Through the Recovery Act, Race to the Top, and other efforts, Congress and the Obama Administration have already set their sights on the right priority: teacher quality.

We know that highly effective teachers strongly and positively influence how well their students learn, and ineffective teachers have a devastating impact on student achievement. The problem is that too many students, especially low-income and minority students, don't have access to the effective teachers they need to prepare them for education beyond high school.

Over the past few years, a number of districts—Hamilton County, Tenn.; Guilford County, N.C.; Miami-Dade County, Fla., among others—have made aggressive efforts to increase the number of truly effective teachers in their highest needs schools. But we have allowed too many states to make false promises and half-hearted commitments about teacher quality and equity.

That’s why the Obama Administration is using the Recovery Act to insist that states remove barriers preventing them from linking teacher and student data and abandon indiscriminate evaluation systems that rate all teachers “satisfactory” or better. But it will take time to develop richer, more sophisticated measures of effectiveness. Until then, we need to use the best data available right now—research-based measures like experience, licensure scores, and subject-matter knowledge—to analyze teacher assignment patterns and act on them.

There are a lot of things we need to do to get on a path toward reaching the president’s goal of having the world’s highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. Among them, though, none is more important than improving teacher quality and ensuring that the students most dependent on strong teachers get their fair share of them.

The question isn't whether we can do this. We know it's possible from recent efforts in a number of equity-minded districts. But the politics underneath teacher quality and equity issues are difficult, and 2010 is an election year. The implications of that are clear: If we are to truly do what's necessary to provide all students with the kind of powerful teaching they need and deserve, Democrats and Republicans will have to stand together on this important issue—even if they can’t stand together on anything else.

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Sadly, the number one education priority for Congress and the Administration this year won't be what works, such as the proliferation of teacher performance pay programs like that which Florida would implement with its potential R2TT funding (but which the unions oppose). Nor will the number one priority be the proliferation of more great charter schools, which, contrary to what Steve Peha believes, are actually dramatically better than conventional public schools. Such options continue to demonstrate their power to reach the most needy and bring their educational learning to new heights, as CERs latest Annual Survey of America's Charter Schools will soon demonstrate (look for it it next week!). The number one priority also won't – but should be – the creation of new incentives for states to create programs such as the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, so that the program may continue to save not just a few lives in the District, but tens of thousands more in cities such as Detroit, Buffalo, Atlanta and Chicago, where no shortage of action and reform is needed to stem the tide of unbelievably bad education and its tragic consequences.

No, Washington's number one priority will not likely not be focused on what it should -- incentives for greater options, not just with R2TT money, but with ALL federal funds following only reforms that truly have the potential to revamp the way we do public education.

To be sure, there will be a lot of puffy pats on the back for a job well done with R2TT as states report in with alleged progress in legislation aimed at doing just that (but those will too often only be words on paper).

The good news is that this somewhat depressing tome doesn't really have any impact on the extraordinary people in our communities, state capitols and schools who ignore Washington, do their work and fight to bring about precisely the kinds of reforms that seem to be getting lip service today at the national level. I'm really excited about the potential for 36 gubernatorial races around the country to transform schools - with only a little help from their friends in Washington, and hopefully no more harm.

If Congress can simply stick to improving upon NCLB so real consequences in states are enforced, that would be awesome. Let the state leaders do what they need to, and build upon support from parents, not special interest groups, so as not to be compromised by politics.

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The Administration will most likely push for ESEA reauthorization in 2010, but it may be better to wait on reauthorization for a couple of reasons:

1. Full Congressional Agenda: Congress already has a full agenda with contentious issues that include healthcare reform, financial regulatory reform, and energy/cap-and-trade. The healthcare debate only served to widen partisan divisions which will make it even more difficult to pull together a bipartisan Congressional ESEA coalition in 2010.
   
2. RttT and I3 Implementation: The Administration has said that RttT themes are their blueprint for ESEA reauthorization. As such, it is crucial that the implementation of these programs is done well at the state level in order to build momentum for ESEA reforms. RttT is an important - and complex - program with numerous implementation challenges, not the least of which is dealing with some of the tricky LEA MOU issues which may only surface after the grants are announced.
   
3. SAFRA: Congress and the Administration are still trying to pass SAFRA which has proven more difficult then I think the Administration expected. There needs to be thoughtful debate about this bill, not only because it fundamentally restructures all of Federal student lending, but the policies also have implications for the still relatively frozen credit markets that the Federal Reserve and Treasury are trying to thaw. If the bill is signed, there are again significant implementation challenges with the Department's financial aid systems as well as with universities to make sure there is no disruption in student loans.
   
4. Pressure for a Third Stimulus: The Administration and Congress are facing growing pressure to pass a third stimulus for a number of reasons: 36 states already report significant FY 2010 budget gaps and 23 states are projecting a $69 billion budget gap for FY 2012 - despite the State Stabilization Funds. Nearly 10.7 million (23%), of all residential homes are "underwater" which continue to have ripple effects across the economy. And today's job report was much worse than expected with unemployment higher than what the Administration projected when selling the stimulus package. ARRA was suppose to help but the majority of programs were focused more on advancing policy agendas in education, health, and energy rather than stimulating economic activity. That's why we see a Race to the Top application that drives great education reforms, but doesn't contain a single selection criteria related to job creation. Great education policy, but bad economic policy. As a result, job creation and spurring economic growth will continue to bump out education in terms of legislative attention and priorities.
   
5. Elections: There will be an unusual political dynamic in 2010 with more than 36 governor races and Congressional midterm elections for 36 of the 100 Senate seats and all 435 House seats. Congressional and White House leadership may want to wait until after the elections to take up ESEA. A 2010 reauthorization ESEA debate could elevate it as an issue for the 36 gubernatorial races, which may not be helpful in terms of building consensus and momentum for key reforms since they would be debated in a heated political race.

All of that to say, my sense is that 2010 should be about RttT and I3 implementation to build the momentum and consensus needed for a strong, bipartisan ESEA reauthorization in 2011.

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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes clear indications of the administration’s priorities. The prospect of improving teacher effectiveness, improving data systems, implementing common standards and focusing on struggling schools is indeed promising and exciting. However, as we look to 2010, my hope is that Congress and the administration will be mindful that only deliberate, thoughtful implementation over the long haul will yield positive results for our young people. In order for programs to be implemented in a strong and effective manner, it will require more than just guidance from the Department. There must be quality professional development, technical assistance and a vast array of supports that can and should be provided through public-private partnerships.

The funding cliff” is very real for many states and communities. They are acutely aware that the recent influx of funding is temporary and limited. Although many states may apply for Race to the Top dollars, only a few will receive awards. Thus, Congress and the administration must articulate a clear vision for education in which the Recovery Act, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and other pieces of legislation are merely tactics to reach an overall goal of ensuring that more young people have the rigorous academic knowledge and skills they need to succeed.

Dramatically improving education will take a re-imagination how, when and where young people learn, integrating a variety of learning approaches and places and intentional collaboration at the local, state and national levels. The implementation of the Recovery Act programs as well as the reauthorization of ESEA offer a tremendous opportunity to think differently about education and the unique and essential roles that we all can play. This is an opportunity we cannot allow to pass by us.

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2010 promises to be extraordinary for a host of reasons. Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is predicted to be on the fast-track. And the Department of Education will be rolling out Race to the Top, the Investing in Innovation Fund, and School Improvement Grants.

Against that backdrop, the top priority this year must be transforming our system of public education. The status quo, which allows millions of students to drop out before they finish high school, is unacceptable. Fortunately, I believe Congress and the Obama Administration understand this. It’s really all about collaboration and partnership. After 20-plus years of watching trial reforms here and there, the one thing that I believe is absolutely necessary is partnership – among political leaders, the funding authorities, school employees and their unions, and the community and parents.

The defining moment for education policy in 2010 will be the shared belief by all stakeholders that now is the time to dramatically improve public schools by focusing on the right priorities and funding our schools appropriately, guided by the shared vision that schools should be about what is best for students and what can be done to help each student reach his or her potential.

There are many issues in play this year, but education is something that families across the country discuss regularly. Voters care immensely about the quality of their public schools. And education is critical to the economic recovery and stability of this country. If we want different results, we must invest in education from preschool through adult education and nurture lifelong learning. Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman nailed it in an October 2009 column: “If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be ‘education.’”

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All the buzz made me pull out the copy of Checker Finn's National Affairs piece that I had in my "holiday reading" pile. The holidays are over but somehow not all the reading got done...

So I read it and I think it makes a key point. We need to work on a new way of framing education reform.

For 2010, I hope Congress and the President and the USDOE do what Vander Ark and Kress and other suggest: focus on driving innovation in teaching quality, standards, assessments and turnaround strategies, among other areas. No need to reauthorize ESEA until we get some momentum behind RTTT.

At the same time, I think we ought to be talking about the questions that Finn poses. How do we think about a new way forward? Three specific questions are top of mind for me:

1. Who should be responsible for what in our education system?
2. To what degree do we want "one best system" vs. 'let a thousand flowers bloom" Most of the countries that score higher on international tests mostly go for the first (I think) but we might be better off going for the second. What, in practice, should that look like?
3. How do we make improved education a higher priority in our families and culture?

In 2010, education will fight for attention on Capitol Hill alongside healthcare, the economy and probably national security – not to mention the inevitable election-year partisan rancor. But it’s impossible to separate education reform from other issues – especially the economy. Congress needs to be reminded – and often – of education’s direct connection to the nation’s long-term economic health and other issues.

As part of education-as-a-job-creator debate, let’s place greater focus on increasing the nation’s high school graduation rate (which hovers around 70 percent), improving technical training and improving two- and four-year college completion – to agree with Dean Garfield – particularly in the STEM fields, but also in other creative and innovative industries. Playing a key role in that process will be teachers whose skills are aligned the need of today’s unique, 21st-century learners.

We ought to be talking about ESEA reauthorization, Race to the Top and education-as-a-job creator in the same breath.

Our current recession is sometimes compared to the 1982-83 recession (the unemployment rates were both at 10 percent), but near the end of that recession, leaders realized that certain industries and jobs were not coming back. The best opportunities to get and create jobs were those with education and training beyond high school. So there was a flurry of state education reforms from about 1984 to 1987.

Today, years of data are available to us to help us better prioritize needs at the student, classroom, school, and district levels. And we can use targeted data to reveal gaps between a well- articulated vision and current reality.

Finally, we can’t hear the word, “collaboration,” enough in 2010. Let’s tirelessly promote public and private partnerships to better prepare students and encourage the right innovations to expedite progress. As schools aim to literally reinvent themselves they cannot do it alone. The more permeable they make their “four walls” and create meaningful, collaborative partnerships for learning, the better their chances become for successfully meeting the enormous expectations we place upon them.

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There are any number of worthwhile education programs and initiatives that deserve to be authorized and funded by Congress and launched by the president in the coming year. But as important as they are, individual programs passed by today’s Congress and president can be discontinued by the next Congress and president unless those programs are rooted in a nationwide base of support for the broad national aspiration that the programs represent.

For a little more than the past half-century, since the end of World War II, America’s baseline aspiration for education has been high school graduation. And with good reason. As long as manufacturing remained the core of the American economy, a high school diploma and a good work ethic were sufficient foundation for a middle class standard of living.

Those days are gone now. Today, America’s strength in the world economy is based not so much on the strength of its workers’ arms and backs as on the strengths of their minds: what they know, what they understand, their ability to innovate, and their ability to learn new skills and new disciplines as the world changes around them. This intellectual agility — the ability to thrive in and lead the new global knowledge economy — derives from new knowledge and new learning gained from the postsecondary experience. Employers know it. So do economists and policy makers. And so do our competitors in the global economy.

Now we have to make sure that all Americans know it, believe it and act on it. In other words, we need to raise the national aspiration from finishing high school to finishing a post-secondary educational experience—getting a certificate or degree from a community or four-year college. We may not be able, especially in the near term, to guarantee a post-secondary credential to everyone. But we can aim to make that the generally recognized standard—just as the high school diploma has been the standard for so long.

Raising the country’s educational aspiration from high school to college will require strong statements by prominent people—statements like the president’s commitment to the joint session of congress to regain for the U.S, world leadership in the share of our citizens with post-secondary degrees. It will also require translating our beliefs into meaningful action at the local, state and national levels.

Raising our educational aspiration won’t be inexpensive. Raising aspirations seldom comes cheap. Can we afford what it will cost us to live up to the kind of aspiration I am talking about?

I would ask rather: Can we afford not to? If our ability to compete economically is based on the quality of our workers’ minds—which is another way of saying the quality of their education—can we afford to be a country that rations high-quality education only to those who can afford to pay for it? Can the U.S., as the world’s oldest and largest democracy, as a nation that faces complex and daunting challenges at home and abroad, afford a citizenry unequipped to understand those challenges and weigh competing options?

A little more than fifty years ago, the Soviet Union’s launch of its Sputnik satellite served dramatic notice on the United States of the potential consequences of neglecting science education. All of a sudden, the country understood that it had an important national stake in the quality of the education its children were receiving. Less than a year later, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, increasing funding for college education six-fold in seven years.

Today, we need to re-create that shared national sense of the importance of education beyond high school. And we shouldn’t wait for another Sputnik to light a fire under us.

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The Atlantic just came out with an interesting and insightful article about teachers that dissects new teacher quality data from Teach for America, link here

As one of the four key areas of reform required by the RttT competition, boosting teacher effectiveness will be a big part of the education discussion in 2010.

It’s true that Race to the Top dominated the agenda in 2009, and I predict it will continue to do so in 2010. States are competing for a piece of this $4 billion pie, which means major change is coming to our educational system whether Congress acts or not. We need to watch closely as the competition unfolds, the applications are judged, the grants are awarded, and the new programs are implemented. I disagree with how these funds were handed to the Secretary, but he now holds the checkbook of blank checks, and Congress cannot take them back. Looking to the future, we must focus on keeping RttT accountable to parents, teachers, and taxpayers.

No one knows how or whether education reform legislation will come together in 2010, but I am hopeful that any proposal will be developed carefully, thoughtfully, and inclusively. I have met with Secretary Duncan on several occasions, and I take him at his word that he hopes to pursue bipartisan reforms that put students first. We may not agree on the best approach, but I’m pleased we’re working toward the same goal.

The President and Secretary Duncan like to talk about innovation bubbling from the ground up. Perhaps the best education resolution for 2010 would be to allow that innovation to happen. Let teachers teach. Let principals and superintendents reward success and respond to weaknesses. Let parents have a voice in their children’s education. Stop thinking we inside the beltway know what’s best. If we all agree the parents and educators on the front lines are best equipped to assess and address our children’s needs, perhaps we should take a closer look at the 100+ federally prescribed parameters in RttT.

Protecting our nation and rebuilding our economy will consume much of the attention in Washington this year, but education reform need not be put on hold until Congress clears its plate. Education reform can and should continue to be driven by local leaders, with or without “help” from Washington.

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Though I foresee no "big" action in 2010, I'm unusually optimisitc! Here are my predictions for 2010:

1. The crowded agenda plus partisan division will likely cause there to be no major legislative action on education in 2010. That means almost certainly no re-authorization of ESEA until 2011 - at the earliest.

2. We will, however, see a lot of important activity around the implementation of rttt. Though I continue to have concerns around some of the details, I am mostly optimistic that this program will push education reform forward in a constructive and positive manner.

3. Foundations, various public and private organizations, several states and districts, and many educators will continue to pioneer new solutions to problems that stall improvement in student achievement. There is extremely important work underway all across the land in improving standards, assessments, data systems, and the tools that will help teachers be more effective in the classroom. Further, there is steady growth in solid research that will make those tools even more helpful.

4. There is a very significant emerging consensus in our goals, i.e., that we must succeed at bringing virtually all young Americans to a postsecondary credential that will give them hope and opportunity in life. This clear statement about the purpose of our enterprise will drive better and more concrete thinking about p-16 organization, timely diagnosis and assessment, and more goal-oriented intervention and accountability.

5. If we work cooperatively and productively in these areas in 2010 and we get a bit more of the much-promised-but-rarely-delivered bipartisanship in DC, we might be ready for solid federal policy improvements in 2011.

Happy New Year!

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Steve Peha's comment is brilliant and insightful ): and, if you'd like to read the whole thing, have a look at www.nationalaffairs.com. Moreover, I don't see much chance of bi-partisan agrement on anything important in the education sphere in 2010--along with the acidic legacy of health care on the Hill, it's an election year, after all--and it would be big mistake to embark on major new education initiatives with another 60-40 vote in the Senate. Digesting RTT and "common core" standards and such, and working quietly behind the scenes to see if there's any future prospect of agreement on ESEA/NCLB, strikes me as all we should expect. Truth to tell, getting the economy and the terrorism stuff right is even HIGHER priority for the new year.

Dean Garfield, president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council, submitted the following:

With the winter break behind us, over 50 million people—nearly one quarter of our nation’s population—will be streaming back onto campuses across the country. Even putting aside the sheer number of students attending school, the training of the next generation of leaders should be cause for excitement about America’s future. Unfortunately, based on today’s realities these students are more likely to want to play a scientist on TV rather than actually become one.

Clearly, there is a pressing need to inspire our nation’s youth to develop the important science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills they must have to become tomorrow’s scientific problem solvers. According to NSF, 80% of the jobs created in the next decade will require some level of math and science kills. Despite improvements in test scores, U.S. 12th graders continue to perform below the average for 21 countries in mathematics and science. The U.S. ranked 24 out of 29 industrialized nations in an international standardized test of mathematics skills and knowledge.

Without immediate action in 2010—to close this education gap—another generation of students will be ill prepared to tackle the challenges facing America including energy efficiency, cybersecurity, and global competitiveness.

We need to start with the basic building blocks: put talented, inspired, and educated math and science teachers in the classroom. With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Congress now needs to focus on improving teacher training as well as instituting a host of accountability measures. American students are capable of improving their math and science skills, but it will take a corresponding improvement in the quality of their instruction. Currently, more than 20 percent of students in math and more than 60 percent of students in chemistry and physics are being taught by teachers without expert knowledge in these fields.

No Child Left Behind adequately highlighted the need to close achievement gaps among all of American students. Now, with the reauthorization of ESEA, Congress needs to help ensure that every student has a chance at receiving a quality STEM education so that they are equipped to full participate in the 21st century global economy. In November, the White House’s launched a national education initiative to strengthen America’s economic competitiveness through leadership in STEM education. This is a beginning step in a promising direction.

Although there may be more “high-profile” issues crowding the legislative agenda, none is as important as ensuring the economic viability and quality of life for the next generation of Americans. Therefore, I remain optimistic that STEM education will be a cornerstone of the 2010 education policy agenda.

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Since nothing we’re doing right now in Washington is likely to make a significant and positive impact on our schools, it’s unlikely that anything we do this year will be more effective – or ineffective.

I have to admit that I was deeply affected by the prescience of Chester Finn’s recent article “The End of the Education Debate”. Here’s the lead:

“The education reform debate as we have known it for a generation is creaking to a halt. No new way of thinking has emerged to displace those that have preoccupied reformers for a quarter-century – but the defining ideas of our current wave of reform (standards, testing, and choice), and the conceptual framework built around them, are clearly outliving their usefulness.”

Boy, I wish I’d said that!

So, in response to the excellent question we have before us this week, I would answer very simply as follows: It doesn’t matter at all what the #1 education priority is this year.

However, with near-100% certainty, I can tell you what vitally important things will NOT be priorities:

1. IMPROVEMENTS IN TEACHERS & TEACHING. I have seen no federal attempt to improve the quality of teaching or teachers. The “Highly-Qualified Teacher” component of NCLB was a strange idea especially when you think that the folks who advanced it would probably be the first to conclude that sending teachers back to college has little positive effect on their abilities. There will also be no solid research coming from our government about effective teaching methods. This is especially sad, it seems to me, since the folks at The Institute of Education Sciences could probably figure out some great ways to teach if that’s what anybody thought they should put their brilliant minds to.

2. IMPROVEMENTS IN PRINCIPALS & SCHOOL LEADERSHIP. I haven’t seen anything at the federal level that would help principals. And yet, this relatively small group of 100,000 men and women might actually comprise the optimal point of leverage in our system for reform. For RttT’s historic mother lode of $4.35 billion, we could spend over $40,000 per principal. I suggest this not as a policy but as a measure of how poorly RttT will be spent relative to our needs – and how little money, on a per principal basis, we have spent since reform began relative to many other things that we all know are less important than having highly effective people running our schools.

I know that RttT grants have components for teachers and principals, and that these components will be rated relatively highly in application scoring. But the bits and pieces of dollars and cents that go toward what will likely end up as dozens of thrown-together-just-to-get-the-money initiatives across the country probably won’t tell us much about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to helping principals lead and teachers teach. If the complexity of the application process is any indication, RttT will eventually be known not as “Race to the Top” but as “Race to the Tape” – red tape, that is. I’m sure, as Mr. Vander Ark has pointed out on several occasions, that some programs in some states will show glimmers of success. But my hunch is that these glimmers will be faint indeed, and that our new “stars” won’t burn bright enough, long enough for us to capture their energy and amplify it on a national scale.

3. CHARTER SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT. Charter schools will, of course, be front and center all year long. But charter school improvement will be trampled as enthusiasts stampede to open new schools in every strip mall and boys club they can find. As every well-informed person has already commented, of the 5000 charter schools we have now, there are perhaps only 500 or so that are significantly better than their public school counterparts. Relative to the excitement about charter cap removals in RttT-loving states, replicating these successes will be low on the list. In any case, when the dust settles, I believe we will find that the secret to a great charter school is a much longer school day and school year, along with additional funding from philanthropists and corporations. If, after twenty years, what the “charter experiment” tells us is that the keys to improving student achievement are more time and more money, I don’t think we will have learned anything we didn’t already know.

4. IMPROVEMENTS IN TESTING AND DATA INTEGRITY. Even our Secretary of Education has remarked many times that our tests are inadequate and that the language of the current ESEA encourages states to lower their standards over time. Appropriately, he calls this process, “the race to the bottom”. Mr. Duncan has the issue pegged. But fixing it doesn’t seem to be at the top of his agenda. I find that strange. Finally, someone in Washington has identified the fundamental problem with the fundamental element of reform, and yet he doesn’t seem to want to do much about it. I give the Secretary credit for telling it like it is. But I’m baffled as to why he hasn’t spoken about making like it should be. Perhaps, as reauthorization gets closer, he will.

I would urge all of us to take our cue from Mr. Finn’s article, cut our losses on this round of reform, and begin again in earnest – and without partisan bickering and ideological pap – to reframe reform with a responsible emphasis on teaching quality, school leadership, reliable academic measurement, and the replication of successful models. That’s only four things. And, frankly, I haven’t found anyone in the United States who disagrees with any of them. Maybe if we started from a place of common ground, we could move forward with a measure of common sense.

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Overhauling No Child Left Behind should be priority No. 1. Given the damage done to educational quality and equity and widespread revulsion to NCLB, the federal government must enact fundamental changes. Remember House Education Committee Chairman George Miller’s quote, that NCLB "may be the most tainted brand in America"? The problem is not the name; it is the law's content and implementation that underlies its utter failure to deliver on the promise of its name. Unfortunately, too much of the "Race to the Top" program carries forward and intensifies NCLB's flaws.

Reauthorization—already more than three years overdue--won’t be easy. Congress is divided on many issues. If Education Secretary Arne Duncan recognizes the need to overhaul testing, “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) and sanctions while maintaining disaggregated data and establishing clear guidelines to prevent schools, districts and states from ignoring underserved populations, he might put together a bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress.

President Obama provided a sound outline of some of the changes that need to be made. Campaigning in 2008 at a Colorado school, Obama said, "We must fix the failures of No Child Left Behind. We must provide the funding we were promised, give our states the resources they need and finally meet our commitment to special education. We also need to realize that we can meet high standards without forcing teachers and students to spend most of the year preparing for a single, high-stakes test.”

The farther from the beltway and closer to America’s classrooms you get, the more agreement there is about what should go into an NCLB reauthorization. Priorities identified by the Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB have been endorsed by 151 national education, civil rights, religious, disability, parent, civic, and labor organizations. It has been supplemented by Empowering Schools and Improving Learning and reports from the Forum on Educational Accountability, which FairTest chairs.

The Joint Statement says NCLB’s emphasis must change from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to holding states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement. Among the priorities for change are these:

• Overhaul assessment systems to reduce standardized testing; support multiple indicators of student learning, including state and local assessments; incorporate performance assessments; and utilize growth models.

• Replace arbitrary proficiency targets with goals based on rates of success actually achieved by effective public schools.

• Focus on improvement, not punishment; eliminate sanctions that do not have a record of success and allow improvement efforts time to succeed.

• Support high-quality professional development and other actions necessary for schools to ensure strong learning outcomes for all students.

• Fully fund Title I and supply the additional resources needed to ensure all schools can develop the capacity to serve their children well.

See more detailed proposals at the Forum for Educational Accountability, http://www.edaccountability.org/.

Taken together, these and related changes would overhaul assessment, accountability and improvement in ways that build educator competence and systematically improve school outcomes. By paying attention to inputs, instructional processes, outcomes and improvement, the federal government can promote a comprehensive and helpful approach to school reform to replace the discredited and damaging NCLB.

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President Obama’s Administration inherited underfunded programs, many of which would be politically difficult to eliminate. Take for example the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and its encroachment costs on all school districts across this country. In California, most of the special education encroachment on our general fund would be relieved, leaving us additional dollars to fund locally prioritized programs. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its funding leaves districts and schools far short of the goal of providing an adequate education for those children and families the law seeks to support.

Underfunded programs and one time grant funds like Race to the Top (RTTT) contribute to the negative impression that the public receives via the media. It is time to stop the hype, make a commitment to the importance of public education in this country, and allocate resources for our schools and districts to succeed in accomplishing our goals. Any substitution of rhetoric for funding is not in this nation’s best interests.

Most school districts around the nation are suffering from severe budget cuts. Only the economic stimulus funds are enabling many schools to retain teachers. When the stimulus money runs out, schools will be in desperate financial condition, teachers will be laid off, class sizes will soar, essential programs will be harmed. The most important thing that Congress can do in 2010 is to sustain its commitment to equal educational opportunity, assuring that every district has the financial ability to maintain educational services, especially to the nation's neediest children. The Obama administration's Race to the Top is worse than a distraction; it is bribing states to adopt false priorities, even as essential educational services are in jeopardy. The basic philosophy of American education has long been equality of educational opportunity, not a "race" to see which state can close the most schools and raise test scores of basic skills the fastest. These may be the values of the marketplace, but they are not, never have been, and should not be the values of American education.

For more than thirty years, federal education efforts have been focused on inputs; going forward Congress and the Administration must shift more of their focus to outcomes.

Thirty years of input strategies have created an assortment of worthy but disconnected federal programs to address at-risk students, special education, bilingual education, homeless education, career education, school nutrition, and drug-free schools, to name but a few. At the school level, each of these programs has its own silo of funding, regulations, and staff poorly connected to each other and to the core life of the school.

We know that strong schools work holistically, with students and adults working together toward well-defined and common goals. Yet the federal government's input strategy has worked against this notion. Instead, the federal government should:

• identify key metrics for school outcomes,
• empower states, school districts and schools to achieve those outcomes,
• convert existing federal programs into block grants, and
• distribute funds based on results.

Graduation from high school, growth to standard and college matriculation ought to top the list of desired school outcomes. These outcomes should be the focus of Washington's attention, rather than a growing list of federal programs.

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The first priority of the Obama Administration and the Congress should be to enact a thoughtful reauthorization of ESEA. Parents, students, and the K-12 education community need clarity on the rules that will applied going forward. The No Child Left Behind Act deserves great credit for focusing attention on the need to close the achievement gap and for advancing education reforms to help all students reach at least grade-level proficiency in reading and math. Now is the time to update ESEA and improve and build upon the positive features of NCLB - more transparency, increased accountability at all levels of the school system, and expanded choice for children and parents.

A good place to start are the assurances contained in ARRA and in the excellent features of the Race to the Top competition. Reauthorization should focus on internationally benchmarked standards and assessments; holding all schools accountable while focusing on ending dropout factories; measuring and rewarding teacher and principal success; fostering a client-centered approach by districts and schools; leveraging data systems to inform instruction, improvement, and intervention; investing in school improvement and encouraging technology and other innovations to improve student achievement; and establishing a dedicated strategy and funding stream to improve STEM education.

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Congress should take advantage of the tremendous reform momentum that RttT has created by waiting, watching, and learning. When they do take up reauthorization, they should incorporate the RttT framework and many of its competitive aspects.

Second, congress should note the tremendous growth of online learning inside and outside of traditional schools and the important role that the private sector plays in supporting them.

The combination of the two is the beginning of an innovation agenda that values measurement, effectiveness, and choice.