Articles in the Federal Programs category

Is the U.S. Government hypocritical when it comes to cheese?

The New York Times had a fascinating article recently on how the U.S. Government is spending millions to promote cheese through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dairy Management marketing campaign.

Cheese has become one of the largest sources of saturated fat in our diets.

Ironically, this is happening at the same time that the Department of Agriculture has created anti-obesity campaigns, the U.S. Congress is considering a bill to make the National School Lunch Program healthier, and First Lady Michelle Obama is working on tackling obesity through her Let’s Move initiative (which NSBA supports). Obama has even cited cheeseburgers and macaroni and cheese as culprits for childhood obesity.

Alexis Rice|November 9th, 2010|Categories: Educational Legislation, Federal Programs, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Wellness|

Educators urged to do their part to stop bullying

As BoardBuzz noted earlier, last month was National Bullying Prevention Month. The U.S. Department of Education sent out a letter recently to thousands of school districts, urging educators to be sure they are complying with their responsibilities to prevent bullying, as stated in federal laws.

The major points of this letter are highlighted in a  New York Times article which quotes the  letter: “Harassing conduct may take many forms…” including  ”…the use of cell phones or the Internet” and “it may be physically threatening, harmful, or humiliating.”  The article also points out that any form of harassment based on race, color, national origin, sex, or disability violates federal civil rights laws.

Cyberbullying and school safety are topics that will be covered in-depth at the 2011 NSBA Annual Conference. Sessions include a full-day pre-conference workshop on Friday, April 8 entitled “Integrating Cyberbullying Prevention within a Comprehensive All-Hazards School Crisis Plan,” as well as several district workshops presenting best practices on these topics.

Barbara Moody|November 5th, 2010|Categories: Federal Programs, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, School Law, Student Achievement|

Is education reform just hype?

BoardBuzz is a big fan of Valerie Strauss. She writes The Washington Post blog, The Answer Sheet. She recently highlighted a great commentary piece by Anthony Cody, who was a science teacher in Oakland for 18 years and founder of the website Teachers Lead. His commentary originally appeared on the Teacher Magazine’s website.

We couldn’t agree more with Cody assessment, which notes:

Education reformers have invested billions of dollars in numerous ventures that promote their vision, and we’ll see them in the next few weeks. The release of the documentary Waiting for Superman, NBC’s Education Nation specials and teacher town hall, and D.C. Schools Superintendent Michelle Rhee and Bill Gates on The Oprah Winfrey Show — all will create a crescendo of voices, images and the master narrative that has been carefully developed over the past decade.


That narrative goes like this: Our schools are failing. The only way to save them is to expand charters, remove due process for teachers so they can be fired, and further raise the stakes on standardized test scores.


But ideologically driven projects like this have a way of over reaching, over-promising, and overestimating their strength. And the moment that they reach their apex is actually the moment they begin to collapse. Education reform has finally jumped the shark.


The signs of its imminent collapse are all around us.


They begin with the fundamental problem the education reform movement faces. We are more than 10 years into a massive reform effort revolving around high stakes attached to standardized tests, and there is no significant growth in actual learning — even in terms of the test scores most valued by proponents.

So what do you think? Is education reform bringing positive change to education?

Alexis Rice|September 22nd, 2010|Categories: Federal Programs, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools|

Obama promotes STEM

BoardBuzz likes that President Barack Obama is focusing a lot on education this week.

On Tuesday, Obama gave his annual back to school speech and yesterday, Obama announced the launch of Change the Equation, a business-led effort to dramatically improve education in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), as part of his “Educate to Innovate” campaign.

Check out the video of the launch from CNN:

Alexis Rice|September 17th, 2010|Categories: Announcements, Educational Technology, Federal Programs, Multimedia and Webinars, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement|

Obama goes back to school

In case you missed it on Tuesday, here is the video from President Barack Obama’s back to school speech at Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School in Philadelphia, Pa.:

Alexis Rice|September 15th, 2010|Categories: Federal Programs, High Schools, Multimedia and Webinars, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools|

Addressing school bullying

Erica Jacobs, a columnist for The Washington Examiner, today explored the phenomenon of school bullying following the U.S. Department of Education’s first ever summit to address school bullying.

Jacobs shared her personal experience and noted:

Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan convened America’s first summit on bullying last week, and it’s about time. The goal was to bring together government agencies to both prevent and combat this growing problem. One in three students reports being bullied in middle or high school, and there are increased numbers of cyber bullying incidents. These are not rites of passage or normal adolescent behaviors, according to experts at the summit. They are learned patterns that can be changed.


My school’s bully was named Bradley. Everyone knew his pattern: He picked on students who were shy, overweight, or had a disability. We saw his actions in the schoolyard, yet we didn’t report him to teachers; we thought it was just the way it was. The message from the Department of Education, psychologists, and experts from the Department of Justice is that bullying has been protected for too long; it’s time to educate parents, teachers, and students to recognize when a child is being bullied and stop it before it’s too late.

BoardBuzz agrees that we must address school bullying as a safe school environment is critical in making sure our students succeed academically.

Alexis Rice|August 17th, 2010|Categories: Federal Programs, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, School Security, Student Achievement|

Showdown in Texas

Could Texas’ $830 million share of the Education Jobs Fund that could save more than 14,000 education jobs end up in legal limbo?

It seems that Gov. Rick Perry and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott are threatening to sue the federal government because of requirements to receive the new education funding.

“If anyone wants to play games or mess around, we will simply stop funding them and put that money in states where there’s a real need,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told The Houston Chronicle.  ”We’re not going to have any tolerance for (states) trying to divert money or playing games.”

Duncan continued, “We will be working with every state, including Texas, to make sure the right things happen for children.”

So are we going to see a showdown in Texas?

Alexis Rice|August 16th, 2010|Categories: Educational Legislation, Federal Programs, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Obama’s education policies

Today in The Washington Post, Dana Milbank questions President Barack Obama’s education policies, noting, “Obama has taken the worst aspect of Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law — an obsession with testing — and amplified it. Obama has expanded the importance of standardized testing to determine how much teachers will be paid, which educators will be fired and which schools will be closed — despite evidence that such practices are harmful.”

BoardBuzz believes there needs to be vast improvements to No Child Left Behind including reevaluating the emphasis of standardized testing. We should not assess the quality of a school on a student’s performance on a single assessment; and then mandate a series of overly broad sanctions that are not always targeted to the needs of the students.   To date, the strategies in No Child Left Behind have not yet proven to have a significant impact on improving student or school performance.

Let us know what you think?

Alexis Rice|August 15th, 2010|Categories: Educational Legislation, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Federal Programs, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Are you experienced?

An article in today’s The New York Times should be read by all edu-watchers in America.  It raises the interesting question (our headline) when putting education in the hands of often unknown entities.  With hundreds of millions of dollars on the line in many states across the nation, and an increasing pressure to show results by organizations and companies to raise student achievement, one might think that there would be guarantees when it comes to performance, but many of the organizations getting money to turnaround schools have nothing to do with results.   And in many cases, the school districts impacted by these turnaround groups are in urban areas that can’t afford to lose any more ground.

So will this educational infusion of money be like the carpetbaggers of the south following the Civil War, as Dr. Rudy Crew points out in the article, or like the Homestead Act, which gave land to eastern farmers and freed slaves as they settled the west?  Although the Homestead Act was controversial in ways, it was a government funded program that gave farmers a reason to move west, settle the land, farm it, and in many cases those families are still there today.  Is Race to the Top going to have an impact generations from now?

With many of the entities making big claims, we wonder what the decision makers will be looking for when deciding to pay them.  In some cases, experts have weighed in on what they’ve seen so far is not impressive to them, as many of the organizations and companies don’t have a lot of school experience.  But with the U.S. Department of Education looking for new ideas, it’s hard to judge what is innovative versus inexperienced.  As millions get doled out, it seems that everyone is just chasing the money.  At BoardBuzz, we can’t help but ask, is that what’s best for America’s students?

Kevin Scott|August 9th, 2010|Categories: Federal Programs, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement|

Promoting the benefits of early childhood education

BoardBuzz attended the Early Childhood 2010: Innovation for the Next Generation conference earlier this week, hosted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Education.  The conference marked the first of its kind collaboration between the two federal departments, as they welcomed both state and local partners from a variety of early childhood programs. Over the course of three days, various presentations, meetings, and workshops took place aimed at better integrating efforts on early childhood development between different organizations.  NSBA and the Center for Public Education were both exhibitors.

Coinciding with the start of the conference was Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s announcement of the creation of a new partnership in early childhood education. The new Early Learning Interagency Policy Board, composed of senior staff from the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, hopes to integrate the diverse work of different organizations towards their common goal.

The Board’s goal is to collaboratively work to develop quality indicators for Head Start and other programs, coordinate research, technical assistance, and data collection to help eliminate barriers to collaboration between systems. Duncan, in reference to surmounting these obstacles said, “We have to get the bureaucracy out of the way of creativity.”

BoardBuzz hopes steps like these will be a start of more concerted efforts to promote the benefits of early childhood education.

Michael Long|August 5th, 2010|Categories: Announcements, Center for Public Education, Conferences and Events, Educational Legislation, Federal Programs, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Preschool Education|
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