Article on No Child Left Behind Reauthorization taken from CQ Today Online News

CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS – EDUCATION
Dec. 16, 2011 – 6:14 p.m.

‘No Child’ Rewrite Won’t Happen During 112th Congress, Miller Says

By Lauren Smith, CQ Staff

House Republicans are abandoning bipartisan talks about rewriting the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind, according to the top Democrat on the Education and the Workforce Committee.

“I have communicated to Chairman [John] Kline my disappointment that he has chosen to go the partisan route,” George Miller of California said in a written statement Friday afternoon. “Partisanship means the end to NCLB reform in this Congress.”

“Bipartisanship is the only successful way forward,” Miller continued, underscoring that the Senate has already moved a bipartisan bill out of committee. “The House could do the same if it had the political will to do so.”

Aaron Albright, spokesman for Miller, said Friday, “We’ve been told the majority intends to write a partisan bill without us.”

Kline, R-Minn., would not comment Friday on whether he was walking away from the talks permanently, but he said that negotiators have been unable to move forward.

“My colleagues and I also spent months engaged in bipartisan talks on the way forward for reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” he said through a spokeswoman. “There were several areas where we forged new agreement but others in which we ultimately could not come to a consensus. The urgency to reform the law has not changed.”

The architect of the Senate’s plan, Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa, said in November that it would be difficult to find a path forward for sending the president a bill to overhaul the education law (PL 107-110) without bipartisan legislation from the House.

Kline has taken a piecemeal approach to the issue by creating targeted bills designed to fix specific problems. The committee has produced three bills, but only one garnered bipartisan support. That bill (HR 2218), aimed at expanding charter schools and replicating successful ones, passed the House by a vote of 365-54 on Sept. 13.

The other two bills, which have not yet been brought to the floor, passed the committee on strict party-line votes. One (HR 1891) would eliminate more than half of the programs overseen by the Education Department, and the other (HR 2445) would give states and local school districts nearly 100 percent flexibility in how they use federal dollars.

Committee leaders have yet to introduce bills that would tackle the two most nettlesome parts of No Child Left Behind: the school accountability system and teacher evaluations.

With 11 freshman Republicans — many of whom sympathize with the tea party — on the House committee, Kline could have a difficult time bridging partisan differences.

‘Do the Right Thing for Kids’

The Senate bill faces uncertain prospects if and when it is brought to the floor, as some Republicans who supported it in committee want to see significant changes before they vote for it again. Without a similar bipartisan effort in the House, Harkin and Miller agreed, Congress has little chance of overhauling the law anytime soon.

Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, urged Kline to reconsider on Friday.

“Without a bipartisan bill coming out of the House, I believe it would be difficult to find a path forward that will draw the support we need from both sides of the aisle to be able to send a final bill to the president,” he said. “Given that the HELP Committee was able to come to bipartisan agreement on a strong bill to reauthorize [NCLB], I sincerely hope Chairman Kline will reconsider his decision to not pursue a bipartisan bill.

“There is widespread agreement that No Child Left Behind needs to be fixed for the sake of our nation’s children, and I hope we will not abandon the longstanding tradition of bipartisanship when it comes to the education of our kids,” he said.

The administration echoed Harkin’s sentiments about the parties pursuing a rewrite together.

“Education reform requires all of us — parents, teachers, students and elected officials from both sides of the aisle — to come together and do the right thing for kids,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Friday. “Our children only have one shot at a good education, so it’s disappointing to hear that some members of Congress may let partisan politics stand in the way.”

A version of this article appeared in the Dec. 19, 2011 print issue of CQ Today

Source: CQ Today Online News

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On another blog.... tash.org

Florida TASH Members Hold TASH Night … err … ‘Afternoon’ Out On December 10, a TASH Night (Afternoon) Out was organized by Amy Toson, a graduate student in special education at the University of South Florida, and hosted at the residence of Lise Fox, a Professor and Director of the Florida Center for Inclusive Communities at the University of South Florida, in order to drum-up interest for the Florida TASH Chapter. The event raised $825 on behalf of TASH and was a major success. Attendees had the opportunity to meet and speak with Lou Brown, a TASH founder, on issues of equity, opportunity and inclusion. David Westling, TASH's National Board President, was also at the event. Thank you to all who attended and made a contribution on behalf of TASH. For more information or to ask questions about the Florida TASH Chapter, please email Amy Toson atatoson@usf.edu.

How Bad do I Want it???

This question keeps seeping into my mind and some days I don't have an answer for it.  Those are the days like today when I get a text from a stranger with a picture of my daughter winning her first award for good grades at school- a ceremony I was not at because I am home in front of my computer typing away ANOTHER paper that counts for nothing more than a grade.  It seeps into my mind when I am told by the same daughter on our walk to school that she is acting out because "you never have time to play with me anymore" or when I sit for hours "playing" with my children but can't focus on anything other than the building anxiety of what I am not doing for my PhDness.

But then visions of Burton Blatt's Christmas in Purgatory pass through my mind.  And statistics of homeless, incarcerated and jobless youth with disabilities flash in my mind like lightning bolts.  I picture the kids down the hall, forgotten by all their peers, who do crafts in high school and take separate busses on far away "field trips" to the Y with someone else dressing them, deciding what they will eat and even wiping their "$*&#S" because the teachers and leaders of that school deemed separate as equal.

I picture their moms and dad's trusting a system that separates children based on constructed ability lines and I think to myself, "No, I do not want it that bad, but WE NEED IT THAT BAD!"

And that folks, is why I push forward.  I swallow my perfect mommy syndrome pride and I sacrifice.  My kids sacrifice.  My husband sacrifices and by gosh my wardrobe sacrifices.  But we, the people of the global world, need a voice that amplifies not my own voice, but that of the separated and marginalized voices of our communities.  So I continue......  do you?

Watch this.....

Sir Ken Robinson speaks about standardization and loss of divergent thinking- calling for a change in education paradigms

Feds tweak with education for kids with disabilities....

I'm not sure how this one snuck by me, but the Feds are asking our opinion and I think many of you should share.......

It's looking as though the feds are ready to revamp part of the regulations governing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act- the law that gives states money to educate students with disabilities and also the law that mandates how they should do it via regulations.  Therefore, the "regs" tend to be the most important part of the law, for kids anyway.  I urge you to read on and submit your responses ASAP.  Click the link below for all the details.- Happy politicking :)

News

Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

On September 6, 2011, the Department announced a notice of proposed rulemaking to amend the IDEA Part B regulations. Changes are being proposed to the regulations regarding when a State or local educational agency seeks to use a child's or parent's public benefits or insurance (e.g., Medicaid) to pay for Part B services. Note that this document has been delivered to the Office of the Federal Register but has not yet been scheduled for publication. The official version of this document is the document that is published in the Federal Register. Download as a Word document or as a PDF.

Here is what I've come to know during my 3 + years.....

We know nothing of what we think we know because everything we know is clouded by that which we think we know (that which we hold in our own, biased and bound, hands).

We, I suppose, is human kind.  If that helps clear anything up.  I'm still working with this thought, but it keeps creeping into my subconscious, almost becoming omnipresent.

Let me give you an example....

Last semester I spent an entire course becoming an "expert" on ethnography.  I read every book "I" could find (along with the guidance of my professor of course).  I read Fetterman, Madison, Van Maan, Carspecken, Clifford & Marcus, Foley, and Bernard. I conducted a pilot ethnography, wrote a how-to guide, and gave an expert presentation.  I knew this stuff. I was proud- still am- of myself.  To some degree it was a turning point for me.  I began to visualize myself as a researcher, an ethnographer.  It sat well and "fit".

Not surprisingly I continued my development and enrolled in an ethnography course this semester.  I love it.  I am reading all about ethnography and get to conduct another "mini" version of an ethnography in a local community.  I couldn't ask for anything more.  However, the books I read now are historic and seminal ethnographic pieces conducted in various Urban American Cities throughout the mid 1900's through today, but they NEVER appeared in my "expert" literature from last semester.  They are written by African American Scholars: W.E.B Cu Bois (1899), Drake & Cayton (1945), Langston Gwaltney (1993), and Pattillo-McCoy (1999); and disappointingly no one questioned their omission from my expert products. I was professing expertise without true representation of the whole ethnographic story.  Had I stopped my quest last semester my expertise, while well informed and in good standing with the indicators "we" look for in experts, would have remained skewed and biased.

 How many other things in life have I not allowed the quest for knowledge and full understanding to continue?

What about you?

Get outside of my comfort zone, get outside of my comfort zone, get outside of my comfort zone…..

This is the mantra I have to keep chanting in my head this semester. 

I’ve been working in schools since I crossed over into adulthood.  I’ve taught in “inner city” schools in Chicago and Milwaukee and even suburban schools.  I’m comfortable in schools, as the teacher/mentor to children.  That is my comfort zone.

Through my current and past work with schools I’ve grown to understand that it is so very critical to be connected with the surrounding neighborhoods, even this I embraced…. as the teacher.  I would walk the streets, hold parent-teacher conferences in local family owned restaurants or even bus stops and even join in local community events at every chance I got- but I had an agenda, my own agenda.  I was “the teacher”.

This semester is different though- I keep going to my roots and thinking up a way to be in the schools, in a power position of the teacher or something similar, but I don’t want to do this.  I want to embrace and move past my power position as a white, female teacher/mentor/leader.  

I want to be guided by the community.  I just don’t know how!?!?!?!  

I’m finding myself nervous, unsure and even feeling physiological symptoms of anxiousness.  You know: the butterflies, shortness of breathe, …  

But I’m committed and by gosh I will find a way to get out of my comfort zone and learn from the community- not ask the community to learn from me.