It looks as if Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) will not be taking over the HELP committee. That leaves Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) next in line.

Here's the story from the Washington Post. Harkin will have to give up the chair of the Agriculture Committee to take the post.

Hope Street Group Joins New Coalition to Track, Support ARRA-Funded Education Reform Efforts

Washington DC – April 16, 2009 – The bipartisan public policy organization Hope Street Group announced today it was joining the newly-formed Coalition for Student Achievement in its efforts to track and support education reforms called for in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The Coalition’s first action appears in the form of a letter sent today (.pdf) to Education Secretary Arne Duncan urging his department to provide "stronger, clearer direction to states and local education leaders about how to meet the assurances and demonstrate measurable outcomes."

"We must take advantage of this unique opportunity to change the landscape in public education by holding ourselves accountable for implementing reforms," said Jocelyn Pickford, Hope Street Group Education Director. "The ARRA funding is keeping education on the national radar screen, and groups like the Coalition are rising to the challenge of doing the difficult work to embed reform into funded initiatives."

Hope Street Group Executive Director Monique Nadeau authored the following Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post, in response to a February 3, 2009 column entitled "$100 Billion and No Change Back":

When it comes to education, Richard Cohen's assertion (Feb. 3) that the economic recovery package contains no change is not quite accurate.

    The House bill in particular has strong reform language: requiring states ensure that our neediest students have access to effective teachers; requiring states that receive part of the $79B state fiscal stabilization fund to follow spending guidelines; and providing funding for teacher incentive pay programs, charter school facilities, and improvements in state longitudinal data systems and assessments. Both the House and Senate bills also highlight and reward innovation, and allow the Secretary to reserve funding each year for grants based on success in increasing student achievement.

    The bill also protects innovative programs already underway across the nation. Mr. Cohen rightly points out that the federal government cannot micromanage 50 states and thousands of school districts. What it can do is take steps to accelerate these reforms, and help share what's working.

    Although there are many more problems to tackle, this is a welcome start. The education components of the final recovery package must strike a balance between tackling the short term crisis while addressing the long-term needs. If the proposed reform measures make it into the final package, it will demonstrate that the administration is serious about taking a new approach to one of the toughest problems facing the country.

    Monique Nadeau
    Executive Director
    Hope Street Group

Please join us for Education 2.0: Making Our Children and Our Country More Competitive, a unique evening hosted by Hope Street Group in New York City on February 24th from 6:00pm-8:00pm at The Yale Club.  We will be featuring NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Harlem Education Activities Fund President Dr. Danielle Moss Lee to share their brief remarks about the role that education can play in our economic recovery.

RSVP and purchase your tickets online now.

Following this, attendees will have the opportunity to network with other social entrepreneurs and policy makers or join other education thought leaders in small group discussions to learn about key education reform issues in the following areas:

- Early Childhood Education
- Improving Education through Technology
- 21st Century Standards & Global Competitiveness

In addition, HSG will present attendees with hands-on opportunities nationally and locally, including professional volunteer activities at Hope Street Group and direct service volunteer opportunities at HEAF.

Tickets: A minimum donation of $100 is requested, although Hope Street Group welcomes additional contributions; if you cannot attend and would like to support the event, please consider sponsoring a teacher or HEAF student for the evening.

Space is limited, so please RSVP and purchase your tickets online now  at  or contact Courtney Haynes at Courtney@hopestreetgroup.org by Feb. 10th.

Hope Street Group is a non-partisan organization founded for one reason:  to build the Opportunity Economy – an economy in which anyone who works hard and invests in themselves has the opportunity to succeed, and where our nation prospers as a result. Over the last two years, Hope Street Group has successfully convened leaders from civil society, politics, and business to build broad-based coalitions and bi-partisan consensus around policies that promote an opportunity economy. As a result of these efforts, Hope Street Group offers numerous opportunities for young professionals to play substantive roles in policy discussions and development.

Learn more about Hope Street Group's American Dream Agenda for the next administration, and the education and health care reform proposals that the presidential campaigns incorporated into their platforms.

After a long absence from policy discussions about education, Pre-K schooling is finally taking the limelight, largely thanks to President-Elect Obama's commitment to making early childhood education a central part of his platform. The renewed focus on early childhood education is welcome; Hope Street Group has long advocated Pre-K as a critical investment in a child's life that has economic repercussions later on.  And yet, daunting questions remain. As an article in today's New York Times points out, the current "system" of Pre-K is a patchwork of competing methodologies, privately and publicly funded programs, all of which are administered in a decidely ununiform way.

The two biggest questions likely to dog this policy discussion will have to do with access and quality. On the access side, how do states expand access to early childhood schooling for those who need it most? Should these programs be universal? Should they be targeted only to those who need it most? Should they be mandatory? And on the quality side, what defines a quality Pre-K program? Who sets the standards?  And what should be the role of parents?

Since Pre-K took center stage, there's been a lot of reflection in the media about different states' attempts to invest in early childhood education.  The blog GothamSchools, in a thoughtful analysis of NYC's efforts to expand early childhood education programs, points out that the number of children actually enrolled, while growing, is far fewer than initially anticipated. Meanwhile, states like Mississippi are launching interesting new private sector-led initiatives in an attempt to create quality universal Pre-K programs.

It's clearly an exciting time to be an advocate for Pre-K. Of course, the real work begins now.  With so much at stake, it's important to get our early childhood education policies right.

Over the course of the last few weeks and months, I have admittedly found myself swept up in the excitement and allure of the 2008 Presidential election. Like a moviegoer enraptured by the thrill and fantasy of a Dreamworks feature, I was glued to my television screen during the conventions, a bowl of popcorn in hand, utterly captivated by the script unfolding before me. The vivid rhetoric rolling off the tongues of our national leaders and echoing through the convention hall allowed me to feel for a moment that I was, in fact, watching something of a dream, or something of, perhaps a fantasy. And this, from both Democrats and Republicans.

In the past week, however, as the fireworks and balloons are no longer clouding the air surrounding the presidential platforms, I am beginning to wonder whether I have been duped, whether the Hollywood magic did get me on more time. No, I am not simply trying to allude to Sarah Palin's jab at the Democratic campaign's show-stopping display at Denver's Invesco Field. I am speaking here about a general sense of concern regarding the potential behind each of the candidates' impassioned assertions.

Given my background, it is no wonder that I will continue to wonder whether the candidates' education action plans contain any action at all. In his convention speech, Senator Obama claimed that he will allow our nation to "finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education," and that he "will not settle for an America where some kids don't have that chance." The Democratic nominee for president said he plans to "invest in early childhood education," "recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support," to "ask for higher standards and more accountability," and finally to "keep our promise to every young American - if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education." In his voting record, Senator Obama has certainly shown his willingness to provide fiscal resources for education initiatives, and if this is true with regards to early childhood education, the Chicago leader will help the nation's youth to make major gains.

While Senator Obama is certainly on the right track with his plan to attract more teachers with higher pay, however, he has not pushed the limits and requirements that would tie teacher pay to teacher performance rather than simply using a traditional credential scale. Unlike Washington D.C.'s chancellor, Michelle Rhee, Obama seems unwilling to address one of the biggest flaws in our system: the unnecessary and harmful protections provided by teachers' unions. In essence, it seems as though Senator Obama has committed to putting more money into the school system as it already is, even as recent reports show a call for increased budget allotments to charter schools.

On the other side of the aisle, Republican nominee John McCain has called education the "civil rights issue of this century," stating that competition and choice would be the keys to improvement of our schools. Senator McCain voting on education has been consistent with stance, following the hard line that throwing money into failed systems will only cause more waste, and only in school choice through state-run education will our children succeed. The Republican claims that his plan will do more to shake up education than his opponent's platform, as McCain claims that he intends to get rid of the typical bureaucracy at the helm of education in a system that systematically retains failing teachers in the nation's neediest districts.

Unlike Obama's plan, however, McCain's outline does not call for an increase in federal funding for pre-k education, despite the call from reputable sources documenting the importance of such an endeavor. In fact, proving that he is not looking towards newly expanded programs in early childhood education, at least one writer has discovered that most of ideas have already been passed in the most recent Head Start Act reauthorization.

Ultimately, though the idealist in me would love to trust every word spoken by our candidates, I am not inclined to do so. Even if the intentions are there, neither Senator Obama nor Senator McCain has provided substantive proof for just how their proposals will improve upon education.  Instead, their rhetoric merely reassures the public that both candidates understand the urgency of the issue but that neither of them will act "too rashly" with the future of America. While there does not have to be one right answer for how we change the educational system, the options must at least provide clear and concise direction for actual results. Neither of the candidates has given us such a blue print, causing at least this one voter to feel that in the game of politics, educational reform is simply a pawn and not the game piece at the center of the action. Thus, opportunities for candidate debate and dialogue regarding their projections for their why, when, and how on education have turned in to personal attacks on each candidate. These are clearly missed opportunities for all of us.

As our financial markets continue to fall into disarray, I can only hope that both Senators Obama and McCain will truly get to the root of how we will fix our future through the overhaul of the American educational system, for this truly is our best hope for a prosperous future.

There is little debate among educators, politicians, and taxpayers that widespread systematic reform is needed to revitalize the American education system. For some, the new bright idea in education reform comes in the form of merit or performance compensation systems. A Denver Teacher Pay on Stage examining Denver's experience suggests that the city’s merit-pay systems represents a systematic change in the American education system, but essentially the program is the same ineffective performance pay system that has failed to work for the last century.

The merit pay system is an alternative pay system that aims to reward outstanding performance by teachers and encourage student achievement. Monetary bonuses are given to teachers whose students demonstrate improved standardized test scores, and for teachers who obtain higher secondary education, or work in challenging districts. Although the merit pay system appears at first glance to provide a viable solution, it has historically shown very little statistical evidence supporting significant gains in student achievement. As recent as 2006, a study by The Urban Institute found that most of the eighteen Pennsylvania school districts in their study did not “succeed at implementing lasting, effective, monetary or non monetary incentive plans that had demonstrated [the] ability to improve student learning." The study also found that the program encouraged competition and employee divisiveness and generally lowered morale. The merit pay system leads to competition among teachers for the best and brightest students, leaving the children in most need of dynamic and enthusiastic educators completely to the waist side. One of the most obvious inefficiencies of the merit system is its focus on raising teacher’s compensation rather than raising the level of quality education. Although the merit system aims to drive student achievement through teacher compensation, the system literally discourages teachers to work with learning or emotionally disabled students who are less likely to make significant improvements in test scores. It also may potentially encourage teachers to help students cheat on standardized tests in order to secure a bonus.

The merit systems focus on improving teaching performance is certainly on the right track, however the merit pay system should reward teachers for obtaining higher levels of training and certification in the field they teach with progressive student loan forgiveness and tuition reimbursement programs rather than just salary incentives. Research suggests that high school math and science students learn more from teachers who are certified within their field. Thus, student achievement levels will improve if school districts provide incentives for educators to master their craft. Alarmingly, research also shows that in high-poverty schools students are 77 percent more likely to be assigned to an out of field teacher than in low-poverty schools. These statistics illustrate perfectly how the American educational system continually fails to properly address the actual problems that lead to poor levels of student achievement. The merit pay program is just another example of education policy reform that will never be able to generate significant results because it fails to adequately address the correlation between student performance and subject mastery. Unless American education policy changes to reflect this relationship and work toward providing education based incentive plans for teachers, hundreds of thousands of students will continue to fall through the cracks.