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The April 4, 2011, Weekly Message from State Superintendent
Christopher A. Koch is available online in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)
format at
http://www.isbe.net/board/archivemessages/2011/message_040411.pdf
<http://www.isbe.net/board/archivemessages/2011/message_040411.pdf>
.
A text-only version of the message is below.
Also, all editions of the Weekly Message are archived on the
Illinois State Board of Education's Web site at
http://www.isbe.net/board/archivemessages/archivemessage.htm
<http://www.isbe.net/board/archivemessages/archivemessage.htm>
.
Message From State Superintendent Christopher A. Koch
I attended the spring legislative conference of the Council of Chief
State School Officers last week. We met with Education Secretary
Arne Duncan, and we heard from legislators on both sides of the
aisle discussing the long-awaited reauthorization of the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)
While everyone seems hopeful that reauthorization will occur prior
to this fall, the simple reality is that it's complex legislation
that will compete for priority with other important issues, both
foreign and domestic, and will be debated during the difficult
budget battle at the federal level. The Senate is currently working
on reauthorization of the ESEA as a single bill, while it appears
that the House of Representatives will likely tackle it in a series
of smaller pieces of legislation. The general thought is that even
though both chambers are considering reauthorization in very
different ways, they will be able to reconcile the separate
legislation in the conference committee process.
Secretary Duncan says the administration remains committed to seeing
reauthorization prior to the beginning of the next school year and
he continues to emphasize a need for having the "courage" to do
what's necessary to raise student achievement. In our meeting with
the Secretary, he made it clear that the administration firmly
supports increasing standards for students and teachers as well as
restructuring how teachers are evaluated. In addition, the
administration believes that reauthorization will need to include
stringent accountability requirements and will require those who are
responsible for failing schools to do some very hard things, such as
closing schools and increasing state interventions.
It's important that you reach out to your members of Illinois'
Congressional delegation so that they understand the urgency for
action.
We all know that 2014 contains unrealistic expectations and if ESEA
is not reauthorized prior to the Presidential campaign kicking off
this fall, it possibly won't happen until after 2014. You can find
contact information for your federal representatives at
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/cgi-bin/newseek.cgi?site=ctc2011&st
ate=il
<http://www.contactingthecongress.org/cgi-bin/newseek.cgi?site=ctc2011&s
tate=il> .
I also had the opportunity to meet with most of the staffs of our
Congressional delegation last week. It was a productive meeting,
providing clarification on issues here at home, but also helping to
set the table for our hopes on federal reauthorization. You may
access a fact sheet we provided congressional staff at
http://www.isbe.net/board/supt/pdf/congressional_handout0311.pdf
<http://www.isbe.net/board/supt/pdf/congressional_handout0311.pdf>
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Have a great week.
Chris
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