America’s Future Now

Education Voters President Beth Sullivan is attending the three-day America’s Future Now conference in Washington, DC.  Here’s her report:

This morning, several leaders in education were asked to join Chairman George Miller in a discussion of where we are with federal education policy.  The President of the Alliance for Excellent Education, Governor Bob Wise, started the conversation with a discussion of the urgency of making changes now, so that we do not leave behind yet another class of kids dropping out of high school.  He urged us to support rewriting the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) immediately.  Chairman Miller then discussed the lessons learned from No Child Left Behind and the elements of the new ESEA he sees as most important.

I asked the Chairman about what Education Voters considers to be the most underdeveloped element of the administration’s blueprint for ESEA reform: the section on turnaround schools.  After noting that in his opinion I was correct in my concerns and that he agreed that this is a crucial thing to address, Chairman Miller said that he was recommending some changes to that section.  His changes would specifically focus on:

• increasing community engagement in helping struggling schools succeed
• encouraging more time for students by lengthening the school day and/or year as needed
• providing the teachers in those struggling schools with more support and real professional development.

We know from our membership survey earlier this year that Education Voters’ members have a lot of knowledge, questions, and concerns about the way our country deals with our struggling schools, so it was very encouraging to hear that Chairman Miller shares our concerns and is working to bring a new focus to the issue.