PAPER TRAIL

Friday, November 14, 2008 4:20 PM

CAP's 'Blueprint' For Obama: Improving Education

By MARY GILBERT

The second installment in our series looking at the Center for American Progress and the New Democracy Project's "blueprint" for the incoming administration focuses on the Department of Education. In one chapter from CAP's "Change For America: A Progressive Blueprint For The 44th President," former DOE General Counsel and Deputy Undersecretary Judith A. Winston advises Barack Obama on how to ensure "that a high-quality, affordable, and accessible education is available to all at every level from preschool through college."

Winston's recommendations include the following:

Within the first 100 days the administration should...
• Strengthen the No Child Left Behind legislation and improve implementation of the bill.
• Appoint a leadership team that can carry out a restoration of NCLB, and consider changing the department's organizational structure to "eliminate excessive 'stovepiping.'"
• Establish several "unified priority areas" on critical issues, such as teacher quality, to improve coordination across the department.
• Reach out to stakeholders in the education, business and nonprofit communities to create a "collaborative framework for productive federal-state and public-private partnerships" on education reform.
• Expand the budget for the department and for NCLB, which Winston says has seen an $85.6 billion shortfall in the six years since its passage.

Within the first year the administration should...
• Improve means of evaluating teachers, incentivizing them for good performance and enhancing teacher quality overall.
• Help states upgrade data collection and analysis so that student progress can be more reliably measured.
• Focus attention on schools known to be "dropout factories."
• Engage the public by holding town halls, or "road shows", to discuss the federal government's role in the schools.
• On higher education, simplify the process of filing for financial assistance, reduce the cost of student loans and make it easier for students to pay them back over time.
• Reform the Office for Civil Rights, which under the Bush administration was described as "missing in action," and use the OCR to guide schools on how to legally increase diversity.

Looking long-term, the administration should...
• Address interstate funding inequities by reforming Title I, which determines the amount of federal money that each state receives.
• Create "a national foundation plan of federal aid to ensure a decent floor of education resources in all states."
• Establish a federal fund to back nongovernmental organizations that are working to develop national education standards.
• Broaden early childhood education programs.
• Reduce high school dropout rates and find ways to lure dropouts back into school.
• Reduce the costs of higher education to make sure that it is available to all students who want to pursue a college degree.