Is House bill a preview of the 'S' in ESEA?
Blog by Catherine Gewertz/Education Week (Subscription required)
The 'Graduation For All Act' was introduced yesterday in the U.S. House of Representatives. It creates a $2 billion competitive grant program to help districts turn around their lowest-performing high schools and their feeder middle schools. (The bill is not the House version of the Senate's Graduation Promise Act, which was introduced in September. One source tells me the House is still expected to introduce its own version of that bill soon.) To get the grants, districts have to choose a turnaround strategy, or "model of success," identified in the bill (which are pretty much the four turnaround models touted by Ed Secretary Arne Duncan), and build a team to pull off the turnaround. They also have to implement data-based early warning systems to catch students before they fall seriously off-track, and they have to make sure "teacher talent" is distributed fairly to their schools. (more...)