AEI Releases Education Agenda for the States Brief

In an effort to help state lawmakers across the nation, the American Enterprise Institute put together a briefing that lists a number of do’s and don’ts for reform in K-12 education, higher education, and early childhood education.

The briefing, titled An Education Agenda For the States, begins with Director of Education Policy Studies at AEI, Frederick M. Hess, said that in general, it matters more how a reform is executed rather than whether or not it is attempted.  He goes on to clarify that this means education reforms should be left up to individual states rather than carried out by the federal government, as it is often difficult for federal officials to produce the results that will most help students.“The US Constitution leaves education to the states for a reason: states are close enough to their communities and have suffi- cient control over schools and colleges that they can promote reforms in a manner that is actually likely to deliver.”

The briefing begins by discussing the importance of early childhood education, which is the foundation for learning and brain development.  According to researchers from Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, “Early experiences determine whether a child’s developing brain architecture provides a strong or weak foundation for all future learning, behavior, and health.”

While a number of issues, including poverty, neglect and maltreatment, have been shown to have a negative effect on a child’s ability to learn, the authors contend that research has shown that high-quality care for at-risk infants, toddlers and preschools can help these children to overcome such disadvantages and rise above the negative consequences associated with them.

As such, the authors suggest that reforms look to expand beyond an increase to pre-kindergarten programs, arguing that pre-k can sometimes be too late for disadvantaged children, and that early childhood expansion should begin at the infant stage.  Because learning begins at birth, brain development at that time becomes crucial.The authors suggest creating initiatives that can test what works while at the same time serving children well, as the authors stress that how a program is designed is just as important as it existing at all.  However, they continue to stress that new programs should not built up too quickly because it creates programs that are less-effective.

The authors continue by discussing the K-12 system in the US, which they say creates opportunity within each state.  In order to create a high-quality education system, they suggest that each state complete a comprehensive review, and that regulations should not micromanage schools.  They go on to say that instead of using standardized tests and teacher evaluation systems, states include a variety of tools that allow for flexibility.

The briefing concludes with a discussion of higher education, in which authors discuss the portability of transfer credits, suggesting that state lawmakers allow credits to transfer between state colleges and universities in an effort to shorten the amount of time spent working toward a degree, and therefore decrease the amount of money they spend on tuition.AEI warns not to simply spend additional public dollars, but instead to find a way to put the correct amount of funding into each institution to help them to better serve their students.

What Makes MA Different From Other States On Education?

Student achievement in Massachusetts handily demonstrates why treating the US as one undifferentiated mass when it comes to education policy may be wrong-headed. According to the latest data, if MA were treated as a separate country, it would have the second-highest levels of academic attainment in the world.

The state defies trends when it comes to science and mathematics. According to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, it ranked behind only Singapore in 4th-grade science and lagging only Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan in the same subject at the 8th grade level.

This puts the state a full 4 places ahead of United States as a whole, according to Kenneth Chang of The New York Times.

TIMMS might not provide a complete picture of student achievement, but the test offers an interesting insight into what happens when a state gets serious about improving its science and math education. Nearly 20 years ago, lawmakers, along with education advocates and experts, set this as a goal, developed a plan and – most importantly – believed in it enough to stick with it through early years of disappointment.while Massachusetts has a richer and better-educated population than most states, it is not uniformly wealthy. The gains reflected improvement across the state, including poorer districts.“I think we are a proof point of what’s possible,” said Mitchell D. Chester, the state education commissioner.

The goal was encapsulated in the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993, a joint effort between the Democratic state legislature and Republican governor William F. Weld. The law attacked the problem of education on three fronts: allocating funding, adopting objective academic benchmarks and – a full decade before it become popular – rolling out a set of standardized exams all students had to pass before they could graduate high school. In this regard, the state seemed foretell the education reform movement that was to upend American education only a few years later. However, there were some parts of the movement that MA rejected outright – specifically, school choice.

Also noteworthy was what the reforms did not include. Parents were not offered vouchers for private schools. The state did not close poorly performing schools, eliminate tenure for teachers or add merit pay. The reforms did allow for some charter schools, but not many.then the state, by and large, stayed the course.the new achievement test, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS for short), was given to 10th graders for the first time in 1998. (The graduation requirement of obtaining an acceptable score on the 10th-grade MCAS did not take effect until 2003.)

Six GOP Presidential Hopefuls Explain Their Education Platforms

As the 2016 Presidential election season continues to develop, Republican presidential candidates are talking more about their stances on education.

Jeb Bush, at a panel discussion sponsored by the American Federation for Children, a group that advocates school vouchers, and The 74, an education news website launched by former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, said the kids who are left behind tend to be young people who live in poverty, mostly African-American and Hispanic kids. When they fail, he said, we blame it on the “social circumstances of their lives.” Bush also stated that he supports annual standardized tests for public school students just as his brother President George W. Bush did.

The New York Times’ Motoko Rich writes that Bush, a former governor of Florida, used one of his brother’s signature phrases when he said, “And that is what a former president called the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations,’ and we should reject that out of hand.”gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said he did not support the federal government overseeing public schools.“The federal government doesn’t have a very good track record of holding anybody accountable,” he said. “My solution is, I would like to take the money and the power from Washington in education and send it back to the states.”

By saying this, he added, he would be going against some in his own party.

Republicans in the race for president have been divided on the subject of education, and the panel was a testimony to that fact as participants tried to explain how little they would have the federal government involved in public schools; that they were on the side of high standards for the country’s schoolchildren; and that some were backing away from the Common Core, the educational guidelines that have become extremely controversial among teachers, parents, and conservatives.both Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are critical of teachers unions. And for years, Republicans have wanted the federal government to get out of the education business, even as far as abolishing the federal Education Department. But President G. W. Bush’s education law, No Child Left Behind, greatly expanded the role of the federal government by requiring annual standardized tests and ordering interventions for schools that were judged to be failing.

The summit on education took place at a Londonderry, NH high school and was moderated by CNN anchor-turned education reformer Campbell Brown. The American Federation for Children and Brown are backers of expanding access to charter schools and overhauling teacher tenure laws that they say make it too hard to fire a bad teacher.

Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich were the only backers of Common Core in the group. Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, says she does not support the Common Core, however, five years ago she praised President Obama for initiating the “internationally benchmarked standards.”

Obama’s Race to the Top called for states to use higher quality, more stringent academic standards, which did not necessarily have to be the Common Core, in exchange for federal dollars. Most states did choose to add Common Core, according to Stephanie Condon of CBS News.bush and Fiorina endorsed school vouchers to push competition and innovation in the nation’s school systems. Fiorina touted Nevada’s new law that permits parents to open a K-12 education accounts which would allow their children to take their public funding to whichever school they and their parents choose. The plan is strongly opposed by Democrats and several education organizations, as opponents say this will leave struggling and low-income students in lower-funded schools.

Caitlin Emma of Politico writes that Louisiana Gov. Jindal was behind the Common Core at the start, but is now suing the federal government over the standards. Gov. Chris Christie agreed to the Common Core in 2010, but now denounces the curriculum. The GOP candidates speak often of restoring local control, but Brown asked whether education could be improved if there is no federal role.