President-Elect Obama's Priorities for Education

NASSP asked the education advisers for the presidential candidates to weigh in on issues that would affect you and your school. Along with the candidates’ positions on each issue, the advisers were asked to submit quotes or links to verbiage that support that position. Barack Obama's education adviser, Linda Darling-Hammond, provided the following verbatim response.

The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) is a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization that does not endorse, support, advocate for, or encourage people to vote for any political candidate or party. The information provided on the president-elect does not reflect the opinion of or endorsement by NASSP.

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

NASSP supports comprehensive reform of NCLB.
NASSP's NCLB Recommendations
Joint Statement on the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

Barack Obama
Senator Obama believes that the goals of NCLB are the right ones - to raise standards and close the achievement gap that exists in too many places for too many children, and to ensure that students have well-qualified teachers. But he believes that the law, as written and implemented, did not provide the necessary supports, funding, and accountability system for accomplishing those goals. Obama understands that NCLB has demoralized educators, broken its promise to our children and must be changed in fundamental ways. www.barackobama.com/issues/education

Improve School Supports: Senator Obama believes that changes in NCLB should support states and local districts in transforming schools using the best available knowledge from research and the practice about school improvement strategies that work. The Senator will bring high quality teachers to classrooms by transforming the teaching profession with strategies for recruiting talent to the profession, improving preparation, retaining new teachers with mentors who provide them with guidance and support, ensuring high-quality professional development, and rewarding expert teachers for taking on mentoring and leadership roles and serving in high-need schools.

Improve Assessments: Senator Obama believes assessments should be improved, and students should not spend the year preparing to fill in bubbles on standardized tests. He will work to create assessment models that provide educators and students with timely feedback about how to improve student learning, that measure readiness for college and success in an information-age workplace; and that indicate whether individual students are making progress toward reaching high standards. This will include funds for states to implement a broader range of assessments that can evaluate higher-order skills, including students’ abilities to use technology, conduct research, engage in scientific investigation, solve problems, present and defend their ideas. These assessments should provide immediate feedback to so that teachers can begin improving student learning right away.

Improve the Accountability System: Barack Obama believes we need an accountability system that supports schools to improve, rather than focuses on punishments. Obama also believes schools should assess all of our children appropriately – including English language learners and special needs students. Such a system should evaluate continuous progress for students and schools all along the learning continuum and should consider measures beyond reading and math tests. It should also create incentives to keep students in school through graduation, by including graduation in an index of measures evaluating school progress..

Quotes:
“I believe the goals of this law were the right ones. Making a promise to educate every child with an excellent teacher is right. Closing the achievement gap that exists in too many cities and rural areas is right. More accountability is right. Higher standards are right. But I’ll tell you what’s wrong with No Child Left Behind. Forcing our teachers, our principals and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong….Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next is wrong.” Thornton, CO 5/28/08

DETERMINING ADEQUATE YEARLY PROGRESS

NASSP supports the following:

Using results of multiple measures of student and school performance, not results of a single test

Allowing special education students until age 21 to be counted as graduates

Waiting until English Language Learners (ELLs) have achieved language proficiency before using test scores.

NASSP's NCLB Recommendations
Joint Statement on the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

Barack Obama

The Senator believes that the accountability system for NCLB needs to include more than a single student test. His proposal for a continuous progress index for measuring student and school progress would allow states to include multiple measures of learning within subject areas and the option of including evidence about subject areas beyond reading and mathematics. It would measure student performance and growth at all points along the learning continuum, not just at the so-called “proficiency bubble,” and it would include evidence of other important school outcomes, including student progress through school to graduation.

Senator Obama is also concerned about the quality of our assessments. If our children are going to be the great thinkers of the 21st Century, we need to measure their abilities to think critically, solve problems, and communicate their ideas. The Senator will support the creation of assessment models that provide educators and students with timely feedback about how to improve student learning, that will measure readiness for college and success in an information-age workplace, and that indicate whether individual students are making progress toward reaching high standards.

“The goal of educational testing should be the same as medical testing - to diagnose a student's needs so you can help address them. Tests should not be designed as punishment for teachers and students, they should be used as tools to help our children grow and compete.” (11/20/07)

“As President, I will work with our nation’s governors and educators to create and use assessments that can improve achievement all across America by including the kinds of research, scientific investigation and problem-solving that our children will need to compete in a 21st Century economy. The test our children take should support learning, not just accounting. If we really want our children to become the great inventors and problems solvers of tomorrow, our schools shouldn’t stifle innovation, they should let it thrive.” Thornton, CO 5/28/08

The Senator’s effort to provide incentives for states to create model assessment programs will include encouragement to develop assessments that will appropriately measure progress for students with disabilities in ways that are compatible with their Individual Education Plans (IEP). He supports public laws requiring free, appropriate education through age 21 for students with special needs, and he acknowledges that some students may take longer than four years to graduate with a regular diploma. He believes that the numbers of such students is reasonably small. While maintaining graduation rate goals for most students, the Senator supports extending the age of special education students with regard to inclusion in AYP calculations, as long as proper safeguards are in place to ensure proper identification of those students with disabilities necessitating such flexibility.

Plan to Empower American’s with Disabilities: http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/DisabilityPlanFactSheet.pdf. 

Senator Obama believes that schools should assess all children appropriately – including English language learners. He also believes that it is important to acquire and use accurate information about each student’s learning each year to support instruction. This means that schools need good instruments to assess students’ growing language proficiency and understanding of subject matter while they are acquiring English language skills. The Senator will support research and development focused on improving these assessment tools, in keeping with professional standards for the assessment of English learners and the valid use of the results of these tests. He will also support improvements in the accountability system for NCLB so that such measures can be appropriately incorporated into measures of student and school progress.

The Senator understands that, by focusing only on the percentage of students who score “proficient” on a single test, the current law does not allow educators to obtain a full understanding of the growth of student learning in a school at all levels along the achievement continuum, and as a result, it can misrepresent the progress of students in schools that have large numbers of ELL students. He believes we need a system that will help teachers and schools learn about academic growth of their students using appropriate measures, rather than focus exclusively on a single academic target to the exclusion of other information about learning gains, making the hard-earned work of those students and those schools seem invisible. By encouraging improved assessment models and improvements in the accountability system, the Senator believes measures of AYP should reflect growth for all students from where they begin in their learning. The Senator’s focus on multiple measures of student and school growth creates a new context that does not penalize schools for having ELL or special needs students. Rather, it makes schools’ efforts to help those students achieve, visible.

FEDERAL EDUCATION FUNDING

NASSP supports increasing federal education funding.
NASSP Board Position Statement on Funding and Support for Secondary Education

Barack Obama
The Senator’s plan for K-12 education and early education will invest an additional 18 billion dollars per year in education. He will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent an increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government.

FUNDING FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

NASSP supports the following

Creating a $100 million dedicated funding stream

Funding professional development for teachers and school leaders to support literacy education.
NASSP Board Position Statement on Highly Effective Principals
NASSP Policy Recommendations for Middle Level Reform 
NASSP and Coalition Letter on the Success in the Middle Act
NCLB Reauthorization Recommendations to Improve Middle Level Education
Presidential Candidate Champions Middle Level Reform

Barack Obama
The Senator has a comprehensive strategy to address the high school drop out rate. His plan includes a focus on middle grades, federal efforts to support redesigned schools that enact new models that personalize instruction and create a more relevant curriculum, and grants to develop evidence based models for improving graduation rates. His commitment to addressing the dropout problem by focusing on prevention at the middle school level is evident in the “Success in the Middle Act” that he introduced in the U.S. Senate. Evidence showing that sixth-grade students who do not attend school regularly, who are subjected to frequent disciplinary actions, or who fail mathematics or English have no more than a 10 percent chance of graduating high school on time and a 20 percent chance of graduating one year late is one impetus for Senator Obama's introduction of the Success in the Middle legislation.

This legislation provides federal support to improve the education of middle students by requiring them to create a detailed plan to improve achievement, to develop and utilize early identification data systems to identify those students most at risk of subsequently dropping out, and to assist school districts in providing targeted interventions to help all middle grades students succeed.

The legislation also invests in proven strategies including professional development and coaching for school leaders focused on diverse learners and developing comprehensive school-wide improvement efforts.

Success in the Middle Act: thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:S.2227
Middle Grades Coalition Support Letter:
www.nmsa.org/portals/0/pdf/advocacy/messages/Middle_Grades_Coalition_Letter.pdf

INTEGRATED LITERACY AND MATHEMATICS INSTRUCTION

NASSP supports the integration of literacy education throughout all subjects and targeted grant funds to assist students struggling to read in grades 4 - 12.
Creating a Culture of Literacy: A Guide for Middle and High School Principals
NASSP Board Position Statement on Adolescent Literacy
Making the Mathematics Curriculum Count: A Guide for Middle and High School Principals
Bush Signs Competitiveness Bill  

Barack Obama
Senator Obama understands that students learn to communicate verbally and reason mathematically within real world contexts and in interdisciplinary settings as well as in lessons focused explicitly on skills within these disciplines. The Senator believes that we will improve literacy and mathematics education by making smart investments in innovative solutions based on a developing deep knowledge of what works. He will support research and dissemination of best practices so that researchers and educators can identify strategies that work, and determine the contexts and conditions that support and inhibit their implementation in the varied educational settings of our country.

As educators identify and study effective approaches to literacy and mathematics education, he will ensure that these strategies and the growing knowledge about their implementation are disseminated and easily accessible to practitioners and the public. He will support our growing knowledge of educational improvement by doubling our investment in educational R &D by the end of his first term in office.

SCHOOL SAFETY ISSUES

NASSP supports amending federal law to ensure that schools have effective student conduct policies Supports ammending federal law to ensure that schools and districts have comprehensive and effective student conduct policies that include clear prohibitions regarding bullying and hassment, including cyber bullying.
Bridging the Gap in Federal Law: Promoting Safe Schools and Improved Student Achievement By Preventing Bullying and Harassment in Our Schools
NASSP Board Position Statement on Safe Schools
NASSP Board Position Statement on Internet Safety
Safe &Orderly Schools

Barack Obama
Senator Obama will promote safe schools by expanding innovative programs that teach students about positive behavior and enable the adults in schools to set the same high standards for behavior as they do for achievement. He has been a leading advocate for this approach, introducing the “Positive Behavior for Effective Schools Act to make it an allowable use for NCLB funds. In schools that follow this approach, the adults act together to set common expectations for behaviors that support learning, and create a proactive system for teaching students how to be responsible and productive members of their learning community. These schools work to stop problem behavior before it starts, using these and other practices.

In addition, the Senator recognizes that discipline and safety are the result of actions taken not only at school, but also at home. He will call on parents, families and schools to work together and take responsibility for instilling in young people our best-shared values like honesty, hard work and preparation for good citizenship. His plan calls for clear and high expectations for behavior and shared values, school-family contracts that lay out expectations for attendance behavior and homework.

“Positive Behavior Support programs have proven successful in Illinois and throughout the country. They teach good behavior and reduce the need for discipline in the classroom, in turn allowing more time for teachers to teach. We must expand these innovative programs to teach our students about positive behavior. Let's give our teachers this additional tool to support their teaching, and let’s give our children the benefit of high expectations and supports for good behavior. These programs would not only strengthen our schools, but would bolster our nation’s competitiveness by providing the best possible learning environments for our next generation of leaders.” 10/2/07 Bill to Improve Student Behavior in Schools: http://obama.senate.gov/press/071002-obama_durbin_ha/.

CHARTER SCHOOLS

NASSP supports public charter schools with the provisions that they be required to follow the same mandates as non-charter public schools, including certification of all professional staff, and that funding for non-charter public schools should not be reduced to either establish or support charter schools.
NASSP Position Statement on Charter Schools

Barack Obama
Senator Obama is committed to innovation within our public school system to meet the challenges of the 21st century, bringing teachers, parents, and administrators together to redesign schools, develop more thoughtful assessments, upgrade curriculum, and design programs that will work with students who are struggling. His plan proposes investments in middle and high school reforms to personalize schools and offer additional supports for students who need them, as well as summer programs for students who will benefit from enrichment and more learning time.

He supports public school choice, including charters that are accountable to the public and ensure equitable access and high quality programs. He would help fund and disseminate successful innovations launched by teachers, administrators, and parents in public school districts.

PRIVATE SCHOOL VOUCHERS

NASSP opposes the use of vouchers in any form (e.g. Education Savings Accounts used for private school tuition) as an acceptable school choice option.
NASSP Board Position Statement on School Vouchers

Barack Obama
Senator Obama believes that parents should have choice within the public school system and has been a consistent and outspoken opponent of vouchers that would drain money from public education. Twice in the Illinois State Senate, Senator Obama voted against bills that would have created tuition tax credits for parents to use for private and parochial schools – legislation that he believed would create “backdoor vouchers.” In a major speech in July he noted, “The ideal of a public education has always been at the heart of the American promise. It’s why we are committed to fixing and improving our public schools, rather than abandoning them and passing out vouchers.”

Senator Obama believes that voucher positions are based on questionable premises and have little evidence of effectiveness. It is unrealistic to expect that vouchers will open the door of the best private schools to children who otherwise don’t have the opportunity. That is why the Senator believes in having high quality free public education that serves every American student. Our innovations in education need to focus on ways to make the whole system better for all students.

“I think that the ultimate result of initiating a voucher program ends up being to, over time, not foster competition, but, in fact, to reduce the options available, particularly for the hardest to reach kids, because a private market system will not ultimately try to reach the toughest to teach kids.” Interview with Jeff Berkowitz 7/24/03 for “Public Affairs”