CEC Policy Insider

Race to the Top District Application Deadline Postponed Due to Hurricane Sandy

The Race to the Top District Application deadline, previously October 30, 2012, has been postponed due to Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged the east coast on Monday and Tuesday of this week. No new deadline has been announced. The U.S. Department of Education will update their website once the new deadline is determined.

Please stay tuned to the U.S. Department of Ed and to the CEC Policy Insider blog for more information. CEC’s thoughts are with those affected by the storm.  

Webinar on CEC’s New Position on Special Education Teacher Evaluation; Free for CEC Members

The CEC Policy and Advocacy Team will be hosting CEC’s Position on Special Education Teacher Evaluation: Making Evaluation Meaningful, a webinar which will discuss the new position and how you can use it in your district or state. Please join us on Dec. 12, 2012 from 4:00 – 5:00pm (EDT) or 7:00-8:00pm (EDT), for an hour-long discussion of CEC's new position.

The webinar will include discussion of the underlying questions about fair and meaningful evaluation of special education teachers and how CEC considered such issues in identifying key components of meaningful teacher evaluation systems,  such as:

• How can evaluation systems appropriately account for the different, and often complex, roles that special education teachers fulfill?
• How can they fairly measure the performance of students with disabilities or accurately attribute any of their academic gains or losses to an individual special education teacher?
• How can they incorporate measures of a teacher's skill in improving important areas beyond academics, like functional and behavioral needs?
• How can evaluations meaningfully inform a special education teacher's practice and enhance his/her career?

This position is the result of careful deliberation and extensive consultation with CEC members and other experts in the field. It was adopted by the CEC Board of Directors in October 2012.

This webinar is free for CEC members. For more information and to register for the webinar, please click here. 

Comment Today: OSEP Releases Question 5 in the Results Drive Accountability Process!

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs has released question 5 in their series of comment solicitations as part of the results driven accountability reform currently underway for IDEA. You can read and respond to Question 5 by clicking here. The Results Driven Accountability process seeks to emphasize educational results and functional outcomes for students with disabilities and creating a system that maximizes resources available. OSEP posts each question on the Department of Education blog to solicit comments from stakeholders and special educators.

You can find links to CEC’s Policy Insider coverage of the previous questions by clicking here. CEC also provided input on the reform process by attending several meetings over the summer in Washington, D.C. and will continue to participate in and monitor the process.

You can read the responses to Question 1, Question 2, Question 3, and Question 4 on the Department of Education’s blog. Question 5 requests comments on OSEP’s Results Drive Accountability Core Principles. Read and respond by clicking here. 

Obama Campaign Releases “Closing Argument”; Plan Outlines Vision for Second Term

This week, the Obama campaign unveiled a report dubbed the President’s ‘closing argument’, officially titled A New Economic Patriotism: A Plan for Jobs & Middle-Class Security. 

The Plan sets forth President Obama’s vision for his second term in areas of national interest, including education, much of which echoes the initiatives already pursued during his first term to reach his goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.  The plan also calls to prevent layoffs of teachers.

Specifically, Obama says his second term will:

• Cut tuition growth in half over the next ten years;
• Recruiting and preparing 100,000 math and science teachers;
• Strengthening public schools in every community;
• Training 2 million workers for good jobs that actually exist through partnerships between businesses and community colleges.

Of specific interest to PI readers, the President explains how he would strengthen schools by calling for expanding Race to the Top to school districts (which is already underway, see here), relief from NCLB mandates in exchange for adopting reforms (which is also already underway, see here), and preventing layoffs of teachers.

Click here to read the full Plan.

Presidential Candidates Invoke Education into Foreign Policy Debate

It was an education policy wonk’s dream: presidential candidates fighting to talk about education during a presidential debate!

That’s exactly what happened during Tuesday’s foreign policy debate between President Obama and Governor Romney.  Education, a topic that is rarely mentioned during such public debates, was discussed numerous times during the last debate between the two candidates.

While the candidates spent most of the 90 minutes focused on issues abroad, significant references were made to domestic policy, including education.  The most heated exchange came when moderator Bob Schaffer asked both candidates to explain how they see our role in the world. Below are excerpts from both candidate’s answers which referred to education:

• Gov. Romney: “You can’t have kids coming out of college, half of whom can’t find a job today, or a job that’s commensurate with their college degree. We have to get our economy going.”
  
  “…we’re going to have to have training programs that work for our workers and schools that finally put the parents and the teachers and the kids first, and the teachers union’s going to have to go behind.”

• Obama: “… let’s take an example that we know is going to make a difference 21st century, and that’s our education policy. We didn’t have a lot of chance to talk about this in the last debate. You know, under my leadership, what we’ve done is reformed education, working with governors, 46 states. We’ve seen progress and gains in schools that were having a terrible time, and they’re starting to finally make progress. And what I now want to do is to hire more teachers, especially in math and science, because we know that we’ve fallen behind when it comes to math and science. And those teachers can make a difference.
  
  Now, Governor Romney, when you were asked by teachers whether or not this would help the economy grow, you said, this isn’t going to help the economy grow. When you were asked about reduced class sizes, you said class sizes don’t make a difference. But I tell you, if you talk to teachers, they will tell you it does make a difference.
  
  And if we’ve got math teachers who are able to provide the kind of support that they need for our kids, that’s what’s going to determine whether or not the new businesses are created here. Companies are going to locate here depending on whether we’ve got the most highly skilled workforce. And the kinds of budget proposals that you’ve put forward — when we don’t ask either you or me to pay a dime more in terms of reducing the deficit, but instead we slash support for education, that’s undermining our long-term competitiveness. That is not good for America’s position in the world. And the world notices.”

• Gov. Romney: “…about education, because I’m — I’m so proud of the state that I had the chance to be governor of. We have, every two years, tests that look at how well our kids are doing. Fourth graders and eighth graders are tested in English and math. While I was governor, I was proud that our fourth graders came out number one of all 50 states in English and then also in math, and our eighth graders number one in English and also in math — first time one state had been number one in all four measures. How did we do that?
  
  Well, Republicans and Democrats came together on a bipartisan basis to put in place education that focused on having great teachers in the classroom.”

• President Obama: “But that was 10 years before you took office.”  “… And then you cut education spending when you came into office.”

• Gov. Romney: “The first — the first — and we kept our schools number one in the nation. They’re still number one today. And the principles that we’ve put in place — we also gave kids not just a graduation exam that — that determined whether they were up to the skills needed to — to be able to compete, but also, if they graduated in the top quarter of their class, they got a four-year tuition-free ride at any Massachusetts public institution of higher learning.”

• President Obama: “That happened — that happened before you came into office.”

• Gov. Romney: “That was actually mine, actually, Mr. President. You got that fact wrong.”

Okay, maybe the candidates bickered more than debated education policy.  But let’s be honest, it felt good to have education injected into the foreign policy debate!

Want more information about the education policy platforms of the two candidates and political parties?  Check out CEC’s I Educate, I Participate: 2012 Presidential Election Voter Education Guide.which has the candidate’s positions on education, voter registration information, a polling place locator, classroom resources and more!