Written by former Senate education staffer and journalist Alexander Russo, This Week in Education covers education news, policymakers, and trends with a distinctly political edge.

September 6, 2007

Spellings Letter; Teacher Quality Draft Later Today

Thanks to the Ed Trust, here's a PDF of the Spellings letter to Miller that she promised yesterday, listing problems she and others have with the M&M discussion draft. Speaking of which, Miller said that Title II and the rest would be posted sometime today, which will help us see whether the teacher quality elements of NCLB are going to be strengthened or -- is such a thing possible? -- weakened. (There's a nod to teacher quality in the form of an attempt to close the equitability loophole in Miller's Title I proposal, according to EdWeek's David Hoff, but if they couldn't do that in 2001 they don't seem likely to take care of it now.)

Weighing Miller's NCLB Proposal

Three different takes on how Cong. Miller's proposal is going over. Compare and contrast:

'No Child' Loopholes Decried Washington Post

Should suburban schools that barely miss federal learning targets be allowed to escape penalties, while inner-city schools that never even hit the dart board are required to give free tutoring and let students transfer to better schools?

Secretary of Education Criticizes Proposal NYT

The education secretary criticized a Congressional proposal to soften provisions of the President’s Bush signature education law.

Spellings Criticizes No Child Proposals AP

The administration and congressional lawmakers agree on one key change. They want schools to measure the performance of individual students over time rather than comparing the scores of students in a certain grade to students in that grade the year before.

New NCLB Bill "Isn't Wonkery," Says Chairman Miller;
Criticisms Are "Hokum"

The public mud-slinging between Spellings and Miller is really heating up. Makes you wonder what they say about each other behind closed doors. And, substantively, it bodes poorly for a strengthening of the current NCLB law.

Responding to Spellings' criticisms read to him by USA Today's Greg Toppo at a conference call with reporters today, Chairman Miller said that what he's trying to do with NCLB isn't just "wonkery" (as Spellings describes it) but rather much-needed changes to an imperfect law. "I know she wants to add confusion and doesn't like the debate," said Miller of Spellings. He also repeatedly mocked the "99.9 percent pure" claim Spellings once made (fire the writer who came up with that one), and called claims that multiple measures would muck up accountability "hokum."

Obviously, Miller's got to do what he's got to do, and -- this sentence is already so vague -- is going to go ahead and do it. But still it's sad to hear him denounce the current NCLB system which he created and defended for so long, now using much the same language as his detractors had (ie, a single test on a single day determining AYP). Such is politics. Somewhere, Joel Packer is smiling.