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.

 Organizations supporting the letter:

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!

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.
   

This guest post comes from AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech. Dan serves on the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), which oversees the four programs of the Universal Service Fund, including E-Rate.Tomorrow, February 3, marks the beginning of the 2016 application filing window for the E-Rate program. The filing window will be open through April 29, meaning school districts will have 87 days (nearly two weeks longer than normal!) to submit an E-Rate application.

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.

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. 

Healthy Students, Promising Futures (PDF) provides state and local action steps/practices that can improve school-based health. It outlines 5 specific high-impact opportunities, listed below.

• 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. 

As you can see, our advocacy efforts proved fruitful but our work, is far from over. We are now moving full steam ahead with efforts to support ESSA implementation. With expanded authority and flexibility comes increased responsibility. We look forward to supporting our state affiliates and members, and position them as the go-to leader. 

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.

Though technically effective since December 26, 2014, non-federal entities, including schools and LEAs, are under an implementation grace period for two (2) fiscal years after the effective date. For example, a school with a fiscal year start of July 1 will need to shift to the new rules by June 30, 2017.

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. 

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.
• It is essential to reform the Perkins accountability system to match the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act. While federal reporting mandates may be appropriate, States should measure the success of secondary CTE programs and address low-performing programs as they see fit.

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 amongthe 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. 

Congress faces two significant tasks before the end of the year: raising the debt ceiling (which expires Nov 3) and completing its annual appropriations work  to avoid a federal shutdown (the current continuing resolution ends Dec 11). Recent history would indicate that Congress would legislate by crisis, waiting until the 11th hour on both proposals, bringing the nation to the brink of a shutdown.

Not this week, though. Breaking recent trends of both last-minute legislation AND highly partisan approaches, Congress is set to vote on the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, a bill that would raise the debt ceiling and replace sequester/raise draconian funding caps, setting the stage for far-less contentious discussions for wrapping up the annual appropriations work. 

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 ReadingThe 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. 

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 nine 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. Join 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 

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. 

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