Environmental studies classes are offered in most colleges in a variety of different forms, including the scientific, engineering, political, and economic dimensions of the environment. However, environmental studies are very rarely offered before college, in elementary, middle, or high schools. There’s a growing population that argues that this should not be the case.

Incorporating environmental education into our public school system would provide an important opportunity to educate our population on an issue that’s shrouded in confusing and debated science–at least in the United States where more Americans than ever believe in climate change but 91 percent still don’t view it as a threat. Beyond this, it would help students to understand the fundamental systems of the world around them, including where and how they get clean water, electricity, and food. Environmental education is also often presented as an opportunity to explore alternative teaching methods, including hands-on, experiential forms of learning.

Of course, even as support for this idea grows, there are just as many people who oppose it vehemently, and the issue is handled differently state to state and region to region. Read on to learn about the way environmental education is handled as well as its proven benefits and disadvantages.

Environmental Education: The Door to New Potential Career Paths

Those who oppose environmental education often do so on the grounds that its purpose is simply to indoctrinate a generation with the idea that climate change as a scientific fact. However, the environmental sector is also a multifaceted job market and early exposure to the field can open up new pathways to potential jobs for American students.

While there’s plenty of disagreement on whether climate change is real, most people would likely agree that it’s good that we have a clean and regular water supply. However, most people don’t even know how a watershed (the geographical space that feeds rainwater into an area’s water source) functions, let alone that there are jobs that they could seek to positively impact watershed management. Likewise, environmental jobs include seismologists who predict earthquakes, climatologists who study the weather, agricultural scientists who plan sustainable permacultures to ensure long-lasting food supplies, and urban planners who figure out how different areas can be built to ensure affordability, sustainability, and security against disaster.

“View Across the Garden Bed Area” courtesy of Billie Greenwood via Flickr

While many see environmental studies as a largely humanities-based discipline and to an extent that’s true–there are many careers within environmental policy, business, journalism, etc.–there are also plenty of opportunities for scientific education. Environmental science and engineering are huge fields that could be taught to American students in ways that would align with our increased desire for STEM studies and careers. These are not “hard” sciences such as chemistry, biology, and physics but rather applied sciences, which directly pertain to certain aspects of natural life. Education in these disciplines can lead students to jobs like those listed above, which have a clear and concrete benefit to our society as a whole. Regardless of your position on climate change, the environment around us is a functional system that requires maintenance and oversight from experts, and education in these fields will create a generation of people equipped and motivated to do these jobs.

Alternative Teaching Pathways

One of the central reasons so many people have decided to join the environmental education wave is that it allows for new and alternative teaching methods. Our current lecture-based, rote memorization system of public school education often leaves many students feeling bored or uninterested. Hands-on education has been explored as a way to lift this boredom while still imparting important information to American students. Because environmental education largely ties into the world surrounding us, lessons can be effectively taught in ways that allow students to directly work with nature. Environmental education provides a valuable opportunity to integrate a variety of academic disciplines into this hands-on style of education. This both allows students to process information in new and novel ways and connects their lessons to a real-world context.

How better to understand water quality than to actually go to a water source and do the testing? How better to gain an understanding of geological processes than to use the actual geographical area where you live as an experimental site? One of the most interesting avenues for environmental education is the use of school gardens, a movement that has been steadily growing in popularity. Most American youth (and to a larger extent American adults as well) only connect to their food via a grocery store and have little to no understanding of where and how that food is grown. School gardens bridge this psychological gap both by helping students understand the fundamental processes of agriculture while also providing a source of healthy and nutritious food within American schools, which have had difficulty providing effective diets to combat obesity. This kind of hands-on connection to agriculture and the presence of a local source of food are increasingly important when huge areas of earth known for producing food are experiencing severe water scarcity (in America, see: California).

While this may sound largely like hippie preaching, the numbers also agree with the advantages of experiential learning. Students who take part in hands-on learning often achieve higher overall test scores in other disciplines, including STEM classes, than those who learn through traditional lecture systems. This suggests that the addition of environmental education to a learning curriculum doesn’t take away from important time spent studying other subjects but enhances overall performance by exposing students to novel and exciting learning methods.

Educational Reform Policy

Increasingly, more people are starting to realize these benefits of environmental education and lawmakers have started to respond. This has led many states to begin implementing environmental education requirements into their educational policies. The initial push behind this came from the No Child Left Inside Act. Initially introduced in Congress in 2007, the effort passed in the House in 2008 but was not voted on in the Senate. The bill has been reintroduced in several sessions of Congress but has yet to become a law. The act sought to provide incentives for states to implement environmental education in elementary and secondary public school levels. States that participate would be eligible for grants to upgrade their curriculum, with the only requirements being a strong focus on environmental STEM studies and the use of outdoor field work. In this way, the act supports both the inclusion of environmental based learning and effectively opens the door for new experiential learning methods.

Although the No Child Left Inside Act failed to gain traction in Congress, the final version of the 2015 Every Child Succeeds Act contained some important aspects of the No Child Left Inside Act to encourage states to expand environmental education. The Every Child Succeeds Act was created to reform a Bush Administration law known as No Child Left Behind. It requires each state to make accountability plans for both short and long term goals to improve a series of different indicators of success, including test scores, English proficiency, and indicators the states pick for themselves. Special attention in the act is also given to low-performing schools, which are required to work together with state and district departments to increase test scores and graduation rates.

The Every Child Succeeds Act also amounts to a significant effort to expand states’ use of environmental education. It makes environmental education programs eligible to receive grants from a $1.6 billion fund for well-rounded education programs. It also makes environmental literacy programs eligible for grants from the $1 billion fund for Community Learning Centers. Finally, the law prioritizes outdoors and hands-on field work being incorporated into STEM education, which provides a unique opportunity for environmental education to flourish.

Going Forward

There’s little benefit to adding environmental education to our public schools if it detracts from other subjects that we’ve already agreed are important, and herein lies the challenge of educational reform. Incorporating environmental education into a standard curriculum can be tricky, especially because No Child Left Behind tightened up academic schedules throughout the nations and put an increased emphasis on boosting test scores. In the 15 years since the No Child Left Behind Act, our test scores haven’t seen any real improvement and interest in STEM has steadily dwindled. The Every Child Succeeds Act is a response to this current academic stagnation; a chance to restructure our curricula in order to boost our test scores by diversifying our educational tactics.

It’s important to note that the act does not make environmental education mandatory, and it’s up to each state to decide whether to use the funds made available by the act for that particular purpose. The states that do will have to carefully create Environmental Literacy Plans, the central goal of which is to figure out how to incorporate new forms of environmental information into students’ schedules in a way that does not detract from their other studies and instead enhances their overall performance. This is a very serious challenge, but the result of a successful ELP will be a generation that’s more aware and informed of the world around them. These plans will educate students on the environment’s most important issues and ensure that they are both motivated and equipped to make a positive difference.

Conclusion

The issue of environmental education for many people largely comes down to whether or not you believe it’s relevant for students to spend their time studying and learning about environmental concerns. Many simply don’t see any advantage of adding an entirely new field of learning to the schedules of overloaded students. In a sense, this is an ideological question about whether parents think the environment is of real relevance to their children’s lives, and many, many (millions) of people already have their minds made up on this issue. However, many do see the advantages of environmental education as a tool both to impart new and important information but also to open new doors to careers and improve our education system with novel teaching styles.

As time passes and more concrete results come out of states that have implemented environmental education, it will become possible to see benefits of educational reforms. While some states simply don’t have the right mix of lawmakers to ever approve adding environmental learning to the curriculum, others may shift toward approving it as they see higher test scores and happier students with a greater variety of job options.

Resources

Environmental Science: Environmental Science Careers

Campaign for Environmental Literacy: National Overview: State Level EE Legislation/Policy

Tampa Bay School Gardening Network: Benefits of School Gardening

Julie Ernst & Martha Monroe: The Effects of Environment-Based Education on Students’ Critical Thinking Skills and Disposition towards Critical Thinking

Monmouth University: Public Says Climate Change is Real

National Environmental Education Foundation: Benefits of Environmental Education

National Wildlife Federation: Green STEM: How Environmental Based Education Boosts Student Engagement and Academic Achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

No Child Left Inside Coalition: No Child Left Inside Act

United Nations: Water Scarcity

World Resources Institute: World’s 36 Most Water-Stressed Countries

YouGov: Global Survey: Britain Among Least Concerned in the World About Climate Change

Kyle Downey

Kyle Downey is an Environmental Issues Specialist for Law Street Media. He graduated from Skidmore College with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies. His main passions are environmentalism and social justice. Contact Kyle at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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This holiday season is bringing much more than gifts and cheer for children as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a graduated, more sophisticated, and polished version of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), was passed by the House of Representatives. The much-needed update was passed by a 359-64 majority in the House and will be voted on by the Senate in the coming week. The overwhelming bipartisan support for the bill reinforces the likelihood that it will ultimately be signed into law by President Barack Obama.

The overhaul and revision of NCLB, which resulted in the creation of ESSA, comes as a welcomed and advocated-for change to remove the federal grip over the requirements and implementation of public education and move it toward a state-based ideology that narrows the focus and tailors implementation to resources and needs within a specified state. Additionally, ESSA seeks to evolve past the sole focus on standardized testing and opens up consideration for other factors such as student/teacher engagements, success in advanced coursework, and career readiness. The main goal is a holistic approach to standardize primary education through a variety of measurable and functional factors through a more tailored, state-focused lens.  Read on to learn more about the evolution of measurable standards within primary education, what ESSA holds for future generations, and the potential impact of the pending legislation.

The Evolution of Standardized Primary Education

Education is a cornerstone in a progressive, self-sustaining society. It provides for the social and economic advancement, as well as the stability of people that allows for growth, development, creativity, and forward movement and innovation. Education is the bedrock of a society and its importance has been highlighted throughout the history of the United States in a variety of ways as evidenced by its evolution in law and implementation.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson sought to mend the “achievement gap” in the United States by implementing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA allocated a substantial amount of federal funding into bridging the gap in the educational disparity based on race and poverty–a disparity highlighting that minorities, low-income students, immigrant students, and those from rural/neglected areas were not receiving the same level of quality education and therefore were not achieving at the same levels or percentage rates as students outside of those statistical and categorical confines. While ESEA shifted focus onto a federally controlled education policy and allowed the government involvement in implementation through funding, it also provided “Title I” designation to schools with over 40 percent of students designated low-income through federal standards. Such a designation provided schools, mainly elementary schools, with federal-based funding to make education more accessible to low-income families and to increase resources available to schools. The Act gave young students a pathway out of institutionalized poverty through encouraged and standardized academic advancement, which was monitored through testing benchmarks and requirements.

ESEA underwent several reauthorizations, none more prominent and controversial than the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), which was signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002. NCLB was authored and instituted out of concern that the United States was losing academic advantage on an international scale and applied testing standards and progress tracking to all students, not just the low-income students identified by ESEA. While NCLB sought to bring academic progress and responsibility as applied to all students, it carved out specific standards and a focus on students with special needs, those learning English as a second language, and those below the poverty line, as well as minorities, as these groups of children in primary schools tended to test lower than their classmates. The law provided required benchmarks for academic achievement, testing students from the third grade through high school. It also marked the 2013-2014 school year as the goal year to have all schools testing at a “proficient level,” marked by results and scores defined by each individual state. It is important to note that by the end of the 2015 school year, no school had gotten all 100 percent of its students above the required proficient level. Additionally, teachers were required to have certain qualifications and schools were required to reach specific testing goals and provide yearly progress reports that would subject them to serious sanctions if the goals set were not met.

While NCLB was a positive step and evolution from the outdated versions of ESEA, it was laced with great controversy and consequently, great criticism. One of the major criticisms of NCLB was the heavy focus on standardized testing in math and reading, which ultimately resulted in less investment on subjects such as social studies that were not empirically tested and measured, as well as an increase in cheating in order to meet required results. The desire to increase educational standards ironically did the opposite in order to meet them. The focus on test scores also created an “educational marketplace” out of federal funding, forcing schools to compete in a survival-of-the-fittest atmosphere, rather than a collegiate and collective one. Another criticism of the law was that remedies for the low performing students–free tutoring and the opportunity to transfer to a better performing school–were completely underutilized by the students and facilities they were available to. When given the free choice and the transportation to get a better education, families opted to keep their children in what was familiar, even if what was familiar was not performing at an acceptable level. Finally, NCLB was criticized as being underfunded. Although annual funding for Title I was supposed to rise to $25 billion, it had only reached $14.5 billion by 2015 highlighting the fact that federal funding never reached the lofty goals it had set for the law as well.

In 2011, in recognizing the failure of NCLB, President Obama instituted waivers that allowed states struggling to meet the standards outlined by the law to set their own standards in an effort to adequately prepare students for higher education and the workforce. The need for reform in education policy was crystal clear. It was up to Congress to take action.

Every Student Succeeds Act: What is in Store

Last week, the House of Representatives got the ball rolling in Congress on education policy and the support for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was overwhelming. While the Senate will be voting on the bill within the week, the support strongly suggests that it will be signed into law following the vote.

ESSA aims to address the concerns, criticisms, failures, and restrictions highlighted by NCLB by primarily honing in on a state-centered emphasis, which would allow for more flexibility in the implementation and assessment of academic achievement. Rather than just analyzing test scores and graduation rates, ESSA will take a more holistic approach to assess educational success by looking at additional factors such as “student and teacher engagements, success in advanced coursework, and school climate and safety,” as well as performance on college prep and Advanced Placement (AP) courses, career readiness, and specialized certificates.

However, the shift back to a more state-based system of control and implementation will not be without federal regulation. States will still have to test students and report findings in order to be held accountable for the way the programs are being instituted, absorbed, and utilized, still tracking positive academic achievement benchmarks. ESSA still provides safeguards by integrating the availability of waivers for schools performing below desired levels and grant programs that will offer schools more resources to meet goals if they qualify. The bill initiates additional programs that focus on over-testing research, the importance of effective and quality early childhood education practices, and the equal distribution of funding within districts.

While ESSA is certainly a more polished and advanced version of its predecessor, it is subject to its own criticisms. The main critique this early in its life is the fact that it is silent in terms of upgrading, updating, and elevating the status quo for the profession of teaching. Although authors of the bill did not utilize this opportunity to address the modernization of teaching, qualification requirements, and experience of the individuals working within its confines–teachers, the bill successfully sets out to update a largely outdated system that has failed the children and teachers in the United States.

Conclusion: A Welcomed Change That’s Long Overdue

No Child Left Behind had officially expired in 2007. It is now December 2015. Surprisingly, despite its eight-year expiration, NCLB had maintained its grip on implementation control as no alternative methods and bills had been proposed and implemented with success in Congress. In an effort to circumvent the failing aspects of NCLB and loosen the regulatory grip over state implementation, most states were working under waivers granted by President Obama, providing them with the necessary flexibility to implement more successful educational policy options for their specific circumstances. States have had temporary and remote control over educational policy following NCLB’s expiration.

And while critics are emphatic that ESSA’s authors dropped the ball in addressing a refocused lens on increasing and updating teaching standards as well as standardized education, the bill did take big steps in initiating additional programs to reform education policy, elevated expectations and implementation of a revitalized policy, and works to ensure fair and equally distributed system of federal funding. Additionally, the bill provides the opportunity for volunteer partnerships, but prohibits any state to be influenced, provided incentives, or coerced into accepting and adopting Common Core principles. While criticisms will exist on both political sides, particularly within the idea that the federal government is simply punting the education problem to the states to fix, the overwhelming bipartisan support for the Every Student Succeeds Act shows the importance of quality education in this country for all students alike.

The steps taken to eliminate NCLB and reinvent the bill in a new form is a commendable and welcomed progression in education policy.

Resources

Primary

House of Representatives: Every Student Succeeds Act

107th Congress: No Child Left Behind

Additional

 U.S. News: Leaving Behind No Child Left Behind

LAWS: Elementary and Secondary Education Act

 Education Week: No Child Left Behind: An Overview

National Public Radio (NPR): Former ‘No Child Left Behind’ Advocate Turns Critic

 CBS DFW: A Major Overhaul of No Child Left Behind is in the Works

Ajla Glavasevic

Ajla Glavasevic is a first-generation Bosnian full of spunk, sass, and humor. She graduated from SUNY Buffalo with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and received her J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law. Ajla is currently a licensed attorney in Pennsylvania and when she isn’t lawyering and writing, the former Team USA Women’s Bobsled athlete (2014-2015 National Team) likes to stay active and travel. Contact Ajla at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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We’ve seen it all over the news lately–parents getting into trouble when their children are truant from school without a valid excuse. While to many it may seem easy to get an excuse letter signed or send in a note the day after the absence, sometimes parents aren’t able to take those steps, or don’t know about their children’s absences from school. In a time of more testing and government regulations in our schools, administrations have elected to pay more attention to when students are staying home, and more importantly, why they are staying home. Read on to learn about truancy laws in the United States and the consequences that may arise for some parents if their children don’t attend school.

What truancy means for each student, school, and state varies. While Strategies for Youth, a non-profit, defines truancy as simply “an unexcused absence from school,” the definition of what an excused absence is, and what being “truant” means depends on the state and sometimes even the school district.

Another organization, Truancy Prevention, breaks down the level of states’ involvement even more:

Any unexcused absence from school is considered a truancy, but states enact their own school attendance laws. State law determines 1) the age at which a child is required to begin attending school, 2) the age at which a child may legally drop out of school, and 3), the number of unexcused absences at which a student is considered legally truant

Each state and school is different, so if you’re curious about specific truancy laws, the best thing to do is look in your individual school handbook to figure out the rules.

Case Study: Eileen DeNino

One extreme case that has gained national attention is that of Eileen DeNino of Reading, Pennsylvania. The 55-year-old mother of eight had to serve a two-day sentence because she owed the court system money due to her sons’ truancy issues. Two of her sons had been absent more than the three days that Pennsylvania allows and were fined repeatedly over several years. She never paid the fines, which landed her in jail; however, the first night of her stay she started complaining that it felt hard to breathe. Jail officials allegedly ignored her pleas for help, thinking she was just trying to get out of serving her time. Her cellmate said that she was moaning in pain the entire time. She died later that night due to complications from a previous medical problem.

Critics have said that her stint in jail is reminiscent of debtor’s prison, which is illegal, while others have said it was wrong because her children were making the decisions on their own. The coroners found that the prison system was not in the wrong.

The law that DeNino broke applies to Pennsylvania, where staying home from school for more than three days is considered truancy. In Berks County alone, “more than 1,600 parents—most of them mothers—have been jailed” for truancy.

A call for reform?

DeNino’s death has led to some calling for change within the education system. While consequences are one thing, parents being fined or put in jail because their children were absent is viewed as something else entirely. Each year, many parents experience problems with a child’s truancy, which commonly leads to fines, loss of custody, and probation for juveniles and/or parents. In some cases these children can be placed in foster care.

For example, in October 2014 the Florida State Attorney’s office issued warrants for the arrest of 44 Jacksonville parents of truant children. One couple, Lucius Corbitt III and Afton Nolan, were both arrested after their daughter missed 40 school days over a three-year period; however, their daughter still made honor roll and was at the top of her class.

“Maybe there are some kids whose parents didn’t want to send them to school,” Corbitt told The Florida Times-Union. “But when my child missed school, my wife and I got make-up work and she passed. … Most days she missed we had doctor’s documentation, but it is so hard to get someone at the school board. It really is crap.”

In other states, such as California, officials have been sent out to do “truancy sweeps” to check up on students who stayed home. In one particular sweep, six parents were arrested, including one parent whose child missed school 21 times. In this situation, most parents were offered parenting classes.

The Arguments For Parent Punishment

There is a reason that we have truancy laws and why students can’t just go to school only when they feel like it. In 1889, the Chicago Board of Education argued, “We should rightfully have the power to arrest all these little beggars, loafers, and vagabonds that infest our city, take them from the streets and place them in schools where they are compelled to receive an education and learn moral principles.”  This was during a time when nearly a quarter of the juveniles jailed in Chicago where there for truancy. By 1918, every state had a law that made school attendance mandatory.

It wasn’t until 2001 and the start of No Child Left Behind that schools had to report this data to the state. Many surmise that the goal was to identify parents who weren’t taking care of their children or were negligent. Since then, more and more government officials have been calling for stricter regulations on truancy, specifically for teenagers.

Recent research has shown that many students are absent at least two days a month, often because the student just didn’t feel like going to school. That is a problem that we need to face, and starting with parents might be the best approach to take.

 Arguments Against Truancy Laws

Most of the cases that we hear about involve teenagers. Some critics of truancy laws feel that teenagers today don’t really feel the effects of the mistakes they make–and this is just another example of that. Parenting website the Stir poses the question:

What’s more, what are we teaching kids about taking responsibility for their own actions, and their own lives, if we’re making parents pay for their misdeeds? Once kids reach their teenage years, it seems to me, it’s time for them to take more responsibility for their own decisions, not less.

Others have claimed that throwing parents in jail isn’t something that will help anyone in the family. According to the Marshall Project, “the criminalization of truancy often pushes students further away from school, and their families deeper into poverty.” Instead of focusing on parents, some hope to focus on the schools and determine why teens are using any excuse not to go.

In some states, the child does face the brunt of the punishment. Some states are even allowed to take away the driving privileges of the teen who is truant.

Conclusion

Students being absent from school is an undeniable problem The rates are typically higher in schools that have more students, which need to have higher scores on state testing in order to get the materials they need. We also know that more than a few absences per year are correlated with lower grades, dropping out of high school, and trouble with the law. It remains unclear whether or not actively threatening, fining, or even jailing these parents is an effective way to treat the “crime.” There may need to be alternate steps taken to make sure that students stay in school as much as possible.

Resources

Jacksonville: Parents Arrested in Truancy Sweep Say There Were Reasons Why Their Kids Missed School

Juvenile Justice Bulletin: Truancy

Stir: Parents Now Thrown in Jail When Kid Misses School

Washington Post: Mother of Seven in Jail Because Her Kids Skipped School Dies in Cell

Truancy Prevention: Truancy Definition, Facts and Laws

Connect With Kids: Arresting Parents For Truancy

Counter Punch: Criminalizing Truancy

Desert Dispatch: Six Arrested, 26 Cited in Truancy Sweep

Johnson Juvenile Lawyers: Juvenile Truancy

Lawrence Journal: Truancy Policies Can Catch Parents by Surprise

Think Progress: The Return Of Debtor’s Prisons: Thousands Of Americans Jailed For Not Paying Their Bills

WFMZ: Coroner Issues Ruling in Death of Woman Jailed in Child Truant Case

WFMZ: Exclusive: Cellmate of Woman Who Died in Jail Speaks Out

U.S. News & World Report: Skipping High School Can Lead to Fines, Jail For Parents

Noel Diem

Law Street contributor Noel Diem is an editor and aspiring author based in Reading, Pennsylvania. She is an alum of Albright College where she studied English and Secondary Education. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, theater, fashion, and literature. Contact Noel at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Criminal justice reform in the United States is long overdue as prisons are overcrowded, racial profiling remains a problem, and rehabilitation practices are often overshadowed by questionable “tough on crime” policies. After high-profile incidents of police brutality began circulating media outlets, the push for criminal justice reform has become greater than ever. Recently, both Republicans and Democrats decided to work together to transform the American criminal justice system, announcing the creation of a bipartisan coalition that would partner with non-governmental organizations and advocacy groups to craft and implement reform. The media called this left and right-wing union an “unlikely alliance,” emphasizing ideological and political differences between the two parties, and highlighting the fact that bipartisanship doesn’t happen very often on Capitol Hill. The question remains whether this bipartisan coalition can transform American criminal justice practices into a more fair, unbiased, and swift system? Read on to learn more about the current bipartisan efforts to reform the criminal justice system in America.

How is bipartisan criminal justice reform coming along?

The Coalition for Public Safety

One of the first  tangible results of this consensus culminated in the creation of the Coalition for Public Safety, introduced on February 19, 2015. It’s a bipartisan coalition of funders and advocacy groups that will work on reforming the current criminal justice system and hopes to find solutions to the most pressing issues in the realm of current practices. The coalition is funded by both conservative and liberal groups such as Koch Industries, the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In addition, both right and left-wing organizations such as FreedomWorks, Americans for Tax Reform, the ACLU, and the Center for American Progress will partner with the Coalition to work at all levels of the government (local, state, and federal) to overhaul ineffective criminal justice policies. The initial funding is $5 million, and will be used to launch a campaign to tackle prison overpopulation, mandatory sentencing practices, reduce recidivism, and address many other issues endemic to the American criminal justice system.

The Coalition for Public Safety emphasizes a smarter, fairer, and more cost-effective criminal justice system. It identifies five main goals:

Reduce our jail and prison populations and associated costs; end the systemic problems of overcriminalization and overincarceration — particularly of low-income communities and communities of color; ensure swift and fair outcomes for both the accused and the victim; and make communities safe by reducing recidivism and breaking down barriers faced by those returning home after detention or incarceration.

The overall plan of the Coalition is to replicate state practices that have proven to be successful in dealing with specific issues of the criminal justice system on the federal level. As the Coalition is diverse in its political affiliations, the plan is to divide spheres of influence between conservatives and liberals while lobbying for reform.

Koch Industries and other organizations on the right will try to persuade Republicans, while the Center for American Progress and other liberal think-tanks will work on convincing Democrats to engage in meaningful dialogue about criminal justice reform. Other organizations such as the ACLU will lobby at the state level to include criminal justice reform issues on state ballots in 2016.

The Bipartisan Summit for Criminal Justice

Another early milestone of the criminal justice reform movement was the Bipartisan Summit for Criminal Justice held in Washington D.C. on March 26, 2015.

The summit brought together lawmakers, advocates, religious groups, and criminal justice leaders, totaling 600 people. There were 90 speakers who shared their experiences and proposed possible solutions to fix the American criminal justice system. Newt Gingrich and Van Jones hosted the event, putting their differences aside. Among the most prominent speakers and participants were Attorney General Eric Holder, Mark Holden (senior counsel for Koch Industries), David Simon (“The Wire” creator), Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, Piper Kerman (author of “Orange is the New Black”) and Senator Cory Booker. Non-profit organizations that advocate for justice were present  as well.

So, it’s clear that criminal justice reform is gaining momentum, but why did both parties come on board in the first place?

 Why are both parties on board with criminal justice reform?

Players across the political spectrum have begun to form a bipartisan consensus, but do they care about the same things? Both conservatives and liberals have agreed that criminal justice reform is necessary, however, their reasons for engaging in the initial dialogue seem rather different.

Conservatives are particularly worried about the high costs of maintaining the prison complex as it operates right now. Financially speaking, criminal justice spending is soaring. Some conservatives also cite religious arguments as a reason to give second chances to those who acted wrongly. This philosophy is in accordance with Christian tradition. In this view, prison reform requires rehabilitation, not just incarceration.

Democrats tend to be more concerned with minority rights and the personal freedoms of American citizens that are being diminished by the current criminal justice system. They propose well-funded social programs in impoverished and vulnerable communities instead of an aggressive expansion of the prison complex.

Why does America need criminal justice reform?

(Un)Fairness of the Current System

The American criminal justice system has multiple issues with which to contend. One of the biggest is the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Latino youth and men. In addition, 60 percent of those who await trial, meaning they have not yet been formally convicted of any crime, are housed in detention facilities for months. The majority are lower income individuals who cannot afford to make bail. These holdings lead to many issues for these individuals, including loss of employment, housing, and even family.

In addition, civil asset forfeiture practices are often viewed as unfair as property can be confiscated at the pre-trial stage, without a formal conviction. In some cases, family members can suffer property seizure due to the actions of their children or other close family members.

Overall, the prison population is soaring with non-violent offenders, who are incarcerated for drug crimes, including simple possession or selling a small amount of marijuana.

It’s Too Expensive

The criminal justice system, particularly prison complexes, drain taxpayers’ money. On average, it costs $80 billion a year to maintain the American correctional system, not counting other criminal justice agencies and courts. As 86 percent of all prisoners are housed in state, not federal, correction facilities, state governments spend large sums of money on incarceration, leaving fewer resources for education, mental health, and social services. In addition, it costs around $88,000 a year to house a young offender in a juvenile facility. Juveniles in particular have more developmental and educational needs which have to be addressed by the prison facility where they are housed.

Recently, costs associated with police misconduct, such as fees and settlements, are also soaring as more incidents are published and openly discussed.

It Doesn’t Solve Problems

The current criminal justice system incarcerates violent and non-violent offenders alike without any consideration for the mental health, drug, or alcohol issues these people may face. Moreover, it doesn’t provide tools for those who have been released from prison to reintegrate back into society. Formerly incarcerated individuals are largely disenfranchised through laws restricting Pell Grants, voting, certain types of employment, and housing.

Overall, left and right-wing politicians have gotten it right: current criminal justice system is costly, ineffective, and unfair in many ways, and it needs fixing. Watch the video below to learn more about reasons why America needs a comprehensive criminal justice reform:

Are there any signs of progress?

This new wave of bipartisan criminal justice reform is still in its infancy, but signs of progress in changing ineffective criminal justice practices are seen in both state and federal initiatives.

State Practices

Many states have already enacted innovative programs to overhaul civil assets forfeiture practices and restore voting rights to those who bear the stigma of a criminal conviction. For example:

• State Representative David Simpson (R) introduced a bill that could potentially prohibit civil asset forfeiture without formal conviction in Texas. State Senator Nathan Dahm (R) proposed similar legislature in Oklahoma.
• Many states have enacted so-called “Ban the Box” laws that prohibit asking about criminal convictions in employment applications. Currently, “Ban the Box” laws have been successfully implemented in states such as Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Mexico. In addition, individual jurisdictions in various states have begun to use this practice.

Watch the video below to learn more about “Ban the Box” movement:

Federal Initiatives

On a federal level, Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, is one of the most vocal proponents of criminal justice reform:

• Paul and Tim Walberg (R) from Michigan introduced the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, that raises the burden of proof on the government for asset seizure.
• Rand Paul and Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, re-introduced the Civil Rights Voting Restoration Act of 2015 as a bipartisan effort to restore voting rights to non-violent formerly incarcerated individuals.
• Rand Paul, Brian Schatz (D) from Hawaii, and two U.S Representatives, Corrine Brown from Florida and Keith Ellison from Minnesota introduced the Police Creating Accountability by Making Effective Recording Available (Police CAMERA) Act of 2015 that creates a pilot grant program for police departments across the country who are willing to use body cameras.

In addition, education reform is being worked on, and the Comprehensive Justice and Mental Health Act is on its way. Both pieces of legislation are important components of re-designing the American criminal justice system by breaking the school-to-prison pipeline, and increasing access to treatment for mentally-ill people in the criminal justice system.

What are the concerns over bipartisan criminal justice reform?

Not everybody believes in the future of bipartisanship, as history has consistently proven that consensus could be compromised at any stage of the process. For example, a recent human trafficking bill with bipartisan support was filibustered over anti-abortion language, and, consequently, died in the chamber. Doubts remain that bipartisanship could be successful as Congress starts its legislative process. Such concerns are voiced due to the profound differences in the two parties’ ideologies, as well as their social and economic views.

These differences also incite worries over the redistribution of prison money. Liberals generally seem to hope that after reform, money that was formerly used for incarceration will be released for education and social services. However, conservatives mostly remain silent on this issue, postponing the discussion for a later date.

Some critics on the left believe that bipartisan criminal justice reform was “right-wing” from the beginning, initiated by the Koch brothers, and then marketed as a “bipartisan” effort. In this view, the movement serves the conservative agenda by pushing the expansion of for-profit community correctional facilities, including the consolidation of medical treatment programs within prison complexes. The rationale is as follows: if non-violent offenders are released to community corrections rather than to prison confinement, it will produce a new source of revenue for private companies that provide treatment for addiction and other medical and mental health issues. The money will be channeled through non-profit organizations that are free to sub-contract their services.

In addition, the Coalition has heavy representation of conservative think-tanks and  prominent liberal groups, but it doesn’t include grassroots community and advocacy groups that could bring the voices of poor communities of color to the table.

Another point of criticism is centered on the notion that the Coalition doesn’t ask the right questions and completely ignores the issue of structural racism that fuels the community-to-corrections pipeline. It acknowledges “over-criminalization” and “over-incarceration” of individuals from these communities, but doesn’t address the underlying reasons for it.

Conclusion

Criminal justice reform is inevitable as there are multiple concerns about the current criminal justice system. However, will it produce the intended changes and improve the American criminal justice system? The Coalition has all the tools to initiate reform, but political differences and personal motivations of certain players can easily change the course of reform at any given moment. It’s a shaky “unlikely alliance,” but it’s certainly better than nothing at all.

Resources

Primary

LegiScan: Bill Text: TX HB3171 | 2015-2016 | 84th Legislature | Introduced

LegiScan: Bill Text: OK SB621 | 2015 | Regular Session | Introduced

Rand Paul: Sens. Paul, Schatz & Reps. Brown, Ellison Introduce Bipartisan Legislation To Help Expand Use of Police Body Cameras

Rand Paul: Sen. Paul Introduces Civil Rights Voting Restoration Act

The U.S. Department of Justice: Attorney General Prohibits Federal Agency Adoptions of Assets Seized by State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies Except Where Needed to Protect Public Safety

Additional

#cut 50: A Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform

Huffington Post Politics: Georgia Governor Signs ‘Ban The Box’ Order Helping Ex-Offenders Get Jobs

National Journal: This May Be the Year Crime Finally Stops Being a Wedge Issue

NBCNews: Editorial: Could Criminal Justice Reform Create Bipartisanship?

Politico: Fixing Justice in America

Slate: A Koch and a Smile

Southern Coalition for Social Justice: Ban the Box Community Initiative Guide

The Daily Caller: Red State Forfeiture Bills Signal Bipartisan Push For Justice Reform

Truth Out: “Bipartisan” Criminal Justice Reform: A Misguided Merger

Truth Out: Smoke and Mirrors: Essential Questions About “Prison Reform”

Truth Out: Confidence Men and “Prison Reform”

U.S. News: Lawmakers Outline Path Forward on Criminal Justice Reform

U.S. News: Democrats Block Human Trafficking Bill Over Abortion Language

Justice Policy Institute: The Costs of Confinement: Why Good Juvenile Justice Policies. Make Good Fiscal Sense May 2009

Vera Institute of Justice: The Price of Prisons. What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers

Valeriya Metla

Valeriya Metla is a young professional, passionate about international relations, immigration issues, and social and criminal justice. She holds two Bachelor Degrees in regional studies and international criminal justice. Contact Valeriya at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform: Can it Succeed? appeared first on Law Street.

Common Core State Standards have been a matter of controversy for a few years now, garnering opposition from both sides of the aisle. Common Core in some ways saw its inception in the George W. Bush era and serves as a predecessor to the No Child Left Behind Act. But what exactly is Common Core, why was it launched, and what is the opposition? Read on to find out.

What is Common Core?

The Common Core State Standards “aim to raise student achievement by standardizing what’s taught in schools across the United States.” They include a particular focus on language arts and mathematics. The objective is to universally prepare students from Kindergarten to high school to be successful for entry-level college courses or to enter the workforce. It lays out what students should know and be able to do by the end of each specific grade. The standards are results driven, but the methods used to achieve the set results are chosen by local teachers and facilities.

The History Behind Common Core

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was first signed into law by President Bush in January 2002. The next decade was spent revising the law’s requirements and attempting to create more successful “adequate yearly progress” reports. However, people quickly realized that NCLB was in need of serious reform itself. In November 2007, state chiefs first brainstormed Common Core standards at the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) Annual Policy Forum. The following year, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA), CCSSO, and education nonprofit Achieve released Benchingmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education. In it they recommended the common standards. In April 2009, the NGA and CCSSO officially invited states to commit to the Common Core standards, and by June 49 states and territories announced commitments. After public feedback, a final draft was released in June 2010.

The NGA and CCSSO  led the development of the standards and actively advocated for their implementation. They also sought input from teachers, parents, school administrators, and various state leaders in “how the standards are taught, the curriculum developed, and the materials used to support teachers.” Implementation, however, is completely up to the states. Once a state adopts the Common Core standards, it is delegated to local teachers, principals, and superintendents to introduce the standards into school curriculum.

 Why was the Common Core program started?

It has long been a bipartisan view that the U.S. needs education reform. Common Core was started to allow high school graduates to be competitive in college, but also in “the rapidly changing American job market and the high tech, information-based global economy.” It is widely believed that U.S. students are falling behind their counterparts in other countries. Standardized tests in countries like China and Singapore have advanced well beyond the U.S. over the last few decades. Bill Gates, a heavy investor in the Common Core, advocated,

Our nation is one step closer to supporting effective teaching in every classroom, charting a path to college and careers for all students, and developing the tools to help all children stay motivated and engaged in their own education. The more states that adopt these college and career based standards, the closer we will be to sharing innovation across state borders and becoming more competitive as a country.

In Gate’s interview, he repeatedly noted that the standards are not based on curriculum. They are “solely” milestones for where the students should be at each grade level.

How much does Common Core cost?

The cost for implementing Common Core will vary from state to state, but will undoubtedly be expensive. Training teachers and buying new materials will take a substantial amount of money. In 2011, California estimated that replacing its current standardized tests with Common Core standards would cost taxpayers approximately $1.6 billion. In Texas, the estimate is upward of $3 billion dollars.

According to the Common Core Initiative however, the implementation will allow for states to eventually save on resources, materials, and “cross-state opportunities that come from sharing consistent standards.” The cost-benefit ratio should end favorably. As of 2014, 43 states, Washington D.C., Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands adopted the Common Core.

What are some characteristics of Common Core?

English and Language Arts

Generally, the standards call for “regular practice with complex texts and their academic language.” They demand a steady increase in complexity and progressive reading comprehension. There is to be an emphasis on academic vocabulary, focusing on meaning, nuances, and range. There isn’t a required reading list; however, categories of literature are required. Examples include classic myths, foundational U.S. documents, works of Shakespeare, and staples of American literature.

Students should know how to provide evidence from the text when forming analyses and arguments at different levels. The standards call for text-dependent questions on assessments as opposed to questions based on student experiences and/or opinions. The objective is for students to be able to effectively inform and persuade, and for these skills to become stronger as students move up in grade levels.

There is also a larger focus on nonfiction. For grades K-5, there is a 50/50 ratio between informational (history, social sciences, etc.) and literary texts. In grades six through 12 there is substantially increased attention to literary nonfiction.

Mathematics             

In mathematics, the standards call for a “greater focus on fewer topics.” The standards aim to narrow and deepen lessons on concepts, skills, and problemsolving depending on grade level. For example, K-2 will focus on addition and subtraction, while grades three through five will focus on multiplication and division of whole numbers and fractions.

There is an overriding theme across grades of linking topics and thinking. A standard at any grade level is designed to build upon the standard of the previous grade and act as an extension. This consistently reinforces major topics, which are used to support grade-level word problems that need mathematical applications to solve.

Finally, the mathematics standards aim to pursue conceptual understanding, procedural skills and fluency, and application with equal force. The idea is to deepen the understanding of concepts as opposed to memorizing rules. If the building blocks of complex math concepts are completely understood by students, that will eliminate degrees of future difficulty. Speed and accuracy are both to held in high importance.

What are the arguments against Common Core?

The goals of the Common Core seem to have U.S. students’ best interests at heart. So why is there so much opposition? Here’s a look at some of main challenges.

National Standards

First, some argue that the name “Common Core State Standards” is misleading. Since they have been adopted by 43 states, they are truly national standards. Detractors worry that states didn’t necessarily adopt the Common Core by choice, but were strong-armed by conditions ascribed by federal Race to the Top grants and the No Child Left Behind programs. Prior to the implementation of Common Core, all 50 states–whether on board or not–adopted NCLB or revised standards under the threat of losing federal funding.

More of the Same

Many see the Common Core as round two of No Child Left Behind. NCLB failed in both “raising academic performance and narrowing gaps in opportunity and outcomes.” This propagated the notion that American schools need to be fixed. Test results from NCLB did not meet expectations. After the first ten years, more than 50 percent of the nation’s schools were categorized as failing. Many of these same schools never received the support or resources necessary to stand a chance. In the same respect, will all schools be supplied with the needed computers required to take the Common Core tests?

Too Curriculum Based 

There are also worries that Common Core has become more curriculum based than originally intended. In the video below, a seven-year public school teacher discusses why the Common Core is not good for kids and dictates curriculum. She argues, “when the standards are tested that’s what you are going to spend your time on…[there is] no room to teach anything else.”  Her job security is based on meeting the standards. As a result, she’s concerned that the standards must be taught 100 percent of the time, and don’t allow flexibility or creativity.

She continues to argue that the material is not condensed, using the 93 elements of the third grade reading standard as an example. Her largest problem with Common Core is its age appropriateness. Although she advocates pushing students, she doesn’t believe seven year olds should be expected to master the difference between an adjective and an adverb. She labels the standards as a  “race to the middle” with “mediocre teaching.” Using a uniform approach, the faster learners are bored, while the slower learners are under immense pressure.

There is plenty of concern on the length and difficulty of the assessments as well. In the first round of distribution of the Common Core tests in New York, students, parents, and teachers strongly voiced their concerns. Many students felt immense pressure and were scared of failing, and teachers complained about the atmosphere the tests created.

Opting Out

Some children have started to opt out of the tests, often with parental support. The “opt out movement” has grown in popularity–thousands of students nationwide have chosen this route. Opt-outs protest the Common Core standards and the overemphasis on testing in public schools. There is even a National United Opt Out group comprised of parents, educators, students, and social activists. The legality of opting out seems to be a gray area, varying from state to state. In an extreme case, the Illinois State Board of Education sent a letter stating students opting out would be breaking the law and teachers refusing to administer the test would face legal consequences.

There are a variety of other arguments as well. One other concern is that corporate businesses are behind the standards to create a marketplace for Common Core resources. Others argue that electives like music and art will be sidelined. Finally, many teachers and parents don’t approve of the “one-size fits all” approach to teaching children.

Conclusion

It’s hard to say what is in store for U.S. education reform. We do need a change, but is Common Core the right one? There aren’t any studies regarding Common Core’s success to fall back on. Only time will tell. There are convincing arguments on both sides. Ultimately, everyone involved wants the same thing: U.S. students to be as educated and prepared for the world as possible.

Resources

Primary

Common Core State Standards Initiative: About the Standards

CCSSO: National Governors Association and State Education Chiefs Launch Common State Academic Standards

U.S. Department of Education: No Child Left Behind

Additional

Washington Post: The Common Core’s Fundamental Trouble

EdWeek: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World Class Education

U.S. News & World Report: Who is Fighting for Common Core

Truth in American Education: State Costs for Adopting and Implementing the Common Core State Standards

U.S. News & World Report: The History of the Common Core State Standards

U.S. News & World Report: The History of the Common Core State Standards

U.S. News & World Report: Opt-Out Movement About More Then Test, Advocates Say

U.S. News & World Report: Who is Fighting Against the Common Core

Why Science: A Historical Timeline of No Child Left Behind

Jessica McLaughlin

Jessica McLaughlin is a graduate of the University of Maryland with a degree in English Literature and Spanish. She works in the publishing industry and recently moved back to the DC area after living in NYC. Contact Jessica at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Common Core: A Solution to America’s Education Problems? appeared first on Law Street.

The now much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)–an attempt to improve the American education system–became law in early 2002. Since then, NCLB has become a divisive political issue, called a failure by many, and blamed for many inadequacies of our admittedly weak education system. But beyond all of the politics, what have the ramifications of NCLB actually been? Read on to learn about NCLB, and what it’s done to measure student growth and teacher effectiveness.

What exactly is NCLB?

The No Child Left Behind Act is bipartisan legislation signed in 2001 that was designed to improve student achievement and to help schools and parents work together to create educational solutions for struggling students. The act is based on four essential themes: accountability for results; doing what works based upon scientific research; expanded parental options; and expanded local control and flexibility.

The most controversial aspect of this act is the accountability for results. This requires states to create a single standardized test for each grade level to be administered to students of all levels, regardless of disability or educational background. Each state is required to determine a score on math and reading tests that they deem  to be “proficient.” All states were then required to have 100 percent of students score at at least that level on their standardized tests by 2014. Additionally, each state had to define “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) and ensure that all student groups make AYP based upon standardized tests administered each year. These accountability measures, according to NCLB co-author Representative George Miller, were intended to be diagnostic and to help schools and parents work together to remedy student weaknesses.

What’s the argument for NCLB’s effectiveness?

Advocates of NCLB argue that accountability serves as a way to identify areas where schools and students need improvement, and enables schools and parents to work together to make those improvements. No Child Left Behind mandates that its quota of 100 percent of students reaching the proficient level by 2014  includes students with disabilities and students from low socio-economic backgrounds. Advocates argue that accountability and testing ensure that these often marginalized groups do not slip through the cracks and that they obtain the support and resources they need to succeed in school.

The Act also demands higher qualifications for teachers as well as giving parents the option of transferring their children out of schools that have failed to meet their AYP quotas; both aspects have been seen as a step toward improving the American education system. Additionally, schools that do not meet their AYP receive technical assistance from the federal government and are required to draft an improvement plan aimed at targeting the groups of students who did not show improvement on standardized tests. Supporters of NCLB find these measures helpful in providing quality education to all student groups and in improving education in areas previously allowed to fall behind.

Why do people want to get rid of NCLB?

Opponents of NCLB argue that standardized testing is a flawed method of gauging student learning and that “accountability” causes schools and teachers to teach to the test. Opponents of standardized testing argue that these types of tests measure only superficial knowledge and do not measure critical or creative thinking. Scientists and psychologists have also determined that all students have different learning styles and intelligences; some are visual learners, some are kinesthetic learners, etc. Standardized tests, with their “one size fits all” method of testing, do not account for this diversity among student learning styles. Additionally, many students simply are not good test takers, and while they may know the content, the anxiety of test-taking impedes their ability to recall and use this information.

Due to this uncertainty about the validity of test scores, opponents of NCLB argue that schools and teachers are forced to “teach to the test” or “drill and kill.” With the funding of their schools and the security of their jobs hinging solely upon the results of standardized tests, teachers often feel they have to provide a narrow form of education for their students. These teaching styles require minimal critical thinking and understanding of topics, and instead rely on repetition and quick regurgitation of information to ensure students do well on a standardized test. This method of teaching offers an incomplete education to students and teaches them to simply memorize and repeat instead of understand the underlying concepts of a topic.

It has also been argued that states will lower their AYP quotas in order to meet NCLB standards instead of providing further funding for educational support. Opponents of NCLB argue that the act’s emphasis on accountability and standardized testing lead schools and teachers to adopt faulty educational methods in order to meet federal requirements.

Conclusion

NCLB can certainly be considered a good idea in theory that attempted to fix a struggling American education system. Unfortunately, the results speak for themselves, and they certainly leave a lot to be desired. NCLB still has some supporters who point out its advantages, but most are turning to new ways to reform our educational system.

Resources

Primary

Department of Education: “No Child Left Behind” Act (2001)

Department of Education: “No Child Left Behind” Act Is Working

SC Department of Education: New Study Confirms Vast Differences in State Goals for Academic ‘Proficiency’ Under NCLB

NJDOE: No Child Left Behind Overview

Additional

National Center on Educational Outcomes: “No Child Left Behind” Act: What it Means for Children With Disabilities

Wrights Law: “No Child Left Behind Act”

Wrights Law: What Teachers, Principals & School Administrators Need to Know

Education: The Purpose of No Child Left Behind

EdSource: NCLB Author Rep. Miller Says He Never Anticipated NCLB Would Force Testing Obsession

NPR: Former “No Child Left Behind” Advocate Turns Critic

Fair Test: What’s Wrong With Standardized Tests?

ASHA: “No Child Left Behind” Fact Sheet

RAND: Accountability for NCLB: A Report Card for “No Child Left Behind”

Schools of Thought: The High Stakes of Standardized Tests

Huffington Post: States Offered More Time to Ignore Education Law

Joseph Palmisano

Joseph Palmisano is a graduate of The College of New Jersey with a degree in History and Education. He has a background in historical preservation, public education, freelance writing, and business. While currently employed as an insurance underwriter, he maintains an interest in environmental and educational reform. Contact Joseph at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post No Child Left Behind: Where is it Now? appeared first on Law Street.

Tenure was originally created as a protection for teachers. In more recent times however, critics have grown concerned that it has turned into a system that has the potential for abuse. Read on to learn about the history of tenure and the arguments for and against it.

The History of Tenure

The early twentieth century saw an immense number of unions formed in a wide array of industries, empowering the American workers and dramatically altering legal precedent concerning workers’ rights. During this time, American public school districts began adapting and adopting the process of tenure from colleges and universities and applying it to their own school systems. Tenure, in the K-12 public school sense, provides teachers with the right to due process before being terminated. Before tenure became a common aspect of public school districts, female teachers were often dismissed for getting pregnant or even being seen in town with a man to whom she was not married to; and older teachers were often replaced with new, younger teachers simply because they had become too expensive for the district.

As educational professionals seek ways to improve the American education system in the wake of No Child Left Behind’s rigorous standards, many argue that replacing teacher tenure with a merit-based system would improve teacher quality and, therefore, student performance. However, advocates of teacher tenure argue that is protects vital rights that, if removed, would allow teachers to be exploited and would constrict their ability to improve their educational strategies.

What are the arguments for teachers being able to receive tenure?

Advocates argue that the tenure system protects teachers from being wrongfully dismissed because of problems that could arise out of industry politics, economics, and other such dynamics, as well as personal or political reasons, such as disagreeing with the school board over whether to teach a topic such as evolution or to teach a banned book. Advocates argue that this allows teachers to take more risks in their teaching style and methods, encouraging teachers to push the pedagogical boundaries and improve themselves as educational professionals in the process. A distinction that many advocates of teacher tenure make is that it does not make it impossible to fire a tenured teacher. Instead, tenure ensures due process is followed when a district seeks to dismiss a teacher.

Tenure is not merely given to any teacher hired by a district; most school districts require teachers to spend three to four years in a probationary period before receiving tenure, which allows the teacher to gain experience and allows the district to determine whether the teacher will continue to be a valuable addition to the school’s faculty.

Many teachers also face the prospect of termination due to false student accusations. At times a student may falsely accuse his or her teacher of committing a fireable offense, which often gains a large amount of negative publicity for the school district and could potentially blacklist a teacher from getting a job elsewhere. Tenure ensures that a thorough investigation is conducted before the administration acts upon a student’s accusation, thus protecting good teachers from malcontented students.

What are the arguments against teacher tenure?

Opponents of the tenure system argue that it is being manipulated by teachers’ unions to make ineffective teachers difficult to dismiss and creates a system that favors seniority over merit. Opponents argue that while teachers must work through a probationary period before receiving tenure, nearly all teachers receive it once they reach that mark, and therefore tenure becomes a process not aimed at protecting and retaining good teachers, but at protecting the job security of all teachers regardless of merit. In the New York City public school district, 97 percent of teachers received tenure after teaching for three years, and opponents argue that statistics such as these indicate that tenure is not a highly selective process.

Tenure also makes teachers difficult to fire by allowing teachers’ unions to drag out the termination process and to dispute any decisions concerning dismissal, making the removal of poor teachers expensive and time consuming. A study published in 2009 stated that 89 percent of administrators did not fire ineffective teachers for fear of the time and money it would require to do so. Additionally, in the Chicago public school district, where only 28.5 percent of student met expectations on standardized tests, only 0.1 percent of teachers were dismissed for performance-related reasons between 2005 and 2008. Obviously, there is a disconnect between the poor performance of students in this district and the replacement of teachers who were unable to improve that performance.

Many opponents also argue that tenure allows teachers to stop seeking personal improvement and to begin to “coast” through their jobs. In a profession that demands constant improvement while children’s education hangs in the balance, a system that provides teachers with impeccable job security unrelated to merit is not the way to promote teacher development.

Conclusion

The history of granting teachers tenure makes sense, but whether or not the system has reached antiquity is a common topic of debate. Tenure has many benefits — protection and incentives for teachers — but also some downsides — potential to kill innovation. As the American education system evolves and begins to adopt more alternative forms of teaching, such as charter schools, tenure policies may have to evolve too to keep up.

Resources

Primary

University of Minnesota: A Study of Transparency of K-12 Teacher Tenure: What the Evaluation Policy Documents Reveal

Additional

Huffington Post: An Argument For Teacher Tenure

NEA Today: What Teacher Tenure Is and What it Is Not

Teach For America: Point/ Counterpoint: In Support of Teacher Tenure

News Observer: Wake County School Board Opposes Elimination of Teacher Tenure

Teachers Union Exposed: Protecting Bad Teachers

NPR: Is Teacher Tenure Still Necessary?

USA Today: States Weaken Tenure Rights For Teachers

Scholastic: Weigh In: Is Tenure For Teachers Over?

Education.com: Should Teachers Have Tenure?

Concordia Online Education: K-12 Teacher Tenure: Understanding the Debate

Teachhub.com: Teacher Tenure Debate: Pros and Cons

Take Part: Pros and Cons of Teacher Tenure: What You Didn’t Know

Joseph Palmisano

Joseph Palmisano is a graduate of The College of New Jersey with a degree in History and Education. He has a background in historical preservation, public education, freelance writing, and business. While currently employed as an insurance underwriter, he maintains an interest in environmental and educational reform. Contact Joseph at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Teachers and Tenure: An Outdated System? appeared first on Law Street.

It’s no secret that the state of public education in the United States is concerning. We are falling behind our peer nations, and recent efforts to improve the American education system haven’t been great. So what can be done? One proposal that has been floated is to link the pay of teachers to how successful their students are, sometimes referred to as “merit pay.” Read on to learn why merit pay was suggested, what it means, and what the arguments for and against merit pay are.

How’s the state of public education in the U.S.?

Let’s be honest, not that great. There are a lot of factors at play here, but a lot of people are concerned about what our students are learning. There are many voices and debates out there — should we test more or test less? Offer more structured education, or less structured education? No one’s really sure, but what we do know is that something definitely needs to change. A big question is if we’re spending money in the right places. Here’s a quick overview on the money spent in the American educational system.

What is merit pay?

Amid a general call for reform in American education that resulted in legislation such as the Bush Administration’s “No Child Left Behind” Act and the Obama Administration’s “Race To The Top” school incentive program, there has been a call for the implementation of a merit pay system for public school teachers. Currently, teachers get a set raise in salary each year. Merit pay would establish a system in which teachers would receive raises and bonuses based upon their effectiveness, much the same way that corporate employees receive raises.

There’s no real consensus about how merit pay would be decided — some suggestions include that it be tied to test scores, teacher evaluations, or a combination of those factors and other more intangible parameters.

What are the arguments for merit pay?

Advocates see merit pay as a fair system that would create a form of natural selection that retains effective teachers and drives out those who are ineffective. Advocates of merit pay note the flaws in the current system, wherein teachers who have been at a school the longest have the highest salaries based on set raises each year, and the tenure system that keeps older teachers in their jobs. They say this old system assumes that experience translates into effectiveness, which is not always the case, and also prevents younger teachers with newer, fresher ideas from being able to get jobs.

Advocates point to merit pay’s successful use in the corporate world as an indicator of its possibilities in education. If teachers’ salaries were based upon their performance, all teachers, young and old, would continually strive to improve their teaching and work hard throughout their careers to ensure that they are effective in teaching their students. This system would also draw more highly-qualified professionals to the profession who would have otherwise been driven away from a profession known for its relatively moderate salaries, thus adding more quality to the talent pool. While many opponents chafe at the thought of standardized test scores determining teacher salaries, advocates argue that this system could be based on a combination of test scores, lesson observations, school involvement, and even peer reviews.

Those who favor a merit pay system also point out that it was originally met with resistance in the business sector, as well. The current system of rewards that we see right now at many corporations only came to fruition around the early 1980s. It was deemed unfair and too subjective by many workers, but now it’s become the norm. Advocates for merit pay point out that the transformation didn’t happen overnight but rather took some time, and now business as a whole has been improved by the implementation. They argue that the same thing will happen with merit pay for teachers — it will take some time but the kinks will be worked out and everyone will eventually be pleased with the changes.

What are the arguments against merit pay?

Opponents of merit pay argue that this system would have less-than-desirable side effects that would damage the education system. Opponents point out that education budgets in most towns and cities are already stretched thin, and that these limited budgets would make the bonus incentives of merit pay minimal and parsimonious. Therefore this system would pit teachers against one another in competition for raises and destroy the collaboration that currently exists between teachers, while possibly leading to favoritism.

Merit pay would also reduce the intrinsic motivation that currently drives many teachers, replacing a genuine desire to educate students with a desire to merely jump through hoops in order to gain more money. Such attitudes, opponents argue, would promote a narrow focus on what educators are teaching students and, if the system were based even in part on standardized test scores, would also promote a practice of “teaching to the test”. “Teaching to the test” shows students how to answer simple, multiple-choice style questions without activating any deeper analytical or critical thought, and would provide an incomplete and shallow education for students as a result of standardized testing. If this emphasis were placed on standardized testing, the pursuit of merit pay would drive many effective teachers toward affluent, high-achieving districts and away from less affluent school districts where low socio-economic status and other problems often factor just as much into test scores as the effectiveness of a teacher.

There’s also the issue that merit pay would be very difficult to organize. The businesses that give certain employees bonuses for good performance already have many of the bureaucratic mechanisms in place. Schools don’t necessarily have the extra administrative capacity to come up with a fair and equitable way to measure merit in addition to actually implementing it. It would distract from the real goal of administrators: making sure that students receive the best education possible. Overall, opponents argue, these negative side effects of merit pay far outweigh the benefits it may bring to education.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that there are plentiful issues that need to be discussed in the way we run our public schools. One proposition has been to link teachers’ salaries to their performance, however that performance may be measured. The idea, while certainly drawing some applause, and some ire, is an interesting one in an environment where ingenuity is so desperately needed.

Resources

Primary

U.S. Department of Education: Teacher Incentive Fund

Additional

City Journal: Why Merit Pay Will Improve Teaching

Forbes: Merit Pay For Teachers is Only Fair

ASCD: When Merit Pay is Worth Pursuing

Washington Post: Does Teacher Merit Pay Work? A New Study Says Yes

CATO Institute: Teachers Deserve Merit Pay, Not Special Interest Pay

NEA: Pay Based on Test Scores?

Washington Post: Why Merit Pay For Teachers Sounds Good–But Isn’t

United Teachers Los Angeles: No Merit to Merit Pay

Voice of San Diego: Problems With Merit Pay Outweigh Benefits

eSchool News: Why Teacher Merit Pay Can’t Work Today–and What Can Be Done About This

USA Today: States Push to Pay Teachers Based on Performance

Economist: Merit Pay for Teachers

Dayton Daily News: Schools Push Merit Pay For Teachers

Times-Picayune: Teachers to Begin Receiving Merit Pay Based on 2013-14 Evaluation Scores

wiseGEEK: What is Merit Pay For Teachers?

Joseph Palmisano

Joseph Palmisano is a graduate of The College of New Jersey with a degree in History and Education. He has a background in historical preservation, public education, freelance writing, and business. While currently employed as an insurance underwriter, he maintains an interest in environmental and educational reform. Contact Joseph at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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