: before you can even get to the meat of the problem – that public services Americans rely on are being decimated – you have to engage in a lot of preliminary explanation. And it’s the problem, the solution, and how NDD United is working toward that solution that should form the building blocks of all of NDD United’s messaging. This handbook provides the tools to maximize your public presence and raise your voice on behalf of NDD programs. It offers sample documents for major communications pieces: an op-ed, blog post, press release, media advisory and pitch email. It also offers tips on spreading your message in a way that engages the press, the public and our leaders."

Please use the information made available here to inform your conversations with your full Congressional delegation, letting them know to support raising the caps, that education cuts don't heal, and that our children deserve support and investment, not cuts and eliminations.

AASA will be releasing a related education-specific toolkit in the coming week, in coordination with the Committee for Education Funding. 

Last week, we sent a survey to all superintendents as a part of a project examining what is and is not working in educator development, including teachers, principals and superintendents. In this survey, we are looking to look more closely at how public and private universities and their principal preparation programs are—or are not—meeting the needs of the candidates they prepare and the communities they serve.

If you have not yet completed the survey, please take a few minutes to do so. Your participation would be greatly appreciated, as every response we get increases the quality of our data. The responses from the survey will be published in a report and will inform the future of the project.

Please email me at lfinnan@aasa.org for a link to the survey or with any questions.

Today's guest post comes from Fred Nolan, Executive Director for the Minnesota Rural Education Association. We share this post to gauge the extent to which other communities (rural and non-rural!) are having similar experiences. Dual/concurrent credit can be an excellent option to get students started on a college-bound path who otherwise might not consider such an option.

To the extent that you have a similar experience or relevant information to relay, please contact Fred at fred at e-f-services dot com. 

Minnesota’s growing concurrent enrollment (dual-credit) programs for high school students to earn college credit while attending high school is being threatened by recent actions of the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). The Commission is proposing new credentialing requirements for Minnesota’s secondary teachers to teach these college courses under the auspices of a college or university.

MREA Working to Establish Coalition: MREA is very involved with the Center for School Change and Minnesota Association of School Administrators to create a broad coalition of school, business and public officials to protest this change and propose a Minnesota alternative for credentialing high school teachers to teach dual-credit courses. MREA worked successfully with these two education organizations in the 2015 legislature to advocate for an increase of $4.6 million in funding for concurrent enrollment and to strengthen local control over which students can enroll in dual credit courses. 

Southwest Minnesota State University Concurrent Enrollment Coordinator Kimberly Guenther says HLC’s action is a huge change. “Everyone is concerned,” she said. “There are not programs to get this credentialing in a manner that would work for teachers even if they wanted to [meet the requirements].”

HLC Accreditation Determines Grant Eligibility: While not well known, HLC has clout. It is a voluntary accrediting association of post-secondary institutions in 19 Midwest and Rocky Mountain states. It is authorized by the U.S. Department of Education to accredit colleges and universities and thereby make their students eligible to receive Federal Pell Grants.

MREA thanks Senator Greg Clausen of Apple Valley, a former high school principal, who was chief author in the 2015 session for concurrent enrollment and is a leader in this current effort.

Learn More

• Southwest Minnesota State University Letter to High School Principals
• Center for School Change Research Summary on Concurrent Enrollment
• 2013 Concurrent Enrollment National Descriptive Report
• REL Midwest Reference Desk Dual Enrollment in Rural Settings
• Windom Area Schools Letter to Higher Learning Commission
• MREA Request to Delay HLC Additional Credentialing Standards

Today, AASA signed on to The Hunger Free Summer for Kids Act of 2015 (S. 1966), a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators John Boozman (R-AR), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Joe Donnelly (D-IN) aimed at making summer meals more accessible, especially to students in rural and remote areas.

The bill would introduce two additional models for summer food delivery: summer electronic benefit transfer (EBT) or non-congregate feeding programs. With these improvements, as many as 6.5 million children who are underserved by the program currently could get the food they need during the summer months. These policies complement the site-based model and efforts to strengthen it, and would improve summer nutrition for low-income children no matter where they live.

This legislation is modeled on the successful demonstration projects USDA administered to test both program options. The extensive evaluations showed strong results, including significantly improved access to summer meals, decreased hunger, and improved consumption of healthy foods. 

For more information, find this summary or find the full bill text here.

AASA, in coordination with 17 other national organizations, submitted joint comments in response to proposed changes to the Lifeline program, weighing in on the role of access to connectivity in homes, what it means for students, and the opportunity to update the Lifeline program to potentially address this gap. 

"EdLiNC believes that providing broadband access to low-income families is a major step in the right direction to help close the educational equity gap that exists for students who lack access to Internet at home. Without broadband access at home, too many students lack the ability to complete digital homework assignments, perform academic or employment research, apply to college or for summer jobs, and gain access to basic government services. Without broadband access at home, parents may find it difficult to send and receive electronic communications with their children’s teachers or school leaders, access school websites, engage in school activities, and ensure the safety of their children online. Moreover, without broadband access at home, the tremendous work that the Commission did last year in modernizing the E-Rate program, thereby ensuring all k-12 schools and libraries enjoy robust WiFi and broadband connectivity, will be undermined."  Read the full comments.

The coordinating organizations--known collectively as EdLiNC--include:

• AASA: The School Superintendents Association 
• American Federation of School Administrators (AFSA)
• American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
• American Library Association (ALA)
• Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA)
• Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO)
• Consortium for School Networking (CoSN)
• International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
• National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP)
• National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS)
• National Association of Secondary School Principals  
• National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA)
• National Education Association (NEA)
• National PTA
• National Rural Education Association (NREA)
• National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition (NREAC)
• National School Boards Association (NSBA)
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)

AASA joined forces with 16 state and national organizations to file an Amicus Brief on Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse, asking the Supreme Court to review the Sixth Circuit's erroneous decision making mandatory reports of child abuse vulnerable to federal lawsuits asserting First Amendment retaliation claims. Read the filing. 

National organizations joining AASA and the National School Boards Association on the brief include:

• American Professional Society on Abuse of Children
• American School Counselors Association
• Council of Administrators of Special Education
• Council for Exceptional Children
• International Municipal Lawyers Association
• National Association of Elementary School Principals
• National Association of School Psychologists
• National Association of Secondary School Principals
• National Association of State Directors of Special Education
• School Social Workers of America Association

While ESEA reauthorization continues to be the focus of AASA’s advocacy efforts this summer, we are doing a special call-to-action this month for superintendent-championed legislation amending IDEA’s maintenance of effort requirements. For years, superintendents, school business officials, special education directors and others, have lamented the rigidity of the maintenance of provisions in IDEA. The recession and its subsequent impact on school district finances brought to light the critical need for more flexibility in the federal statute.

In July, AASA successfully lobbied to have legislation introduced that would amend IDEA to grant districts additional exceptions to reduce the maintenance of effort requirements as long as the provision of special education services to students was not compromised. Rep. Walberg (R) of Michigan introduced the legislation, the Building on Local District (BOLD) Flexibility in IDEA Act (HR 2965), and we need YOUR help to attract additional co-sponsors in the House and companion legislation in the Senate.

What flexibilities are provided to districts under the BOLD Flexibility in IDEA Act?

Districts can reduce MoE if they can demonstrate that (1) they are increasing the efficiency of their special education programs and there is no impact on the provision of special education services to students or (2) the reduction in expenditures is related to employment-related benefits provided to special education personnel (such as pay, retirement contributions, health insurance, etc) as long as the reduction does not result in a reduction in special education services to students.

Districts can also apply to the State for a waiver to reduce MoE if they are facing a serious financial crisis, but only if the districts provide evidence they are still providing FAPE to students. 

5 Reasons Why This Bill Is Helpful to You and Your District

Reason #1: District leaders have an obligation to leverage local education funding in a manner that best serves the maximum number of students. IDEA must provide districts with the flexibility to ensure they are not wrongly penalized for changes in their special education funding levels that in no way impact the provision of special education to students with disabilities. 

Reason #2: Districts should be encouraged to “do more with less” and re-negotiate contracts with vendors, repurpose equipment, change staffing schedules, and find other budgetary efficiencies that do not compromise student services without jeopardizing the federal maintenance of effort requirements. School system leaders have a responsibility to provide academic services to their students as well as a fiduciary responsibility to allocate resources economically to the taxpayers in district. These flexibilities bring these two responsibilities into balance.

Reason #3: States that have enacted reforms that have changed the requirements for districts regarding their contributions to employee pensions or health care should be allowed to reduce IDEA MoE since these budgetary changes do not impact the provision of services to students.

Reason #4: When state and federal IDEA funding levels decline dramatically or a major economic crisis affects a community’s overall resources, districts must be allowed to apply for a waiver to the state to reduce IDEA MoE on an individualized, annual basis. Title I of ESEA enables districts to apply for a waiver when these unfortunate circumstances arise, and IDEA should be aligned to Title I to provide districts with the same flexibility.

Reason #5: Special education students are general education students first. Savings that districts realize in their local special education expenditures should be reallocated to the general education budget, so administrators can dedicate these resources in a manner that best serves all of their students. Artificially maintaining special education funding levels because of an inflexible federal requirement does not allow districts to efficiently allocate limited resources to serve the maximum number of students.

Please take a moment to reach out to your Congressional Delegation and ask them to support this important bill. Feel free to include our one-pager, which is available here.  

Nineteen national education associations--representing state and local associations, educators, districts, rural communities and more--submitted letters in support of AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech's nomination to the USAC Board.

You'll recall that Dan has served on the USAC Board--the entity that oversees the E-Rate program--since 2012. As the voice of schools and libraries on the USAC board, he is the conduit to ensure that the program has a direct infusion of practitioner-based feedback and input. 

You can file a letter of support from your association or independent school district until August 17. Details here.

In addition to AASA, the endorsing organizations include: (The groups were on two letters, one representing broader school/libraries groups and one representing rural communities.)

• American Federation of Teachers 
• Association of Educational Service Agencies 
• American Library Association 
• Association of School Business Officials, International
• Consortium for School Networking
• International Society for Technology in Education
• National Association of Elementary School Principals
• National Association of Independent Schools
• National Association of Secondary School Principals
• National Association of State Boards of Education
• National Catholic Educational Association
• National Education Association
• National PTA
• National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition
• National Rural Education Association
• National School Boards Association
• Organizations Concerned About Rural Education
• Rural School and Community Trust 

USED released guidance on the ‘supplement not supplant’ portion of the Title I formula in ESEA. ‘Supplement not supplant’ is a long-standing provision in Title I requiring that education funding from the federal government be in addition to—not in place of—funding that would otherwise be available from state and local funds. Center for American Progress and American Enterprise Institute released a pretty good primer on supplement/supplant in 2012. How the Supplement-Not-Supplant Requirements Can Work Against the Policy Goals of Title I reviews the origins of the provision and shares examples of how the rule impacts Title I program implementation. Current statute can substantially limit how LEAs may spend their Title I funds and the ways that Title I funding can support at-risk students. Compliance with supplement/supplant comes with administrative burden. While LEAs can operate school-wide Title I programs, the field continues to have some confusion about what can and cannot be done with Title I funds as it relates to running a school-wide program and being compliant with the supplement/supplant provision. The latest guidance seeks to clarify the confusion.

The guidance is a clarification for current law, though in our read it also aligns with proposed changes to ESEA. In a nutshell, the guidance highlights a compliance test that can be used in running a school wide program. Current law measures compliance with a cost-by-cost basis, meaning LEAs have to demonstrate that each cost is aligned with an activity they would not have administered with state or local funds.  This test doesn’t fit in a school-wide model, and the guidance clarifies the compliance tests that can/should be used in that instance. For someone managing dollars (like a school system leader) this emphasis on the use of school-wide programs is more flexibility. For someone who is a program coordinator (Think: Title I program coordinator) this could be an increased burden. No longer looking at specific costs or services within Title I, this clarification gives more room to innovate; it makes it easier to try something new, and to step away from the status quo. Pages 4-6 offer good examples of misconceptions about running school-wide programs, and pages 9-10 offer concrete examples of ways to calculate supplement/supplant in a school wide system. 

This post was updated to reflect the support of additional national organizations.

AASA's Executive Director, Dan Domenech, is again up for nomination to the USAC Board (the body related to the FCC that oversees the E-Rate Program). You’ll recall this is a role he currently serves in, a nomination he received broad support from the field in both 2012 and 2013. 

He has once again been nominated for the seat that represents schools and libraries. Dan’s nomination comes with the support of AASA, along with that of AESA, NREA, NREAC, ASBO, AFT, CoSN, ISTE, NAESP, NAIS, NASBE, NCEA, NEA, National PTA, NASSP, ALA , and NSBA.

CALL TO ACTION: Individual school districts and state affiliates are submitting letters of support, as well, and we encourage you to do the same!

While we are confident in Dan being the final choice for the role he currently holds, we do now want to take anything for granted and would appreciate letters of support akin to those he has received in previous years. Please take a few moments--whether as an AASA member, superintendent, E-Rate supporter, or education stakeholder--to submit a letter of your own. This could be a numbers thing when it comes down to it, and we'd welcome support from the field.

What to do?

• Letters must be filed by August 17.
• Refer to AASA’s template nomination letter you can use as a starting point for your own letter.
• In drafting your own letter, please copy verbatim the address block and subject line, including the docket number (96-45 and 97-21).
• Feel free to borrow liberally from the letters provided, starting with that text and personalizing with appropriate letter head and changing organization names as necessary.
• When it comes to filing, you have two options:
  • You can either file it as instructed in the FCC notice (see below) or email it to me (Noelle) and I can file it for you. Please email me your final letter (nellerson@aasa.org) no later than Aug. 15, with the subject line 'Please file ERate/USAC letter'.
   

How to File Comments with the FCC (LETTERS ARE DUE Aug 17.)  

• Draft your letter. You can create your own or work from AASA’s template letter (see above).
• Go to www.fcc.gov/ecfs
• Choose “Submit A Filing” and you will be taken to an online submittal form
• For the Proceeding Number, use all of the following proceeding numbers: 97-21 and 96-45
• Under the 'details' section, check the box marked 'Comment'
• Complete the rest of the information on the form
• Upload your letter at the bottom of the form.

Today's guest blog post comes from our friends at the Foundation for Excellence in Education and EducationCounsel and relays information about the Course Access programs. This information was initially made available to the AASA Large Countywide and Suburban District Consortium, and we felt our general membership would appreciate the information, as well.

Districts across the country face a host of pressures to meet the needs of today’s students and harness the opportunities of the 21st century. Superintendents need to think about meeting new rigorous college and career ready standards, customizing and personalizing learning experiences, closing long-standing opportunity and achievement gaps, creating advancement opportunities for teachers, and leveraging innovative technologies – not to mention stretching tight budgets. Navigating these currents requires creativity, flexibility, and a willingness to do things differently. New “Course Access” programs present an opportunity for states and districts to do just that.   

Course Access is a state-level policy that provides public school students with expanded course offerings across learning environments from diverse, accountable providers.  Participating students have a right to enroll in qualifying courses and earn full class credit for courses completed through the program. Many Course Access opportunities are delivered online, but some states also allow for in-person and blended Course Access options. 

Patrice Pujol, Superintendent in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, explains, “Districts today have to think creatively about budgets, including how to address a growing array of student interests and needs in the most effective and efficient way possible. That requires you to think outside the four walls of your school and to consider other partners in the effort.” Ascension is working with a local industry certification provider and utilizing Louisiana’s Course Access program as a cost-effective and efficient way to provide new career and technical education courses to its students to give them a new opportunity to graduate with a high school diploma and an industry-recognized credential. 

To illuminate how leading districts are making these programs work, the Foundation for Excellence in Education and EducationCounsel recently released Leading in an Era of Change: On the Ground.  It profiles nine districts and one charter management organization across seven states utilizing Course Access or Course Access-like strategies to maximize the use of resources, better serve students, and ensure districts are evolving with the needs of the 21st century student.  

Importantly, these profiles demonstrate that Course Access can look different in different contexts.  For example, the paper shows that rural and remote districts tend to use Course Access to offer core curriculum (particularly for hard-to-staff subjects like world languages), while larger districts tend to use Course Access to serve certain populations of students more effectively (e.g., students who want to accelerate through AP or dual enrollment courses, students who need to catch up, and students with specialized interests).  But, as Patrick Murphy, Superintendent in Arlington County, Virginia, observed at the paper release event, "Regardless of what environment you come from, Course Access is going to be the future of K-12 education. State policies are needed to create a structure enabling school districts to connect their students with high-quality courses.”

States are responsible for creating Course Access policies and the infrastructure that supports them (e.g., provider review and approval processes, a consolidated online course catalog).  But districts are often the key to the success for students, both as to serve as potential providers of Course Access opportunities for out-of-district students and to support their own students enrolled in Course Access courses.  

The innovative school systems profiled in the paper demonstrate what’s possible through Course Access – which we hope will serve as inspiration for districts and states alike.   

Resources to learn about Course Access include: 

• Policy summary and model state legislation from ExcelinEd 
• District focused white paper from ExcelinEd and EducationCounsel 
• State policy white paper and infographic from ExcelinEd and EducationCounsel 
• Column from Michael Horn of the Clayton Christensen Institute on why districts should love Course Access 
• White paper from iNACOL about Course Access creating equitable opportunities for college- and career-ready students  

This is a longer blog post, but very relevant to the August recess and the way school system leaders can best use the time that Representatives and Senators spend in their home district (during the month of August) to engage on critical federal policy topics. Especially relevant this summer? ESEA reauthorization and appropriations.

This blog post has 3 sections:

• Your advocacy matters.
• Congressional To-Do List for 2015.
• AASA August Call to Action
• ESEA
• School Nutrition
• IDEA Maintenance of Effort
• Appropriations/Sequester

Your Advocacy Matters

• When it comes to advocacy, your voice matters. No one is better positioned to tell your district’s story than you are, and in a time where Congress is driven by anecdotes and a desire to pull a story out of their back pocket, why not have them tell YOUR district’s story? They make these decisions whether you weigh in or not; help them make the better decision.
• The nation’s public schools are the largest employer in the country. No one employs more people than the nation’s schools. At the local level, most of you work for your community’s single largest employer. That is an important role, something you can and should leverage in your advocacy.
• Beyond the size of local education agencies (LEAs) as employers, school system leaders are uniquely positioned: Not only are you all positioned to detail the impact of policies on your school; you are also in direct contact with a series of other important constituencies. In you, elected officials have an education expert and a community leader, someone who can report on the students, parents, local business, community trends, and more.
• Do not underestimate the importance of your role in advocacy!

Congressional ‘To Do’ List, Fall 2015: Congress does not enjoy a stellar reputation, something public opinion polls bolster. When they come back from recess this year, their ‘to do’ list for the remainder of 2015 is intense, and that is putting it politely. See related Politico Article. Post-Labor Day thru the end of 2015, here’s what’s on their dance card:

• A continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown. This would need to be completed by September 30. 
• The debt ceiling – deadline now not until November/December
• Tax extenders that expire on December 31
• The highway bill, which will expire again on October 31
• Export-Import bank – already expired
• Budget reconciliation related to repealing the Affordable Care Act
• The ESEA conference
• The conference report on the Defense authorization bill.
• The Iran nuclear deal – a 60-day clock is ticking
• Other issues including cybersecurity, the CURES bill, Toxic Substances Control Act rewrite, energy legislation, etc. 

Recess Call to Action: There’s a lot for them to work on this fall. It’s important that your FULL delegation hear from you and your colleagues while they are home to visit. With that in mind, here are the top-line messages to carry to them. Please make sure to check back to the blog, as the ESEA-related items will be increasingly detailed as we get into and through ESEA conference.

• ESEA: Contact your full delegation about ESEA Conference (full details below). The asks are simple. Reaching out to both your Senators and your Representative, please relay:
  • Complete ESEA Reauthorization. We need Congress (both sides of the Hill, both sides of the aisle) to work together to deliver our nation’s schools and the students they serve a comprehensive reauthorization of ESEA. It is imperative that members support the deliberate work of the ESEA conference committee and vote for ESEA reauthorization. (There are some caveats to this, namely the inclusion of vouchers, but those chances are slim and we would communicate with you about those.)
  • When it comes to conference specifics, use this list to relay priority positions:
    • NO to vouchers and portability.
    • NO to expansion of federal accountability. We support what was in the Senate ESEA bill, and would be opposed to efforts to increase federal mandate/prescription in accountability, which would represent a step back to AYP 2.0 and high-stakes testing.
    • Alternate Assessment: Maintain current law. The Senate bill includes language that would limit the number of students who can take alternate assessments at 1%, a significant tightening of current law, which allows students to take the tests determined appropriate by the IEP team, but only using 1% of alternate assessments in accountability.
    • Maintenance of Effort: We support current law, as written in the Senate bill. We are opposed to the House bill, which eliminates MoE.
    • Funding Caps: ESEA is authorizing statute, and the authority to determine program funding level should rest with the appropriators, those in charge of allocating federal dollars. We are OPPOSED to the House version’s funding caps.
• School Nutrition
  • Increase reimbursement rate by 10 cents per meal to offset some additional spending required by increased nutrition standards.
  • Return whole grain requirement to 50% from current 100%.
  • Keep sodium limit at Target I, cancelling increases planned in 2017 and 2022.
  • Allow anything that can be sold as part of the reimbursable meal to be sold a la carte, no matter the day of the week.
  • Change fruit and vegetable requirement from “must take” to “may take” to allow students to only take fruits or vegetables they intend to eat, which will decrease plate waste and wasted spending.
• IDEA Maintenance of Effort
  • Legislation to make critical improvements to IDEA’s maintenance of effort provisions was introduced in July by Rep. Walberg (R-MI). The bill is called the Building on Local District (BOLD) Flexibility in IDEA Act (HR 2965). The bill would do the following:
  • Allow districts to reduce MoE if they can demonstrate that they are increasing the efficiency of their special education programs and there is no impact on the provision of special education services to students
  • Allow Districts to reduce MoE if they can demonstrate the reduction in expenditures is related to employment-related benefits provided to special education personnel (such as pay, retirement contributions, health insurance, etc) as long as the reduction does not result in a reduction in special education services to students. 
  • Allow districts to apply to the State for a waiver to reduce MoE if they are facing a serious financial crisis. Waivers will only be granted to districts if they provide evidence they are providing a free appropriate public education to all eligible students.
  • Ask your House members to co-sponsor the BOLD Flexibility in IDEA Act (HR 2965). Ask your Senators to introduce companion legislation. 
• Appropriations/Sequester:
  • Congress must work to resolve/replace the sequester. If they cannot do that, they must ensure continued parity between defense and non-defense discretionary funding. That is, defense discretionary should not be exempt at the direct expense of non-defense discretionary funding, which includes education.
  • If Congress cannot/will not replace sequester, they need to at least negotiate a budget/appropriations compromise (much like the Murray/Ryan budget deal) that raises the current funding caps to ensure that our programs don’t continue to struggle at sequester level caps. 
  • OPPOSE House and Senate LHHS proposals and work with colleagues to negotiate a budget deal that raises the overall funding caps.

Yesterday, USDA Secretary Vilsack and USED Secretary Duncan issued a letter to chief state school officers related to the school nutrition program and the expanded opportunity to use the Community Eligibility option. We share it here, as AASA members may be interested in using the Community Eligible model in an effort to expand participation in school breakfast and lunch programs.

Yesterday, AASA joined the Council of Administrators of Special Education, the National Education Association, the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, and several other groups in a letter to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services requesting that the Department not issue new guidance or directives to schools encouraging the use of the terms dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia or any other medical or mental health diagnostic term within the context of IDEA procedures. This letter was in response to a letter sent in June by the National Center for Learning Disabilities and 13 other disability advocacy groups that maintains that guidance is needed because “schools may be reluctant” to use terms like dyslexia in a child’s IEP, instead opting to refer to the disability as a “specific learning disability.” They claim that "without indicating the specific terms dyslexia, dyscalculia, or dysgraphia when appropriate, this phrase [specific learning disabilities] on an IEP is simply too vague a description to communicate to a teacher that the child needs intensive, explicit, systematic, evidence-based instruction to make progress."

The rationale used to justify the requested guidance is of concern to AASA and other organizations because it assumes that the inclusion of the terms dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia in an IEP will “ensure that the interventions goals and objectives outlined in the IEP match with the students’ specific needs.” In particular, there is an implication that "a diagnostic label alone dictates instructional programming which is completely counter to the individualization of instruction mandated by the IDEA. IDEA does mention dyslexia as an example of a medical or mental health diagnosis that might lead to a determination of IDEA eligibility in the category of learning disabilities along with perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, and developmental aphasia. However, it is not necessary for schools to include any of those terms in a student’s IEP to ensure appropriate services are provided because schools must already consider medical and mental health diagnoses in their eligibility determinations and instructional programming."

We believe advocates are requesting this guidance, and specifically clarification regarding the inclusion of these terms in an IEP, because they want to use these labels to force the hand of districts to use specific instructional methodologies or demand new or different services for students with learning disabilities that are not specific to “dyslexia” for example. However, the terms dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia are derived from reference materials like DSM-V and ICD that represent medical and psychiatric criteria for diagnosis and classification. If OSERS were to use guidance that accepts a DSM-V for these specific issues as equivalent to assessments conducted under the guidelines set forth in IDEA, then eligibility for services would potentially be opened for all diagnoses contained within this manual. IDEA already mentions dyslexia as an example of a medical or mental health diagnosis that might lead to a determination of IDEA eligibility in the category of learning disabilities, so it is not necessary for schools to include any of those terms in a student’s IEP to ensure appropriate services are provided. Moreover, the body of research districts rely on to educate students with specific learning disabilities is well-established thanks to the National Reading Panel, the What Works Clearninghouse, etc., so the process, accommodations and services districts provide to students with specific learning disabilities would be unchanged.

Many Americans are unaware that every year a very small portion of their tax dollars are directed towards a school voucher program operated in the District of Columbia. This program, known as the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, has been in existence since 2004 and almost 200 million dollars have been directed to D.C. students, so they can attend private, predominantly parochial, schools with taxpayer funds. Given its unique relationship to Congress, the D.C. voucher program is the most studied voucher program in the nation, yet all four of the congressionally mandated USED studies that have analyzed the D.C. voucher program have concluded that it did not significantly improve reading or math achievement. The studies also indicate that many of the students in the voucher program are less likely to have access to key services such as ESL programs, learning supports, special education supports and services, and counselors than students who are not part of the program. Moreover, the D.C. program administrators have struggled to provide accurate information to parents about the quality of the participating private schools, certify the schools met basic safe and health standards, and ensure the program operated with basic accountability measures and quality controls. It fails to offer D.C. students better educational resources, greater opportunities for academic achievement, or adequate accountability to taxpayers.

In July, the Senate committee which oversees the reauthorization of the D.C. voucher program, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, held a field hearing in Wisconsin praising the Milwaukee voucher program and the D.C. voucher program. AASA is deeply concerned that the Committee will attempt to expand the D.C. voucher program during this reauthorization and we sent this letter to the Committee today to express our firm opposition to the continuation of this failing program. 

AASA Advocacy is pleased to share this joint blog post, penned in coordination with our friends at ASBO International. 

Last month, President Obama announced his proposal to raise the overtime salary threshold under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which would extend overtime protections to nearly 5 million Americans next year. In his executive order, President Obama instructed the Department of Labor (DOL) to make specific changes to the FLSA, including raising its current salary threshold for overtime pay from $23,600, which is below the poverty level for a family of four, to $50,400. In other words, workers who earn less than this new threshold must be paid time and a half for each hour they work beyond the typical 40-hour work week.

As a quick refresher, the FLSA determines how employees are compensated and the standards for minimum wage and overtime pay (unless an employee meets one of the available exemptions). The FLSA was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on June 25, 1938 to “end starvation wages and intolerable hours,” and set a national minimum wage in the U.S. for the first time. It also established a 44-hour work week (which was later decreased to 40 hours), but anything beyond that required employers to pay their employees time and a half. However, DOL Secretary Tom Perez notes that the overtime regulations “haven’t been meaningfully updated in decades,” and the salary threshold has been eroded by inflation over the years. No statistic highlights the underlying problem as well as this: in 1975, more than 60% of full-time salaried workers were eligible for overtime pay; today, only 8% qualify under the current threshold.

“We've got to keep making sure hard work is rewarded. Right now, too many Americans are working long days for less pay than they deserve,” President Obama said in a Huffington Post op-ed. “That's partly because we've failed to update overtime regulations for years—and an exemption meant for highly paid, white collar employees now leaves out workers making as little as $23,660 a year—no matter how many hours they work.”

With the President’s proposal, the salary threshold would be adjusted so that managers and executives can qualify for overtime pay. While these employees have been exempted in the past, this effort partially aims to counter employers who deliberately use the title “manager” for employees in low-wage occupations to avoid paying for overtime. At this point, the proposal is expected to impact nearly 5 million workers, but you can see how many workers would be affected state-by-state here. It should be noted however, that employees who make more than $122,000 a year will continue to remain exempt from overtime pay.

So what does this mean for schools?

Generally speaking, teachers, principals, and superintendents will not be affected by this change, thanks to the FLSA’s “learned professional” exemption. The “learned professional” exemption applies to employees who are compensated with a salary of $455/week or more, whose performance of work requires advanced knowledge that is primarily intellectual in character, and whose knowledge is in a field of science or learning and is acquired via “a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.” Teachers are exempt from overtime pay regulations if their primary duty is “teaching, tutoring, instructing, or lecturing in the activity of imparting knowledge, and if they are employed and engaged in this activity as a teacher in an educational establishment.” This includes regular academic teachers, Pre-K and K–12 teachers, gifted and special education teachers, music teachers, and others. 

School administrators are also exempt in most cases, thanks to the “administrative” exemption under FLSA. To qualify, the employee must earn a salary of $455/week or more, and his or her primary duties must involve office or non-manual work that is “directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer,” and must require them to exercise discretion and judgment on significant matters. Primary duties involve working in areas like finance, accounting, budgeting, auditing, purchasing, quality control, personnel management, and related fields—all of which relate to the duties of the school business official in particular. For more information, please refer to this FAQ (see questions 16–22) about exemptions for administrators, district leaders, and other non-curriculum school staff. 

Learn more about the FLSA and President Obama’s new overtime proposal with these related resources:

• U.S. Department of Labor YouTube Video: “White Board Explainer: What Is Overtime?”
• White House Fact Sheet: “Middle Class Economics Rewarding Hard Work by Restoring Overtime Pay.” 
• Boardman & Clark LLP Fact Sheet: “Proposed Regulations Issued Concerning FLSA Exemptions from Overtime.”
• K–12 HR Solutions Guide: “A Quick Guide to FLSA.”  
• K–12 HR Solutions Blog: “FLSA Changes Are Coming: Are School Districts Ready?”
• K–12 HR Solutions FAQ: “FAQs That School Districts Have Regarding FLSA.”
• K–12 HR Solutions Article: “5 Tips for School District Leaders in Managing Changes to FLSA.”

Today, AASA released the following press release as Senators Alexander and Murray and Representatives Kline and Scott meet to begin negotiations on a final ESEA reauthorization bill. 

Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association, issued the following statement today commending U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and U.S. Reps. John Kline (R-Minn.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.) for their continued leadership and commitment to our nation’s schools and students as they meet today for the first time to begin the deliberate and critical discussions necessary to move the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization one step closer to completion. AASA represents more than 13,000 school system leaders across the country and has listed ESEA reauthorization as a top legislative priority since the day the most recent iteration (No Child Left Behind) was passed into law.  

“As the only national organization to have opposed NCLB from its onset, we are keenly aware and appreciative of this group’s concerted efforts for comprehensive reauthorization. This group of leaders is the one responsible for moving ESEA reauthorization to its furthest point in 15 years. They know, as well as anyone, the importance of balancing personal and party policy priorities with the needs and priorities of the broader group and that compromise is central to the ultimate goal of complete reauthorization. 

“As a former superintendent having worked in schools under NCLB, and today, as the leader of the national organization representing our nation’s public school superintendents, the schools they lead and the students they serve, I am confident that our nation’s students will be in a better position under this legislative work product than their peers who went before them under NCLB. Schools open their doors to students regardless of the quality of federal policy and I am looking forward to an ESEA reauthorization that bolsters and strengthens educators’ unwavering commitment to teaching, learning and achievement.

“Earlier this month, AASA joined nine other national education organizations to urge Congress to work quickly to complete the ESEA conference process. As the letter states, there is still more work to be done. We strongly urge you to build on the momentum generated this month around ESEA reauthorization by proceeding to conference as soon as possible. Today’s meeting is a big step in the right direction. We at AASA stand ready to support this process.”

For specific questions about ESEA reauthorization, please contact Noelle Ellerson, AASA associate executive director, policy and advocacy, at nellerson@aasa.org.

You will recall that AASA has been very active in its efforts to urge Congress to avoid, repeal and replace sequester. We have advocated against it since before it was law and remain involved in ongoing efforts to spur Congress to repeal/replace the very failed policy they themselves wrote into law.

As such, we have once again signed on to the NDD (Non Defense Discretionary) Coalition letter, which is open to national, state and local associations and agencies (but NOT individual people). AASA has signed on to this letter, in conjunction with our friends at AESA, NREA, and NREAC. 

We encourage you (within your school district and state associations) to consider signing on to this letter, urging replacement/repeal of sequester and the damaging/very limiting budget caps put in place by the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA). The current budget framework under which the House and Senate are writing their appropriations bills abides by the sequestered BCA caps. The inadequacy of these levels has been proven time and time again through appropriations bills that fail to make the necessary nondefense discretionary (NDD) investments that protect all Americans and promote a strong economy.  If these cuts are to be avoided, Congress must work with the President to replace sequestration with a balanced approach to deficit reduction. Such sequestration relief should maintain the parity principle set in the “Ryan-Murray” Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA) and reverse sequestration for both defense and nondefense.

• If these cuts are to be avoided, Congress must work with the President to replace sequestration with a balanced approach to deficit reduction. Such sequestration relief should maintain the parity principle set in the “Ryan-Murray” Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA) and reverse sequestration for both defense and nondefense. . Details below:
• Link to letter: http://www.publichealthfunding.org/uploads/NDDSignOnFall2015_Final.pdf 
• Link to sign-on form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CKU-w_ZTXpCUH64grdIEO1utOuEYVfyXwX9_ZB6gNHQ/viewform?usp=send_form 

Below are the text of the letter and instructions to sign on. The letter is also available online at the link above. Due to the large number of signatures, they WILL NOT be accepting any edits. Organizations must sign on to the letter “as is.”

INSTRUCTIONS TO SIGN-ON (PLEASE READ CAREFULLY)

• This sign-on letter is for national, state, and local signatures ONLY. Individual citizens CANNOT participate and WILL NOT be listed.
• When adding your organization’s name, please write it EXACTLY HOW YOU WOULD LIKE IT TO BE LISTED ON THE LETTER. Please double check your spelling before you submit your form. Note that if your organization’s name begins with the word “The,” it will be listed with the other organizations that begin with the letter “t.”
• Please confirm that you are in fact authorized to sign on for your organization by checking the appropriate box on the form. Only organizations with authorized individuals completing the form will be listed on the letter.
• We have added a section of the sign on form that asks you to identify the nondefense sector with which your organization most closely identifies. While your organization may identify with more than one, please choose the one that is MOST applicable. This question is meant for administrative use and will not appear on the letter sent to Congress.
• Due to the large number of signatures, we WILL NOT accept edits. Organizations must sign on to the letter “as is.”
• To sign on, complete the form in the link at the top of this email. The DEADLINE TO SIGN ON IS AUGUST 21! We aim to get this letter to the Hill in September. 

Earlier this week, the Senate Committee on Finance considered a package of tax extenders. AASA follows two items in the broader package, including the educator deduction and the Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZABs). In our letter, we supported the proposals to provide two-year extensions to both both programs. 

I am pleased to report that the Senate Finance Committee approved a $95 billion tax extenders package extending 52 expired tax provisions for 2 years, including both the educator deduction and QZABs. 

The educator deduction is a $250 above-the-line deduction for teachers and other school professionals for expenses paid or incurred for books, supplies, and materials. QZABs provide tax credits to assist the financing of school renovation, repair and modernization projects.  

Earlier today, AASA joined forces with nine other national education organizations to urge Congress to work quickly to complete the ESEA conference process, bringing ESEA reauthorization to a close and providing the nation's schools and the students they serve an updated, current ESEA.

You'll recall that these same ten groups--American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association, The School Superintendents Association, National Association of Secondary School Principals, Council of Chief State School Officers, Association of School Business Officials International, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National School Boards Association, National Parent Teacher Association and National Association of State Boards of Education--joined forces last month in a press conference urging Congress (both the House and Senate) to #PutKidsFirst and move their respective bills for a final vote. Both chambers did so within the last two weeks, and today's letter is a similar type of pressure and message for the next step: conference. In 'conference', the House and Senate conferees have to work together to reconcile differences between the two bills.

The unified message is simple and clear: "...Educators and parents cannot wait for a reauthorized ESEA. This bill is long overdue, and we do not have a moment to waste. We are now closer than we have been in the last 8 years to producing a new law as both Houses of Congress have passed ESEA reauthorization proposals. However, as you are well aware, there is still more work to be done before we reach our goal. To this end, we strongly urge you to build on the momentum generated this month around ESEA reauthorization by proceeding to conference as soon as possible."

You can read the full letter here.

On Wednesday, July 8, AASA and ASBO members took to Capitol Hill to advocate for public education. According to the responses on our google doc (if you haven’t filled it in yet and you were at the conference, please do so here!), we visited 112 offices! In the graphs below, the orange bars show meetings with the Senators or Representatives themselves (29 and 45, respectively), and the purple bars show meetings with staff members.

This kind of direct contact has real consequences. While we cannot take full credit, the members whose offices we visited voted for ESEA reauthorization (HR5 in the House and S1177 in the Senate) at high rates – 68 percent of the offices we visited voted for the bills, much higher than the 56 percent support overall.

Your visits didn’t only focus on ESEA; you had the chance to highlight other important issues and communicate with your Members of Congress the need for federal action on a myriad of issues. These were the topics discussed most often: 

Please stay in touch with your Members and their staff - persistence is key - and let us know how we can help you maintain these relationships and encourage action!

Earlier today, the Senate voted (81-17) to pass the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA). As a strongly bipartisan proposal to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the bill is a welcome step forward, bring an overall ESEA reauthorization effort nearly 8 years in the making the closest its been to the finish line. Today’s Senate vote follows last week’s House vote, and the bills now go to conference (to reconcile differences) before hopefully making it to the President’s Desk.

AASA was pleased to support the bill and provided daily updates and calls to action on the blog. You can find the final status of all amendments as filed in this spreadsheet. Amendments without a listed action were not considered. 

With a final vote of 81-17, 14 Republicans and 3 Democrats voted against the bill. Voting against the bill were Blunt (R-MO), Booker (D-NJ), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Daines (R-MT), Flake (R-AZ), Lee (R-UT), Moran (R-KS), Murphy (D-CT), Paul (R-KY), Risch (R-ID), Rubio (R-FL), Sasse (R-NE), Scott (R-SC), Shelby (R-AL), Vitter (R-LA), and Warren (D-MA). Those not voting included Graham (R-SC) and Nelson D(FL).

Highlights from the floor debate: As you’ll recall, more than 200 school system leaders were in town last week for the AASA advocacy conference and were on the hill when both the House and Senate were considering their respective b for ills. There were eight large priorities we were watching, and we are pleased to see that AASA was 8 for 8 with these in the Senate debate:

• Student Data Privacy: Sen. Vitter withdrew his student data/privacy bill, which was overly prescriptive/limiting and linked ESEA and student data privacy too closely. The Hatch/Markey commission as adopted by amendment was something AASA endorsed, and calls for a report to examine what information Congress needs to make appropriate federal education policy related to student data/privacy.
• Vouchers and Portability: The Senate defeated TWO amendments calling to allow Title I dollars to be restructured as vouchers or to follow a child to a school of their choice. AASA is strongly opposed to both vouchers and portability, and AASA’s Sasha Pudelski co-chairs the national coalition that leads the charge against vouchers and portability.
• Accountability 2.0: AASA was actively engaged in efforts to defeat proposals that wanted to increase federal requirements related to accountability. Proposals (Murphy/Booker) included mandating the identification of schools in the bottom 5%, identifying schools graduating less than 67% of their students, expanded data disaggregation, and more. We were pleased to see these amendments either defeated or withdrawn.
• Student Bullying: AASA actively supports legislation aimed at educating staff and students alike on how to avoid, identify and respond to instances of bullying. The Franken amendment under consideration in the Senate, however, included a private right to action, to which AASA was opposed. We were pleased to see this amendment defeated and welcome the chance to work in conference with any members interested in policy related to bullying.
• Equity: There was an amendment (the Kirk amendment) looking to expand the way in which schools evaluate/report the equitable allocation of all resources within a school district, including facilities and library resources. AASA absolutely supports conversations around equity, but we were concerned with data collection expanded beyond what is already collected under the Office of Civil Rights (which in and of itself has expanded significantly in recent years). We were pleased to see this amendment defeated.
• Title I Formula Change: AASA was able to ultimately endorse the Senator Burr proposal, which was adopted. Through a series of late revisions, the amendment’s new formula structure only goes into effect when allocations exceed $17 billion and then apply only to dollars exceeding that amount. This eliminates the ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ that would have dominated in an immediate implementation. We see room for additional improvement, but commend Mr. Burr for his continued focus on equity in ESEA allocation formulas.
• Community Schools: AASA was proud to support TWO amendments related to community schools, both of which were adopted. As a long standing member of the Coalition for Community Schools, these amendments are strong affirmations of the importance of educating the total child and engaging community partners. These amendments included one related to community school coordinators and the full-scale program.
• Edu-Flex: Sen. Cornyn and Warner introduced this amendment, the reauthorization of a pilot program that has been well received among participating states and schools as a way to allow states/districts more autonomy in leveraging state and federal resources in a flexible manner. Ed-flex is a program that delegates to states the authority to grant waivers of certain federal requirements. This bill reauthorizes the program and allows it to move forward; absent explicit reauthorization, the program would go away.

Today the Senate will vote on whether to proceed with ESEA reauthorization and move to Conference the Senate bill, the Every Child Achieves Act, with HR5. There is no emailed update today as the message remains the same: urge the Senate to pass the Every Child Achieves Act. We did, however, send a note to the full Senate detailing our position on one of the major amendments that will be voted on today. Feel free to reference AASA's position in any outreach you do today.

 Burr Title I Amendment: Senator Burr’s (R-NC) amendment modifies the Title I formula in an effort to ensure the critical dollars are more accurately targeted to the neediest of students. You can read our initial analysis and response below in our blog. While we were initially neutral, the changes reflected on the floor today garner our support. More specifically: delaying the implementation of the new formula until the Title I appropriation level reaches $17 billion and then applying the new formula only to dollars above that level opens up the formula to the critical improvements necessary and eliminates the issue of ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ that would play out in the current funding level. We look forward  to working with conferees to make even more improvements to the Title I formula to further—and more accurately—target Title I dollars. 

AASA Call to Action:

Thank you to everyone who attended the advocacy conference last week. We hope you learned a lot and made an impact in your meetings with your representatives. Please make sure you have filled in the google doc (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nAunkft_wYqiaBiUBFa6NOVha9U8NG_dL0Xhd_wLfZs/viewform) to let us know how the meetings went and what we should do to follow up.

All of the materials from the conference are available here, now including the slides from the presentation by Maree Sneed and Michelle Tellock.

Presentations:

• AASA and ASBO Advocacy Briefing Presentation
• Hogan Lovells Presentation

Talking points and information:

• ESEA Reauthorization
• Senate ESEA: Rewriting Title I Formula
• Legislative Efforts to Make Title I Funding Portable to Public and Private Schools
• Student Data and Privacy
• The BOLD (Building on Local District) Flexibility in IDEA Act
• Federal Funding: Budget & Appropriations
• Child Nutrition
• Reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins CTE Act
• The Affordable Care Act
• AASA Legislative Agenda Tri-Fold
• School Nutrition Association Infographic
• Senator King school nutrition proposals

This afternoon, the Senate voted 45-51 to incorporate an amendment by Sen. Scott that would allow Title I funds to be made portable to private and public schools. AASA strongly opposed this amendment and this victory is a testament to the many conversations with Senate staff that school superintendents have had over the past year on this topic.

There is a call-to-action regarding Senate Amendment #2093. This amendment by Senator Franken would add the Student Non-Discrimination Act into the ESEA reauthorization bill. SNDA contains a private right of action and lacks a requirement that a student who may be harassed or discriminated against go through an intermediary agency like OCR prior to launching a suit. Leaving OCR out of the process is bad for both harassed students and schools. OCR specializes in investigating discrimination and harassment claims and by ensuring that no wrongdoing is happening by the school to one student or groups of students. By litigating immediately, OCR would never know if there was a pervasive culture or climate problem in the school that is causing other students to be harassed or discriminated against. Moreover, this amendment does not protect against frivolous litigation, and schools would be responsible for any attorney’s fees incurred by students. We strongly support adding sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes and requiring schools to treat discrimination and harassment claims for these categories of students the same as they would for any other protected student population, but we cannot support this amendment as written. 

Please take a few minutes to reach out to your Senators about this amendment. The vote will occur sometime after 4 pm ET. 

We are still waiting for word on when amendments related to expanded data collection, accountability and data disaggregation requirements will be on teh floor. These are key amendments for AASA and we will keep you posted as we learn the final details of these amendments and when they will be up for a vote tomorrow. You can download a spreadsheet of all the amendments filed so far and AASA's positions. 

This blog post comes from AASA's Noelle Ellerson and Marty Strange, former policy director Rural School and Community Trust and former coordinator of the Formula Fairness Campaign involving over 20 organizations seeking more equity in the Title I formula.

Senator Burr has introduced an ESEA amendment that overhauls the Title I formula. The bill revamps the current formula structure, making six assumptions to revamp the current formulas into one singular formula.

Those changes are:

• Funds available to states and LEAs are provided only through the EFIG formula, as opposed to providing funds through the four formulas in current statute.
• Funds distributed through EFIG will use ‘formula child’ quintiles that have been updated to reflect roughly 20% of all children
• Grants are calculated using the national average per pupil expenditure
• The EFIG factor included in current law is NOT used in the calculation of the grant
• Funding for Puerto Rico is capped at its estimated FY2015 share
• All LEAs must have a formula child rate at or above 20% to benefit from the weights in the 4th and 5th quintiles of the number-weighting matrix 
• Read the related CRS analysis/report as prepared by the Congressional Research Services (CRS).

This set of changes is different than the Title I formula fight AASA has championed on the House side. That bill—All Children Are Equal (ACE) Act—focuses on ensuring that Title I dollars are targeted based on concentration of poverty, not presence of poverty. It looks at allocations within states, touching only the EFIG and targeted formula, leaving basic and concentrated alone. 

Here are the key takeaways from the proposed changes:  

• It shifts money both between and within states. Some states win, some state lose, some districts win, some districts lose. Overall, about 600 districts lose all of their Title I funding. 9,000 lose something, and 4,600 gain. At the state level, 15 states (CT, IL, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, NE, NJ, NY, OH, PA, VA, WV and WI) lose. Please see the attached one pager for the state-specific impact. We also have access to school-level runs.
• The cost to revamp the Title I formula under this proposal while holding schools harmless is upwards of $970 million.
• The bill shifts from state average per pupil expenditure to national per pupil expenditure. This is in large part what forces the shifting of dollars between states – away from high-spending states and toward low-spending states.
• The bill preserves number weighting, which drives the shifting of dollars both between and within states. Larger districts in states that gain due to use of statewide per pupil expenditure gain mightily, even if they are low percentage poverty districts.  Larger districts that lose because they are in high-spending states lose less than smaller districts in the same states.
• It updates the quintiles, setting enrollment breaks at the very levels where one-fifth of students are enrolled. Under this change, school districts reach the top enrollment bracket at 26,000 rather than the current 35,000. This becomes problematic only in the context of number weighting. It aggravates the effect of number weighting because very large districts have even more of their students weighted at the top weight.  Otherwise, it is simply adjusting quintiles to reflect student enrollment.
• This proposal rewards inequitable and inadequate state funding formulas.

AASA does not endorse this bill as introduced. We applaud Senator Burr for his focus on updating and modernizing the Title I formula. We applaud his efforts to work to target dollars more closely to the neediest districts. All formula fights are tough, as there are winners and losers. The need for a revamped formula trends with times of fiscal limitation; scarce dollars have a way of highlighting formula inequities.  As such, we welcome the opportunity to explore the following changes to the Burr proposal: 

• Set a floor of national per pupil average, in terms of what a state can receive. Allow for variance above that amount to reflect (and not disproportionately punish) states where it truly costs more to educate students or where they have invested more significantly.
• Eliminate number weighting. The continued presence of number weighting—and this is the core issue of our long-running work on ACE—is that it allows larger, less poor districts to receive a higher per-pupil allocation than their concentration of poverty would warrant. Smaller school districts (both rural and urban) struggle most under this. Their poverty level is higher, but the critically needed dollars they qualify for are usurped by larger, less poor districts that fill students in the upper brackets, where (under this bill!) the student can be weighed up to 6x the average!  
  • Under current law, a system preserved in the Burr amendment, there are two weighting brackets: one weighted based on the count of students in poverty (“number weighting”) and one weighted based on the percentage of students in poverty (“concentration weighting”). School districts evaluate their poverty level based on count and percentage, and depending on which bracket maximizes their per-pupil allocation, that is what they receive. While this seems inherently fair in that every district seemingly ‘maxes out’, the reality is that number weighting disproportionately favors larger, less poor districts who are able to fill the very top levels of the weighted bracket, warranting more money, per pupil, than actual concentration of poverty would warrant. Districts are far more likely to ‘max out’ in the number weighting bracket than to do so under concentration weighting.
  • There is a difference between the mere presence of poverty and a deep concentration of poverty. Take, for example, two school districts, both with 100 students living in poverty. School District A enrolls 500 students, while School District B enrolls 2,000. Under number weighting, both schools would receive the same allocation per child, though their actual concentrations of poverty are far apart (20% in School A, 5% in School B%). A low presence of poverty is not where the compounded impacts on education occur; rather, it is in the concentration of poverty. The real issue lies when you compare very large (whether suburban or urban) school districts who have very large enrollments and can place lots of students in the highest number weighting bracket. Nobody is denying that they have a large COUNT of students in poverty; the issue is that their large count is not necessarily a large CONCENTRATION, and is often in fact a lower concentration than their current Title I allocation, under a percentage weighting schema, would warrant. That is, they likely end up in the upper levels of a number weighting bracket, with a higher per-pupil allocation than they would receive if funds were allocated based solely on concentration of poverty. 
  • When an unintended consequence in federal policy is found to not allocate resources in the most effective manner based on the stated purpose (which, in Title I, is concentration of poverty), any effort to improve allocations should address-rather than preserve—that flaw, which in this instance would mean eliminating number weighting.  
• We recommend a study of this approach and that of ACE to see which elements of each proposal truly are most equitable and how those elements can be combined. This could be accomplished through a secondary amendment calling for a report.
• We recommend that any Title I formula change has a multi-year implementation, especially when funding isn’t expected to increase. We would also explore the option of a hold harmless provision.

Other related resources:

• Full Education Opportunity Act of 2015 text 
• State-level impact analysis (dollar change only)
• State-level impact analysis (dollar and percent change)
• School district-level analysis (LEA analysis)  

A new report looks at how educators and policy experts can work together to bridge the gap between their two very different but interrelated worlds. 

Teacher Voice: The Current Landscape of Educator and Policy Expert Communication and it's related blog/website are dedicated to bringing more teachers to the policy table. You'll find information that can be useful for teachers, school leaders, and policymakers.

The report is filled with great, helpful information, with the added bonus of solid infographic work. 

Of late, the appropriations process has been a series of actual and threatened government shutdowns, sequestration and continuing resolutions. The funding for the programs we advocate for are in the Labor, Health, Human Services, Education and Other (LHHS) appropriation bill. While Congress has advanced budget proposals, which outline the overall funding level, policy makers haven’t provided details at the LHHS appropriations level in several years. 

Today's blog post comes from AASA Past-President David Pennington, Superintendent of Ponca City Schools (OK). He writes about the importance of public education and our nation's long-term support for public education. 

“There is no mention of education in the U. S. Constitution.” During the past few years, this sentiment has become a popular refrain among members of Congress looking to justify their support for reductions or in some cases elimination of federal funds allocated to our nation’s public schools. Although it’s true that the Constitution does not mention education, there is a historical precedent for the federal government’s involvement in funding public education dating back to the late 1700s. 

Federal involvement in public education can be traced back to the laws that comprise the Northwest Ordinances: the Land Ordinance of 1784, the Land Ordinance of 1785, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. These laws were enacted by the Second Continental Congress to organize and govern the Northwest Territory. This land, ceded to the United States government by England at the end of the Revolutionary War, consisted of more than 260,000 square miles north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River.  

The Northwest Ordinances were critical to the creation of our nation as we know it today, as they helped promote and manage the country’s westward expansion. The Ordinance of 1785 required that the Northwest Territory be surveyed and organized into townships. Each township would be 36 square miles in size and would be divided into 36 sections of one square mile each, with each section comprising about 640 acres. Each section of the township save one was to be sold to the public for $1 per acre. Thus, this legislation provided a means for the government to raise much-needed revenue. 

What if that one section that was to be set aside from public sale? Setting the precedent for providing support for public education, Congress decreed that Section 16 in each township be set aside for the maintenance of public schools. When states were carved out of the Northwest Territory, this same strategy was also a part of the Enabling Act of each of the newly formed states. Beginning in 1850 Congress set aside Sections 16 and 32 in each territory for the support of public schools. The exceptions were the territories of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, where four sections of land in each township were set aside to support common schools. 

As a result of this set aside of land specifically for public schools, billions of dollars were earmarked to support the public schools of this nation. Even as the nation grew and debates over the rules for the settlement of territories and the admittance of those states into the Union became more and more contentious, this practice was never contested. In fact, many of the original states added provisions to their state constitutions putting land in trust to support public schools

Why would a Congress desperate for revenue set aside millions of acres to support public education? Many of our Founding Fathers recognized the need to develop a system of education for all citizens if our democracy was to flourish. Many of them wrote about the importance of an educated populace to the survival of the democratic republic they created. The Founding Father who is most well-known for his support of education is Thomas Jefferson, who was the author of the Ordinance of 1785. In fact, in a letter to John Adams in 1813, Jefferson said he hoped public schools would become “the keystone in the arch of our government.” 

I believe that although public education is not mentioned in the Constitution, our Founding Fathers fully intended to provide support for public education for as long as the nation exists. 

DAVID PENNINGTON served as AASA’s president for 2014-15. Twitter: @DavidPennid

Capping off a great week for AASA’s annual advocacy conference—this year in conjunction with our friends at ASBO International—the House and Senate both moved forward with their ESEA proposals. The Senate continues to debate amendments, and the House passed the Student Success Act (HR 5).

HOUSE: The House considered 18 amendments during debate before passing the final bill by a slim 5-vote margin, 218-213. (See how your Representative voted!) Read AASA's letter of support. The House is now waiting for the Senate to pass the Every Child Achieves Act, so the two bills can be conferenced and sent to the President's desk. 

Thanks to the pressure from AASA members, an amendment to incorporate the A-PLUS Act, failed by a vote of 195-235. The A-PLUS Act would have allowed states to take any and all federal funding they receive and direct these funds to private schools. You can read the letter AASA sent asking the House to oppose A-PLUS here.

SENATE: The Senate entered day three of ESEA debate, completing another round of amendments. The Senate is expected to complete amendment debate and final vote on the bill early next week. Keep the pressure on your Senators! Here is the latest summary of all introduced amendments. Read AASA's letter of support! No more votes till Monday.

The Senate took a vote to incorporate the A-PLUS Act on Thursday morning, and it, too, failed by a vote of 44-54.

Our friends at the Data Quality Campaign are releasing 'What is Student Data', a set of resources designed to help parents, teachers, and everyone with a stake in education to increase the understanding of what types of student data exist, how they are used, the requirements for safe and effective use, and the people who stand to benefit from the effective use of student data. 

Information, in the right hands, at the right time, is power. And for those involved in education—parents, teachers, community, state and federal leaders, and students themselves—having the power to support learning is critical.  But what does this information look like and how is it used? See the related info graphic.

What Is Student Data?   breaks down the basics about what the types of student data are and how they can work together to help us form a fuller picture of student information. Watch now! 

The review and analysis of House and Senate ESEA activity on July 7 is pulled from AASA resources as well as outside resources.

Please note that the chart of amendments is for both the House and Senate. The FOUR House amendments are at the bottom, in the rows shaded grey. The list of amendments is comprehensive for the House and as complete as possible for the Senate. For the Senate amendments, some are filed and some are pending. We only report the AASA position so you can effectively communicate with your delegation.

SENATE: As the Senate kicked off what is expected to be a two week (ish) long process of debating ESEA, opening comments were just that—more comments than substantive debate. No ESEA-related votes were taken. HELP Committee leadership made opening remarks detailing the collaborative effort that has been a cornerstone of the bill so far.

As we expected, the issue of accountability emerged as a talking (sticking?) point, divided along the lines of supporting the current state/local focus language in the base bill and an effort to reinstate elements of accountability that bring the bill closer to the high-stakes testing climate people claim to be ‘over’.  Specific elements of the expanded accountability are those AASA detailed in our legislative conference earlier today: requiring states to ID the bottom 5%; requiring states to identify/intervene in schools with graduation rates below 67% and some element we are trying to confirm related to ‘other gaps’. AASA is opposed to any proposal that would expand accountability beyond the critical guardrails already built into the Every Child Achieves Act: data disaggregation by student subgroup and adjusted cohort graduation rate.

A handful of amendments have been filed and votes will start at 12 noon on Wednesday. Please see the related AASA letter and amendment summary, noting that the summary of amendments for the Senate will be continuously updated as additional amendments are filed.

HOUSE: The House Rules Committee met on Tuesday evening and cleared four amendments for consideration, in addition to 10 amendments still awaiting roll call votes from the February debate. Votes will start at 5 pm on Wednesday. See the related AASA letter and amendment summary.

RESOURCES:

• Text of Senate manager’s amendment
• White House Statement of Administrative Policy: “The Administration appreciates the bipartisan effort that produced this legislation and wants to work with the Senate and House on a bipartisan basis to ensure that important changes are made to protect the most vulnerable students.”
• White House Report on Waivers: As mentioned in the conference on Tuesday afternoon, the White House released a report detailing the academic gains of states receiving ESEA waivers.

We hope it's been a great first day of the advocacy conference, for all of you who were able to join us. You are here on an especially important week, and we are excited to put you to work on the Hill tomorrow! All of our one pagers and talking points are available below, for your information or to share with your Congressmen or their staff. 

Once you have completed your meetings, please be sure to fill in the google doc (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nAunkft_wYqiaBiUBFa6NOVha9U8NG_dL0Xhd_wLfZs/viewform) to let us know how the meetings went and what we should do to follow up.

• ESEA Reauthorization
• Senate ESEA: Rewriting Title I Formula
• Legislative Efforts to Make Title I Funding Portable to Public and Private Schools
• Student Data and Privacy
• The BOLD (Building on Local District) Flexibility in IDEA Act
• Federal Funding: Budget & Appropriations
• Child Nutrition
• Reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins CTE Act
• The Affordable Care Act
• AASA Legislative Agenda Tri-Fold
• School Nutrition Association Infographic
• AASA and ASBO Advocacy Briefing Presentation
• Senator King school nutrition proposals

Enjoy your time on the Hill tomorrow, and if you need any assistance, please let us know!

Today AASA, in coordination with a local governance coalition, joined nine other national organizations on a letter of support for the Senate ESEA proposal, the Every Child Achieves Act.

As ECAA moves on the Senate floor this week, AASA joined the National Governor's Association, National Council of State Legislatures, Council of State Governments, National Association of Counties, National League of Cities, International City/County Managers Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, National Association of State Boards of Education and National School Boards Association in signing the letter, applauds ECAA for restoring the balance necessary for the federal-state-local partnership in education to succeed and for paving the way for a long-term, stable federal policy that ensures all students are better positioned to achieve from early learning all the way into the workforce. 

Read the full letter. 

This blog post comes from AASA's Noelle Ellerson and Marty Strange, former policy director Rural School and Community Trust and former coordinator of the Formula Fairness Campaign involving over 20 organizations seeking more equity in the Title I formula.

Senator Burr has introduced an ESEA amendment that overhauls the Title I formula. The bill revamps the current formula structure, making six assumptions to revamp the current formulas into one singular formula.

Those changes are:

• Funds available to states and LEAs are provided only through the EFIG formula, as opposed to providing funds through the four formulas in current statute.
• Funds distributed through EFIG will use ‘formula child’ quintiles that have been updated to reflect roughly 20% of all children
• Grants are calculated using the national average per pupil expenditure
• The EFIG factor included in current law is NOT used in the calculation of the grant
• Funding for Puerto Rico is capped at its estimated FY2015 share
• All LEAs must have a formula child rate at or above 20% to benefit from the weights in the 4th and 5th quintiles of the number-weighting matrix 
• Read the related CRS analysis/report as prepared by the Congressional Research Services (CRS).

This set of changes is different than the Title I formula fight AASA has championed on the House side. That bill—All Children Are Equal (ACE) Act—focuses on ensuring that Title I dollars are targeted based on concentration of poverty, not presence of poverty. It looks at allocations within states, touching only the EFIG and targeted formula, leaving basic and concentrated alone. 

Here are the key takeaways from the proposed changes:  

• It shifts money both between and within states. Some states win, some state lose, some districts win, some districts lose. Overall, about 600 districts lose all of their Title I funding. 9,000 lose something, and 4,600 gain. At the state level, 15 states (CT, IL, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, NE, NJ, NY, OH, PA, VA, WV and WI) lose. Please see the attached one pager for the state-specific impact. We also have access to school-level runs.
• The cost to revamp the Title I formula under this proposal while holding schools harmless is upwards of $970 million.
• The bill shifts from state average per pupil expenditure to national per pupil expenditure. This is in large part what forces the shifting of dollars between states – away from high-spending states and toward low-spending states.
• The bill preserves number weighting, which drives the shifting of dollars both between and within states. Larger districts in states that gain due to use of statewide per pupil expenditure gain mightily, even if they are low percentage poverty districts.  Larger districts that lose because they are in high-spending states lose less than smaller districts in the same states.
• It updates the quintiles, setting enrollment breaks at the very levels where one-fifth of students are enrolled. Under this change, school districts reach the top enrollment bracket at 26,000 rather than the current 35,000. This becomes problematic only in the context of number weighting. It aggravates the effect of number weighting because very large districts have even more of their students weighted at the top weight.  Otherwise, it is simply adjusting quintiles to reflect student enrollment.
• This proposal rewards inequitable and inadequate state funding formulas.

AASA does not endorse this bill as introduced. We applaud Senator Burr for his focus on updating and modernizing the Title I formula. We applaud his efforts to work to target dollars more closely to the neediest districts. All formula fights are tough, as there are winners and losers. The need for a revamped formula trends with times of fiscal limitation; scarce dollars have a way of highlighting formula inequities.  As such, we welcome the opportunity to explore the following changes to the Burr proposal: 

• Set a floor of national per pupil average, in terms of what a state can receive. Allow for variance above that amount to reflect (and not disproportionately punish) states where it truly costs more to educate students or where they have invested more significantly.
• Eliminate number weighting. The continued presence of number weighting—and this is the core issue of our long-running work on ACE—is that it allows larger, less poor districts to receive a higher per-pupil allocation than their concentration of poverty would warrant. Smaller school districts (both rural and urban) struggle most under this. Their poverty level is higher, but the critically needed dollars they qualify for are usurped by larger, less poor districts that fill students in the upper brackets, where (under this bill!) the student can be weighed up to 6x the average!  
  • Under current law, a system preserved in the Burr amendment, there are two weighting brackets: one weighted based on the count of students in poverty (“number weighting”) and one weighted based on the percentage of students in poverty (“concentration weighting”). School districts evaluate their poverty level based on count and percentage, and depending on which bracket maximizes their per-pupil allocation, that is what they receive. While this seems inherently fair in that every district seemingly ‘maxes out’, the reality is that number weighting disproportionately favors larger, less poor districts who are able to fill the very top levels of the weighted bracket, warranting more money, per pupil, than actual concentration of poverty would warrant. Districts are far more likely to ‘max out’ in the number weighting bracket than to do so under concentration weighting.
  • There is a difference between the mere presence of poverty and a deep concentration of poverty. Take, for example, two school districts, both with 100 students living in poverty. School District A enrolls 500 students, while School District B enrolls 2,000. Under number weighting, both schools would receive the same allocation per child, though their actual concentrations of poverty are far apart (20% in School A, 5% in School B%). A low presence of poverty is not where the compounded impacts on education occur; rather, it is in the concentration of poverty. The real issue lies when you compare very large (whether suburban or urban) school districts who have very large enrollments and can place lots of students in the highest number weighting bracket. Nobody is denying that they have a large COUNT of students in poverty; the issue is that their large count is not necessarily a large CONCENTRATION, and is often in fact a lower concentration than their current Title I allocation, under a percentage weighting schema, would warrant. That is, they likely end up in the upper levels of a number weighting bracket, with a higher per-pupil allocation than they would receive if funds were allocated based solely on concentration of poverty. 
  • When an unintended consequence in federal policy is found to not allocate resources in the most effective manner based on the stated purpose (which, in Title I, is concentration of poverty), any effort to improve allocations should address-rather than preserve—that flaw, which in this instance would mean eliminating number weighting.
• We recommend a study of this approach and that of ACE to see which elements of each proposal truly are most equitable and how those elements can be combined. This could be accomplished through a secondary amendment calling for a report.
• We recommend that any Title I formula change has a multi-year implementation, especially when funding isn’t expected to increase. We would also explore the option of a hold harmless provision.

Other related resources:

• Full Education Opportunity Act of 2015 text 
• State-level impact analysis (dollar change only)
• State-level impact analysis (dollar and percent change)
• School district-level analysis (LEA analysis) 

Earlier today, AASA joined nine other national organizations to urge Congress to 'Put Kids First' and to focus on ESEA reauthorization. AASA was joined by leaders from the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Association of School Business Officials International, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National School Boards Association, the National PTA, and the National Association of State Boards of Education. 

Read the press release, which includes statements from each organization. You can follow a record of the event on Twitter, using the hashtag 'PutKidsFirst'.

This blog post has been updated to include links to the groups' letter to the Senate. 

AASA joined AESA, NREA and NREAC in a joint letter of opposition to the House FY16 LHHS appropriations bill. Read the full letter.  

UPDATED: The groups also collaborated on a letter to the Senate appropriations committee. The letter was virtually identical to the House letter, and is available here.

On behalf AASA, The School Superintendents Association, the Association of Educational Service Agencies, the National Rural Education Association, and the National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition, I write to express our strong and unified opposition to the Fiscal Year 2016 Labor-Health-Human Services-Education (LHHS) Appropriations bill as reported from subcommittee on June 16. 

Collectively, our groups represent superintendents, school system leaders, educational service agency leaders, and rural educators, including parents, teachers and administrators. We cannot support a bill like this one, based on sequester level caps, essentially freezing funding for non-defense discretionary programs, which include critical education funding. This bill eliminates 27 education programs, cuts funding to 10, increases funding for 21 programs, and freezes funding for 29 programs. In total, funding for K12 programs are cuts by $2.03 billion, an amount uncomfortably close to the deep cuts of sequester. 

We would normally applaud and welcome the proposed $502 million increase for IDEA (among others) as critical and well past-due. In the context of broader cuts and freezes that run deeper than any IDEA increase can cover, though, this is an appropriations bill focused on cutting funding to our nation’s schools and disinvesting in the future. We understand the importance of fiscal responsibility and have meaningfully engaged in conversations around spending cuts, restraint, revenues and more. There are two sides to responsibility, though, and cuts of this magnitude are deliberate and irresponsible.

It is imperative that Congress work collaboratively to identify a blend of revenue increases, spending cuts and mandatory program reform to replace sequester. Our groups have actively advocated against—and demonstrated the deep, damaging cuts stemming from—sequestration and its impact on our nation’s public schools, impacts which are only amplified by the cuts in this appropriations bill. 

The cuts within this bill harm our nation’s global competitiveness and economic future by completely undermining progress on improving student achievement, closing achievement gaps and increasing high school graduation and post-secondary education attendance. 

We urge you to VOTE NO on the FY16 LHHS Appropriations bill and to support negotiations that raise the caps on NDD spending so that LHHS programs can receive funding increases that invest in our nation’s schools and students, rather than undermining their future.

Daniel A. Domenech, the executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association, issued the following statement  regarding the draft fiscal year 2016 Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) funding bill.  

“The House released an LHHS appropriations bill, detailing proposed funding levels for federal health, education, and labor programs, among others. While this represents the first time in a handful of years that the committee has provided this level of detail in a public manner, we are deeply disappointed in the Committee—and the House in general—for continuing to deeply undermine the work of the nation’s schools by allocating deep, damaging cuts.

“We would normally applaud and welcome the proposed $502 million increase for IDEA (among others) as critical and well past-due. In the context of broader cuts and freezes that run deeper than any IDEA increase can cover, though, this is an appropriations bill focused on cutting funding to our nation’s schools and disinvesting in the future. We understand the importance of fiscal responsibility and have meaningfully engaged in conversations around spending cuts, restraint, revenues and more. There are two sides to responsibility, though, and cuts of this magnitude are deliberate and irresponsible.”

AASA is happy to participate in a media event tomorrow. Ten national education groups, representing educators, principals, school boards, superintendents, chief state school officers, parents and PTAs, and school business officials, will come together Tuesday to urge the U.S. Senate to bring the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization bill to the floor for a vote.

The Senate reauthorization bill, the Every Child Achieves Act, passed unanimously through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on April 16. No date has been set for debate and vote by the full Senate. ESEA has been expired since 2007.

The event will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, June 23 at 11:00 ET. Join us in person at the National Press Club Zenger Room, 529 14th St. NW, 13th floor or follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AASAHQ and https://twitter.com/Noellerson

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, passed in 2010, covers the school lunch program as well as school breakfast, summer meals and more. The law as written and through related regulations has strict nutrition rules that are difficult to meet for school districts around the country. 

In response to these burdensome restrictions, Senators Hoeven (SD) and King (ME) and Representative Davis (IL) introduced the Healthy School Meals Flexibility Act in both the Senate and the House. These companion bills permanently cut the whole grain requirement from 100 percent to 50 percent, the original USDA requirement. They would also keep the sodium requirement at Target 1 levels, eliminating increased sodium restrictions scheduled to go into effect in 2017 and 2022.

Read AASA's letter of support here and here.

We invite you to join us for the annual School Leadership Summit, held online, and this year focused on the pillars of the U.S. Department of Education's Future Ready Pledge. The Pledge is a commitment by district leaders to work with educators, families, and community members to make all schools in their districts Future Ready: setting a vision and creating the environment where educators and students access the tools, content, and expertise necessary to thrive in a connected world. A great program with great speakers, and at no cost. All are encouraged to register in order to attend or watch the recordings: http://www.FutureReady.education

Today, AASA filed an ex parte notice to the FCC regarding the Educational Broadband Service (EBS). In this filing, AASA proposed a new paradigm for issuing EBS licenses, which would open the licenses, along with the internet connectivity and leasing revenue, to more schools throughout the country. 

Read our comments here.

As the school year comes to a close, I know many superintendents are focused on ensuring their students have summer learning opportunities, and I thought many of you may benefit from networking with other district leaders to share information on how to increase access to high-quality, sustainable summer learning opportunities in your district. 

New Vision for Summer School Network (NVSS Network) is an affinity group of school districts hosted by the National Summer Learning Association (NSLA), a national organization exclusively focused on closing the achievement gap by increasing access to effective summer learning opportunities. NSLA recognizes and disseminates what works, offers expertise and support for communities and programs, and advocates for summer learning as a solution for equity and excellence in education.The NVSS Network consists of more than 30 school district members and national partners committed to a broad vision for summer learning—one that engages more children and youth, boosts academic achievement, and influences teaching and learning throughout the year. Together with their community partners, these districts are committed to closing the opportunity gap and ensuring that all young people have access to high-quality summer learning experiences that help them succeed in college, career and life.

NVSS Network members commit to regularly participating in NVSS Network activities facilitated by NSLA, leading presentations or conversations with peers in their areas of expertise or interest, and contributing to annual research and data collection activities aimed at better understanding the national summer learning landscape.

For information about the NVSS Network, please contact nvss@summerlearning.org.

Today's guest blog post comes from AASA Executive Director Daniel Domenech. Originally composed for his monthly Advocate article, it is being shared here for its relevance. 

It is not going to happen. ESEA will not be reauthorized any time soon. I have been a skeptic throughout the entire process. ESEA could have been easily reauthorized during the first two years of the Obama administration when the Democrats held a majority in both houses of Congress but that clearly was not a priority. After the 2011 midterm election, the Democrats lost the House and chances for reauthorization diminished. After the 2015 midterm elections, when the Republicans gained control of both legislative chambers, the possibility emerged that the Republicans had the votes to pass bills in both Houses but the threat of a Presidential veto loomed large.

Truth be told, there really are no significant policy issues between the two parties when it comes to education. The reality is that the House and Senate, whether Democrat or Republican, agree on far more than not, and that the grid lock is more aligned with adults and politics than with students and schools. At one time there was a clear delineation between Democrats and Republicans on issues like school choice, vouchers, teacher tenure and seniority, and education reform. Today those lines are blurred and the differences have become political rather than pedagogical. Last year the House passed a partisan ESEA reauthorization bill that AASA endorsed. There were many elements of the bill that we were not happy with but at least it was movement in the right direction. Steps would be taken to reduce federal intervention at the local level and accountability and assessment decisions would go back to the states, where they belong.

This year’s legislative session started with the hope that Senators Alexander and Murray would forge a bipartisan bill in the Senate and that the House would again deliver a bill as they had done last year. Indeed Alexander and Murray did what most observers of the Washington scene did not think would be possible and forged compromises between the two parties that signaled the potential passage of a bipartisan ESEA reauthorization bill and did so with unanimous, bipartisan support in committee. The surprise, however, has come from the House side. As Congressman Kline moved to reintroduce last year’s House bill, he was confronted with opposition from his own party. Over 40 Republicans in the House indicated that they would not vote for the bill. He quickly pulled the bill and during the Easter break, AASA and many of our members and state executives were making phone calls in an attempt to get the recalcitrant Republicans to change their minds.

The House was anticipated to pass the exact same bill it passed last Congress, a seemingly easy feat given that this is the chamber that has passed more than a dozen attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Senate is the chamber where things were expected to perhaps fall apart – they were the ones doing the hard work of not only comprehensive reauthorization, but doing so in a bipartisan effort. To be where we are now, with the House struggling with the easy route and the Senate completing the infinitely harder task with flying colors, is a ‘Dunce and Golden Child’ scenario.

It takes two to tango and without House and Senate bills we will not have a reauthorized ESEA. With next year being a Presidential election year, we will have to wait until after the elections for our next opportunity. I would love to be proven wrong but in the meantime, waivers anyone?

AASA is proud to partner with Futures Without Violence to release a new report, “Safe, Healthy and Ready to Learn.” This report focuses on policy solutions to help children exposed to violence as well as their families and communities. The recommendations in the report include early investment in parents and young children, ensuring schools promote positive school climates, increased alignment and coordination of service agencies, and increased public awareness.

Read the full report or executive summary here.

AASA is pleased to support Rep. Joe Courtney's (D-CT) Middle Class Health Benefits Tax Repeal Act, designed to repeal the excise (or 'Cadillac') tax under the Affordable Care Act. Though the tax doesn't go in effect until 2018, employers--including superintendents--find themselves considering a range of options to avoid the unintended consequences of the excise tax. School districts operate with finite, balanced budgets and failing to repeal the excise tax forces schools to choose between maintaining benefits and paying the excise tax or making changes to available health care plans. Read the full letter.

• 30 v 40 Hours as Full Time: ACA requires employers to provide benefits to employees working more than 30 hours. School superintendents recognize the important role that compensation and benefits play in ensuring districts' abilities to recruit and retain a high quality staff. That said, the current 30-hour threshold poses a burden and obstacle to school administrators who must balance their district staffing needs within their operating budget. The forced 30 hour threshold undermines long-standing local hiring decisions. School administrators have long negotiated salary and benefit conversations at the local level, and the ACA regulation represents a seemingly arbitrary cap with very real consequences. AASA endorses the Save American Workers Act, which would push the threshold to 40 hours per week, aligned with the long-standing construct of '40 hour work week'. Read the related blog post.
• Excise Tax: Set to go in effect in 2018, the excise tax will apply to employer-based health insurance that exceeds certain amounts. While envisioned to apply only high-end and overly generous health plans, the tax is far more likely to be based on factors other than benefit richness including age, gender and geography, among others.
• Employee Contribution Threshold (9.5%): ACA, as it relates to employer-provided insurance, looks to address both access AND affordability. In an effort to reign in affordability, employers can be penalized if the plans they offer include employee contributions that exceed 9.5% of their wages. 

Earlier today, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released a guidance package emphasizing the responsibility of school districts, colleges and universities to designate a Title IX coordinator. The package also contains an overview of the law’s requirements in several key areas, including athletics, single-sex education, sex-based harassment, and discipline. 

The suite of guidance includes three resources:

• A  Dear Colleague Letter to school districts, colleges, and universities reminding them of their obligation to designate a Title IX coordinator.
• A letter to Title IX coordinators that provides them more information about their important role. 
• A Title IX resource guide that includes an overview of Title IX’s requirements in several key areas, including recruitment, admissions and counseling; financial assistance; athletics; sex-based harassment; treatment of pregnant and parenting students; and discipline – all topics that frequently confront schools and their Title IX coordinators 

AASA is pleased to partner with a major technology vendor to the education industry in support of their survey about technologies in the classroom. Your voice is critical to the conversation about education technology. The survey should take about 6-7 minutes to complete. All of your feedback is anonymous--no respondent or company will be identifiable by individual answers.

A limited number of people are being asked to participate, so your feedback is critical to the success of this study. This is strictly a market research survey and will be used to understand the growing use of tools and software in classrooms, and how effective they are.        

Simply click on THIS LINK to begin the survey.        

Please complete the survey before Sunday, April 26, 2015. Thank you very much for taking the time to share your opinions with us.

Last week, the US Education Department issued a Dear Colleague letter to school districts related to filing due process complaints against parents who have gone directly to the state with a disagreement. The letter cautions against such activity, as it short-circuits a parent's ability to complain directly to the state about a special education dispute.

You'll recall that IDEA's due process is a core component of AASA's IDEA reauthorization priorities. Read our white paper.

EdWeek has a more detailed write up on the Dear Colleague letter. AASA is looking into this further.

Today the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee is set to begin mark of up Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA) of 2015, the bipartisan proposal to reauthorize ESEA.

AASA's been busy putting together an analysis, side-by-side, letter of response and a quick summary of the filed amendments. Stay tuned to the blog and follow Noelle on twitter (@Noellerson) for live tweeting of all the ESEA fun.

Related Materials

• ESEA Side-by-side: Current Law, Student Success Act (HR5) and ECAA
• AASA Memo & Analysis
• AASA letter of support
• AASA summary of filed amendments
• AASA letter on amendments as filed
• AASA summary of mark up and UNANIMOUS committee vote

Today, AASA and 49 affiliated state superintendent associations sent a joint letter on ESEA reauthorization to the U.S. House and Senate.

In a related statement, AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech said “ESEA expired more than seven years ago. This means that our nation’s K-6 graders have spent every day of their K-12 experience under an outdated and broken law. Our students want and deserve more. We cannot continue to ask our nation’s schools and the students they serve to live under the approach offered by the administration’s waivers. Congress alone can and should address the shortcomings of the current law and the waivers. We (AASA and our state affiliates) are urging Congress to move forward with the very critical work of reauthorizing ESEA. We need legislation that supports state and local innovations that strike the appropriate balance between federal government authority, and state and local autonomy.”

From the letter:

"...Though Congress has been engaged in efforts to reauthorize ESEA for the past seven years, we cannot continue to ask our nation’s schools and the students they serve to live under the patch-work approach offered by the administration’s waivers."

"..Public schools in every corner of America are making remarkable strides in student learning. Individual school districts and schools are developing and innovating ways to improve student outcomes for all students.  ESEA reauthorization always represents an opportunity to breathe new life in to federal education policy, incorporating the latest research and actual experience to improve student outcomes and eliminate achievement gaps.Those efforts are under way: The House has moved its proposal—The Student Success Act (HR 5)—out of committee and is waiting for full floor action. The Senate committee is working through bi-partisan negotiations for a bill that will be marked up in the coming weeks. AASA has endorsed the House bill and is optimistic the Senate draft will make improvements on HR5 and further advance the ESEA reauthorization effort..."

"..We (the undersigned associations) urge Congress to move forward with the very critical work of reauthorizing ESEA and providing all of the nation’s schools with workable federal education policy that supports state and local innovations by striking the appropriate balance between federal government authority and state and local autonomy."

Budget & Appropriations: Last week, the House and Senate each adopted their FY16 budget resolution. You'll recall that the Congressional FY16 budgets, while lacking specifics for education funding, are so severe AASA opposes both. They are so cut-heavy that it is hard to imagine any scenario where either the House or the Senate are able to advance an LHHS appropriations bill that adequately supports the nation’s public schools and the students they serve. Read AASA’s letter of opposition.  

The Senate had a good old vote-a-rama, considering dozens of amendments in the process. I flag one of particular interest for the way it addresses sequester. Sen. Kaine’s (VA) amendment puts the Senate on record that the sequester caps for both FY16 and FY17 for both defense and non-defense discretionary dollars should be listed as equal, and that offsets should include both targeted spending cuts and cuts in tax expenditures. The amendment passed with bipartisan support, including Sens. Alexander, Ayotte, Collins, Corker, Graham and McCain. AASA sent a ‘thank you’ email to each of these Republican Senators for their support for the amendment.   

 Here are some fact sheets on the budgets, including a map of the consequences and state fact sheets.     On the appropriations front, AASA sent a letter with our FY16 funding priorities to the House and Senate LHHS appropriations subcommittees, calling for them to resolve sequester and invest as much as possible in IDEA, TItle I, education technology teacher development and rural education.  

Secure Rural Schools (Forest Counties): Buried within the House budget was crucial language to extend the Secure Rural Schools and Communities (Forest Counties) act. The House language provides a two-year extension of the program, a portion of which is retroactive, as funds had expired in September 2014. The program provided $270 million to 729 counties in the year ending in Sept. 2014. The two-year extension is located in section 524 of HR 2, Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015. The SRS extension was included in a broader health care bill, the so-called ‘doc fix’. The Senate did not vote on the bill before adjourning for their Easter Recess, but is expected to do so when they return. AASA sent a letter of support, in coordination with the Association of Educational Service Agencies, the National Rural Education Association, and the National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition.  

 IDEA Letter: AASA was pleased to coordinate 14 other national organizations in a letter of support for increased investment in IDEA in FY16. You can read the full letter, which expounds on this excerpt: "While special education funding has received significant increases over the past fifteen years, including the one‐time infusion of IDEA dollars in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, funding has leveled off recently and even been cut. Federal funding has never come close to reaching the promised 40%,causing states and local school districts to find ways to pay for needed services. This means using local budget dollars to cover the federal shortfall, at the direct expense of local district needs and expenditures, and/or increasing local taxes, which is an especially high burden in times of fiscal austerity and uncertainty. Collectively, level funding through the appropriations process and the cuts of sequestration have exacerbated the need for school districts to raise taxes or use local budget dollars to cover an ever‐growing share of the federal contribution to special education. Investing in IDEA, a federal flagship formula program designed to help level the education playing field for students with disabilities, is an investment in our nation’s students and their future, and represents an indication that Congress is serious in meeting its commitment to helping school districts meet the needs of all students. Therefore, we strongly support full funding for IDEA."

Supporting groups included: American Federation of Teachers; American Speech‐Language‐Hearing Association; Association of Educational Service Agencies; Council for Exceptional Children; Council of Great City Schools; National Association of Elementary School Principals; National Association of Secondary School Principals; National Association of State Directors of Special Education; National Center for Learning Disabilities; National Education Association; National PTA; National Rural Education Association; National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition; and National School Boards Association. 

Earlier today ,the US Education Department announced the availability of funds for States who have at least one county where, during calendar year 2014, HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement placed 50 unaccompanied children or more with an appropriate sponsor while the children's immigration cases were being resolved. 

The purpose of these funds is to provide additional monies to local school districts in helping them meet the needs of these immigrant children and youth.  At total of $14 million is available to eligible States.  

This information was relayed to the states via a letter to each state's respective chief state school officer. They also received an FAQ document detailing which States are eligible for a portion of these funds, as well as the process for accepting them. 

If you have specific questions regarding either of these documents, please contact Supreet Anand, at supreet.anand@ed.gov

As the budget and appropriations process gets under way, there is always a flurry of letter writing. Groups organize sign-on letters, addressed to appropriators, highlighting priority programs. Members of Congress circulate 'Dear Colleague' letters, looking for support for key programs, also addressed to appropriators. AASA is regularly involved in letters that prioritize investment in Title I, IDEA, Impact Aid and education technology.

Related to these letters, I have two items I want to share with you:

Education Technology: This year, our group sign on letter for education technology is open to state-level associations. Please share this information with your state association for consideration. This letter supports funding for the Enhancing Education Through Technology program at $200 million for FY16, the same amount requested in the Administration's FY16 budget. The letter will be sent to both the Senate and House Labor, HHS and Education Subcommittees. Please reply to hgoldmann@iste.org and ally@jbernsteinstrategy.com by March 24 if your organization would like to be listed on the letter.

IDEA Funding: Rep. Jared Huffman's office is coordinating a Dear Colleague letter for FY16 IDEA funding. The letter is being supported by Reps. Huffman, Scott, McKinley, VanHollen, Reichert, Walz, Gibson, Engel and Hanna. All signatures are due COB 3/23/15, and we can help round up some more names. See the hyperlink in the first line of this paragraph for the full text of the cover letter and the Dear Colleague letter itself. Please take 5 minutes to call your Representative and urge them to sign this letter.

Yesterday, House Republicans released their FY16 budget proposal. As a reminder, FY16 runs Oct. 1, 2015 through Sept. 30, 2016, and FY16 dollars will be in schools for the 2016-17 school. You’ll recall that President Obama released his budget proposal in early February. AASA’s Leslie Finnan provided a comprehensive analysis and summary.

The House budget bears zero resemblance to the President’s. It does include policy riders broader than just general funding, including proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This proposal balances the budget in less than ten years by relying solely on spending cuts that will total $5.5 trillion. It asks each committee, including the House Education and the Workforce Committee, to identify $1 billion in funding cuts to programs over 2016 thru 2025.  It cuts non-defense discretionary programs by $759 billion over the next ten years, programs that include education, public health, job training, and public safety, among others, all programs currently funded at historically low levels. The proposal locks in the cuts of the sequester.  

Even absent specific details related to K12 education funding, AASA opposes this budget proposal, as it is so cut-heavy that it is hard to imagine any scenario where the House is able to advance an LHHS appropriations bill that adequately supports the nation’s public schools and the students they serve.

AASA sent a letter of opposition to the House budget committee in advance of today's mark up. Please review the letter and feel free to use it in conversations with your Representative. Also, see our related talking points on the sequester, including information on the cumulative impact of the cuts and caps. 

The Appropriations Caps and Sequestration Are a Serious and Growing Problem, Despite the Tiny Nominal Increase Allowed in 2016  

Our friends at the Non-Defense Discretionary (NDD) Steering Committee created the following talking points about sequestration and its impact on NDD programs, including education. Feel free to use these talking points as you communicate with your House and Senate members as they work on through their budget and appropriations process:  

• While total non-defense appropriations will increase slightly in 2016 even if sequestration is fully implemented, that increase will fall far short of what would be needed just to keep up with inflation or address high-priority needs, let alone make up for any of ground lost over the past several years.  
• The Budget Control Act of 2011, which established the appropriations caps and sequestration, specifies that sequestration cuts in 2014 and all subsequent years are to be implemented by reducing the caps that would otherwise apply (rather than by across-the-board cuts as in 2013). For 2016, the pre-sequestration caps were scheduled to increase by 1.9 percent, but sequestration will eliminate almost all of that increase.
• Without sequestration relief, the cap on non-defense appropriations for 2016 will be just 0.2 percent ($1.1 billion) above the 2015 level. That’s $8.6 billion less than what would be needed just to keep up with even the modest level of expected inflation. The defense situation is similar: an increase of just 0.3 percent or $1.8 billion.
• With the spending caps essentially flat, 2016 will be the sixth year of austerity in non-defense appropriations. In four of the previous five years, the total has either decreased in actual dollar terms or increased only slightly.  
• By 2016 the cumulative effect will be substantial. When adjusted just for general inflation, the 2016 cap on non-defense appropriations will be 17 percent (or $103 billion) below the 2010 level. The cumulative reduction in defense appropriations is only a little smaller: 15 percent or $94 billion. These are, of course, only averages. Within both categories some things have been cut considerably less and other things considerably more.  
• The effects of the caps and sequestration are even more dramatic when measured relative to the size of the economy. Outlays for non-defense appropriated programs are projected to be 3.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016—equal to the lowest percentage recorded at any point since 1962, which is as far back as data go on this basis. With the caps and sequestration fully in place, the percentage is expected to then set a new record low in 2017 and to continue dropping in subsequent years.  
• One result of these limits is that increases even for high-priority needs become difficult to accomplish, as almost any increases require offsetting cuts or savings. After five previous years of cutting, feasible and acceptable cuts are getting harder and harder to find. And even for things that haven’t been cut in dollar terms, the cumulative erosion of purchasing power is growing.  
• Unless the cap on non-defense appropriations is raised, it will be virtually impossible for Congress to approve important increases in the President's budget such as $1.5 billion to expand Head Start for low-income children, a $1 billion increase for Title I education funds to improve services for students in high-poverty schools, $1.8 billion over the 2015 level for the Housing Choice Voucher program to expand access for affordable housing, and new investments in research and development throughout the government (including additional funding of $1 billion for the National Institutes of Health and $379 million for the National Science Foundation  .

The Senate Committee that oversees the E-Rate program (Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation) will hold a hearing tomorrow titled 'Oversight of the Federal Communications Commission". The hearing will cover multiple topics and give Senators the opportunity to make inquiries about the agency's FY16 budget request, completed and pending rulemaking/enforcement activities, and efforts to improve processes/efficiency. Read the full Notice Memo.

I call your action to the slightly alarmist tone surrounding the FCC's 214 actions to modernize the E-Rate program and to provide funding commensurate with program demand and implementation:

E-rate Program Expansion: In December 2014, by a partisan 3-2 vote, the FCC increased universal service fees on the American public by more than $15 billion over the next decade.13 Specifically, this post-election action by the FCC raised the annual E-rate spending cap from $2.4 billion to $3.9 billion, plus future indexing for inflation. This 63% fee increase will, in large part, fund expansions to the program adopted by the FCC in July 2014, by another partisan 3-2 vote.14 The July order obligated $5 billion in E-rate spending to provide Wi-Fi capabilities to school classrooms and libraries. At the time, the FCC suggested this new spending would be fully offset by using previously unobligated funds within the E-rate program and efficiencies produced by reforming support for legacy services. The E-rate program lacks sufficient metrics to determine its effectiveness and need. The program is also not based on the actual costs of service, but rather a system whereby the relative poverty of a school's student population is used as a proxy for such school's relative ability to afford communications services. E-rate's distribution scheme consistently results in lower funding for relatively poor rural areas of the country and higher funding for relatively wealthy and densely populated cities.

Please take a moment to contact your Senator and let them know what E-Rate is and what it means to your district.

In particular, I have listed the members of the Senate Commerce Committee below. If your Senator is listed here, they especially would benefit from hearing directly from E-Rate beneficiaries about the program, the need for the modernization and the need for adequate funding.

Earlier today, USAC and FCC (the two entities responsible for administering and monitoring the E-Rate program) announced a three-week extension for filing the E-Rate Form 471.

Forms are now due by April 16, 2015 at 11:59:59 pm EDT.

Here is the press release:

In response to a reasonable request from our nation's largest school districts, USAC – in consultation with the FCC – has extended the FY2015 application filing window for THREE additional weeks. The application filing window will now close on April 16, 2015 instead of the original date of March 26, 2015.

FCC Form 471 applications must be submitted on or before 11:59:59 pm EDT on Thursday, April 16, 2015 to be considered in-window.

The extension of the application window will not slow down or adversely impact the review of applications or cause a delay in issuing funding decisions for those applications which have been submitted and certified. In preparation for the expected volume of applications and to help ensure that we issue timely decisions, we have added and trained a significant number of additional reviewers.

We encourage all applicants to continue to work on their applications. Please do not use the extension to delay submission of your application. Remember if we do not have your application, we cannot review it. We are already starting the review of FY2015 applications. You should be prepared to respond as soon as possible to any questions you receive from our reviewers, so that we can make funding commitment decisions on your application. Those applications that have been submitted, certified and meet program requirements will likely get a decision first.

- If you have not yet started your FCC Form 471 application process, start it now.

- If you have started but not submitted your FCC Form 471 application, complete and submit it as soon as possible.

- If you have not yet certified your application, certify it now.

- You can certify online if you have a Personal Identification Number (PIN).

- You can also print a paper copy of your certification page, sign and date it, and send it to USAC.

The review of your application cannot start until it has been successfully certified. Please visit the USAC website for helpful tips as well as videos that can help you as you prepare your FY2015 application. You can also Submit a Question<http://www.slforms.universalservice.org/EMailResponse/EMail_Intro.aspx> or call us at 1 (888) 203-8100 if you have questions.

Senator Toomey is pushing to include a provision in the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, anti-human trafficking legislation currently being debated in the Senate, which would bolster background checks for teachers. AASA opposes the amendment, which poses unnecessary barriers to employment and increased burden on school employers without providing greater protection for students. AASA has encouraged Senators to vote NO on this provision, and suggests that you do the same.

At the same time, Chairman Alexander introduced an amendment with a more measured approach to background checks. We have encouraged Senators to vote YES on this amendment.

We sent a letter to the Senate,  urging Senators to take these actions.

While we were in San Diego for NCE, we sent out links for the 2015 State of the Superintendency Mid-Decade survey. This survey will lead to the next in a line of State of the Superintendency reports which provide a glimpse of how the superintendency has changed over the years, with a special emphasis this year on women in the superintendency. The higher the response rate, the more we will be able to disaggregate the data and provide more detailed reporting. 

AASA is once again pleased to support Digital Learning Day, an annual event that kicked off in 2012 as part of a nationwide celebration for students and educators to show how technology can transform and personalize learning for all students.

Digital Learning Day 2015 will be held on Friday, March 13. Click here to see how your school, district, community, and/or state can participate. Since Digital Learning Day’s inception, thousands of teachers and schools across the nation have held local activities, and last year alone, an estimated 10 million students and educators participated.

Stay up-to-date on all things Digital Learning Day through (what else?!) social media:

• Twitter: @all4ed; @OfficialDLDay; #DLDay
• Internet: digitallearningday.org; all4ed.org; futurereadyschools.org

Last week, AASA submitted comments to the FCC regarding the Educational Broadband Service (EBS). This program, formerly the Instructionally Televised Fixed Services (ITFS) program, now allows educational agencies (universities, community colleges, school districts and the Catholic schools) to provide wireless broadband access. This provides increased access to broadband, especially for rural areas where broadband is difficult to find, as well as a revenue stream for schools. 

The debate on HR5 is drawing to a close and Congress is hearing a large amount from grassroots groups, with a loud opposition to HR5. The overall vote is apparently close, and now is the time to contact your Representative and urge them to SUPPORT HR5!

Please take a few minutes (it should take no more than 5 or 10) to contact your Member of Congress and urge them to VOTE YES to HR5.

• Find your member of Congress here: http://aasa.org/legislative-action-center/# (Scroll to “Find Your Elected Officials”)

• Ask them to vote YES on HR5. Relay your support, what complete reauthorization would mean for your district and that AASA supports HR5.  

• Here is a link to the AASA letter of support and committee letter (with a list of all that is good in the bill)

• Here are some talking points:
• Reauthorization is crucial to providing the nation’s schools with relief from current law, which is both broken and lacking in the flexibility states and local school districts need to support student learning and achievement
• HR5 is a strong step in the right direction because it restores a more proper balance between federal, state and local government in public education.
• HR5 takes the pendulum of federal overreach and prescription and places it more squarely in the area of state and local expertise and autonomy.
• HR5 recognizes the importance of empowering state and local leaders to use their professional knowledge and proximal location to make the decisions necessary to successfully adhere to their educational missions.
• HR5 is not a perfect bill, but it gets far more right than it gets wrong, and our nation’s schools and students deserve a complete reauthorization and to be free from the limited, conditional nature of ESEA waivers.  

The policy and advocacy team is busy here in San Diego at NCE. Today, we're presenting on AASA's 2015 legislative agenda, policy research and effective grassroots campaigns, and advocacy in action with AASA's president, past president, and president-elect. Tomorrow, we have two presentations for a federal policy update. Joe Spurgeon and Steve May, of Milliman, talked about the Affordable Care Act and its effects on school districts.

If you are in San Diego with us, please join us for the rest of our presentations. If not, check out our presentations and let us know what you think.

Here's everything advocacy related you need for NCE 2015. We'll post presentations and materials as the sessions conclude.

Connect directly with the Advocacy Team at NCE via twitter: @Noellerson, @LeslieFinnan, and @fm_duffy.

ICYMI: Yesterday, the governing board adopted the 2015 Legislative Agenda.

Thursday February 26

•  9 am, Knowledge Exchange Theatre (KET): The Superintendent’s Social Media Lounge, Part 1
  Gayane Minasyan & Francesca Duffy  
• 9 am, 26A: 2015: New Legislative Agenda, New Congress, New Outcomes?
  Leslie Finnan
• 11:45 am, 29: Federal Relations Luncheon, featuring Pedro Noguera
  Sponsored by Ameson, hosted by AASA Advocacy & the AASA Collaborative
• 1:15, 26A: Policy Research: Effective Grassroots Campaigns & Public Education
  Leslie Finnan & Francesca Duffy  
• 1:15, KET: AASA Leadership: Advocacy & Policy in Action
  David Pennington, Amy Sichel, David Schuler, & Noelle Ellerson  

Friday February 27

• 10:30 am, 26A: Federal Relations Update I*
  Noelle Ellerson & Leslie Finnan
  This is NOT a repeat of Federal Relations Update II. They are complementary and separate.   
• 12:15 pm, KET: Federal Relations Update II*
  Noelle Ellerson & Leslie Finnan
  This is NOT a repeat of Federal Relations Update II. They are complementary and separate.   
• 1:30 pm, 26A: The Affordable Care Act & Public Schools
  Randy Collins, Steven May & Joe Spurgeon  
• 1:30 pm, KET: The Superintendent’s Social Media Lounge: Part 2
  Gayane Minasyan & Francesca Duffy

This post has been updated to reflect AASA's response to the amendments under consideration in conjunction with HR5.

AASA, The School Superintendents Association sent a letter to the House of Representatives expressing our support for the Student Success Act (HR5). HR5 is the House proposal to reauthorize ESEA, now more than 7 years past due for reauthorization. You can also read our letter in response to the amendments under consideration.

AASA members have long prioritized ESEA reauthorization. While HR5 is not perfect, it gets far more right than it gets wrong, and moving an imperfect bill out of the House with room for improvement in conference is a better option than defeating a bill and with it, any hopes (however slim they remain) for reauthorization this Congress.

Some context:

AASA  opposed No Child Left Behind since the legislation was introduced, citing the law’s federal overreach, punitive measures, assumption that federal government knows best what local schools need, and unworkable mandates and requirements. More than a decade of NCLB implementation has demonstrated the problems AASA predicted, and has highlighted how current law relies on ineffective, costly requirements rather than supporting and trusting public school leaders to improve student outcomes.  Congress must address the shortcomings of current law.   AASA strongly believes that reauthorization is crucial to providing the nation’s schools with relief from current law, which is both broken and lacking in the flexibility states and local school districts need to support student learning and achievement. 

As ESEA reauthorization efforts enter their eighth year, AASA’s position remains the same: We strongly support and prefer complete reauthorization of ESEA as the best and most meaningful way to provide relief from the broken and outdated constructs of current law to all students and all schools. We remain opposed to the continued use of, existence of, and reliance on ESEA waivers in place of complete reauthorization. We urge Congress to work together to advance a bipartisan bill that can pass to and through the President’s desk, ultimately delivering a much needed modernization of ESEA to the nation’s schools and the students they serve. 

As a starting point for discussions to reauthorize ESEA, HR5 is a strong step in the right direction because it restores a more proper balance between federal, state and local government in public education. HR5 takes the pendulum of federal overreach and prescription and places it more squarely in the area of state and local expertise and autonomy. The bill recognizes the importance of empowering state and local leaders to use their professional knowledge and proximal location to make the decisions necessary to successfully adhere to their educational missions.  HR5 makes significant improvements in the federal role in accountability, standards and assessments that AASA supports. These improvements include:

Maintain student disaggregation by subgroup

Eliminate the 100 percent proficiency mandate

Eliminate SES/Choice 

Eliminate Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and Annual Measurable Objectives (AMO)

Return ownership of the accountability system to the state/local level

Maintain school improvement for low performing schools, under state direction

Require that assessments measure proficiency and  growth models 

Remove caps on alternate assessments, allowing the IEP team to ensure that children are assessed in a meaningful, fair and accurate manner

Maintain supplement/supplant language      

Reduce federal overreach into school improvement/turnaround strategies

Put states in charge of designing a teacher evaluation system

Eliminate requirements related to Highly Qualified Teacher provisions

Provide option for 5-, 6-, and 7-year graduation rates. 

Reauthorization of the Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP)

Today, the AASA Governing Board came together and adopted AASA's 2015 Legislative Agenda. This serves as a guide for our lobbying for the year so we can best represent the interests of our members. Not much has changed from last year's legislative agenda. Our legislative priorities for this year are to reauthorize ESEA, fully fund IDEA, and limit federal intrusion into state and local education policies. 

We added a piece on the Higher Education Act regarding teacher preparation programs and a piece on student data privacy, urging Congress to clarify definitions and provide guidance on the scope of different privacy laws (FERPA, PPRA, COPPA). 

We also made a trifold version, which is a great advocacy tool to leave behind with your representatives, so they are aware of our main priorities. 

 Today, AASA released the 2014 AASASuperintendents Salary and Benefits Study. This is the third edition coming from AASA, and received over 1,700 responses from all 50 states. Thank you to all of you who participated!

The survey’s key findings included:

Base salaries ranged from $36,000 to $315,000, with an average salary of $122,000 and a median salary of $113,000.

Respondents are predominately male (79 percent), White (94 percent) and from intermediate-sized districts (300-2,499 students) regardless of their gender.

Female respondents were, on average, older than male respondents (53.1 to 51.7 percent respectively).

A three-year trend of improving economic conditions continues. Slightly more than half of the respondents (53 percent) reported their districts’ economic conditions as stable (50 percent in 2013; 45 percent in 2012).

The survey revealed a small trend toward longer longevity compared with 2013 results. Over half of respondents described their districts’ economic conditions as stable for the first time; this year, 53 percent said so, compared to 50 percent in 2013 and 45 percent in 2012. Despite this positive change, nearly four in 10 respondents still described their districts’ economic conditions as declining.

The survey is available here: http://aasa.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/2014_supt_salary_public.pdf

 This week the House Education and Workforce Committee marked-up their ESEA bill, HR5, the Student Success Act. One of the amendments to HR5 that was supposed to receive a stand-alone vote focused on Title I portability. AASA had deep concerns with how Title I portability would dismantle local efforts to close achievement gaps and generally undermine local control over limited federal resources. You can read about Title I portability here.

In light of this news, AASA launched a call-to-action asking some our members and affiliates with connections to House Education & Workforce members to weigh in on the House ESEA bill. In a matter of hours, emails and calls flooded into Capitol Hill. I heard from staff that they were being “bombarded” about the Title I portability amendment from superintendents. A few House members that we thought would not vote in favor of an amendment to strike portability even told me they were now “on-the-fence” after talking with their local superintendents.

While the amendment process never worked out as we had hoped, the effort by our state affiliates—particularly our PA and OK affiliates—to engage the appropriate superintendents, coupled with our active advocacy network of AASA members who reached out, represents an advocacy victory. It’s not unrealistic to think we could have another chance on the floor to strike these Title I portability provisions from ESEA, and we’ll certainly have a chance to engage on this issue in the Senate side, but thanks to our committed superintendents who found a few minutes to call up staff and send some emails, we are now ahead of the game.

As you have heard, ESEA reauthorization is finally moving through both the House and the Senate! Last week, the Senate announced it would proceed with a bipartisan bill, so Democrats and Republicans are negotiating now. The House bill is in committee mark up today, and will be sent to the floor in the last week of February.

We sent letters to Senator Alexander and Representative Kline with comments on each bill. We also created a side by side comparison of the House and Senate ESEA proposals. 

The ESEA reauthorization process continues to pick up speed. The House will be voting on an ESEA bill (the same bill that passed in 2013) the last week in February and the Senate Education Committee is expected to vote on an ESEA bill at the same time. While Senate leaders recently announced they will try and craft a bi-partisan ESEA bill, as it stands today, the bills under consideration in both chambers contain many critical policy changes that AASA members strongly support, but they also contain an unfortunate provision known as Title I portability.

On February 2, President Obama released his FY16 budget proposal. While, in the current Congress, this budget is “dead on arrival,” it still serves as an important conversation piece around the national agenda and the President’s priorities for the next year. AASA’s detailed analysis of the budget can be found here.

In this budget, President Obama made a dramatic shift from previous budgets. In the past, his education budgets focused on competitive grant programs, typically level-funding formula programs. The FY16 budget, however, reverses that; it proposes sizeable increases in formula funded programs and only includes small competitive programs. Race to the Top is not funded through this budget proposal, while Title I would receive a $1 billion increase, IDEA a $175 million increase, and Title III ELL grants a $36 million increase.

AASA applauds President Obama’s continued prioritizing of education, and especially the emphasis of this budget on formula funded programs. We welcome the opportunity to work with the President on his identified priorities, including early childhood, teacher quality, post-secondary access and affordability and 21st century job training.

The Alliance for Excellent Education and the U.S. Department of Education are hosting a series of Future Ready Regional Summits to improve teaching and student learning outcomes through the effective use of technology.

The summits will provide district leaders with the resources and expert support needed to build digital learning plans that align with instructional best practices, are implemented by highly trained teachers, and lead to personalized learning experiences for all students, particularly those from traditionally underserved communities.

“School districts across the country are helping teachers harness the power of technology to create personal learning environments for all students,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “We want to make sure every child—whether he or she is in the inner-city, in a rural community, or on a Native American reservation—has access to knowledge and the chance to learn 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

These summits are free to attend and open to all superintendents who take the Future Ready Pledge, a promise to develop the human and technological capacity needed to personalize learning using digital tools. Over 1,300 superintendents have already taken the pledge. The summits are designed to build a very strong regional network to share information and expertise, and make progress toward district-driven Future Ready goals for ALL students.

The schedule is as follows:

• February 11-12 Raleigh, North Carolina
• February 17-18 Vancouver, Washington
• March 2-3 Baltimore, Maryland
• March 26-27 Atlanta, Georgia
• April 13-14 Phoenix, Arizona
• April 21-22 West Warwick, Rhode Island
• April 28-29 St. Louis, Missouri
• May 4-5 Redwood City, California
• June 11-12 Denver, Colorado
• June 15-16 Wadsworth, Illinois
• June 22-23 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• June 2015 (Date TBD) Dallas, Texas

For more information, visit http://www.futurereadyschools.org/ or contact Sara Hall (shall@all4ed.org) at the Alliance for Excellent Education.

On December 3, 2014 the U.S. Department of Education released new proposed regulations regarding teacher preparation programs. These regulations would require states receiving money through the Higher Education Act to create a rating system of all teacher preparation systems in the state. These rating systems would be based on graduates’ placement and retention rates as well as student outcomes.

Today, AASA submitted comments to the proposed regulations. AASA believes the new regulations represent an overreach of the federal government into the K-12 system for the purpose of improving higher education institutions. The regulations ask too much of districts leaders, who are responsible for educating students K-12, not improving teacher preparation programs.

AASA believes these proposed regulations would not improve a school or district’s ability to recruit and retain effective teachers; rather, it would add to the already sizeable paperwork burden of school administrators without providing any useful information to the schools or administrators. The proposed regulations will not result in more highly effective teachers entering our nation’s classrooms ready to teach. Instead, the measures outlined in the regulations to gauge teacher preparation programs and the successes of individual new teachers in our classrooms are blunt, inappropriate instruments.

The comment period is open until February 2, 2015.

AASA urges its members and supporters to participate in our social media campaign this week to fight the school choice and voucher rhetoric during National School Choice Week, Jan. 25-31. In unity with and as co-chair of the National Coalition for Public Education, a coalition of over 50 national education, civil rights, religious and secular organizations, AASA joins with these groups to oppose and inform the public of the real focus of this event--the push for private school vouchers. While the word “school choice” implies options for parents, it is actually a scheme to get the public to buy into the use of public funds for private schools:

Discrimination
Private school vouchers do not provide students and parents with real and meaningful choice. Under private school voucher schemes, the ultimate choice rests with the school, not with the students and their families. Voucher programs usually allow participating private schools to reject students based on numerous factors, including economic status, gender, religion, academic achievement, sexual orientation, and even disability. Public schools, on the other hand, are required to accept all students.

Tweets
• Voucher schools don’t solve social inequality. They contribute to it: http://bit.ly/1er5YPU

• #Schoolchoice doesn’t give choice to parents, but instead gives private voucher schools choice of students they want to accept or reject.

• What do taxpayer funded school voucher schools teach? Often it’s LGBT bigotry. http://bit.ly/1j007Ys

• #Voucherfail Wisconsin voucher schools fail to provide equal access for students with disabilities: http://bit.ly/1yooEer

Students with Disabilities
Some students have even less choice than others. Students with disabilities often aren’t guaranteed the same services in the voucher school that they would ordinarily receive in a public school and can find few voucher schools that offer them the services they need. Here is an example: Students with disabilities comprise almost 20% of the Milwaukee public school population, but they number only 1.6% of the city’s voucher school students. And, students who want to attend a secular school are also left with few options, as the vast majority of schools that accept vouchers are religious schools.

Tweets
• #voucherfail: private voucher schools don’t grant students with disabilities the same protections guaranteed under IDEA.

• #voucherfail: voucher programs systematically exclude students with disabilities from participation. http://bit.ly/1DEjteX

• #voucherfail Many families who get vouchers reject them b/c they do not meet needs of students with disabilities http://1.usa.gov/1AXSav1

Academic Performance
Voucher programs also don’t provide students and families with quality options. Studies consistently show that private school vouchers don’t improve reading and math achievement. For example, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – the country’s oldest voucher program – a recent study shows that the students in the voucher program do no better in reading or math than their peers in public schools. Similarly in Louisiana, 67% of public school students pass their standardized tests, whereas only 44% of voucher students do.

The lack of quality control is even seen in the school buildings themselves. A closer look into the schools that serve Milwaukee’s voucher students found these schools to be lacking in appropriate amenities; many of them were operating out of old storefronts, gas stations, and other run-down facilities. The DC voucher program has a similar problem: students in a school accepting vouchers in DC had to go to the day care center downstairs because the school’s only bathroom wasn’t usable.
Unfortunately, parents often don’t know and can’t discover these problems in voucher schools. With no oversight, access to records and test scores, or public meetings, parents are often denied the pertinent information required to make a good choice.

Tweets
• Vouchers don’t work: Test scores show students in Milwaukee public schools outperform students in voucher schools http://bit.ly/1ghHKJt

• #VoucherFactCheck: Voucher programs strip protections for students who are English language learners. http://bit.ly/1wV4B4A

• #Voucherfail: 67% of La. public school students pass their LEAP and iLEAP tests; only 44% of voucher students do. http://bit.ly/1suSkHu

Say No to Private School Voucher Programs
Nonetheless, states continue to create and expand voucher programs. There are currently private school voucher and tuition tax credit (backdoor voucher) programs in 23 states. And as states begin their 2015 legislative sessions, we are already seeing the introduction of numerous voucher bills.

Congress will likely debate private school vouchers too, as it attempts to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In fact, the Senate bill already includes a scheme called Title I “portability.” Title I funding was designed to support schools with high concentrations of poverty, allowing schools to pool funds to help students most in need. Title I portability would dismantle the program, allowing funds to “follow the child” to another school. The current proposal limits the funds to public schools. It is clear, however, that supporters of portability want the funds to eventually flow to private schools too—creating a national private school voucher plan.

Talk to Your Legislators
During this National School Choice Week, it is important to remember that private school vouchers are not true school choice, and they do not offer any real benefit to the children most in need of better educational opportunities. That’s why voters in several states have voted down vouchers at the ballot box. Take the time to let your legislators know that you don’t support private school vouchers and that they should oppose any attempt to create or expand private school voucher programs, including Title I portability.

--AASA and the National Coalition for Public Education

As we gear up for an ESEA reauthorization led by Republicans in both the House and Senate, AASA is releasing a white paper and a one-pager for Hill staff outlining our deep concerns with Title I public school portability. Title I portability would allow states to change how they distribute Title I dollars to districts and to schools by assigning an exact identical value to each eligible Title I child in the state. This means every eligible child within a state would receive the same amount of Title I funds regardless of the wealth of the district they attend, undermining the very purpose of Title I, which ensures that students in high poverty districts receive a greater allocation of funds.Why do some Republicans support this policy concept? Providing every eligible child with a consistent amount of funding would make it considerably easier for the state to eventually combine state voucher funds with this set federal per-pupil allocation and seamlessly distribute one combined federal/state allocation to students attending private schools.

From AASA’s perspective, we believe Title I portability puts us on the road to federally funded private school vouchers, but we also have deep reservations with how it limits local school district administrators’ ability to efficiently target federal resources to at-risk students in their community, which would result in less effective and fewer comprehensive services for eligible students.

If you’re a superintendent, staffer or education wonk interested in understanding why a group like AASA would oppose Title I portability--a policy that keeps Title I dollars in public schools, but changes how the funds are distributed and spent on each Title I eligible student in our schools—please check out our white paper and one-pager.

Dan, AASA President David Pennington and I are leaving tomorrow for the Dominican Republic, proud to participate in the Lifetouch 2015 Memory Mission. During our stay, we will help build a school in the town of Constanza. Before I leave, though, one more advocacy update:

ESEA: The House and Senate were very serious when they said they’d hit the ground running when it came to ESEA reauthorization in the 114^th Congress. I recently penned an overview for a guest appearance in Dan’s The Advocate article; you can read that here.

• Senate: Chairman Lamar Alexander introduced his ESEA discussion draft earlier this month. He is moving on an expedited timeline, with a Feb 2 deadline for submitting comments. His bill is almost unchanged from the bill he introduced last Congress. Read the AASA summary, position and talking points here.
• House: The House is slated to move even quicker than the Senate and in a more partisan manner. They are scheduled to introduce their bill (as passed out of the full House in the summer of 2013) the first week in February, with committee mark up shortly after and a full floor vote the last week in February.
• Administration: In a refreshing move, Secretary Duncan gave remarks highlighting the need to revise and repeal NCLB. It is good to hear the administration give deliberate attention to ESEA reauthorization, given their continued hyperfocus on ESEA waivers. Even with this renewed attention to ESEA, we have to remember that the Dept will continue to move forward with the latest round of waivers, under which some states will get four year waivers, lasting far beyond the administration itself.

Student Data and Privacy: The issues of student data and privacy—which have by and large played out at the state level—are making their way to federal policy discussions. Last Congress, there were some initial legislative proposals aimed at bolstering student privacy. While the bills did not go anywhere, they did prime the pump for further discussions this year, and Congress is expected to move forward with an effort to reauthorize FERPA. In the meantime, President Obama laid down the administration’s position earlier this month, announcing a wide-sweeping set of proposals related to consumer and student privacy. The announcement was met with mixed reviews. (Read the White House press release.) Student data groups are heralding the approach for its efforts to bolster student data privacy, while the education vendor side is more tempered in their response, trying to ascertain how the administration’s proposal may limit the ability of vendors to continue to operate in this space. Seeing as this will be a legislative conversation moving forward, it was inserted into AASA’s 2015 legislative agenda. Given the relatively broad parameters framing the conversation right now, AASA’s positions are equally flexible:

• Provide coherent and easy-to-understand guidance for parents and educators regarding FERPA, PPRA, and COPPA and their protections of the privacy and security of student data. 
• Update definitions to address the realities of the digital age, making it possible to protect data while ensuring appropriate use of student data for legitimate educational needs and reforms.

SRS/Forest Counties: You’ll recall that at the end of the 113^th Congress, they failed to provide funding for the Secure Rural Communities and Schools Act. The Forest Counties coalition received an update earlier this week with two items:

• The Forest Service Chiefs office wants us to remind anyone with excess Title III funds not to send them back as it will be lost to the treasury. So hang on to those Title III funds.
• On the SRS reauthorization front we have a number of champions working in both the Senate and the House to get it done. Please reach out to your Representatives and Senators. Remind them of the importance of SRS. Remember the first dollars to pay SRS come from actual shared receipts.

More succinctly, we are still waiting to see some meaningful action commensurate with assurances that this would move in the first quarter of 2015. We remain optimistic, and urge all impacted members to weigh in with their full Congressional delegation, urging them to support SRS funding.

This month, I was a guest writer in AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech's The Advocate. I used the space to provide a general overview of the latest goings on re: ESEA.

Last week, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) released a discussion draft of his ESEA reauthorization proposal, entitled Every Child Ready for College or Career Act. The bill is the first piece of ESEA reauthorization in the 114^t Congress, one that seems primed not only to move discussion drafts, but to get a comprehensive ESEA reauthorization to President Obama’s desk.

The bill bears a strong resemblance to legislation he sponsored during the last Congress, offered as the Republican substitute to the Democrats partisan ESEA bill. In a nut shell, the bill is an improvement over current law and realigns the balance of power between state, local and federal government (Reigning in the federal prescription and overreach that is rampant in current law.).

Please see the related overview memo for a summary of what is in the Alexander bill, as well as AASA’s position and suggested talking points. It is never too early for you to reach out to your Congressional delegation. These decisions—these especially critical ESEA decisions—will be made whether you weigh in or not. AASA members are uniquely positioned to inform these decisions. As school system leaders responsible for running entire school districts, supervising staff and development, and supporting student learning, there are few others who can speak so directly to the impact of various federal policies on local school practices.

At this point, AASA remains neutral on the bill. While the bill takes strong steps in the right direction around standards, accountability and assessment, we have deep reservations around portability, education technology, funding caps and maintenance of effort among others. We are in the early part of the process and will continue to work with both Democrats and Republicans to move amendments to improve the bill that we can support.

Sidebar on the Politics of Reauthorization: I have no doubt that each chamber’s committee leadership (Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray for the Senate committee, and Chairman Kline and Ranking Member Scott for the House committee) is committed to moving reauthorization. With the House and Senate now unified under Republican leadership, it should be marginally easier to get a bill to the President’s desk.

The political calculus will likely fall to the Senate, where 60 votes will be needed to pass any measure. Since the Republicans don’t have 60 seats in the Senate, any ESEA bill will need to pick up some Democratic supporters. The question is whether Alexander works to get initial bipartisan support coming out of committee, potentially compromising some Republican support from more conservative members, or if he moves a partisan bill thru committee and relies on the amendment process to make the bill palatable to voters on both sides of the aisle. The House will move a bill virtually identical to the partisan bill it has moved the last two Congresses. Conferencing any differences between a House and Senate bill could pose a further threat to a final vote in each chamber and/or earning the President’s signature.

 Today’s guest blog comes from Bill Olsen, Principal of Rutland High School in Rutland, VT. Rutland’s Superintendent is AASA member Mary Moran, former member of the AASA Executive Committee.

Ten years ago, I taught Social Studies in the same high school in which I currently serve as principal. Teaching sophomores, I could not avoid a small sense of apprehension whenever we started a new project. With the goal of developing creativity and engagement while learning the required skills of history, there came the risk of students not performing up to expectations when the teacher stepped away from center stage. Inevitably though, with enough structure and guidance, the challenge and the chance to be creative and more self-directed produced a stronger interest in learning. Projects nearly always finished well, and I was glad to have taken the risk.

Ten years later, we hear a lot about how schools need to develop student voice; about how learning should be relevant and meaningful; about how we want students to be independent thinkers, learners and people who will “take action” to change their world for the better. It all came together for us at Rutland High School in Vermont on December, 2014, when the student body made some adult decisions on how to stand up to cyberbullying.

It was a real surprise that by the end of the school day on December 3, many of our students were emotionally damaged by words written on social media, in a forum that seemed to appear literally in just a few hours. On that morning, students started coming to teachers, administrators, and guidance counselors, complaining about the very rotten comments made about them and their friends on a new forum, the After School App. We had dealt with this kind of bad behavior before, but what made this app so dangerous and harmful was the nature of its structure. To be allowed access to the message wall dedicated to our high school, one had to possess a Facebook account, identified as a student at the school. Postings were also anonymous. Clearly, the software engineers who produced this tool wanted to keep out adult supervision.

They also played upon the worst instincts of human nature. Anonymous postings allowed commentary to run wild, owing to the lack of ownership over what was said. And even though many of our upperclassmen described the entries as “stupid,” there developed an interest in downloading the app, “just to see what all drama was about.” Students relayed to the adults that obscene or provocative pictures and videos could be posted. The app also supported surveys that focused on individual students, asking peers to rate each other on dubious personal distinctions.

Rutland High School’s response to the app evolved almost as quickly as the app appeared. Events in school were serious enough to send a letter home to parents that afternoon, describing the issue and asking parents to partner with us by talking to their children about what happened, reinforcing an understanding of the responsibilities that come with using a tool as powerful as a smartphone. Our school safety team also met to review events, to make plans for next steps, and especially to identify and help students who had suffered the most.

But on the morning of December 4, we put the responsibility of resolving the damage back on the students. Administrators and counselors first met with influential students: team captains and leaders in student government, clubs, and activities. We asked them to address the issue with their peers on our televised daily announcements. They embraced the challenge without hesitation. On camera, a couple of adults spoke first, but it was the students who won the day. With about 20 colleagues behind them, five students added their mature voices, asking their peers to delete the app and to support their classmates.

Then with one more request, the tide turned. The group presenting on camera challenged the school to participate in a Positive Post-it day, an idea to counteract cyberbullying that we had heard about from other schools. That resonated with our students. A year prior in a whole school assembly, they listened to anti-bullying advocate John Halligan speak to their power to end bullying, “Be an ‘upstander,’ not a bystander.” Provided with stickie notes in various offices, students wrote uplifting comments, leaving them on office windows, lockers, and classroom doors. Some were personal, “Mrs. Foley has a heart the size of Alaska.” Some were instructive, “Stay classy, RHS!” Some made curricular connections, “Tout le monde est beau!” All of them pointed the school in the right direction, “Stop everything that you are doing right now and SMILE!”



That brought the mood around 180 degrees, yet even on the following day, some students reported that while diminished in volume, the negative comments on the After School App still existed. Again, students took the next step. A year prior, former Rutland 12th grade student Melanie Hubbard created a school club called Cyber You as part of her action piece in a senior year Capstone project. Cyber You’s purpose was to educate peers about the negative consequences of some behaviors on social media. The club lived beyond Melanie’s graduation. As a way to generate attention outside of the building about the effects of this app, the club developed a petition on Change.org, asking for public support in requesting Apple’s App Store to remove the After School App from its offerings.

The approach caught fire. Now the students were able to use social media in a positive manner, with the same speed and reach of the tool that had affected them negatively just a few days before. The Cyber You club manned laptops at the cafeteria, offering students the chance to add their voice. The petition was spread through Twitter and Facebook. Vermont’s governor, Peter Shumlin, and Secretary of Education, Rebecca Holcombe, signed on. Then the Associated Press ran a story on the events, one that ran all over the U.S, and was even picked up in Australia. That brought needed exposure to the petition. Within just a couple of days, word came from Apple that they were dropping the After School App from their App Store.

It is doubtful that this app or others like it will go away completely. And given human nature, the mean words that people say to one another will emerge from time to time, even from the best of us. But students in Vermont learned that they could influence how corporations respond to the customers they serve. Much more important, these students realized that even though they were part of the original problem, when challenged to take a stand in support of their peers, they rose to the occasion, teaching the adult community how to lead.

AASA joined with six other national rural education organizations to applaud today's FCC vote to raise the E-Rate program funding cap:

AASA, The School Superintendents Association, the Association of Educational Service Agencies, the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, the National Rural Education Association, the National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition, Organizations Concerned with Rural Education, and the Rural School and Community Trust issued the following statement in response to today’s historic E-Rate vote:

“We commend the FCC for their unwavering focus on addressing the rural connectivity gap that persists for our nation’s schools and libraries as they worked through the hard work of modernizing E-Rate over the past two years. We have long supported the E-Rate program and are pleased to see the collaborative effort culminate in today’s historic vote. Raising the E-Rate funding cap by $1.5 billion and revising the E-Rate program’s definition of rural go hand-in-hand with helping connect rural schools, libraries and communities and ensuring they can all benefit from expanded broadband connectivity. We applaud the FCC’s leadership and look forward to helping our rural schools and libraries implement the new E-Rate program to more fully address current and future connectivity needs.”

Just moments ago, the FCC voted for a set of changes to the E-Rate program, many of which AASA not only supported, but led the charge for. Chief among those changes were a raising of the E-Rate cap (providing a permanent bump of $1.5 billion to the program). AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech released the following statement in response to today’s historic E-Rate vote:

“AASA is a long-time supporter of the E-Rate program, and we are proud to have collaborated with the FCC in their bold efforts to not only modernize the program, but to bolster the program’s continued and future success by raising the program’s funding cap by $1.5 billion. Chairman Wheeler, Commissioner Rosenworcel, and their colleagues proved tireless advocates, committed to addressing the connectivity needs of our nation’s students, educators and community members. In the same week where Congress is advancing their federal funding bill, it is the FCC that emerges as the education champion, ensuring that all schools and libraries are able to benefit from robust wireless broadband connectivity. We applaud the diligent effort to modernize the E-Rate program, with today’s funding vote complementing the programmatic changes of this summer. Collectively, it is the first major comprehensive modernization of the E-Rate program and a bold step toward supporting our nation’s schools and libraries as they navigate current and future connectivity needs and uses.”

You will recall that federal fiscal year 2015 (FY15) started October 1. This represents federal dollars that will be in your schools for the 2015-16 school year. Surprising no one, Congress was once again unable to complete its appropriations work on time and opted to use a continuing resolution (CR). CRs are used to extend current government spending (level funding), avoiding a government shutdown while Congress works to do something it should have already completed.

The current CR was passed before Congress adjourned and returned home for August recess and the final push of the 2014 campaign. Congress may not take budget timelines/completion serious, but they do take recess very serious. Don’t encroach on recess! I digress…

The current CR expires TOMORROW, December 11. Loving the ever-addicting threat of government shutdown and pushing negotiations to the last minute, Congress released late on the night of December 9 the long-awaited FY15 Cromnibus (a witty, if over-trendy, mash-up of CR and omnibus). Process wise, the House Rules Committee will meet today. We will likely get a one or two day CR to buy the time Congress needs to be compliant with transparency laws. This CRomnibus should be adopted by the end of the week (refer back to earlier comment on Congress and recess).

Here’s what you need to know re: education funding and FY15. Generally speaking, if it is not listed below, it is level funded (and most programs in FY14 were not fully restored to pre-sequester levels, so many programs are level funded below pre-sequestration levels):

• US Education Department discretionary funding, overall, is down by $166 million. Excluding Pell grants, the USED has a net increase of $137 million. 
• INCREASES
• Early Education: Head Start is level funded and Child Care Development Block Grants received an increase of $75 million
• Title I: $25m increase
• IDEA: $25m increase
• Charter School Grants: $5m increase
• 21^st Century Community Learning Centers: $2m increase
• English Language Acquisition Grants: $14m increase
• Striving Readers: $2m increase
• Mathematics and Science Partnership: $3m increase
• Funds for the Improvement of Education: $255.6m increase, $250m of which is for the Preschool Development Grants
• FIE also includes $25m for Arts, $10m for Full Service Community Schools, $25m for Innovative Approaches to Literacy, $10m for Javits Gifted/Talented
• IDEA Grants for Infants/Families: $.058m increase
• DECREASES
• Race to the Top: Eliminated
• Investing in Innovation: $21m decrease
• Safe and Drug Free Schools National Program: $20m decrease
• High School Graduation Initiative: $46.2m decrease
• Transition to Teaching: $.062m decrease
• School Leadership: $9.3m decrease
• Teacher Incentive Fund: $58.7m decrease
• Carol White Physical Education Program: $27.5m decrease
• NAEP: $3m decrease

Other Language to Note:

• Secure/Rural Schools (Forest Counties): NOT funded in the CRomnibus.
• School Nutrition Waivers: States can grant an exemption from the whole grain requirements to LEAs that demonstrate a hardship, including financial hardship, in procuring whole grain products. Additionally, sodium standards cannot be reduced below Target 1 until the latest scientific research establishes the reduction is beneficial for children. Also, States can vary the frequency of monitoring and compliance reviews of each school food authority based on past school performance, with no cycle extending more than five years. 
• ESEA Title II Teacher Quality State Grants: Allows up to 2.3% to be used for competitive awards for teacher/principal recruitment, training and PD activities.
• Unaccompanied Minors: Dedicates the $14 million increase in ELL grants to LEAs with a significant increase in unaccompanied minor children. State-to-local grants, available to states with at least one county with 50 or more unaccompanied children released to sponsors since January 1, 2014. 
• Statewide Data Systems: Allows for up to $6 million of funds in the Educational Technical Assistance Act to support activities to improve data coordination, quality, and use at the local/state/national level. 
• Comprehensive School Safety Initiative: $75 million for this Justice Department program
• School Improvement Grants: Includes languages that any final requirements for the SIG program adhere to bill language that allows LEAs to implement an alternative state-determined school improvement strategy

Related Resources:

• Omnibus Landing Page and bill text.
• Labor-HHS-Education (Education starts on page 92)
• House Appropriations LHHS-Education Summary

AASA is pleased to partner with Blackboard to offer a webinar TODAY, December 10:  

Change is All Around: E-Rate, School Communications and You – How Blackboard Can Help

E-Rate is changing. The recent E-Rate modernization order from the FCC redefines E-Rate funding priorities in a manner that will impact the out-of-pocket costs for web hosting at your district or school. Blackboard understands the value that district and school websites provide to parents, students and your entire K-12 community, and we want to help. Join us for this webinar, where you'll learn:

• Specifics about E-Rate funding changes
• New trends emerging in school-to-home communication
• Ideas for re-evaluating your existing communication strategy to incorporate new trends

We will also provide an introduction and overview of "Bb-Rate" - our commitment to helping schools and districts navigate E-Rate changes to find the best solution for engaging learning communities.

Date: 12/10/2014 3:30:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))

Registration Link/Landing Page: http://bbbb.blackboard.com/bbratewebinar

This update covers FY15 appropriations, E-Rate, QZABs, Secure/Rural Schools, OMB Regulation, and State Medicaid. It is seemingly all over the board, but do take a moment to scan it all. Happy holidays!

As AASA prepares for a few days away from the office to celebrate the holidays, here’s a quick round up of what happened as Congress wrapped up their 113^th session and returned hope, not to return until the new year and the new Congress.

Funding: Congress completed its work for FY15 in mid-December, more than two months after the fiscal year had started. Here’s what you need to know: Generally speaking, if it is not listed below, it is level funded (and most programs in FY14 were not fully restored to pre-sequester levels, so many programs are level funded below pre-sequestration levels):

• US Education Department discretionary funding, overall, is down by $166 million. Excluding Pell grants, the USED has a net increase of $137 million.
• INCREASES
• Early Education: Head Start is level funded and Child Care Development Block Grants received an increase of $75 million
• Title I: $25m increase
• IDEA: $25m increase
• Charter School Grants: $5m increase
• 21^st Century Community Learning Centers: $2m increase
• English Language Acquisition Grants: $14m increase
• Striving Readers: $2m increase
• Mathematics and Science Partnership: $3m increase
• Funds for the Improvement of Education: $255.6m increase, $250m of which is for the Preschool Development Grants
• FIE also includes $25m for Arts, $10m for Full Service Community Schools, $25m for Innovative Approaches to Literacy, $10m for Javits Gifted/Talented
• IDEA Grants for Infants/Families: $.058m increase
• DECREASES
• Race to the Top: Eliminated
• Investing in Innovation: $21m decrease
• Safe and Drug Free Schools National Program: $20m decrease
• High School Graduation Initiative: $46.2m decrease
• Transition to Teaching: $.062m decrease
• School Leadership: $9.3m decrease
• Teacher Incentive Fund: $58.7m decrease
• Carol White Physical Education Program: $27.5m decrease
• NAEP: $3m decrease

Other Language to Note:

• Secure/Rural Schools (Forest Counties): NOT funded in the CRomnibus.
• School Nutrition Waivers: States can grant an exemption from the whole grain requirements to LEAs that demonstrate a hardship, including financial hardship, in procuring whole grain products. Additionally, sodium standards cannot be reduced below Target 1 until the latest scientific research establishes the reduction is beneficial for children. Also, States can vary the frequency of monitoring and compliance reviews of each school food authority based on past school performance, with no cycle extending more than five years.
• ESEA Title II Teacher Quality State Grants: Allows up to 2.3% to be used for competitive awards for teacher/principal recruitment, training and PD activities.
• Unaccompanied Minors: Dedicates the $14 million increase in ELL grants to LEAs with a significant increase in unaccompanied minor children. State-to-local grants, available to states with at least one county with 50 or more unaccompanied children released to sponsors since January 1, 2014.
• Statewide Data Systems: Allows for up to $6 million of funds in the Educational Technical Assistance Act to support activities to improve data coordination, quality, and use at the local/state/national level.
• Comprehensive School Safety Initiative: $75 million for this Justice Department program
• School Improvement Grants: Includes languages that any final requirements for the SIG program adhere to bill language that allows LEAs to implement an alternative state-determined school improvement strategy

Related Resources:

• Omnibus Landing Page and bill text.
• Labor-HHS-Education (Education starts on page 92)
• House Appropriations LHHS-Education Summary

E-Rate: On December 11, the FCC took unprecedented action to bolster E-Rate funding. By a partisan vote of 3-2, the FCC voted to raise the E-Rate funding cap by $1.5 billion. The funding cap decision was but one of a handful of changes/tweaks included in the broader order. The other big item that AASA was involved in was the definition of rural within E-Rate (Refresher here, from the blog). We are pleased to report that in addition to the long-advocated cap raise, the FCC vote included the AASA- recommended rural definition modification. You can read the full order or a related summary.

Each year, we need to ensure that the E-Rate program has an exemption from the Anti-Deficincy Act. The ADA requires that payments for programs cannot be made until there is actual money in the coffers. While this is not always a problem for E-Rate, there are instances where the user fees collected by the telecommunications companies are not available for distribution at the exact time the funds are due. Absent, the ADA exemption, the payment would not go out and internet connectivity would be disrupted for schools and libraries. We are always working for a permanent exemption from ADA, but have so far had to settle for one- or two-year exemptions. The current ADA exemption was set to expire at the end of 2015. As part of the FY15 CRomnibus, the exemption was extended through 2016.

School Construction (Qualified Zone Academy Bonds, or QZABs): QZABs moved as part of the tax extenders package at the very end of the Congressional session. Congress approved a one-year extension of QZABs, which provide critical support for renovating and repairing schools and classrooms. The tax extenders package provided a one-year $400 million extension.

Secure Rural Schools (Forest Counties): The CRomnibus did NOT include funding for SRS. While there was $70 million for Payment in Lieu of Taxes, there was zero funding for SRS. The two are related, but SRS is the program that ensures funding specific/direct to schools. Here’s an interesting/relevant link that helps describe the differences and overlap between PILT and SRS. Absent funding in the final FY15 funding bill, there is already a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter circulating on the House side to support reauthorization of and funding for SRS. We will be focusing on reauth in 2015, as well as efforts aimed at funding SRS (including retroactively, to the extent possible).

State Medicaid: Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued guidance that removes a key barrier to funding school health services: the free care rule. In a State Medicaid Director’s Letter issued by CMS Director Cindy Mann, CMS clarified that schools are eligible to receive reimbursement for health services delivered to Medicaid-eligible students. Advocates around the country had been working to seek clarity from CMS on the “free care” rule, which had been inappropriately applied to schools, preventing school districts from receiving reimbursement for health services provided to Medicaid-eligible students. This announcement changes that.

OMB Procurement Regulations: In late 2013, the Federal Government issued a set of regulations from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) designed to update policies for federal agency procurement and grant administration. The push for this revision stems from a 2012 Executive Order aimed at streamlining processes, improving cost effectiveness and reducing waste/fraud/abuse. The regulations are government-wide and each agency is responsible for providing additional clarification as necessary. Much of what is in the regulation is not new, but instead represents a streamlining/merger of multiple OMB guidance circulars. Please read the attached memo.

These rules take effect December 26, 2014 and will impact administrative, purchasing and audit policies for federal agencies and programs. It applies to all federal grantees, including school districts, states, institutions of higher education and educational service agencies—as well as their vendors. The rule applies to all purchases made by federal agencies and by any recipient of federal funds through a grant award, including state and local education agencies. The regulations apply more pressure to ensuring fair/open competition as well as more transparency in pricing and purchasing.

The Department of Education released its interim final rule this week, which kicked off a 60 day comment period. The reality is that there is not a lot of wiggle room for them to make substantive changes from what is outlined in the larger OMB document. Related FAQs, guidance and training will be available in the coming months.

Most important for your purposes and how this relates to procurement: While the new regulations take effect December 26, 2014, there will be a one-year grace period for the new procurement rules, The expectation is that most states already have a more rigorous procurement process in place. The change most likely to impact LEAs, ESAs and their vendors is the requirement for competition for contract awards exceeding $150,000 (no more sole source awards) as well as a requirement to make decisions based on both price and profit on contracts between $3,000 and $150,000 when there is no competition.

We are monitoring activity related to funding for the PILT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) and Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act (SRS) program in the FY 15 appropriations process.

Earlier this week, both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees announced a compromise agreement on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY15. It includes $70 million in appropriations for the PILT program, resulting from savings stemming from the NDAA’s federal lands package. The $70 million, according to committee leadership, is a down-payment and that PILT will be further addressed in future language. The FY15 NDAA includes $0 for SRS.

What can you do? The NDAA vote is TODAY (Dec 4). We support full funding for PILT in FY15 and retroactively funding SRS for FY14. Please contact your Senators and Members of Congress and urge them to support FULL FUNDING for PILT AND SRS, and to share their support with their colleagues in House and Senate leadership.

Both the House and Senate are circulating ‘Dear Colleague’ letters that support funding for PILT and SRS. The roster of signatories is below (last names only). Please reach out to your full Congressional Delegation to thank those that have already supported the letter and to urge the others to sign on.

The current continuing resolution expires next weekm on December 11. We remain hopeful that Congress will be able to complete an omnibus appropriations bill that includes the LHHS/Education bill instead of relying on a year-long continuing resolution.

When it comes to tax extenders, you'll recall that the Senate Finance Committee passed the EXPIRE Act (S 2260), which extended 55 expired tax provisions for two years. This included the Qualified Zone Academy Bond (QZAB) program, with the modification to reduce the local business contribution/match from 10% to 5%. 

On the House side, the Ways/Means Committee is introducing the Tax Increase Prevention Act (HR 5771), which would retroactively extend the tax provisions that expired in 2013 for one year (through 2014). That committee is meeting today and the bill could face House consideration tomorrow. Depending on how that unfolds, the Senate Finance Committee/Senate will have the option to pass the House extenders bill (with the one-year extension) or amending it withe the EXPIRE act (two-year extension).

AASA works closely with our friends at Rebuild America's schools and we urge Congress to complete/pass an extenders package.

The ESEA reauthorization process continues to pick up speed. The House will be voting on an ESEA bill (the same bill that passed in 2013) the last week in February and the Senate Education Committee is expected to vote on an ESEA bill at the same time. While Senate leaders recently announced they will try and craft a bi-partisan ESEA bill, as it stands today, the bills under consideration in both chambers contain many critical policy changes that AASA members strongly support, but they also contain an unfortunate provision known as Title I portability.

Title I portability would afford states an option to have Title I dollars “follow the child” to a public school of their choice. This policy was originally intended to divert Title I dollars to private schools, but this policy push was unsuccessful, so proponents settled for making Title I dollars portable in public schools. Title I portability in public schools is problematic on a number of fronts:
1) Portability undermines Title I’s goal of addressing achievement gaps in poor schools
2) Portability would deny district leaders the ability to effectively direct Title I funds to the students and schools who need dollars the most
3) Portability places a significant administrative burden on districts to allocate resources on a per-child basis rather than on a program basis
4) Districts with a poverty rate of more than 30 percent would lose money under portability, while districts with a poverty rate of under 15 percent would see dramatic increases in funding.
5) Portability would eliminate the ability of districts to focus resources on a particular school or grade level since the dollars must “follow the child.”

To assist you with your advocacy, please review this one-pager that AASA developed for Hill staff about Title I portability. We also have a more comprehensive white paper that details the various flaws with portability. You can also download a one-page letter you can modify to send to your Congressional leaders outlining your concerns with the inclusion of Title I portability in ESEA.

We strongly encourage you to take the time to write your members of Congress today asking them to not support Title I Portability in a reauthorized ESEA. If you are unsure of how to contact your members of Congress, please use https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members

 The Alliance for Excellent Education and the U.S. Department of Education are hosting a series of Future Ready Regional Summits to improve teaching and student learning outcomes through the effective use of technology.

The summits will provide district leaders with the resources and expert support needed to build digital learning plans that align with instructional best practices, are implemented by highly trained teachers, and lead to personalized learning experiences for all students, particularly those from traditionally underserved communities.

 “School districts across the country are helping teachers harness the power of technology to create personal learning environments for all students,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “We want to make sure every child—whether he or she is in the inner-city, in a rural community, or on a Native American reservation—has access to knowledge and the chance to learn 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

These summits are free to attend and open to all superintendents who take the Future Ready Pledge, a promise to develop the human and technological capacity needed to personalize learning using digital tools. Over 1,300 superintendents have already taken the pledge. The summits are designed to build a very strong regional network to share information and expertise, and make progress toward district-driven Future Ready goals for ALL students.  

The schedule is as follows:

• February 11-12 Raleigh, North Carolina
• February 17-18 Vancouver, Washington
• March 2-3 Baltimore, Maryland
• March 26-27 Atlanta, Georgia
• April 13-14 Phoenix, Arizona
• April 21-22 West Warwick, Rhode Island
• April 28-29 St. Louis, Missouri
• May 4-5 Redwood City, California
• June 11-12 Denver, Colorado
• June 15-16 Wadsworth, Illinois
• June 22-23 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• June 2015 (Date TBD) Dallas, Texas

For more information, visit http://www.futurereadyschools.org/ or contact Sara Hall (shall@all4ed.org) at the Alliance for Excellent Education. 

AASA joined with six other national rural education organizations to applaud today's FCC vote to raise the E-Rate program funding cap:

AASA, The School Superintendents Association, the Association of Educational Service Agencies, the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, the National Rural Education Association, the National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition, Organizations Concerned with Rural Education, and the Rural School and Community Trust issued the following statement in response to today’s historic E-Rate vote:

“We commend the FCC for their unwavering focus on addressing the rural connectivity gap that persists for our nation’s schools and libraries as they worked through the hard work of modernizing E-Rate over the past two years. We have long supported the E-Rate program and are pleased to see the collaborative effort culminate in today’s historic vote. Raising the E-Rate funding cap by $1.5 billion and revising the E-Rate program’s definition of rural go hand-in-hand with helping connect rural schools, libraries and communities and ensuring they can all benefit from expanded broadband connectivity. We applaud the FCC’s leadership and look forward to helping our rural schools and libraries implement the new E-Rate program to more fully address current and future connectivity needs.”

Just moments ago, the FCC voted for a set of changes to the E-Rate program, many of which AASA not only supported, but led the charge for. Chief among those changes were a raising of the E-Rate cap (providing a permanent bump of $1.5 billion to the program). AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech released the following statement in response to today’s historic E-Rate vote:

“AASA is a long-time supporter of the E-Rate program, and we are proud to have collaborated with the FCC in their bold efforts to not only modernize the program, but to bolster the program’s continued and future success by raising the program’s funding cap by $1.5 billion. Chairman Wheeler, Commissioner Rosenworcel, and their colleagues proved tireless advocates, committed to addressing the connectivity needs of our nation’s students, educators and community members. In the same week where Congress is advancing their federal funding bill, it is the FCC that emerges as the education champion, ensuring that all schools and libraries are able to benefit from robust wireless broadband connectivity. We applaud the diligent effort to modernize the E-Rate program, with today’s funding vote complementing the programmatic changes of this summer. Collectively, it is the first major comprehensive modernization of the E-Rate program and a bold step toward supporting our nation’s schools and libraries as they navigate current and future connectivity needs and uses.”

You will recall that federal fiscal year 2015 (FY15) started October 1. This represents federal dollars that will be in your schools for the 2015-16 school year. Surprising no one, Congress was once again unable to complete its appropriations work on time and opted to use a continuing resolution (CR). CRs are used to extend current government spending (level funding), avoiding a government shutdown while Congress works to do something it should have already completed.

The current CR was passed before Congress adjourned and returned home for August recess and the final push of the 2014 campaign. Congress may not take budget timelines/completion serious, but they do take recess very serious. Don’t encroach on recess! I digress…

The current CR expires TOMORROW, December 11. Loving the ever-addicting threat of government shutdown and pushing negotiations to the last minute, Congress released late on the night of December 9 the long-awaited FY15 Cromnibus (a witty, if over-trendy, mash-up of CR and omnibus). Process wise, the House Rules Committee will meet today. We will likely get a one or two day CR to buy the time Congress needs to be compliant with transparency laws. This CRomnibus should be adopted by the end of the week (refer back to earlier comment on Congress and recess).

Here’s what you need to know re: education funding and FY15. Generally speaking, if it is not listed below, it is level funded (and most programs in FY14 were not fully restored to pre-sequester levels, so many programs are level funded below pre-sequestration levels):

• US Education Department discretionary funding, overall, is down by $166 million. Excluding Pell grants, the USED has a net increase of $137 million. 
• INCREASES
• Early Education: Head Start is level funded and Child Care Development Block Grants received an increase of $75 million
• Title I: $25m increase
• IDEA: $25m increase
• Charter School Grants: $5m increase
• 21^st Century Community Learning Centers: $2m increase
• English Language Acquisition Grants: $14m increase
• Striving Readers: $2m increase
• Mathematics and Science Partnership: $3m increase
• Funds for the Improvement of Education: $255.6m increase, $250m of which is for the Preschool Development Grants
• FIE also includes $25m for Arts, $10m for Full Service Community Schools, $25m for Innovative Approaches to Literacy, $10m for Javits Gifted/Talented
• IDEA Grants for Infants/Families: $.058m increase
• DECREASES
• Race to the Top: Eliminated
• Investing in Innovation: $21m decrease
• Safe and Drug Free Schools National Program: $20m decrease
• High School Graduation Initiative: $46.2m decrease
• Transition to Teaching: $.062m decrease
• School Leadership: $9.3m decrease
• Teacher Incentive Fund: $58.7m decrease
• Carol White Physical Education Program: $27.5m decrease
• NAEP: $3m decrease

Other Language to Note:

• Secure/Rural Schools (Forest Counties): NOT funded in the CRomnibus.
• School Nutrition Waivers: States can grant an exemption from the whole grain requirements to LEAs that demonstrate a hardship, including financial hardship, in procuring whole grain products. Additionally, sodium standards cannot be reduced below Target 1 until the latest scientific research establishes the reduction is beneficial for children. Also, States can vary the frequency of monitoring and compliance reviews of each school food authority based on past school performance, with no cycle extending more than five years. 
• ESEA Title II Teacher Quality State Grants: Allows up to 2.3% to be used for competitive awards for teacher/principal recruitment, training and PD activities.
• Unaccompanied Minors: Dedicates the $14 million increase in ELL grants to LEAs with a significant increase in unaccompanied minor children. State-to-local grants, available to states with at least one county with 50 or more unaccompanied children released to sponsors since January 1, 2014. 
• Statewide Data Systems: Allows for up to $6 million of funds in the Educational Technical Assistance Act to support activities to improve data coordination, quality, and use at the local/state/national level. 
• Comprehensive School Safety Initiative: $75 million for this Justice Department program
• School Improvement Grants: Includes languages that any final requirements for the SIG program adhere to bill language that allows LEAs to implement an alternative state-determined school improvement strategy

Related Resources:

• Omnibus Landing Page and bill text.
• Labor-HHS-Education (Education starts on page 92)
• House Appropriations LHHS-Education Summary

AASA is pleased to partner with Blackboard to offer a webinar TODAY, December 10:  

Change is All Around: E-Rate, School Communications and You – How Blackboard Can Help

E-Rate is changing. The recent E-Rate modernization order from the FCC redefines E-Rate funding priorities in a manner that will impact the out-of-pocket costs for web hosting at your district or school. Blackboard understands the value that district and school websites provide to parents, students and your entire K-12 community, and we want to help. Join us for this webinar, where you'll learn:

• Specifics about E-Rate funding changes
• New trends emerging in school-to-home communication
• Ideas for re-evaluating your existing communication strategy to incorporate new trends

We will also provide an introduction and overview of "Bb-Rate" - our commitment to helping schools and districts navigate E-Rate changes to find the best solution for engaging learning communities.

Date: 12/10/2014 3:30:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))

Registration Link/Landing Page: http://bbbb.blackboard.com/bbratewebinar

We are monitoring activity related to funding for the PILT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) and Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act (SRS) program in the FY 15 appropriations process.

Earlier this week, both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees announced a compromise agreement on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY15. It includes $70 million in appropriations for the PILT program, resulting from savings stemming from the NDAA’s federal lands package. The $70 million, according to committee leadership, is a down-payment and that PILT will be further addressed in future language. The FY15 NDAA includes $0 for SRS.

What can you do? The NDAA vote is TODAY (Dec 4). We support full funding for PILT in FY15 and retroactively funding SRS for FY14. Please contact your Senators and Members of Congress and urge them to support FULL FUNDING for PILT AND SRS, and to share their support with their colleagues in House and Senate leadership.

Both the House and Senate are circulating ‘Dear Colleague’ letters that support funding for PILT and SRS. The roster of signatories is below (last names only). Please reach out to your full Congressional Delegation to thank those that have already supported the letter and to urge the others to sign on.

The current continuing resolution expires next weekm on December 11. We remain hopeful that Congress will be able to complete an omnibus appropriations bill that includes the LHHS/Education bill instead of relying on a year-long continuing resolution.

When it comes to tax extenders, you'll recall that the Senate Finance Committee passed the EXPIRE Act (S 2260), which extended 55 expired tax provisions for two years. This included the Qualified Zone Academy Bond (QZAB) program, with the modification to reduce the local business contribution/match from 10% to 5%. 

On the House side, the Ways/Means Committee is introducing the Tax Increase Prevention Act (HR 5771), which would retroactively extend the tax provisions that expired in 2013 for one year (through 2014). That committee is meeting today and the bill could face House consideration tomorrow. Depending on how that unfolds, the Senate Finance Committee/Senate will have the option to pass the House extenders bill (with the one-year extension) or amending it withe the EXPIRE act (two-year extension).

AASA works closely with our friends at Rebuild America's schools and we urge Congress to complete/pass an extenders package.

Last week, FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler announced his proposal to raise the E-Rate funding cap by $1.5 billion. AASA strongly supports this proposal, issuing a press release and signing two coalition letters, one with a broad group of E-Rate stakeholders and one representing rural communities and schools.

I have prepared a template letter you can use to facilitate this call to action.

There are two steps you can take to help ensure the proposal becomes reality:

1. Inundate the FCC with voices from the field. We are urging all AASA members to weigh in in support of the proposed funding cap increase. All comments are due by December 5. I have drafted a template response you can download and personalize. Add you district logo/header to the top, modify the date, insert proper name/title/address and use the template as a starting place for telling your story.
2. Make sure your Congressional delegation knows you support the proposed increase. While this is a decision outside of Congressional authority, it is a decision that Congressmembers will weigh in on. Our goal is to ensure that Congress understands what E-Rate means to the nation's schools and the critical nature these additional dollars play in ensuring the E-Rate program is successful AND sustainable. You can either forward the comments you send to the FCC to your Senators and Representative (feel free to ask for the proper point of contact!) or you can further personalize your FCC letter and send that to your delegation.

How to File Comments with the FCC

COMMENTS ARE DUE Dec 5

• Draft your response comments. You can create your own comments or work from AASA’s template letter.
• Go to www.fcc.gov/ecfs
• Choose “Submit A Filing” and you will be taken to an online submittal form
• For the Proceeding Number, use all of the following proceeding numbers: 13-184
• Under the 'details' section, check the box marked 'Exparte Presentation'
• Complete the rest of the information on the form
• Upload your comments at the bottom of the form.
• If you are pressed for time or need help submitting the comments, I can submit them on your behalf. Please email me your final comments (nellerson@aasa.org) no later than Dec 1, with the subject line Please file E-Rate comments.

Share Your Letter with Your Congressional Delegation: Contact a member of the advocacy team with any questions about who to contact when you share your FCC filing with the hill.

--Written by Noelle Ellerson

AASA is pleased to once again partner with Project Tomorrow for their annual Speak Up survey. The Speak Up National Research Project provides participating schools, districts and non-profit organizations with a suite of online surveys and reports to collect authentic feedback from students, educators and parents. In addition, we summarize and share the national findings with education and policy leaders in Washington DC and your state.

Since 2003, educators from over 30,000 schools have used the Speak Up data to create and implement their vision for 21st century learning.

AASA encourages its members to complete the educators survey, and to share the parent, student and community survey links in your communities. Check here to see if your state is participating!

Here are some data bits from a preliminary look at the data collected so far:

• 84% of district administrators agree that it is important for every student to have access to a mobile device to use in class for schoolwork
• 47% of teachers note that teacher evaluation is a good marker of quality in digital content for them
• 57% of parents say they are concerned that their child is not learning the right skills at school to be successful in the future
• 65% of Students Gr 6-8 think that blended learning sounds like a good way for them to learn

AASA joined forces with six other national education organizations, collectively representing rural education and communities, to issue a letter of support for FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler's recent proposal to raise the E-Rate program funding cap.

AASA joined the Association of Educational Service Agencies, the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, the Rural School and Community Trust, Organizations Concerned with Rural Education, the National Rural Education Association and the National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition. 

Excerpts are below, or you can read the full statement.

"We thank Chairman Wheeler for his continued support of the E-Rate program. Following the July 2014 programmatic changes to the E-Rate program, today’s announcement is an excellent complement to the E-Rate modernization effort. The additional funding is a critical component of ensuring the E-Rate program’s sustainability and the ability of our schools and libraries to meet their ever-growing connectivity demands.”

"To date, the FCC’s efforts on E-Rate modernization have focused on closing access and affordability gaps within the program, with careful attention to the unique challenges of connecting rural communities. The permanent infusion of additional funding is a strong step towards closing these gaps. The FCC has estimated that over 40% of rural schools lack access to high speed connections, and the record is clear that bringing these schools up to speed is a costly endeavor, something that will remain unattainable without additional support from the E-Rate program. We sincerely thank Chairman Wheeler and the FCC for their support.”

AASA today collaborated with a handful of national organizations to issue a statement of support for FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler's proposal to increase the E-Rate funding cap.

Read the statement here.

Signing organizations include: 

AASA Executive Director Daniel Domenech penned this blog post as part of his regular series The Advocate.

The mid-term elections are over and anticipated changes in Congress have taken place. The Republicans now control both houses. What are the implications for education?

Last July, at AASA’s Legislative Advocacy Conference in Washington D.C., U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander spoke to our group. Alexander will be the next chair of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. During his presentation, he referred to the U.S. Department of Education as the National School Board. This was a not very subtle reference to the increased intrusion into local school affairs that we have witnessed during the current administration.

During the current Congress, which expires at the end of the year, both the House and Senate made serious progress toward ESEA reauthorization. The House moved its bill (which AASA endorsed) through both the Education & Workforce Committee and the full House floor. The Senate moved its version through committee, but momentum stalled and the bill has yet to go to the floor. The bills are expected to expire at the end of this Congress without any additional action.

It’s expected that during the remainder of the current administration’s term, we will see efforts by Congress to curtail the dominance that the Department of Education has exerted over local affairs. Sen. Alexander has already indicated that reauthorizing ESEA will be a priority. We anticipate the House to move a bill much like the one they moved this Congress, and for the Senate to consider a bill similar to one Alexander floated in the chamber a few years ago.

We can anticipate that both the House and Senate will continue to rail against the administration’s continued reliance on waivers as a way to deliver limited relief from NCLB. Both chambers will complement this effort with a proposal to reauthorize ESEA and tighten language around how the Secretary can (and cannot!) use waivers and will be devoid of reference to Race to the Top and other competitive programs that the Department has instituted that we have opposed. We could also expect the bill would return the responsibility for accountability and assessment back to the states—positions we have supported.

Our problem will undoubtedly be with elements of the bill that will be favorable to the growth of charters, vouchers (including portability) and choice. We will be watching closely for any effort to provide Title I portability that would enable children leaving public schools to take their Title I allocation. Whatever happens to Title I as it relates to vouchers and portability is likely to be what will happen to funding in other major K-12 education programs, including IDEA and Perkins.

The legislative process has always been about compromise, something that has been in short supply in recent legislative sessions. As we develop our strategies for the upcoming legislative session, it will be important for us to know our priorities as defined by you, our members.

Do we want pooled Federal dollars giving us greater discretion in how to spend them but with the risk of reducing the pot, as will undoubtedly be the case as the Republicans cut the budget?

Can we hold our noses and go along with charters, vouchers and choice in exchange for lessening Federal intrusion in local affairs? Are we ready to support changes to NCLB accountability framework and current mandates for teacher and principal evaluation?

Let us know what you think. Email me at ddomenech@aasa.org with your ideas. Thank you. I look forward to hearing from you.

AASA President David Pennington (Ponco City, OK) penned this blog post, which originally appeared in The Flashlight, the Data Quality Campaign blog.

As superintendent of Ponca City Schools in Oklahoma, enrolling 5,300 students at a 68 percent eligibility rate for free and reduced-price lunch, I have firsthand experience in the collection, reporting, and analysis of countless data each school year. More than a decade after NCLB paved a wide road for expanded data collection and transparency, education stakeholders are at a crossroads, faced with answering questions that are both complementary and contradictory: What is collected, why, and how? Who has access to data, when, and for what purposes? How do we ensure data quality and integrity? How do we protect student privacy? And how do we answer all of these questions in a constantly evolving, increasingly digital school and learning environment?

AASA has collaborated with the team at the Data Quality Campaign for over seven years, partnering on white papers and in roundtable discussions, and looking to advance the broader conversation about the role of data in education.

The public reporting of data emerges as a critical point. Done incorrectly or incompletely (e.g., a rushed state report card), data can be misused or misinterpreted. Used properly, that same state (or district) report card becomes an empowering tool that can inform a myriad of other conversations, covering topics from transparency and accountability to student learning and areas to improve in instruction.

In my work at Ponca City, access to high-quality data is critical to decisionmaking. Almost all of the information we use in day-to-day decisions—as well as to inform long-range or mission-focused decisions—is collected and stored locally. Oklahoma’s state education agency is required by the federal government to make certain information about public schools and the students they serve available to the public. This includes information about accountability, student achievement, and teacher quality, data that are not personally identifiable. This is information that becomes public information, and it is of vital importance that the data I (as a superintendent) have access to are high-quality; useful; trustworthy; and easy to find, understand, and communicate. This is a lot to ask of a data set, but it is the right set of questions. It will—and should—affect the data we collect, how we store and access them, and most importantly how we are able to use them to inform decisions that best support student learning.

Leading a school district has helped crystallize the importance of publicly reported data being timely, actionable, and comprehensible; it is one of the most effective ways to give stakeholders (including superintendents like me, along with educators, policymakers, parents, and community members) access to the data, which in turn is the most efficient way to promote transparency and strengthen accountability.

The reality is that the full potential of data remains drastically under-utilized. There is a critical conversation to be had around what we are collecting and why. I can attest to the fact that right now, the bulk of the public reporting going on in Oklahoma—and I’d venture to guess other states—is geared more toward compliance with federal, state, and local law than being customized to most effectively inform district data needs and decisionmaking. This disconnect significantly compromises the ability to fully utilize data and support improvements in teaching and learning.

As we gear up for a new Congress, I welcome the chance to address the importance of appropriate data collection and reporting. I know that I—along with AASA—will be at the table for many conversations, from funding for data systems and the role of accountability to expanded data collection and student privacy. Current K–12 federal policy includes data disaggregation and the ability to shine a light on strengths and weaknesses within a system. This deliberate focus empowers an expanded tool for serious conversations about improving student learning and school performance, and we are optimistic that federal policy—if we properly answer the questions addressed in my opening paragraphs—will remain just as empowering.

For more, see DQC’s full suite of public reporting materials, including the full primer; infographic summary; the federal spotlight; and resources for parents, administrators, and local school board members.

In the midst of Election Day excitement, I have been watching what gubernatorial candidates are saying about education. I especially focused on the 12 races designated by Real Clear Politics to be tossups (Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin). The biggest debates have been over school funding. In the 12 toss-up states, eight Democratic candidates pledge to increase funding, and four Republican candidates have been accused of cutting education funding. The school funding debate has also brought out some creative math; because cutting education funding is not politically popular, governors who have cut per-pupil funding have been using overall funding or not including inflation to counter attacks that they cut funding.

School voucher programs have also been discussed, completely along party lines; five Republican candidates have recently expressed support for voucher programs, and three Democratic candidates have expressed opposition. Charter schools follow a similar trend; three Republican candidates have expressed support for expanding charters, and two Democratic candidates have expressed opposition to charters or their expansion.

Other issues that emerged recently include local control of education, Common Core teacher pension reform, high-stakes testing, funding portability, and increased support for education infrastructure. Candidates also mostly fall along expected party lines on these issues.

We will be watching the results on these races and Congressional races to be ready for what changes are ahead. If something interesting is unfolding in your state or district that you think I would be interested in, please send it my way (lfinnan@aasa.org)!

Earlier today, 22 national organizations representing a broad cross-cut of E-Rate stakeholders filed a joint letter in response to a recent Petition to Reconsider, urging the FCC to modify the definition of rural as used within the E-Rate program.

There are a handful of items we are working on related to the July order (read AASA’s summary), which ushered in a myriad of changes to the program. One of the changes that gives us great pause is the change to the definition of rural. The changes impact which schools and libraries will qualify for the rural discount, and we are deeply concerned that the new definition is negatively impacting schools and libraries by reclassifying them as non-rural (even though their community remains unchanged) and costs them crucial E-Rate resources associated with ‘rural-ness’. SECA (the State E-Rate Coordinators) and NTCA (Rural Broadband Association, representing rural telecommunications companies) have filed a motion to reconsider, a call of action of sorts to get the FCC to reconsider its change and (hopefully) adopt a more reasonable and accurate definition of rural. Their motion to reconsider is attached here. Here's a link to SECA’s petition for reconsideration. Pay particular attention to pages 2-5, as that is the portion of the document related to the rural definition. Today's letter was filed by organizations representing a broad cross section of education, library and E-Rate-related associations interested in successfully urging the FCC to reconsider their definition of rural. 

Read the letter here.

AASA sent a letter to Senate and House appropriators, urging them to complete the FY15 appropriations process with an omnibus/appropriations bills, as opposed to continuing to rely on continuing resolutions (CR). CRs level-fund programs and all but eliminate the opportunity to target funding increases to critical programs, including restoring Title I and IDEA to pre-sequester levels.

Read the letter.  

• FY15 Update: Federal fiscal year 2015 (FY15) started on October 1 and Congress did not complete its appropriations work. They did avoid a shutdown, though, by adopting a continuing resolution that keeps government running. The CR expires on December 11, at which point Congress will have to either
• Enact an omnibus appropriations bill that contains all 12 of the appropriations bills (AASA preference)
• Enact an omnibus that contains some, but not all 12 bills, and extends the CR for the remaining bills
• Extend the CR for the remainder of the year for all 12 bills.
• Extend the CR until early next year.
• IDEA State Allocations, as communicated by the Office of Special Education Programs to State Directors: Congress passed a short-term continuing resolution (CR) that will provide funding for a number of Federal programs through December 11, 2014. The bill includes an across-the-board reduction of 0.0554 percent that, in addition to affecting the amounts available in fiscal year 2015 under the CR, also applies to the advance portion of fiscal year 2014 funds for four major Department of Education programs that was scheduled to become available on October 1, 2014. Consequently, the October 1 allocations for these programs—Title I LEA Grants, Title II State Grants, Career and Technical Education State Grants, and IDEA Grants—will be slightly lower than we had previously estimated.
• USED Funding Tables: Earlier this month, USED released updated budget tables, which highlight each program in the current continuing resolution (CR) at its FY14 level, adjusted to reflect the 0.0554% across-the-baord cut included in the FY15 CR. For those programs with advanced appropriations (Title I, ESEA Title II, IDEA State grants and CTE State grants), the across-the board cut comes out of both the FY 15 advanced funding that was provided in the FY 2014 omnibus (and shows up as a smaller funding level in FY displayed for those four programs), as well as the new FY 15 budget authority.
• FY 2015 Congressional Action  (PDF or Excel)

New results from CoSN’s (Consortium for School Networking’s) 2^nd Annual E-rate and Infrastructure Survey reveal troubling gaps in U.S. school districts broadband and technology infrastructure. The report, released today, identifies affordability and adequate funding as the most significant barriers to delivering sufficient Internet connectivity and transforming the learning environment in schools. This chief hurdle mirrors the major barrier identified in the 2013 survey. Other challenges identified include lack of capacity to ensure the network reliability needed for online assessments and instruction and grossly inadequate networks in the nation’s rural school districts.

Conducted in partnership with AASA, The School Superintendents Association, and MDR, the groups collected data from K-12 school leaders and technology directors nationwide. The report is intended to inform the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in its forthcoming decisions regarding the E-rate program’s long-term funding needs and focus.

“This survey boldly underscores that our nation has a funding and bandwidth crisis,” said Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN. “The FCC’s short- and long-term goals for connectivity will not be reached until there is a substantial increase in funding to meet the unmet needs of school districts across the nation, particularly in rural districts.”

“Today’s CoSN and AASA survey is a clear illustration of not only the historical success of E-rate in transforming the role of connectivity in schools, but also the critical need of ensuring the program remains viable. AASA is a strong supporter of E-rate,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director, AASA. “Our survey indicates the demand for high-speed Internet is growing, a need that E-rate remains uniquely positioned to address. As we move forward with the programmatic changes adopted in July, the need to modernize the program to transform connectivity in our classrooms, including closing connectivity and affordability gaps that persist in our most challenged areas, has never been more important. The results of this survey affirm what we have long advocated: The E-rate program remains deeply underfunded, a resource gap that – absent a permanent funding increase – will work to widen connectivity gaps and undermine E-rate’s proven success.”

According to the survey, more than 80 percent of districts indicated that the E-rate program’s current funding levels are not meeting their needs. This is the second year that districts noted the significant gap between E-rate funding and requirements. Only 9 percent of the districts have adequate bandwidth to fully meet the demand for online assessments and digital content anticipated over the next 18 months.

Other key findings of the survey include:

High Costs & Adequate Funding

• The cost of connectivity is higher in rural districts than in urban / suburban. For example, 10 percent of rural districts pay over $250 per Mbps per month and at times the cost is a staggering $800 per Mbps. By contrast, 37 percent of the rural districts pay $10 or less per Mbps per month while 49 percent of urban / suburban districts pay $10 or less per Mbps. 
• Capital, upfront non-recurring costs are the second biggest barrier to increasing robust Internet connectivity in school districts. 
• Sixty percent of districts reported that funding is the biggest obstacle to meeting the FCC’s short-term goal of 100Mbps / 1,000 students. 
• Nearly two-thirds of the districts reported using consortium buying services for bandwidth / Internet access – up from 44 percent last year. 
• WAN costs in suburban and urban districts are significantly more expensive due to the need for individual connections to each building in a district. 
• More than one-half of districts reported that the FCC’s decision to phase out E-rate support for voice and other services in July 2014 will have significant negative fiscal impact.

Lack of Capacity

• More than one-third of the districts reported having three or more days of down time a year for Internet services. 
• Forty-five percent of school districts indicated they do not have the capacity to deploy a 1:1 initiative.
• One-quarter of districts reported that not a single school in their district could meet the FCC’s short-term goal of 100Mbps / 1,000 students.
• Districts struggle to achieve reliable Internet connectivity, with 60 percent of districts indicating they are using only one Internet provider.

The Last Mile Challenge

• When asked for the number of providers responding to E-rate request for services, 6 percent of districts received no responses and 26 percent received only one response. Eighty percent of large districts (with more than 50,000 students), and 59 percent of urban / suburban districts received three or more bids for E-rate services, compared to only 35 percent of rural districts.
• Rural districts have slower internal data connections, with 80 percent of urban / suburban districts reporting typical connection between data switches and router at 1Gbps or greater compared to 65 percent of rural districts. 
• Wi-Fi in rural districts is much less likely to meet current technical standards. Only one-quarter of rural districts have Wireless Access Points (WAPs) that support the most current standards (802.11n/ac) – a rate that is less than one-half that of large districts, where 59 percent have WAPs that meet the 802.11n/ac standard.

“We are pleased to again partner with CoSN on this important survey, which clearly shows the continued need to improve the technology infrastructure in America’s schools so that the power of digital content, mobile devices, online assessments and personalized learning can be realized. MDR has monitored and reported on technology trends for four decades as part our mission to provide timely, research-driven market intelligence to education stakeholders,” said Kathleen Brantley, Senior Director, EdNET Insight.

The survey responses derived from 47 states (with Delaware, Rhode Island, Utah and the District of Columbia not participating). Over 1,000 district leaders and technology directors contributed to the survey, with 584 full responses. Survey respondents were representative of urban, rural and suburban districts as well as large, medium and small districts.

To read the full results, please visit: cosn.org/e-rate-broadband-survey.

Today's guest post comes from Jeremy Kovash, Executive Director,Lakes Country Service Cooperative, Fergus Falls, MN.

Although I hold a health insurance agents license, attend continued insurance seminars and meetings, participate with some of the state and nations' foremost experts on the ACA regularly and read on the subject often, I am not an insurance expert. I am not an attorney, but I do love to learn. I would like to thank our benefits attorney Mark Kinney for his continued work with us and assistance with this article. Identified here are thoughts regarding ACA's implications on service agencies and their members.

When the federal government released the final "employer shared responsibility" rules on February 10, 2014, they provided additional flexibility for ACA implementation, but only a little more clarity and much more complexity. The flexibility was primarily in the form of transitional relief delaying some implementation of the ACA until 2016. Some political pundits felt that the delay until 2016, a national presidential election year, might provide the opportunity for additional relief or even repeal of the "Pay or Play" rule, but that is not very likely. While the ACA may be amended, tweaked and certainly tried, the truth is that the ACA is now very engrained into the fabric of health insurance coverage in the country.

Pay or Play Rule: The ACA expands health insurance coverage in part by defining "full-time employees" as those who work an average of 30 or more hours per week. To avoid penalties, employers with at least 50 full-time employees (including full-time employee equivalents) must offer coverage to at least 95% of their full-time employees and their dependents. The coverage itself must provide "minimum value" and be "affordable." These concepts are explained in a 227-page final regulation and preamble (the "Pay or Play Rule"). The Pay or Play Rule includes transition relief which delays or limits application of some of the requirements in 2015.

Penalty Scheme: The Pay or Play Rule imposes a two-tiered penalty scheme on "applicable large employers," as follows:

• Up to $3,000 per year for each full-time employee who enrolls in an exchange and receives premium tax credits (if they are not offered affordable coverage that meets minimum value).
• Up to $2,000 per year x (all full-time employees - 30) if even one full-time employee receives premium tax credits and the employer does not offer coverage to at least 95% of full-time employees.

Penalties are pro-rated on a monthly basis. Of the two penalties above, the $2,000 penalty has the greatest potential for harm. Employers will need to take a very close look at who works an average of thirty hours or more per week, because if they get it wrong by more than 5%, the penalty is applied by taking into account all full-time employees across the workforce, including those with coverage.

Applicable Large Employers: Generally, an "applicable large employer" is an employer that employed an average of at least 50 full-time employees, including full-time equivalent employees ("FTEs"), on business days during the preceding calendar year. For this purpose, the number of full-time employees in any one-month is the number of employees who work an average of 30 hours per week. The number of FTEs in any one-month is determined by adding the total number of hours of service of employees who are not full-time employees and dividing that number by 120.

While this determination may seem simple, complex issues swirl around questions such as how to count hours of service, who is an employee, whether the employer is part of a controlled group, and whether to include seasonal employees. Transition rules allow school districts to use just six months from 2014 (including over the summer break) to determine whether they are applicable large employers in 2015.

Safe Harbors and Shortcuts: The Employer Responsibility Rule contains various so-called "safe harbors" and shortcuts for determining who is a full-time employee, how hours may be counted, and whether coverage is affordable. The "Lookback Measurement Method" is among the more complex of these rules, and may require employers to track 13 (or more) separate calendars for current employees and new hires to determine whether they are eligible for coverage during "stability periods." In many cases, employers may apply different rules for different classifications of employees. A full description of these rules exceeds the scope of this summary, but school districts must develop or hire the expertise to understand and apply them if they want to avoid penalties under the ACA.

Transition Rules

1. Small Employers (1 - 49 Full Time and FTEs): The Pay or Play Rule does not apply in any part to employers who are categorized as Small Employers. Small employers with self-funded plans, however, may be required to file new Form 1095-B in early 2016 for the 2015 plan year (see below).
2. Mid-Size Employers (50 - 99 Full Time and FTEs): If they qualify for transition relief, Mid-Sized Employers will not be subject to penalties for plan years beginning in 2015 if they fail to offer coverage to the requisite percentage of full-time employees that meets minimum value and is affordable. The requirements that an employer must meet in order to qualify for transition relief include, but are not limited to, maintaining a comparable level of health insurance coverage through December 31, 2015. 
3. Large Employers (100+ Full Time and FTEs): Large Employers are subject to most of the Pay or Play Rule provisions for plan years beginning in 2015. Under transition rules, however, such employers need only offer affordable coverage that meets minimum value to 70% of their full-time employees (rather than 95%) for plan years beginning in 2015. Other penalties continue to apply if any full-time employee enrolls in a state or federal health care exchange and receives premium tax credits. Thus, Large Employers will still be subject to a $3,000 penalty for every full-time employee who enrolls in an exchange and receives a premium tax credit if they were not offered coverage that meets minimum value and is affordable.

Requirements for Reporting to the IRS and Employees: The ACA includes requirements for reporting information on minimum essential coverage to the IRS and to employees. These requirements are described in draft IRS Forms 1095-B and C and instructions, as well as regulations under new Code sections 6055 and 6056. Like Form W-2, these returns must be furnished to individuals by January 31, and filed with IRS by February 28^th (March 31 for electronic filing).

Conclusion: Because of the 30 hour rule, many school districts and other employers will have to expand offers of health insurance coverage to employees (and their dependents) that may not have been eligible for benefits in the past. Because of the enormous complexity of the ACA, however, most employers will incur expenses for legal fees, payroll upgrades, and personnel who can devote significant time to learning and implementing the ACA's requirements.

The U.S. Department of Education released a new evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program this week, demonstrating several flaws with the program. The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) plays a central role in the debates over school voucher programs, and previous evaluations have already failed to find any improvement in student achievement. This most recent study even found that the accepted students most likely to use the scholarships were students already enrolled in private schools. In 2011, the OSP was reauthorized under the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act, which expanded the scholarship amount and types of students eligible.

The USED evaluation analyzed which schools participated, who applied for scholarships, and who used the scholarships to enroll in a private school. The report illustrates many problems with the program. Just over half (54 percent) of private schools in DC participate in OSP, and these schools are more likely than nonparticipating schools to be religiously affiliated, have larger class sizes, serve a higher share of white students and be situated in the most affluent parts of the city. The share of participating schools posting tuition rates higher than the OSP allowance has also risen – 64 percent now charge more in tuition than the scholarship covers.

While the SOAR Act increased the amount of funding available, applications rose, but the increase in applications was not consistent with the first years of the OSP, showing limited demand for these vouchers. A priority group for OSP is students enrolled in schools designated as “in need of improvement.” However, under the SOAR Act, these students applied at lower rates than were eligible.

Once accepted, only 72 percent of students used the scholarship to attend a private school. These numbers were even lower for students from schools in need of improvement and were highest for students already attending private school. This is consistent with findings from other studies that demonstrate that school vouchers are used by students already enrolled in private schools, therefore diverting money from the public school system without changing the placement of any students.

These findings reinforce previous findings that private school vouchers are inefficient policy. The results from the USED evaluation show that OSP is not working as advertised: scholarships are going to students already enrolled in private schools, students most in need accept the scholarships at low rates, demand has fallen, and the schools that accept the scholarships are charging more and are the least accessible for participating students. Paired with previous evaluations showing no increase in academic performance, this evaluation further illustrates the failure of the DC OSP and school voucher programs in general.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) recently sought additional comments (per a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, pg. 106)on the funding needs of the E-rate Program for Schools and Libraries.

We encourage state-wide organizations, school districts, schools and others to join in by signing onto a letter (PDF version) demonstrating support for the E-rate program and our nation’s schools and public libraries.

The deadline to sign-on is 12:00 p.m. (noon) on October 15, 2014.

The time is now to demonstrate support for the Commission to act by making a permanent increase to E-rate funding. Since the program was established in 1998 and capped at $2.25 billion, E-rate funding has not been increased (aside from an annual inflationary adjustment starting in 2010). In a time when almost every single classroom and the majority of libraries in the nation have lower speed internet access than the average American home while serving multiple times more users per day, it is time to ensure all students and library patrons can access high speed broadband they need in their schools and public libraries to excel in school and beyond.

More than 75 national organizations (including education associations, companies, and many others) recently submitted the sameletter. The Commission must also hear from state and local entities, too!

To sign on:

• Please complete this form identifying how you’d like your organization to be included on the letter to the Commission. Please also include your name, title and email address.
• Widely circulate this email and sign-on letter with your partners and colleagues and urge them to sign on.

The deadline to sign-on is 12:00 p.m. on October 15, 2014.After the letter is filed with the Commission on October 15, a final letter will be distributed to all signators.

If you have any questions, etc., please do not hesitate to contact Noelle Ellerson (nellerson at aasa.org)

Today, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights released significant new guidance for districts clarifying the legal obligations under Title VI to ensure school districts are distributing resources comparably between schools. AASA is proud to offer a webinar on the new guidance and the major implications it has for how districts currently distribute resources between schools on October 21st at 3 pm ET. The webinar will be led by Maree Sneed of Hogan Lovells. The discussion will be especially focused on what school superintendents and administrators need to know in order to proactively ensure compliance with the new guidance. There are limited spots available for the webinar, so reserve your place here: https://knowledgecenter.webex.com/knowledgecenter/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=299871998

You can read an abbreviated summary of the guidance below.

Today, the Office of Civil Rights released significant new guidance for districts clarifying the legal obligations under Title VI to ensure school districts are distributing resources comparably between schools. While OCR acknowledges that intradistrict and interdistrict funding disparities often mirror differences in racial and socio-economic demographics of schools and differences in property tax revenue for schools, OCR asserts that some districts are still disparately funding schools within the same district where the racial make-up of students varies meaningfully. The guidance describes the legal framework OCR will use to determine whether educational resources are allocated in a discriminatory manner. The two theories are intentional discrimination and disparate impact.

The guidance also describes in great detail the criteria OCR will use to determine whether school districts are discriminating against students based on race, color or national origin in their allocation of educational resources. They are clear to note that they are not simply looking for a dollar-to-dollar match to monitor compliance, but rather the “relative allocation of equal educational opportunities” for students. For example, OCR may compare a school’s resources against district averages or against district schools serving the most and fewest students of a particular race to assess whether the alleged resource disparities are, in fact, correlated with Title VI criteria. They specifically describe how they will use the following criteria to determine equitable resource allocation: courses, academic programs and extracurricular activities; strong teaching, leadership and support; school facilities; and technology and instructional materials. Here are a few examples from the guidance of how they will measure the allocation of educational opportunities for students.

Example 1: OCR may consider the overall quality and adequacy of special education programs at the school level, including the identification, evaluation and placement procedures as well as quality and appropriateness of services and supports provided to students with disabilities.
Example 2: OCR will review and analyze data on teacher and leader effectiveness produced by teacher and leader evaluations and data on the relative stability of the teacher workforce across a district, including teacher turnover, absenteeism, use of substitutes and vacancies and whether a district provides equitable resources to improve teacher quality and retention.
Example 3: OCR will consider the ratio of pupils to paraprofessionals and the qualifications of those paraprofessionals as well as the amount of training, professional development and supervision given to paraprofessionals and the roles they play in the classroom.
Example 4: OCR will evaluate the overall physical condition of a district’s facilities and the availability of sufficient maintenance staff. They will also consider the location and surrounding environment of school building and facilities as well as the availability and quality of transportation services provided to students.
Example 5: OCR generally considers the number, type and age of educational technology devices available in a school and this assessment includes the availability and speed of internet access. They will also consider whether the technology is located within the classroom and how many hours a week students have access to the technology during and after school.

OCR urges districts to proactively identify and address racial disparities in resource allocation and take proactive, concrete steps to address the root causes of these disparities to comply with Title VI. The guidance also contains examples of what remedies districts found in noncompliance will have to take in order to become compliant

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler delivered a speech at the2014 Educational Technology Summit in Washington D.C., and laid out the next steps in E-rate modernization, specifically that “we must tackle the Rural Fiber Gap if we are to achieve our connectivity targets for all schools and libraries.” In his remarks, the Chairman said “we must still address the challenge of improving the broadband infrastructure to the building for many schools and libraries, particularly in rural America.”  The remarks, as prepared for delivery, are available at http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-chairman-tom-wheeler-remarks-second-ed-tech-summit. 

AASA's response continues to build the case for a permanent increase in E-Rate funding. We build on our long-standing position that E-Rate modernization must be two pronged, a combination of programmatic changes and a permanent funding increase. To the extent that the July order made the programmatic changes, our comments here make the case for the FCC to act to ensure that the changes they adopted have adequate sustained funding both now and in the future. Read the full comments.

Today's guest blog comes from Robert Slavin, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Success for All. His blog focuses on recently proposed regulations that will substantively change the SIG program.

The U. S. Department of Education has just released draft regulations that will substantially change School Improvement Grants (SIG). Within the document are two pages that could change the world. Really.

Up to now, the very low achieving schools that qualified for SIG funding had to choose among four options. Two of these, school closure and restart, are rarely used. Turnaround requires firing the principal and at least 50% of the staff. So most SIG schools have opted for Transformation, which still requires firing the principal in most cases and implementing a lengthy list of changes.

The new regs keep these four options, with a few tweaks, and they add three more. One is a “state-determined” model to be devised by state education departments, which requires approval by the U.S. Secretary of Education, and another emphasizes pre-kindergarten programs as part of elementary school reform. These are good ideas, but not revolutionary.

The revolutionary option is an “evidence-based whole-school reform option.” Schools that choose it have to implement whole-school reform models created and disseminated by external organizations. That’s good, but not quite revolutionary in itself.

Here comes the revolutionary part. Be sure you’re sitting down before reading on.

The whole-school reform models SIG schools may choose must have a high level of evidence of effectiveness. At least two studies that meet tough What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) standards must have documented positive effects on major learning outcomes. The Department will review programs in advance and will determine if they meet the standards. Full disclosure: Our Success for All program will most likely qualify. But this is a lot bigger than a good thing for Success for All.

This is the first time in all of education history, going back to Socrates, when evidence of effectiveness has been a requirement for anything in practice. Yes, the equally revolutionary Investing in Innovation (i3) program requires evidence of effectiveness for its large validation and scale-up grants, and the scale-up grants, in particular, have collectively benefitted thousands of schools. However, the focus of i3 is on building capacity among developers, not on direct service. In contrast, the SIG whole-school option moves evidence-based reform into a new arena. For the first time, a major federal program that does provide direct service to schools is offering them an option that requires substantial evidence of effectiveness.

This gives schools that apply for and receive SIG funding a new set of possibilities to take on a proven whole-school strategy without having to fire their principals or others. Assuming whole-school models were proven in schools like theirs, and assuming the organizations that made and evaluated them have a lot of experience working with similar schools, their students are likely to benefit, and that’s all good.

If all goes well, the whole-school option will demonstrate the power of evidence-based reform. Proven models will show well in evaluations of SIG, because their capacity to show positive outcomes is what got them on the list. If this happens, one might expect that other parts of federal, state, and local education would also begin demanding evidence of effectiveness for innovative programs. Seeing this, perhaps government and private funders will ramp up their investments in research and development, to create and validate additional models for a wide variety of purposes. Imagine, dare I say it, that Title I might begin to encourage schools to use proven approaches. Or Title II. Or IDEA. Or technology applications. Or STEM. Or. . . just about any area of education in which outcomes can be measured.

If we start with the SIG whole-school option, the evidence-based reform movement could get completely out of hand. Wouldn’t that be great?

This post is cross-posted from the AASA Connect blog.

Superintendents, AASA members and educators chimed in during the AASA and Hobsons "Data for School Leaders" Tweetchat, held on September 9, to emphasize the value of utilizing data in affecting district-wide change and improving instruction in the classroom. Hobsons, a partner of AASA, provided expertise during the chat through Naviance, the organization's college and career-readiness platform, and answered questions related to implementing effective data systems and monitoring and tracking student progress through data.

View the archived conversation here. Many thanks to our superintendents and participants for making their views and input on this topic heard on social media through the #dataforchange hashtag.

As an additional resource on how districts and superintendents use data to impact change, check out the January 2013 School Administrator issue, "Data's Driving Force." Also, click here for examples of how Hobsons and Naviance use data to help improve student achievement.

Any thoughts? Contact Francesca Duffy, AASA communications and advocacy specialist, at fduffy@aasa.org.

AASA joined with six other education organizations concerned with rural education to repsond to an FCC rule related to Connect America Fund (CAF) and how CAF recipients are expected to collaborate with anchor institutions, like schools and libraries, in rural communities.

Our schools and libraries have increasing demand for broadband connectivity, as schools are incorporating ever more connectivity-based applications and devices into their curriculum and teaching, and libraries serve patrons accessing multiple devices simultaneously. As our friends at SHLB/SECA wrote, “These organizations are large consumers of broadband and need significantly greater capacity than residential or small business customers, but their resources are far less than the typical enterprise.”

To the extent that the Connect America Fund (CAF) continues to expand connectivity, we urge the FCC to require CAF fund recipients to serve anchor institutions. While the current language in the CAF urges CAF recipients to confer with anchor institutions when planning network design of CAF-supported infrastructure, it stops short of requiring any connectivity for these customers. It is our belief that CAF recipients should be required to serve community anchor institutions, including schools and libraries, with high-capacity broadband connections that reflect their service to the community as a whole. Because broadband connectivity in rural schools and libraries lags behind our urban counterparts, requiring CAF recipients to serve schools (and libraries) with high capacity broadband is necessary to accomplish the goals of the President’s ConnectED Initiative.

Read the full letter.

AASA was joined by six other rural education organizations:

• Association of Educational Service Agencies
• National Association of Federally Impacted schools
• National Rural Education Association
• National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition
• Organizations Concerned with Rural Education
• Rural School and Community Trust

Earlier today, AASA was pleased to join 12 other national education organizations to support Senator Harkin's IDEA Full Funding Act, set for introduction today.

Since its inception, IDEA has protected students with disabilities by ensuring access to a free and appropriate public education. The original statute included a Congressional promise to pay 40 percent of the National Average per Pupil Expenditure. While special education funding has received significant increases over the past fifteen years, including the one-time infusion of IDEA dollars in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, funding has leveled off recently and even been cut. Federal funding has never come close to reaching the promised 40%, causing states and local school districts to find ways to pay for needed services. Many times, this means using local budget dollars to cover the federal shortfall, at the direct expense of local district needs and expenditures, and/or increasing local taxes, which is an especially high burden in times of fiscal austerity and uncertainty.  

The number of students with disabilities has increased more than 25 percent over the last 20 years, a growth that federal funding has struggled to support. In fact, for FY14 (the 2014-15 school year), the federal share for IDEA is 15.8%, less than half of the Congressional commitment to students with special needs. Our reality is that we remain committed to Congress meeting its commitment to fund 40% of the additional costs.

Read the full letter.

AASA was joined by

• American Federation of Teachers
• American Speech Language Hearing Association
• Association of Educational Service Agencies
• Council of Great City Schools
• Council for Exceptional Children
• National Association of Elementary School Principals
• National Association of Secondary School Principals
• National Association of State Directors of Special Education
• National Education Association
• National School Boards Association
• National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition
• National Rural Education Association

On Friday, AASA weighed in on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act by responding to a draft bill issued by the Democratic Staff of the Senate HELP Committee reforming the Higher Education Act. Traditionally, AASA has not devoted much time to working on higher education issues, but provisions in this draft could pose a significant administrative and financial burden for local school districts, which prompted us to submit comments and increase our lobbying efforts. Specifically, the draft issued by Senator Harkin contains a new grant for ranking teacher colleges and leadership programs based in part on student test scores. AASA opposes using unreliable measures of student growth, such as VAM, when evaluating teachers and teacher preparation programs. Provisions of the bill would also require local school districts to collect and report new teachers’ evaluation results, which would include parent and administrator satisfaction surveys as well as teacher retention data. You can read AASA’s full comments here.

In addition, AASA submitted comments on behalf of the National Coalition on Personnel Shortages in Special Education and Related Services (NCPSSERS). AASA has the privilege of co-chairing the coalition and we responded to the draft separately to highlight the importance of addressing these shortages. Those comments are available here.

AASA is pleased to partner with our friend Maree Sneed (Hogan Lovells US LLP) to submit a panel proposal for the March 2015 SXSWEdu conference.

The panel, Student Data: When Innovation Meets Privacy Law, is described as "Every day, schools across the country collect data about students and interact with them in digital learning environments. How should they store the data generated? Join us for a conversation about how educators, industry, and experts in the ever-evolving data privacy law space are creating innovative, workable, and secure solutions for student data and digital learning initiatives."

See more at: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/41349#sthash.oML2nyQz.dpuf and http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/41349.

It’s simple to vote – just follow these steps:

1. Sign up (which is free and takes ten seconds).
2. Click on this link for our session (or search for “Student Data: When Innovation Meets Privacy Law” on the SXSW website). 
3. Click the thumbs up icon near the bottom of the page.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
James Minichello
703-875-0723
703-774-6953 (cell)
jminichello@aasa.org

Access this statement in PDF.

Alexandria, Va. – August 21, 2014 – Daniel A. Domenech, the executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association, issued the following statement today in response to Secretary Duncan’s announcement of the opportunity for states to pursue a one-year delay in when test results matter for teacher evaluation.

“AASA has long supported the state and locally created and adopted Common Core standards, and has supported the implementation of high-quality assessments aligned to those standards. Superintendents across the country agree that the new standards present an opportunity to improve student outcomes but only if given enough time and resources.”

“More than a year ago we went on record urging the Department and education stakeholders to ‘Slow down to get it right’, recognizing the importance of moving with deliberate speed to support successful implementation of the standards and the assessments. All educators and education stakeholders who support the new standards initiative need the time necessary to get it right and make it work in schools. In May 2013, we issued a joint statement with NASSP, NAESP and NSBA highlighting the critical nature of time, time for schools and districts to address a litany of implementation issues, including bandwidth, infrastructure, professional development and more. It is a sentiment echoed by the 16 national education organizations in the Learning First Alliance earlier this year, as written in their statement this past June.”

“We are pleased to see the Department of Education and Secretary Duncan acknowledge what needs to be done and provide states with access to additional time in the narrow construct of using student data in teacher evaluation. Superintendents, school board members, principals, and teachers have consistently advocated the importance of adequate time to meaningfully and successfully implement both the standards and the assessments, and today’s announcement is a step in the right direction. We hope today’s announcement is not a case of ‘too little, too late’. We urge the Department to continue to listen to and reflect upon feedback from the field as it relates to Common Core, the waivers, and ESEA reauthorization.”

###

About AASA
AASA, The School Superintendents Association, founded in 1865, is the professional organization for more than 10,000 educational leaders in the United States and throughout the world. AASA’s mission is to support and develop effective school system leaders who are dedicated to the highest quality public education for all children. For more information, visit www.aasa.org.

Earlier today, Secretary Duncan shared a blog post announcing the option for states to pursue a one-year delay in when test results matter for teacher evaluation. You can read his blog post here, along with AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech’s statement. The top line takeaway is that AASA applauds the Department for acknowledging what needs to be done. It is a step in the right direction, we hope it is not a case of ‘too little, too late’, and we urge the Department to continue to listen to and reflect upon feedback from the field as it relates to Common Core, the waivers, and ESEA reauthorization.

RELATED: Read the letter Deb DeLisle sent to all state chiefs with details on the delay.

As a point of summary, states with waivers can pursue a one-year extension, meaning that it will be the 2015-16 school year before schools in those states will have to incorporate student growth measures based on new state assessments into their teacher evaluation systems. States pursuing this delay will still have to calculate their student growth rate on state assessments during the delay and will have to share that data with teachers and principals. In a conversation with the department yesterday, this delay should be pretty cut and dry. If a state applies for the delay and agrees to the two assurances, they will receive the delay. We applaud the streamlined, straightforward approach to this relief (a ‘waiver to the waiver’).

Secretary Duncan wrote “The bottom line is that educators deserve strong support as our schools make vital, and urgently needed, changes.” It is a sentiment we at AASA strongly agree with, both in the context of the Secretary’s announcement today, as well as in the broader conversation of complete ESEA reauthorization. While today’s announcement does reflect the feedback of educators and practitioners (refer to the AASA statement), it is but a sliver of the support schools need. We remain committed to the idea that the best and strongest federal support for our schools is a policy that ensures all federal resources—whether programmatic or funding—are available to all schools, students and states in an equitable manner.

The results of this poll show that we have much work to do in better informing the public about CCSS and other education issues. Unlike last year when the poll told us two-thirds of the respondents never heard of the Common Core State Standards, this year, an overwhelming majority of Americans (80 percent) have heard about CCSS while nearly half indicated they ‘heard a great deal or a fair amount.’ However, the poll found over half (60 percent) oppose the Common Core.

Much of the opposition is likely rooted in media portrayal of the standards and misinformation. According to the poll, 40 percent of respondents believe the standards are ‘not challenging enough.’ This differs drastically from the view of superintendents. According to our own survey (Common Core and other State Standards, June 2014), nearly all (93 percent) of the superintendents participating replied that the new standards are more challenging than previous standards. Three quarters of our members also replied the political debate has gotten in the way of implementing the new standards.

Another poll, released yesterday by Education Next, also found support for CCSS slipping. However, the public remains very supportive of the standards if the name “Common Core” is not attached. This illustrates the politicization of the standards and the power of the media over public opinion.

Overall, the PDK/Gallup poll’s findings back the position of AASA when it comes to Common Core—to slow down to get it right to ensure schools and teachers have the resources they need to successfully implement the standards and aligned assessments to bolster student learning. Superintendents, according to our survey, remain optimistic about CCSS.

The poll also reveals that the public sees the lack of financial support as a huge concern facing our public schools. We know that public school district budgets have yet to reach pre-recession levels, meaning they are operating with limited budgets to educate 50 million students a year, many of whom live in poverty. We need to acknowledge that poverty is a reality in America that continues to be the dominating factor when determining student achievement.

A large majority (two-thirds) of Americans polled continue to oppose school vouchers. This highlights that respondents view vouchers as the ineffective, flawed policies that they are, both lacking accountability to tax payers and discriminating against students with special needs. While the public also remains supportive of charter schools, the poll also revealed widespread misunderstanding of the nature of charter schools.

You have two days left to submit your application to participate in the 2014 ConnectEd Superintendents Summit. Focused on transition to digital learning, this day-long summit builds on a smaller-scale summit held earlier this year. The effort, led by USED, is something AASA supports and has helped advance, and we encourage our members to both consider attending and submit an application.

Final nominations are due August 15.

The summit will be held on Tuesday October 7, and will feature a selected group of the nation's 14,000+ superintendents.  It will provide opportunities for superintendents from district, charter, and private schools to share lessons learned with each other and with the Department. The Summit will help disseminate promising approaches across the nation and participating superintendents will pledge to be leaders and mentors in the nationwide transition to digital learning.

On May 28th, 2014, the U.S. Department of Education welcomed more than 30 district superintendents and organizations helping to lead the digital transition from around the country to a Technical Working Group. This first of its kind event was crucial to the department's efforts to engage and build a community of connected educators and learn how to better support districts in their transition to digital learning. Feedback from participants helped shape the agenda for the upcoming Connected Superintendents' Summit. The Department of Education is deeply grateful to all of the Technical Working Group members for their time, engagement, and ideas.

If you are, or know of, a district leader who is doing extraordinary work helping to integrate technology to better personalize learning, please take a moment to nominate them for the Connected Superintendents' Summit. We encourage you to share this simple, one-question nomination form. Nominations will close on August 15, 2014 and finalists will be notified prior to September 1, 2014.

As covered in an earlier blog post, the FCC voted last month to modernize the E-Rate program. The proposal is one that AASA supported. While not perfect, it represented a vast improvement over the initial proposal and is structured in a way to ensure the program's sustainability.

Earlier today, the FCC released a handful of items that are informative, helpful tools as we prepare for the next steps in the process:

• Staff White Paper from the Wireline Competition Bureau
• Library and School Fiber Availability Maps
• Public Notice announcing the availability of the information

And last, but not least, here is AASA's summary of the FCC July 11 order to modernize E-Rate.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Education released new non-binding guidance for school district leaders on the use and sharing of student data. The new guidance titled "Transparency Best Practices for Schools and Districts" suggests school districts consider adopting the following practices:

• Publish an inventory of all data collected about students;
• Post online all contracts that require the sharing of student information with third-party vendors;
• Provide parents with a list of all online software and apps that are approved for classroom use, and
• Be more "thoughtful and careful" in responding to parental inquiries and concerns.

You can read the guidance here: http://ptac.ed.gov/sites/default/files/LEA%20Transparency%20Best%20Practices%20final.pdf

From our friends at Rebuild America's Schools  :

The White House Rural Council has announced the creation of the new U.S. Rural Infrastructure Opportunity Fund through which private entities can invest in job-creating rural infrastructure projects across the country. An initial $10 billion has been committed to the fund with greater investment expected to follow. Target investments will include hospitals, schools and other educational facilities, rural water and wastewater systems, energy projects, broadband expansion, local and regional food systems, and other rural infrastructure.

CoBank: http://www.cobank.com/, a national cooperative bank serving rural America and a member of the Farm Credit System, is the fund's anchor investor, committing $10 billion to get the fund off the ground. Capitol Peak Asset Management http://www.capitol-peak.com will manage the new fund and work to recruit more investors to add to CoBank's initial commitment. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other federal agencies will help to identify rural projects that could be potential beneficiaries of financing through this new fund and other private sources.

Today's guest post comes from Michael Leachman, Director of State Fiscal Research with the State Fiscal Policy Division at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.   

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of speaking at the annual AASA conference. It was a good conversation, but my topic was no fun. I was talking about the damage being done by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to the ability of states to properly fund schools.

Here’s a summary of ALEC’s state tax and budget agenda, all of which is likely to weaken funding for schools: (For more information, see our paper on ALEC here):

• Very deep tax cuts, especially for corporations, investors, and the wealthy. These take a number of forms, including the elimination of state income taxes and estate taxes, but always result in less funding for schools and other public services.
• A shift in who pays taxes from the wealthy to the poor and middle class. This includes special treatment for investment income, a shift from income taxes to unusually high sales taxes (which fall harder on lower-income families), and the elimination of tax-based supports for the working poor.
• Rigid (and preferably constitutional) revenue limits, including a harsh constitutional revenue limit known as TABOR and supermajority requirements for revenue-raising bills. These make it harder for the state to provide public schools with the funding they need.

Since 2010, ALEC has had some success pushing this agenda on the false grounds that it will boost state economies. Their biggest success was in Kansas, where major ALEC spokesman Arthur Laffer designed a package of massive income tax cuts the state legislature passed in 2012.

Things haven’t gone so well in Kansas since the tax cuts took effect. Job growth lags the country and the huge hole blown by the tax cuts in the state budget is even bigger than expected, further complicating the funding environment for schools. There’s no reason to think the tax cuts will boost the economy in the future either.

The outcomes in Kansas are no surprise. ALEC’s state fiscal policy approach does not result in stronger economic growth, and analyses ALEC has produced to justify its agenda have been found repeatedly to be faulty and misleading (as we detail in our report).

While ALEC has had some success in recent years, it also has failed. Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and other states have rejected extreme, ALEC-inspired proposals to eliminate the state’s income tax, though a number of states have passed similar, if smaller, versions of the Kansas tax cuts.

As respected state and local leaders, superintendents can play a powerful role in debates over ALEC-inspired tax and budget proposals. You can explain to people in your communities how such proposals hit home and shine a light on the tangible consequences for their schools and children. By participating in coalitions, writing articles in newsletters or for local papers, testifying at legislative hearings, holding community forums, and the like, you also can have a major impact on the broader state debate. Many of you already are in touch with a fiscal policy group that is your state’s representative in the State Priorities Partnership. If not, they’d love to hear from you! I’d be happy to help you make a connection.

Thank you again for a great conversation last week. We look forward to working with you all in the years ahead to protect the funding your schools need to succeed.

Last Friday, the FCC voted to modernize the E-Rate program. The plan as passed is a vast improvement over what had been introduced and what AASA members were lobbying against as part of the 2014 AASA Legislative Advocacy Conference, held in DC last week.

As a bit of context, what happened in E-Rate last week is a case study in how AASA's approach to advocacy works. We are a member-drive advocacy team, with our legislative and policy priorities identified and defined by our members. We represent our members to Capitol Hill, the White House and the agencies. Further, we treat advocacy as a marathon, not a sprint. Yes, there was a flurry of letters, calls, emails and meetings in the final week of the order. But those conversations built on more than a year of deliberate AASA advocacy and outreach relating to E-Rate modernization. Starting with the FCC's proposal last year, AASA submitted comments and issued member call to actions; our 2013 Back to School Toolkit was all about E-Rate, and our blog and advocacy updates regularly relayed the E-Rate goings-on.

This approach to advocacy culminated last week. When AASA members took to the hill, their message was clear and the weight of the superintendent voice rang strong: modernization of E-Rate is a priority, but the Chairman's initial proposal just wouldn't work. AASA members were saying what AASA advocacy had communicated, highlighting that AASA truly represents its members. AASA members had a simple ask, encouraging their members of Congress to weigh in with the FCC to urge them to either slow the process down to get it right and/or to submit a letter to the FCC highlighting concerns with the proposal (which included per pupil funding, shifting the poverty indicator to district level from school level, and more). And AASA members delivered. Collectively, there were nearly ten points of contact from Congress to the FCC, covering House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans. We may not be the biggest education advocacy group out there, but your voice was one of the loudest last week.

The FCC adopted the final proposal along straight party lines, with Chairman Wheeler voting with Rosenworcel and Clyburn for the plan and Commissioners Pai and O'Rielly dissenting. The actual plan itself has yet to be released in written form. The details we are working from the the information we have relayed are all based on discussion; once we have the final plan, we will post an analysis to the blog. In the meantime, you can access:

• FCC Modernization Fact Sheet
• Chairman Wheeler Statement
• Clyburn Statement
• Rosenworcel Statement
• Pai Statement
• O'Reilly Statement
• Statement by AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech

Top line: The plan they passed is a vast improvement over what we had briefed you on earlier this week. There are NO permanent changes to the core E-Rate program. Priority One will be called Category One, but must be fully funded before any funds can go to WiFi. The entirety of the proposal for the 5 year plan, which included $2 b in the first two and promised additional funding in the out years, is now a TEST. Depending on how it pans out, the FCC will later consider making the changes permanent. Once the Category One is fully funded, any remaining available funds in each of the out years can be used for the test. The test will include the per pupil cap, and libraries will receive per-square foot funding. While this is something we opposed, getting it knocked from a permanent change to a test is huge; either way, we win: the two year test will prove our point, or we will see it is a better option.

The vote included the call for an immediate rule to consider raising the ERate cap. This is huge. While it does not raise the cap now, it starts the conversation now. It will unify elements of the broader ERate beneficiary community, who while divided on some of the policies in this vote can unite behind the need for funding. We will do an extensive call to action around this, when the time comes. We anticipate this to be in September.

We did NOT get the poverty base win. That means poverty will be calculated at the district level .I believe this is a permanent change, but cannot confirm that.

This is not a perfect, 100% win, It is a great compromise, and in the adage of ‘the perfect can’t be the enemy of the good’, this is beyond good; this is fantastic.

The response to AASA member advocacy on Capitol Hill continues to roll in. In addition to the letter from Sens. Levin and Stabenow, we now also have letters from Senator Begich (AK) and Representative Long (MO).

It highlights the importance--and weight--of the superintendent voice. Thank you for all you did on the hill this week!

UPDATED: Also submitted:

• Kansas Congressional delegation sent a joint letter
• Representative Goodlatte (VA)
• Senator John Thune (SD) statement
• Senator Kelly Ayotte (NH) statement
• Reps. Upton and Walden statement

This week's advocacy conference was rich in information. While we have already posted the content from Tuesday, including the advocacy update slides and talking points, there were a host of external presenters who shared slides and information that will prove valuable. They have granted permission for us to share their slides, here:

• Student Data
• Paige Kowalski, Data Quality Campaign SLIDES
• Chip Slavin, Alliance for Excellent Education SLIDES
• David Deschryver, WhiteBoard Advisors SLIDES
• Jonathan Voss, Lake Research PDF
• EPA Light Ballasts

Stemming from conversation with AASA superintendents in town for this week's AASA advocacy conference, Senators Levin and Stabenow released a letter expressing concern with FCC Chairman Wheeler's proposed E-Rate changes.

The letter strongly echoes sentiments expressed in a Rockefeller/Markey letter early in the week, and is a close reflection of AASA's concerns, as well as those of the general beneficiary community.

At its simplest level, this letter represents representative democracy at its best, with Senators taking action/leadership on behalf of their constituents.

As you wrap up your hill day, please take a few moments to complete this quick feedback form, as a way of helping our team know which offices were contacted, which topics were covered, and the potential areas for AASA follow up. 

Here are the talking point/one pagers as you prepare for tomorrow's hill visits, along with the Legislative Agenda Tri-Fold and the slides from the advocacy update.

• AASA Advocacy Update Slides
• AASA Legislative Agenda Tri-Fold
• Federal Funding
• IDEA Full Funding
• Vouchers
• Maintenance of Effort (IDEA and Title I)
• Perkins (Career/Tech)
• Background Checks
• Child Nutrition
• E-Rate
• ESEA and Waivers

 Today, Bryan Joffe and I gave a presentation to the AASA Governing Board discussing AASA's research. Bryan spoke on a survey he and Sasha prepared on student discipline, and I spoke on our Common Core survey as well as the 2014 Superintendent Salary Study and future projects. The slides from this presenation are available here.

Feel free to contact me at lfinnan@aasa.org or Bryan at bjoffe@aasa.org with any questions or comments.

Today, we kick off this year's legislative advocacy conference, where we help prepare superintendents to advocate for their districts and students on Capitol Hill. We are also launching the first in a new series of toolkits to help you take this advocacy home to your communities and states. This toolkit focuses on school voucher programs and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). As an introduction, it also includes a section on the successes of public education. The toolkit includes frequently asked questions, talking points, sample Tweets, resources, a PowerPoint presentation, and other resources to help you spread the message of public education throughout your community.

The full toolkit is available in a PDF here.

All of the resources can be downloaded, altered, and disseminated through this page.

If you have any suggestions for topics or resources for future toolkits, please email me at lfinnan@aasa.org.

Earlier this afternoon, the FCC released a report of the potential impact of the pending proposal to modernize the E-Rate program to provide Wi-Fi connectivity to all libraries and schools. The report a state-by-state breakdown of the estimated number of additional students, schools and libraries that would gain E-rate funding needed for Wi-Fi upgrades over the next five years under the proposal. This report projects that nationwide, the proposal would increase funding for Wi-Fi 75 percent for rural schools and 60 percent for urban schools, allowing an additional 44 million students and 16, 000 libraries to have access to Wi-Fi services by 2019. 

AASA has deep concerns with this proposal. As with any of these plans, the devil will be in the details. These numbers, at the state level, look sizeable and impressive, but especially for rurals, it is a situation of 'you get what you get', regardless of actual need, access to previous funding, access to basic school broadband, concentration of poverty or other unique characteristics.

These large funding numbers for internal connections exist in large part--if not solely--because the FCC sat on available funding over the past few years. It is nice that this funding is now available, but we have deep concerns that this proposal is an element of smoke and mirrors and, as stated before, lacks any serious demonstration that the funding needed to maintain the higher levels of connectivity and broadband will be available in the out years.

Rural communities have been down this road before: the rural utility service within the stimulus fund. A recent GAO report detailed the experience of rural communities as it relates to broadband build out as provided through the stimulus. The report found that 14 percent of the projects were terminated, and that of the remainder, 87% were complete or partially operational.

Given the scope of this serious infusion of funding to support broadband build out focused solely on rural areas, these data give us great pause. The proposed changes in E-Rate will rightfully be available to all school districts. As much as the FCC wants to say the proposed changes are focused on driving more dollars to rural areas, it is hard to see how they can (or would or should) disproportionately direct dollars to rural communities. The GAO report illustrates how rural communities were in the position of having promises made related to the out years, and then seeing those promises evaporate or being underdelivered.

It bears strong resemblance to the current E-Rate conversation: "Trust us, take a leap of faith that these programmatic changes can be made now. We have the funding for the first two years, and trust that we can realize the funding for the following three. Trust us that we will be able to meaningfully engage on and deliver as it relates to the conversation of raising the E-Rate cap." These are big asks to make of all E-Rate entities, and especially of the rural communities the FCC seems so focused on, especially when that same community has deep concern with the proposed programmatic changes (related letter and blog post).

We welcome the chance to continue to dialogue with the FCC and to work to make improvements to the proposed modernization so as to not only update the program to reflect the Chairman's focus on internal connections but to also ensure the program's sustainability and capacity to meet schools' and libraries' ever-growing connectivity needs in an equitable manner. Any conversation serious about modernizing E-Rate will reflect the voice of the beneficiary community, and the FCC has been very diligent in working with all E-Rate stakeholders. To the extent that the changes proposed don't gather support from the field and beneficiaries, there may be more good to be gained from 'slowing down to get it right' than to rush to meet an arbitrary deadline.

A new survey of superintendents from Gallup and Education Week on the Common Core State Standards had a similar message as our survey from a few weeks ago. Overall, in both surveys, superintendents are supportive of the standards and see them as an improvement over former standards: the Gallup/EdWeek poll found that two thirds of superintendents believe the CCSS will improve the quality of education, while 92.5 percent of superintendents in the AASA survey said that the new standards are more rigorous than the previous standards. The Gallup/EdWeek poll and our AASA survey saw superintendents not feeling enough support from federal and state government, respectively.

We are excited to see other groups bringing in the superintendent voice and a continuing conversation around the positives and negatives around CCSS at the district level.

AASA is pleased to partner with our friends at Rural School and Community Trust to invite you to attend a hill briefing on Why Rur

Wednesday July 9, 2-3 pm
Capitol Visitors Center SVC 215

Why Rural Matters 2013-14 is published by the Rural School and Community Trust. It is the seventh in a series of biennial reports analyzing the contexts and conditions of rural education in each of the 50 states and calling attention to the need for policymakers to address rural education issues in their respective states. For the first time, the report has a focus on early childhood education in rural America. View the full report at www.ruraledu.org.

Key Research Findings:

• Number of rural students is increasing: 9,765,385 
• Rural student population is becoming more diverse 
• Hispanic population has doubled in past decade 
• 2.6 million (26.7%) are students of color 
• Poverty rate has increased by 10% 
• Based on early childhood data, critical intervention services are required to improve the future of rural education 
• States with the highest rural education needs remain essentially the same: Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Arizona

This event is sponsored by Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Representative Glen Thompson (R-PA). Panelists include Robert Mahaffey, Director, Rural School and Community Trust; President, Organizations Concerned about Rural Education; Dr. Daniel Showalter, Ohio University; and Dr. Robert Klein, Ohio University.

Today, AASA joined five other national education and rural education associations to release a statement expressing deep concern with FCC's proposed changes to the E-Rate program. Representing educators, administrators, rural state associations and federally impacted districts, the letter highlights the groups’ general concerns with the proposal, as well as identifying the aspects most problematic to the nation’s rural schools.

AASA joined the Association of Educational Service Agencies, the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, the National Rural Education Association, the National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition, and the Rural Schools and Community Trust to release the statement, highlighting support for modernization while identifying aspects of the FCC's proposal that are in direct conflict with their stated goal of ensuring that rural schools have access to connectivity comparable to that of urban and suburban communities. The statement comes one the heels of AASA's recent call to action, urging superintendents and school leaders to contact the FCC and weigh in on the changes.

“Rural educators are frustrated to find that after more than a decade of suggesting improvements to the E-Rate program, including proposals to expand teleconnectivity access to the nation’s rural communities and to streamline the application process, the FCC’s proposal is largely focused on cost-savings and efficiencies. We feel it needs to focus more on program equity and sustainability while bolstering efforts to ensure rural communities have access to levels of connectivity comparable (in terms of both bandwidth and cost) to those in urban and suburban communities.

“As recently as one year ago, we were optimistic for comprehensive E-Rate modernization and what it could mean for our rural communities: With both the White House and the FCC focused on E-Rate modernization, surely the President’s goal of connecting 99 percent of the nation’s students in five years would reflect the unique considerations required to expand sustainable broadband to rural communities—areas that have historically and disproportionately been underserved in the E-Rate program.

“We oppose the proposed shift to a per-pupil allocation as it fails to recognize the variance in costs and purchasing power that exist in our rural schools and communities. Beyond being “directly opposed” to one of the E-Rate program’s core tenets—distributing funding based on need—the proposal completely dismisses the reality of connectivity in rural communities, focusing on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model regardless of a school’s enrollment or geographic location. We are strongly opposed to any effort to shift away from a needs-based formula to a per-pupil allocation. Our opposition to per-pupil allocations in E-Rate is well documented and can be found in E-Rate-related filings reaching back as far as 2005.

“We are also opposed to shifting the program’s poverty calculation from school-based to district-based. We represent rural schools that may find themselves within larger school districts with varying poverty rates. The proposed change sets up potential windfalls for the wealthiest schools within relatively poor districts by raising their discount rates and hurts the poorer schools within districts by lowering their discount rates.

“Any effort to modernize the E-Rate program must include the infusion of new, sustained funding. Our nation’s rural schools and libraries struggle to meet today’s broadband demand using 1998 dollars and current demand for the E-Rate program more than doubles the available funding. This funding shortfall is compounded by variations in costs and purchasing power for our rural communities.

“Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, we reiterate our long-standing commitment to E-Rate modernization and affirm our willingness to work with the FCC to improve this proposal. We urge the Commission to work with the beneficiary community—the very people the program was designed to serve—on a two-pronged approach that relies on both programmatic changes and the infusion of new, long-term funding. We stand ready to update the E-Rate program as it approaches its 20-year birthday and to do so in a manner that ensures it is around for at least 20 more.”

The FCC is scheduled to vote on July 11 on a set of proposed changes to the E-Rate program that not only jeopardize the 18-year old program with a track record of success, but also include a shift to per-pupil funding that threatens internet connectivity to schools.

Now is the time to weigh in with the FCC, as they still have time to mpdify the proposed set of changes before the July 11 vote. Here’s where you can help. Please take a few moments to submit comments to the FCC. It is imperative they hear from the schools community, as school systems are a key beneficiary of the E-Rate program, the E-Rate is critical to ensuring schools can provide internet connectivity, and school system leaders are uniquely positioned to highlight the shortcomings of this proposal as it relates to program effectiveness, equity, and sustainability.

Background information: Here is everything you need to know about E-Rate, from basic information on the program’s history and how it works to a summary/analysis of the proposed changes and talking points you can use with your community and local media.

• AASA Summary/Analysis of FCC Proposed Changes
• AASA E-Rate Toolkit
• AASA E-Rate Talking Points
• AASA E-Rate Top Ten Questions
• AASA E-Rate Presentation
• From the Blog:
• AASA Response to FCC Chairman Wheeler’s Proposed Changes
• Joint Letter Signed by 12+ National Education Organizations Expressing Concern with FCC Proposal
• AASA Joins 18 National Organizations on E-Rate Letter

Suggested FCC Comments:

• I write to express my deep concern with the FCC’s proposal to allocate portions of E-Rate funding on a per-pupil allocation. This change would shift dollars away from the neediest schools and libraries, the very entities the program was designed to support.
• I am concerned that the FCC proposes a five-year timeline for these changes yet only provides funding for the first two years. As currently structured, this plan leaves the E-Rate program in the unsustainable and unacceptable position of siphoning critical funding away from Priority I (basic connectivity) to Priority II (internal connections) of the E-Rate program.
• Any conversation truly focused on modernizing and sustaining E-Rate will be focused on programmatic changes to update and improve the program as well as funding to ensure the future availability and success of E-Rate.

AASA’s Positions

• AASA has deep reservations about the FCC’s current proposal. We are opposed to per-pupil funding in the E-Rate program as it runs counter to the program’s cornerstone premise of allocating dollars to the neediest, on a basis of deepest concentration of poverty.
• The proposed set of changes would exacerbate—not address—the gap between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. Per-pupil allocations, especially within E-Rate, are a one-size-fits-all approach and limit the ability of the program to equitably support those schools who are neediest and where internet connectivity and Wi-Fi costs are higher due to geographic location/isolation and/or higher concentrations of poverty. 
• AASA supports a two-pronged approach to E-Rate modernization, one that includes both programmatic changes and a permanent infusion of new funding to the E-Rate program. 
• The current FCC proposal outlines permanent structural changes and a five-year time line of action, while providing funding for the first two. We sincerely question the ability of the FCC to identify the additional $3 billion promised for the final three years, and are deeply concerned that this short-fall puts E-Rate on a path where funds for one part of the program are raided to provide for the other. More succinctly, we are concerned this set of changes focuses funding on internal connections (WI-Fi) in a way that threatens basic, monthly connectivity (phone line, internet connection, web hosting).

How to File Comments with the FCC

COMMENTS ARE DUE July 11

• Draft your response comments. You can create your own comments or work from AASA’s provided talking points. Format your response as a Word/PDF document (include district letter head!).
• Go to http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=s4tca
• For the Proceeding Number, use all of the following proceeding numbers: 13-184
• Complete the rest of the information on the form.
• Upload your comments at the bottom of the form.
• If you are pressed for time or need help submitting the comments, I can submit them on your behalf. Please email me your final comments no later than July 9, with the subject line Please file E-Rate comments.

AASA is proud to co-chair the National Coalition for Public Education, a coalition of dozens of national civil rights, education, religious and secular organizations committed to opposing federal private school vouchers. Yesterday, the Coalition sent a letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations regarding the continued funding of the D.C. voucher program. Specifically, the coalition asked that the Senate eliminate funding for the D.C. voucher program altogether, but at a minimum, the Senate should allocate no more than $3 million to the program, because the Office of Management and Budget has said that is all it needs, plus “the amount carried forward from prior fiscal years,” to have sufficient funding to meet costs through the 2015–2016 school year.

The D.C. voucher program has also repeatedly failed to meet basic and even statutorily required accountability standards. In 2013, in what the Washington Post called a “scathing report,” the GAO found significant “weaknesses in administration and oversight” of the D.C. voucher program. During site visits of ten of the private voucher schools with the most voucher students, the GAO uncovered several schools that were violating basic SOAR Act requirements. For example, nine of the ten schools examined failed to maintain valid certificates of occupancy. This is particularly troubling because, in response to the 2007 GAO report’s finding that several schools receiving vouchers lacked valid certificates of occupancy, Congress included a provision in the SOAR Act specifying that private schools accepting vouchers must obtain and maintain one.

You can read the complete letter here.

Today, the FCC shared top-line talking points related to the final order of proposed changes to the E-Rate program, as early as July 11. While the information made available today is more concrete than what we can glean from conversations, there is much left to be clarified, a level of detail that can come only from an actual order, with full detail.

Earlier this morning, AASA joined 12 other national school groups in sending a letter to the FCC to express deep concern with the FCC’s direction and momentum. The groups, while supporting E-Rate modernization, express serious hesitation related to the FCC’s proposed changes and how they factor into program sustainability, ensuring the program continues to serve the neediest of districts, and providing funding that supports both basic monthly connections as well as the prioritized internal connections.

At this point, we are disappointed in the rush to move forward with this proposal, especially when the school and library groups—representing the very beneficiaries the program is intended to support—have clearly articulated objections to some of the proposed changes. We are still deeply committed to E-Rate modernization and welcome the chance to work with the FCC to improve this initial proposal, to ensure that the changes do not negatively impact high cost and low population rural and remote schools and libraries. We look forward to advancing a proposed set of changes that are reasonable, satisfactory changes that both the FCC and program beneficiaries can support.

Read this morning’s letter, signed by AASA, American Federation of Teachers, Association of Educational Service Agencies, Council of the Great City Schools, International Society for Technology in Education, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Catholic Educational Association, National Education Association, National PTA, National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition, and National Rural Education Association.

You can also read the FCC’s related blog post and top-line talking points.

The FCC is expected to release its final order (the proposed changes for the E-Rate program, which would be voted on July 11 and could impact the 2014-15 school year) tomorrow. The modernization of E-Rate is a priority for AASA, and we (along with ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education) are concerned with how little attention the FCC seems to be giving to the very critical need of raising the E-Rate funding cap.

As we've written before, E-Rate is a long-running successful program. Efforts to modernize are past-due and must remain focused on ensuring that limited E-Rate dollars are allocated to the neediest of districts and that the programmatic changes to the program are sustainable. AASA has long advocated for a two-fold approach to modernization: programmatic changes and a raising of the E-Rate funding cap.

At this point, E-Rate beneficiaries are using 1998 E-Rate dollars to meet 2014 eduction connectivity needs. I can think of no other area in the educational arena that has been more transformed in the last 16 years than education technology. From the demand for connectivity and ever-increasing number of devices in schools to the infusion of technology into all aspects of teaching, learning and professional development, E-Rate played a critical role in supporting the expanded connectivity needs. The current reality is one where the virtually unchanged funding levels mean schools and libraries are meeting 2014 demands with 1998 dollars.

Back to the point: programmatic/structural changes without a permanent raising of the cap threatens to derail the E-Rate program, undermining nearly two decades of growth and success by putting the program on an unsustainable path. Conversely, a funding increase without programmatic changes is a poor investment and a missed opportunity.

To the extent that discussions with the FCC have yet to demonstrate a commitment to a permanent increase in resources to support the significant programmatic changes they propose, our friends at ISTE have launched a #RaiseTheERateCap social media campaign, an AASA is proud to support and participate in the campaign.

From the ISTE Blog: Launching #RaiseTheErateCap

After a year of gathering public input and performing its own research and analysis about E-Rate, it looks like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) may take action on E-Rate modernization this summer. Unfortunately, we understand that the FCC is planning to make only structural changes to the program without increasing the amount of funding available. For all of us who rely so heavily on E-Rate support, we simply cannot stand silently. We must speak out loudly now and tell the FCC that E-Rate modernization must begin with more funding.

Starting today (June 19), ISTE is launching a new campaign. We encourage all #ISTE members, educators, parents and students across the country to tweet directly to @FCC using this new hashtag #RaiseTheErateCap and tell the FCC how important broadband and digital learning is for your students.

ISTE and ISTE members have been leading voices in the E-Rate modernization process every step of the way. This FCC order is a critically important next step, and ISTE and its members must continue to make our voices heard. Below are some sample tweets. However, we encourage you to create and tweet your own. Make sure to use #RaiseTheErateCap and share this hashtag with your colleagues.

• @FCC I’m an educator #RaiseTheErateCap
• @FCC I’m a student and I need high speed broadband #RaiseTheErateCap
• @FCC #Erate keeps our students connected #RaiseTheErateCap
• @FCC Our students can’t wait #RaiseTheErateCap before school year 2014-15
• @FCC #Erate has been essentially level funded since 1998, costs for schools have increased. #RaiseTheErateCap
• @FCC Broadband keeps students competitive #RaiseTheErateCap before school year 2014-15
• @FCC I’m a parent. I expect a 21^st century learning environment for my child #RaiseTheErateCap

At ISTE 2014 we will be circulating a petition urging the FCC to increase funding for the E-Rate program. If you are attending ISTE 2014, please stop by the ISTE Advocacy Network Booth Building B, Level 4, near room A410 to sign the E-Rate petition.

The USDA is expanding its successful Community Eligibility Provision from pilot status to national program. That means that any eligible school could serve ALL students free breakfast and lunch. While this provision/flexibility may not be for everyone, it is something that will be helpful to some AASA members, and as such, we are covering it on the blog.

The 2014-15 school year is the first time the option will be available to all eligible schools. The change technically takes place on July 1, 2014 and schools have until August 31, 2014 to notify their state agency of their intent to participate.  

Background: The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) provides an alternative approach for offering school meals to schools in low income areas. Rather than collecting individual applications for free/reduced price meals, CEP allows schools in communities with higher concentrations of poverty to offer free meals to ALL students, not just those who are eligible. The program launched as a pilot in 10 states and the District (IL, KY, MI, NY, OH, WV, FL, GA, MD, and MA). To be eligible, a school district must have at least 40% of its enrolled students identified as eligible for free/reduced lunch. If that is the case, the school can serve free lunches and breakfasts to ALL students. Household applications for free/reduced price meals are not collected. Additional information is available in the links below. The fourth item is the best overview document.

Related Items:

• USDA Community Eligibility Provision (landing page)
• Letter of Deadline Extension
• CEP Overview (very helpful slide deck)
• Eligibility Status of Districts/Schools by State (this isn’t completely robust; your state may not have information because it doesn’t yet have participating schools. Take a moment to peruse the site for one of the pilot states; it will give you a sense of how the program works and the type of information that is helpful.)

This guest post comes from Robert Slavin, Cofounder and Chairman of the Board of Success for All Foundation, whose goal is to help all students achieve at the highest levels.

Among many educators and policy makers, the idea of evidence-based reform is scary. They fear that rigorous evaluations will fail to support their favorite government programs. What if studies find few benefits of Title I or other longstanding government programs focused on disadvantaged children?

If the evidence movement comes to be seen as the Grim Reaper, intent on stamping out funding programs, it is doomed. Government spending on disadvantaged children needs to be made more impactful, not abandoned. Title I, for example, is not a specific school or classroom intervention, it is a funding source that supports more and less effective initiatives. The goal of research and development should not be to determine whether Title I “works,” but to inform Title I directors, principals, and teachers about which investments of Title I dollars pay off in enhanced student achievement and which do not. R & D needs to create and evaluate new reading and math approaches, interventions for English learners and struggling readers, technology applications, whole-school reforms, and other methodologies. Those that work can then be encouraged as alternatives for Title I schools everywhere to use. As these strategies become more and more widely used, Title I itself will become more and more effective.

As effective uses of Title I funds become more common, less effective uses will fall away. For example, research has long found that traditional uses of paraprofessionals add little to student learning. However, there are several proven programs that use paraprofessionals to tutor struggling readers one-to-one or in small groups. If Title I schools are encouraged to use paras in new ways, less effective uses will be likely to diminish.

With time and continued investment, the evidence base for effective practices will grow, and Title I can further encourage the use of proven approaches. It can use incentives as well as information, but should not mandate the use of particular programs. Title I or other federal programs can invest in R & D, disseminate information on effective practices, help providers of proven programs to go to scale, provide funding to help schools adopt proven approaches, and so on, helping Title I transition from a focus on remediation to a focus on innovation and forward-looking practice. All educators support improving the outcomes of Title I, and I believe they would come to support a process capable of bringing proven innovations to disadvantaged schools.

If evidence-based reform is seen as a way to improve, not threaten, Title I and other federal funding programs, educators and policy makers can come to see it as an ally, not a threat. In a sense, it does not matter how effective Title I is today, as long as it is clearly getting better every year. Creating, evaluating, and disseminating effective approaches for use within Title I is the best way to ensure that Title I gets better outcomes. It maintains the key funding source for reform, and it builds support for evidence among those who care about disadvantaged kids.

The White House is working on a plan to reduce gun violence. Part of this work includes an interdepartmental collaborative effort on school safety and mental health in schools. They recently released a list of funding opportunities related to mental health in schools. Some of these opportunities are open to LEAs, as detailed in this table.

A full list of grants available is available here, and a guide on federal programs funding K-12 universal prevention and social and emotional learning activities, produced by the Center on Education Policy and the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools can be accessed here.

Today, AASA released a report on implementation of Common Core and other new state standards. This survey allowed superintendents to share their thoughts, realities and obstacles as it relates to implementing the standards and assessments. The survey report shows that superintendents are optimistic about the new standards, but that more time and support are necessary to properly implement them. Major findings include:

• Superintendents overwhelmingly (92.5 percent) see the new standards as more rigorous than previous standards.
• More than three quarters (78.3 percent) agree that the education community supports the standards, but that support drops to 51.4 percent among the general public.
• Nearly three quarters of the respondents (73.3 percent) agree that the political debate has gotten in the way of the implementation of the new standards.
• Nearly half (47 percent) say their input was never requested in the decision to adopt or develop new standards or in planning the implementation.
• More than half (60.3 percent) of the respondents who had begun testing say they are facing problems with the tests.
• Just under half (41.9 percent) say schools in their states are not ready to implement the online assessment, while 35.9 percent say they lack the infrastructure to support online assessments.

You can access the survey here. Please contact me at lfinnan@aasa.org with any questions on the report.

Last week, Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN), Chairman of the House Education Subcommittee on Elementary and Secondary Education and father a child with a disability, introduced legislation to voucherize IDEA funds, create a pilot military voucher program and expand the D.C. voucher program. The bill’s co-sponsor is Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Chair of the House Republican Caucus who also has a child with disability.

The title of the bill is the CHOICE Act, which stands for Creating Hope and Opportunities for Individuals and Communities through Education (CHOICE) Act and would allow states with existing voucher programs for students with disabilities to take funds distributed under IDEA and allow the federal funds to also follow students with special needs to private schools of their parents’ choice. This private school voucher legislation will divert $11 billion in taxpayer funds to private schools, fundamentally undermine the ability of students with disabilities to receive adequate educational opportunities in public schools, reduce critically important Impact Aid funding, which would hurt children of military personnel, and expand the failing DC voucher program. This bill is the House companion to legislation introduced in January in the Senate by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). Currently, the CHOICE Act in the Senate has 9 co-sponsors.

AASA was the first national organization to send a letter to the Hill outlining our specific concerns with the legislation. You can read our letter here. It’s unclear as to whether this is just a messaging bill for the election cycle or if there will be a way to move the bill to the floor before July. We will update the blog when we have more details.  We will update the blog when we have more details.

A catch all blog, playing catch up on a handful of things I have been meaning to blog about. I’ll be posting them individually, but here’s the list of topics you can read about, with links to each individual blog. Then, I’m outta here for two weeks. Sasha and Leslie will keep the blog up to date!

• E-Rate
• Appropriations Letters
• School Nutrition Summer Program 
• QZABs (school construction)
• School Nutrition
• Early Education
• Appropriations

Earlier this month, AASA joined 18 other national organizations in a joint letter related to E-Rate and the ongoing modernization efforts. AASA is a member of EdLiNC, a coalition of school and library groups that advocate for E-Rate on behalf of the program’s beneficiaries. EdLiNC penned a letter, and was joined by a handful of outside groups, in supporting a modernization that is two fold, focused on programmatic changes and a funding cap increase.

In addition to the letter, the group released a statement, linked here and included below:

Nineteen national education and library organizations sent a joint letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Wheeler and Commissioners Clyburn, Rosenworcel, Pai and O’Rielly, voicing their continued support for efforts to strengthen and modernize the E-Rate program, especially increasing the program’s annual funding cap. The education groups are drawn from the Education and Library Networks Coalition (EdLiNC), the leading advocacy coalition seeking to expand the use of educational technologies in schools and libraries, and three additional groups. EdLiNC issued the following statement today following the release of the letter:

“We are committed to improving E-Rate in a sustainable manner to ensure that this important program continues to provide our nation’s schools and libraries with the connectivity they need to ensure maximum impact on student learning. However, our schools and libraries should not have to wait for an increase in the program’s inadequate annual funding cap. We urge the FCC, which oversees E-Rate and is engaged in modernizing the program, to act now.

“EdLiNC, representing 14,000 public school districts, 100,000 public schools, 31,000 private schools and more than 16,400 public libraries, focused its message on two key concepts:

• The need for a permanent, sustainable increase in funding for the E-Rate program; and
• The critical nature of ensuring equitable access to support for internal connections for all applicants.

“In our letter, we called upon the FCC to take up the funding question in its first order on E-Rate. The coalition believes if the Commission is serious about ensuring that all schools and libraries have sufficient high-capacity bandwidth – to make use of digital tools, content, services and assessments – it cannot wait until some indeterminate future date for additional E-Rate support. We urge the Commission to fashion an E-Rate order that addresses the need for more funds immediately along with measured structural changes.’

“E-Rate represents the single-largest source of education technology funding for our nation’s schools and libraries, and the students and communities they serve. In just a few months, a new school year will be upon us. As we try to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to technology, it is critical that we enhance and expand digital-based learning, especially in our most challenged schools and libraries.

“EdLiNC will continue to work with the FCC to modernize the E-Rate program.”

###

EdLiNC is comprised of the following organizations:

• AASA, The School Superintendents Association
• American Federation of Teachers
• American Library Association
• Association of Education Service Agencies
• Consortium for School Networking
• International Society for Technology in Education
• National Association of Elementary School Principals
• National Association of Federally Impacted Schools
• National Association of Independent Schools
• National Association of Secondary School Principals
• National Catholic Educational Association
• National Education Association
• National Rural Education Association
• National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition
• National School Boards Association
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Additional Signatories:

• Learning First Alliance
• Organizations Concerned with Rural Education
• Rural School and Community Trust

The FY15 appropriations process in well under way, with both the House and Senate making progress on their respective funding bills to keep the government open. More on that in a separate blog post. In the last month, AASA has signed four separate appropriations-related letters that we wanted to flag for you:

• Impact Aid: AASA signed a letter supporting full funding for Impact Aid in FY15, including opposition to the administration’s proposal to cut Impact Aid.
• Education Technology: AASA worked with a small group of education and education technology groups to lead a letter that applauds the focus on restoring a dedicated line of funding to education technology within the FY15 budget. That said, the letter supports and prioritizes investment in the already authorized formula program in Title II Part D of ESEA, the Enhancing Education Through Technology Act, rather than creating a new, standalone competitive grant (a la ConnectEducators). 
• AASA FY15 Letter: The reality is that level funding for education—even IDEA and ESEA Title I—will be a victory in the current funding climate. AASA submitted a letter to House and Senate appropriators outlining our funding priorities for FY15. Our overall ‘ask’ list is actually much longer, but in an effort to remain relevant and to ensure that our funding priorities are perceived as just that, our ask is simple: the FY15 K12 education funding priority must be on ensuring that Title I and IDEA are restored to pre-sequester levels. We do not advocate a ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ approach, but do reiterate our concern about continued reliance on competitive programs (like RttT and i3), especially when key federal formula programs have yet to be restored.
• Increasing funding for Perkins CTE: The erosion of Perkins CTE funding comes at a time of renewed focus on CTE programs and growth. Yet, Perkins CTE funding is currently more than $140 million lower thanin Fiscal Year (FY) 2010.  It is time to build our federal investment in CTE by robustly funding Perkins CTE State Grants at$1.264 billion in FY 2015.

AASA was pleased to support Senator Patty Murray’s (D-WA) latest legislative proposal, the Stop Child Summer Hunger Act. The bill proposes an expansion fo the already existing Summer Food Service program (SFSP), which works to provide meals to low-income shicldren suring the summer months. The current pilot runs in 14 sites across 10 states. This bill would make it nation wide. Eligible families would receive a pre-loaded EBT card that they can use to obtain food over the summer months. A family eligible for the free/reduced lunch program would be eligible for this summer program. The USDA Secretary will make the cards and any related information, such as details on who is eligible, how to enroll, and information on making more healthful food choices, available to schools, who will work to distribute the cards in a manner they see fit. AASA was pleased to work with Senator Murray’s office to ensure that the burden to schools in implementing a summer program was not unduly burdensome, and is pleased to support the final version of the bill, which reflects key revisions AASA pursued.

Check out the related infographic, as well as the official press release.

In the middle of May, the Senate was working on a procedural motion to move debate on HR 3474 (so it could be the vehicle for the Senate to consider the tax extenders in S 2260). The EXPIRE Act tax extender bill was passed by the Finance Committee and extends 55 tax provisions that expired at the end of 2013. The EXPIRE Act extends tax provisions including the Qualified Zone Academy Bond program for 2 years. Specifically, the measure funds QZAbs at $400 million per year in 2014 and 2015 and modifies the local business contribution down to 5%, from 10%.

Ultimately, the Senate cloture measure on the measure was withdrawn by unanimous consent, meaning no vote as of yet. Please write and contact Senate offices to support the EXPIRE Act S. 2260 and the extension of the QZAB program.

AASA remains concerned about the overreach and unfunded nature of requriements within the school nutrition program, formally known as the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010. The bill, while well intentioned, includes massive misalignment between the focus on higher nutritional standards and the ability of local school districts to implement the costly changes without adequate federal support. AASA is absolute in our support for the federal nutrition program, recognizing the role the program plays in ensuring that students are not a hungry: a fed child is a better student. We strive to ensure that federal policy aimed at this goal reflects the realities of implementation, an approach that has been reflected in our comments on various regulations related to the bill, including recent comments on the proposed national standards for certification and training of food service personnel and proposed changes to school wellness policies.

Efforts to provide school districts relief from some of the more onerous regulations have played out in Congress, including this year’s appropriations work. AASA supports the proposal for $25 million for school mean equipment as well as a proposal to require the USDA Secretay to establish a process by which a state can grant a temporary waiver of compliance from the national nutritional standards. The waiver is critical in providing LEAs relief from the soaring operational costs association with the federal mandates, however unintended, as well as increase plate waste and decreased program participation. AASA is opposed to language that would limit access to the summer nutrition program to only rural areas.

The House passed its FY15 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, and posted the FY 2015 Agriculture Bill - Full Committee Draft and FY 2015 Agriculture Bill – Draft. Committee Report. The relevant language to the school nutrition program is on page 45 of the committee report.

For a little humor: The report includes language calling for a report from the USDA Secretary ensuring that the cafeterias within the USDA and that all vending machines in the National Capital Area meet the same requirements as the school nutrition program. I appreciate the sentiment. Make the agency that writes the regulations have to comply with them. Let’s not forget that there are multiple players in any bill. Congress passed the law before USDA started regulating; perhaps those standards/regulations should apply to all Congressional cafeterias!

In mid-May, the Senate HELP Committee marked up the Strong Start for America’s Children Act (S 1697). AASA neither endorsed nor opposed the legislation. AASA supports investment in early education and welcomes the opportunity for bold legislation like this proposal, but question the relevance of a new, standalone bill (that is not paid for), especially when two other existing early education programs—Head Start and the Child Care Development Blok Grant—are past due for reauthorization. Read our letter, where we outline our concerns related to eligible entities and funding.

The bill was passed out of committee, is not expected on the floor, and the House has no plans to consider similar legislation. This bill will rest on its heels until it expires at the end of the calendar year.

Congress has only completed its appropriations work on time twice since 1983. The last time there was a standalone LHHS appropriations bill (the one that funds education!) was 2007, before I was even at AASA, yet alone lobbying appropriations. And, it’s an election year.

All of this is in indirect way of saying that while I am about to report on the nitty-gritty of the FY15 appropriations progress (the federal dollars that will be in your schools for the 15-16 school year), I would hold your breath for a timely completion. Ideally, Congress would wrap its appropriations work before the fiscal year starts on October 1. The far more likely scenario is that while a few standalone bills will move to completion, a handful (including LHHS) will remain incomplete and Congress will have to adopt some construct of a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown. The calculus of the CR (how long) will be influenced as much by the amount of progress made up to that point as by projections as to how the elections will pan out and if Congress wants to complete its appropriations works before the 113^th Congress ends, or punt to the 114^th, which convenes in January 2015. 

• When we move from the budget to the appropriations process, it shifts from a conversation about the overall funding level for the entire funding program to the funding levels for each of the individual appropriations bills, and then to specific programs.
• Education is within the Labor-Health-Human Services-Education Appropriations bill.
• The allocation to each appropriation bill is called an 302(b) allocation.
• The final FY14 LHHS appropriation was $156.8 billion. For FY15, President Obama proposed $158 billion for LHHS. The House 302(b) allocation for FY15 is $155.7 billion, and the Senate proposes $156.8 billion.
• There are two moving pieces that have negative implications for the LHHS FY15 302b level, and can be best summarized as inaccurate projections resulting in net losses for other aspects of the budget.
• The Federal Housing Administration has lower receipts than originally projected, leaving a hole in the budget that needs to be filled. The only way to fill the hole is to rearrange the existing funding. You can see from the 302b allocations above that the Senate doesn’t take any funding from LHHS to cover the hole. 
• The issue of illegal undocumented children coming in to the children comes at a cost. The unprecedented increase in the number of these unaccompanied minors entering the country has been steadily rising, though the Obama budget for FY15 requested a funding level that grossly underfunds realistic projections. The reality is that the funds will be spent if the kids show up, and the Obama budget failure to accurately request funds puts a stress on other aspects of the budget, including (potentially) LHHS. 
• See our FY15 302b priority letter, which focuses on restroing Title I and IDEA to presequester levels.

Something amazing happened in Congress this week: Democrats and Republicans in both chambers were able to hash out a bicameral, bipartisan piece of substantive legislation that is expected to be signed into law in a matter of weeks. The legislation, known as the Workforce Investment Act or WIA, has been overdue since 2003 and in a weird way I used to take consolation in the fact that while ESEA has been overdue since 2007, the same committees charged with reauthorizing ESEA were unable to reauthorize WIA for 11 years. Perhaps 11 years for bipartisan reauthorizations are the new normal and we will have a new ESEA in 2018? I sincerely hope we don’t have to wait 4 more years and that this recent bipartisan activity spurs greater collaboration across the aisle and across the Capitol on a variety of issues (like ESEA, Perkins, IDEA!).

Here are a few points about the WIA bill that school leaders should know and understand.

First, WIA contains the Vocational Rehabilitation Act and makes substantial changes to how VR provides transition services to districts. The most major and positive change to note in the WIA reauthorization is that VR must spend 15% of its budget on pre-employment transition services for all eligible students with disabilities. Each local VR office will designate someone tasked with attending IEP meetings (when invited) and who will work with schools to coordinate and ensure the provision of pre-employment transition services is carried out effectively in accordance with IDEA and WIA requirements.

Second, VR must use the 15% set-aside to provide students with work-based learning experiences, which may include in-school or after school experiences or experiences outside the traditional school setting (like internships) and opportunities to experience integrated work environments to the maximum extent possible. VR must also provide job exploration counseling for students and counseling on opportunities for enrollment in comprehensive transition or post-secondary programs in higher education. Finally, VR must provide workplace readiness training to develop social skills and independent living skills and instruction in self-advocacy, which may include peer-mentoring. VR is also authorized to spend money to develop and improve strategies for individuals with intellectual or significant disabilities to live independently, participate in post-secondary education experiences and obtain and retain competitive integrated employment. They can also assist in providing instruction to VR counselors and school transition personnel to improve pre-employment transition services and to coordinate VR transition service activities with school districts to conform to IDEA requirements. While it’s great that VR must put money and people power towards assist districts in providing pre-employment transition services to students and ensure students have opportunities for integrated competitive employment while they are in still in school, it is likely that districts will also have to also step-up their pre-employment transition services and provide more comprehensive, effective transition planning for students when IDEA is reauthorized. Hopefully by the time IDEA reauth occurs (my guess is 2020), VR services will be more seamlessly woven into the traditional transition service programs provided by districts and it will be easier and more logical to increase the responsibilities of districts to provide strong transition programs for students with disabilities.

In addition to the new, prominent role of VR in assisting with student transition services, school superintendents should be aware of provisions in WIA related to sheltered workshops. Whether VR should be allowed to place individuals in sheltered work was hotly debated during past attempts at reauthorization. While the bipartisan bill does not prohibit districts from having sheltered workshops as a transition goal—as many disability advocates had hoped—it does prohibits districts from entering into a contract or other arrangement for the purpose of sending students to sheltered workshops. It also states that any employers who hire individuals at a subminimum wage can only do so if the following conditions are met: the individual received pre-employment transition services in accordance with IDEA or WIA, the individual applied for VR services and was found ineligible, the individual made a serious attempt to work in supportive employment settings without success, the VR case is closed, and the individual received career counseling, and information and referrals to supported employment. Schools must provide documentation to prove that the individual received pre-employment transition services from the district prior to an individual working in a subminimum wage employment setting and any other documentation required to meet the conditions above. It is clear that the numerous conditions placed on subminimum wage employment are intended to deter school district personnel, VR personnel, parents and students away from choosing this employment option as much as possible. I am sure that whether subminimum wage employment can be an IEP transition goal will come up again during the IDEA reauthorization as well. If you have more questions, please email me (spudelski@aasa.org)

Today, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Bipartisan Policy Center held an event on the truth about the Common Core. The event featured five former Republican governors (James Douglas of Vermont, John Engler of Michigan, Linda Lingle of Hawaii, John McKernan of Maine, and Sonny Perdue of Georgia) who spoke in defense of Common Core. They discussed their roles in the formation of the new standards. They noted that the idea started after the growth of federal influence in education under NCLB, which they feared would lead to a set of federal standards. To combat this potential intrusion, they decided to develop their own, state-initiated standards. They were all surprised by and ashamed of the current heavily-Republican backlash against the standards.

As I finalize AASA’s report on our recent Common Core survey, it was helpful to hear from these governors the impetus behind the standards, and the frustration with how they are being portrayed. Despite the negative press and frustration, none of the panelists said they would have done anything differently, given another chance. Governor Perdue noted their one mistake: the name. He said, “we should have called it Freedom Core”.

You can view the webcast of the event here, and stay tuned for the release of our survey soon!

We know that many districts are undergoing serious work to improve school climate and school discipline rates and wanted to flag this new opportunity from USED to apply for grants under their School Climate Transformation Program. Under the School Climate Transformation Grant program, grant funds will be awarded to LEAs to “develop and adopt, or expand to more schools, a multi-tiered behavioral framework that guides the selection, integration, and implementation of the best evidence-based behavioral practices for improving school climate and behavioral outcomes for all students.”

The department anticipates that 118 school districts will split the $23 million allocated for the grant work. Complete details are available here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2014-05-07/pdf/2014-10497.pdf

Earlier today, AASA sent a letter of opposition to the House of Representatives as they prepare to vote on HR 10, the Success and Opportunity through Quality Charter Schools Act.

The bill, as drafted, is an improvement over current law, but falls short of ensuring that all entities receiving federal funds face the same transparency, reporting and accountability requirements. Just as AASA advocates for equitable treatment of students, so, too, do we advocate for equitable treatment of schools receiving federal education funds. While we applaud the bipartisan effort of the committee in advancing this bill, we urge the House to direct bipartisan momentum toward a comprehensive reauthorization of ESEA rather than amending individual titles of the statute, and we remain committed to working with the committee and House on ESEA and other past-due reauthorizations.

Read our letter, which outlines our overall position on charters, our response to the bill, and position on proposed amendments. Even if HR 10 is amended to reflect the priorities we support, it still falls short.

Please contact your Representative TODAY and urge them to vote NO on HR 10.