Policy Advocacy

ESEA re-authorization
BBA Co-chairs Helen Ladd, Pedro Noguera, and Tom Payzant describe the key points for Congress and the Administration to keep in mind as they consider the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Noguera-Williams Debate in Education Next
The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education advocates a coordinated approach of improvements in schools and in the social and economic conditions which determine whether children come to school ready to learn. The most prominent critics of BBA have been "Democrats for Education Reform," led by Joe Williams, and the Educational Equality Project, led by Joel Klein and Al Sharpton. Democrats for Education Reform and the Educational Equality Project acknowledge that poor and minority children have social and economic disadvantages that affect achievement, but argue that good teaching can overcome these disadvantages, and that teachers would be successful in doing so if they were held more accountable for the test scores of their students. While Democrats for Education Reform and the Educational Equality Project support the NCLB framework of accountability for closing the test score gap, BBA insists that NCLB is a fatally flawed instrument that narrows the curriculum, creates incentives for excessive test obsession in schools, and ignores the necessity of providing better social and economic support for disadvantaged children. Instead, BBA proposes that a re-authorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act require states to develop on-site evaluation systems that rely on expert judgment to hold schools accountable for successful delivery of a well-rounded curriculum and for coordination with social and economic support services. In the Winter 2010 issue of Education Next, BBA co-chair Pedro Noguera and Democrats for Education Reform president Joe Williams debate these two competing perspectives.

(Note: Education Next editors introduce this debate by describing BBA as a coalition of education scholars and Democratic thinkers. This is a misrepresentation. The leaders of BBA include both Democrats and Republicans, including top education officials from the Clinton and both Bush administrations who have reconsidered and rejected the narrow test-based accountability represented by NCLB. Complete lists of the diverse groups of initial BBA signers, BBA national advisory council members, and members of the BBA accountability policy committee can be found at the end of the accountability report, and elsewhere on the BBA website.)

More BBA policy advocacy work

The Broader, Bolder Approach campaign has signed a letter of support for a bipartisan Senate bill that would mandate reimbursing school-based health clinics through SCHIP and Medicaid funds when the children served, and the services provided, are covered under these public insurance programs. The difficulty of accessing such reimbursement has been an impediment to expanding school-based health clinics.

The Broader Bolder Approach has joined with many other organizations to endorse the Nurse Family Partnership, in a letter to President Obama and in advertisements that appeared in Roll Call and in Congress Daily.

In a letter to Jared Bernstein, chief economist in the office of Vice President Biden, BBA presented a series of recommendations regarding how federal education dollars under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus package) might be used to advance the ideas set forth in A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education.

Helen Ladd, co-chair of the BBA campaign, submitted this comment to the Department of Education regarding its proposed regulations for distribution of "Race to the Top" funds. In this comment, Professor Ladd objects "to the heavy emphasis in the regulations on using student test scores for the formal evaluation of teachers and school principals." She adds that, "while student test scores clearly have a role to play in the overall effort of improving schools, they need to be kept in their place. The regulations [the Department of Education is] proposing gives them a pride of place that will lead to little good and is likely to do much harm." In this comment, Professor Ladd elaborates on a statement issued by BBA in June, explaining why education accountability policies must include qualitative judgment, if such policies are to avoid contributing to the corruption and distortion of school programs.