Education Committee - National Conference of State ...

[Pages:1]Education Committee

August 30, 2013

Education Federal Update: Recess Wrap Up

Congress won't return to D.C. until after Labor Day, but even during the dog days of August, there's been activity on education issues.

No Child Left Behind Waiver Announcements

Following the announcement of waivers from provisions of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law to a group of eight California districts on August 6, the U.S. Department of Education also announced waivers to Maine (on August 12) and Pennsylvania (on August 20). The department has now approved waiver requests from 41 states and the District of Columbia. It continues to monitor the progress of states already granted waivers. This month, three states received warning letters from the department about the status of their waivers. Kansas, Oregon and Washington are experiencing problems and delays with tying student achievement to teacher and principal evaluations. The waivers these three states received in 2012 can only be extended for another year if they can create rules for teacher and principal evaluations that the federal department finds acceptable.

President Obama's College Affordability Plan

Congress may have acted on federal student loan interest rates, but that didn't put an end to the discussion of federal higher education policy. On August 22, President Obama released a plan calling for eventually linking federal financial aid to tuition, graduation rates

and graduates' debt and earnings, as well as colleges' track records on enrolling low-income students. The administration intends to rate colleges before the 2015 school year and then win congressional approval for basing financial aid to students attending colleges partly on those rankings. The plan mentions two ideas to streamline postsecondary education: competency-based degrees, in which college credits are based not on the hours students spend in classrooms, but on how much they can show they know, and online education through massive open online courses (MOOCs), which are mostly free. It also emphasizes three-year degree programs and dual enrollment programs which allow high school students to earn college credits. This is a more ambitious agenda than the plan the president outlined in his 2012 State of the Union address and if enacted would represent a significant change in the federal financial aid systems created in the 1965 Higher Education Act. Tying participation in federal financial aid programs to measures like debt and earnings is something the administration previously tried to do with regulations that ended up being challenged in court.

Did you miss NCSL's 2013 Legislative Summit in Atlanta earlier this month? Do you need to track down presentations, handouts, or videos from sessions that sparked your interest? View the Summit resource page on NCSL's website.

For more information on federal education issues, please contact Lee Posey (lee.posey@) or call NCSL's Washington Office at (202) 624-5400.

| Washington, D.C. 202.624.5400

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download