THE EDUCATION FRONT

Education Week reports that the Obama administration's Race to the Top program may shape the rewriting of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. If that's the case, we could do much worse.

Race to the Top is based on several important principles: creating high standards, turning around failing schools, rewarding states for providing better teachers, offering students alternatives and using data to inform teachers about how to help students progress. There are other parts to this effort, but these are the big ideas.

I like these principles because they build upon the ones captured in No Child Left Behind. In their own ways, Race to the Top and No Child are about ratcheting up school standards, focusing on student progress and giving students the means to get ahead. They are part of the revolution that began in schools a couple of decades ago, when reformers started putting a new focus on school results. To back away from that revolution would shortchange students, in my estimation.

To be sure, there are differences between Race to the Top and No Child. For example, the Obama administration wants to create national standards for schools, while the Bush administration left it up to states to create their standards. While that's a substantial point of divergence, both efforts are still on the same side of the fence when it comes to embracing demanding standards. And that separates them from those in both parties who complain about too much emphasis on meeting benchmarks.

The rewriting of the ESEA will be a big education issue this year, if Congress gets going. I hope the Obama administration pushes for these goals to shape the act. There are plenty of folks on Capitol Hill and in the education world who would like to go in a different direction, so the White House is going to have to stand its ground.

Kay Hutchison finally got into education issues in her gubernatorial campaign last week, and, for the most part, I thought she laid out some good ideas. Rick Perry has been all over her for copying some of his ideas. But, you know, I don't care where ideas come from as long as they can benefit kids in school.

Here are a couple of areas where I think her proposals stand out:

First, she wants to focus on middle schoolers with strategies that will keep them from dropping out once they get to high school. I doubt anyone's been elected governor because of their middle school policies, but she is really on the mark here. As many educators know, kids tend to make progress in elementary school, then fall off once they hit middle school. In some cases, they fall so far behind, they give up and dropout by the time they reach ninth or tenth grade.

What Hutchison proposes is an "accelerated middle school initiative." Here's what her press release says:

"Hutchison will propose an Accelerated Middle Schools initiative to help middle school students who are behind grade level "catch up" by covering core academic curriculum at an accelerated pace. With individualized e-Learning, and a focus on core subjects necessary for graduation, students one or two years behind grade level will be able to catch up to their peers and stay on track."

Now, I don't exactly what all that means. But she is at least throwing out some serious ideas, which is not something you can say about her so far in this campaign.

Second, I like her emphasis on using data to identify struggling learners. We've talked here many times about the importance of using information so teachers, parents and principals can intervene to keep a student from going off track. (Or to supplement their progress.)

Hutchison gets into the data revolution in her middle school proposal when she talks about

"The latest technology permits much more effective longitudinal tracking of individual students, making it easier to identify those most at risk of dropping out of school. Most future dropouts can be identified years beforehand on the basis of statistical factors. We will explore different predictive tools and design intervention strategies so we start to help at-risk students as soon as they start to fall behind - or even before."

Again, there's more to spell out. But this is part of the conversation we need. I think she has run a very uninspiring campaign, but she's put some serious education ideas out there.

Thoughts about these and other of her proposals, which you can read here.

We've talked here regularly about how data on students and their classrooms is part of the next big revolution in education. Well, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation has weighed in once again with serious bucks to push along this revolution. (I don't think we should cede support for education to the private sector, but, wow, where would we be without the backing of the Dells and Gateses in public education?)

Specifically, the foundation announced yesterday that it is investing $10 million in a pilot program that will help Texas streamline the collection of data about students and their schools and put it in the same format for all schools to eventually use. Data is often hard to file, says Dell spokesperson Lori Fey, so this will make the collection easier and put it all on a desktop for teachers and principals to access.

There are privacy issues to work out, but I hope they don't get in the way of making detailed data available to educators and parents so they can have instant access to how someone's child is doing in the classroom. The DMN's Tawnell Hobbs and I did a telephone briefing with Fey and others last week, and they walked us through the type of information a school could have on a hypothetical student.

As a parent of schoolchildren, I would love to have access to the level of detail they are proposing, including reporting on the rigor of courses and how much growth students are showing in them. It would help my wife and I know so much more what's going on in the classroom, and what we could do to help our children get past tough spots.

To be sure, big districts like Dallas' and Houston's already have some advanced data systems. But this grant could help take them and the rest of the state to the next level. According to Fey, TEA will get the grant money and districts around the state could use the program for free. In smaller districts, including rural ones, this could be a godsend.

It isn't all up to Dell to get this done. The state needs to cough up $50-$60 million to spread this new data system around the state.

Unfortunately, the Legislature hasn't been too keen on investing in data systems, perhaps because the concept is so foreign-sounding. In this year's session, they ponied up about $4 million to help develop data systems for our schools.

I'm glad for that, but Texas needs to step up. New York and Chicago, for example, are further along in using data about individual students to help teachers.

Now, some stimulus money could be available through the Education Department. I have very serious reservations about the $100 billion the Obama administration is devoting to schools as a way to stimulate the economy. I don't see how that directly stimulates an economy that was brought to it knees by a housing crisis. But the money's there, so I'm glad to hear the Texas Education Agency is going after some of it to develop our data systems.

The mission here is figuring out ways to use technologies to get information to teachers, principals and, let's hope, parents. They then can turn around and use it to take children up to the next level of learning.

Whether it's in math, social studies, English or whatever, following a student's progress could really benefit them. What's so wrong with that?