photo by stockvault
Should the Title I funds your school district receives be contingent on your state adopting college-ready math and reading standards? That’s one proposal President Obama announced at a recent National Governors Association conference, and it’s the subject of a revealing discussion in this week’s National Journal.
Obama’s proposal would be a shift from the current policy of basing Title I money solely on the number of poor children in a district. But historically, it makes sense, writes Cheryl L. Sattler, a senior partner at Ethica, LLC: “Truth is, the feds have been linking money to state standards for years, in response to low or even nonexistent standards for poor minority students.”
True. But is this the right thing to do with Title I? Phil Quon, superintendent of the Cupertino Union School District in California, doesn’t think so: “Let’s commit to the targeted student population that Title I was created to serve. And while we’re at it, let’s also commit to fully funding all federal education mandates, in particular, IDEA. It just seems like another ‘great idea’ which diverts our attention away from the real issues of fully funding past, present, and future federally mandated programs.”
Novel idea? Let’s travel farther into the trenches via the Public School Insights blog and hear from a middle school principal in Delaware, who heads a school with a free-and-reduced-lunch population of 71 percent and is trying to make Adequate Yearly Progress.
What about those common core standards that the NGA and Chief State School Officers are creating? A good thing? The Fordham Foundation’s Chester Finn is skeptical. (It’s from late February but still timely considering the news this week.)
Want more? For background and analysis of state efforts to improve standards for college and career readiness, see the Center for Public Education’s EDifier blog, which links to a new report on the subject from Achieve, Inc.
Finally, it’s here where we sometimes introduce a lighter diversion from Michael Smith, author of the always-entertaining Principal’s Page. But this time, in addition to be witty, Smith’s call for training teachers more like we do plumbers makes a lot of sense.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
