On Wednesday, April 30, 2008, the White House convened a summit on inner-city children and faith-based schools to highlight the need to preserve the critically important educational alternatives for underserved students attending chronically underperforming schools. President Bush announced the summit in his 2008 State of the Union as an opportunity to help increase awareness of the challenges faced by low-income students in the inner cities and address the role of nonpublic schools, including faith-based schools, in meeting the needs of low-income, inner-city students.
The event brought together educators, policymakers and community leaders to develop local strategies to keep the doors of inner-city faith-based schools open to America's disadvantaged students. Several key facts were highlighted:
Nonpublic schools, including faith-based schools, have helped educate generations of low-income students, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate, due mainly to financial reasons. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, from 2000 to 2006, nearly 1,200 inner-city faith-based schools closed, displacing 425,000 students. This is especially troubling for minority students.
Since 1970, the minority population at Catholic schools, for example, has increased by 250 percent, and the non-Catholic population in those schools has increased by more than 500 percent.
To continue the promise of a quality education for every student, leaders, policymakers, parents, educators and administrators must pursue innovative solutions to improve public education and keep high-performing faith-based schools open as valuable education alternatives.
Among the events held during the day was a lunch plenary session on education options and America's cities, moderated by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, and a panel on public policy options, moderated by Deputy Secretary Ray Simon.
To read President Bush's remarks, visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/04/20080424-2.html.
To read and download the corresponding fact sheets from the summit, visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/education/whschoolsummit/index.html.
On Tuesday, April 29, 2008, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, joined by U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, marked the 25th anniversary of A Nation at Risk by discussing global competitiveness and the importance of math and science at the National Academies' convocation, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm Two Years Later: Accelerating Progress Toward a Brighter Economic Future," in Washington, D.C.
In her remarks, the secretary lauded the gains made by the No Child Left Behind Act—such as improved accountability and the use of disaggregated data to close the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students—and acknowledged the hard work of the National Math Panel in producing its comprehensive report on math education.
Thanks to No Child Left Behind, we are now holding schools accountable for the achievement of every single child, beginning in elementary school. Just as you use data to guide improvement in business, science, and medicine, we're now beginning to use it to improve education and to close the untenable achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students.
With regard to the National Math Panel's report, she stated:
Recently, I was proud to receive the final report of the National Math Panel, which the president created by executive order as part of his American Competitiveness Initiative. The panel included some of the finest minds in our nation, who spent more than two years at work. They reviewed more than 16,000 research publications on what students must learn, by when, to develop solid math skills. The next step is to make sure that teachers have access to this information—the research that helps them work more effectively.
Secretary Spellings also urged Congress to fund the America COMPETES Act to fund programs such as Math Now to help elementary and middle-school students acquire early math skills, Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate (AP/IB), and the Adjunct Teacher Corps to encourage math and science professionals to serve as high school teachers.
To read the Secretary's full remarks, visit: http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2008/04/04292008a.html.
On Tuesday, April 22, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced proposed new regulations to strengthen and clarify No Child Left Behind (NCLB) during a press conference held at the Detroit Economic Club in Detroit. The proposed regulations focus on improved accountability and transparency, uniform and disaggregated graduation rates, and improved parental notification for supplemental educational services and public school choice.
With regard to improved accountability and transparency, the proposed regulations would outline the criteria that states must meet to incorporate individual student progress into the state's definition of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Also proposed is the strengthening of restructuring interventions to make them more rigorous and to include the reasons for the school being in restructuring.
On the subject of proposed regulations for uniform and disaggregated graduation rates, Secretary Spellings announced that the U.S. Department of Education would build on the work of the National Governor's Association to establish a uniform graduate rate that shows how many incoming freshman in a given high school graduate within four years. All states would use the same formula to calculate how many students graduate from high school on time and how many drop out. The data would then be made public so that educators and parents can compare how students of every race, background and income level are performing:
Over their lifetimes, dropouts from the class of 2007 alone will cost our nation more than 300 billion dollars in lost wages, lost taxes and lost productivity. Increasing graduation rates by just five percent, for male students alone, would save us nearly eight billion dollars each year in crime-related costs.
On the topic of school choice, Spellings is proposing rules to ensure parents are notified in a clear and timely way about their public school choice and supplemental educational services (SES) options. The proposed regulations will ensure that states make more information available to the public about what tutoring providers are available, how these providers are approved and monitored, and most importantly, how effective they are in helping students improve:
Research has shown that effective tutoring programs can reduce the achievement gap by 10 to 15 percent. The problem is, these options will not make a difference if parents don't know they're available. I hope these proposed regulations will assist parents in getting the extra help their children may need to succeed.
The regulations proposed by the secretary are published online in the April 22 Federal Register for public comment. Hard copies of the Federal Register will be available Wednesday, April 23.
For more information on how the proposed regulations will strengthen NCLB, to read Secretary Spellings' full remarks and corresponding documents pertaining to the announcement, or to view the Federal Register notice, visit http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/reg/proposal/