Issue Position: K12 Education Priorities

Issue Position

As Michael fights to fundamentally change our education system, he will prioritize the following areas:

Attract, Train and Retain Great Teachers and Leaders in the Classroom
The key to a great education is great educators. We need to update the way we recruit, train, support, retain and pay teachers and leaders in our high-need schools because our current system was designed deep in the last century and is woefully inadequate for the labor market demands of the 21st Century.

Bennet is working to help attract people to the teaching profession, ensure they have proper training to be effective teachers, and focus teacher preparation programs based on outcomes, not inputs. He wants to establish incentives for states to establish selective "Teacher Preparation Charter Academies" and ensure licensing is based on demonstrated effectiveness in the classroom. He has also proposed a Presidential Teacher Corps to recruit and train 100,000 effective teachers to work in high-need schools over the next five years, a version of which was included in the President's budget, as well as the Department of Education's plan to improve teacher preparation programs. Also included in the Department's plan are parts of Bennet's GREAT Act, which supports the growth of new kinds of teacher and principal training academies that have rigorous admissions selection processes, emphasize clinical instruction and tie graduation to improving student academic achievement.

Read an op-ed Bennet penned for the Huffington Post on the Presidential Teacher Corps.

There is no harder -- or more important -- job than teaching in a high-need school.
Without redesigning our system to attract, support and retain key leaders in our schools that need them most, other public education investments will not lead to the dramatic results we need for short-term economic recovery and long-term economic prosperity. Michael supports the Teacher Incentive Fund and other efforts to provide districts opportunities to reform their systems for recruiting, placing, developing, compensating and retaining great teachers and leaders in high-need schools.

Michael has worked on two bills to recruit and train leaders in high-need schools. He was an original cosponsor of the bipartisan School Principal Recruitment and Training Act, which would have created a new, competitive grant program for high-quality training programs that prepare principals to improve student academic achievement in high-need schools. He has also introduced the Lead Act, which would create opportunities, including a School Leadership Academy and local School Leadership Centers of Excellence, for the best principals in Colorado and across the country to get the training and support they need to successfully lead the transformation of the lowest performing schools.

Increase Flexibility to Make Decisions Closest to Kids
Too often, people are focused on meeting the needs of programs instead of meeting the needs of students. One of the problems with No Child Left Behind is that it required one-size-fits all solutions to very individual problems. We need to reduce the red tape and make sure people at the local level have the flexibility they need to make decisions about what is best for them.

Bennet joined Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) to introduce a bipartisan bill to establish a national task force to examine federal, state and local regulations, as well as testing and assessment systems, governing public schools. The task force would analyze the findings to make recommendations for policymakers to remove red tape, reduce regulatory compliance while ensuring important regulations remain in place, and improve the quality of assessment systems.

In addition to the long-term, nationwide task force authorized in the bill, Bennet and Alexander already have established a working group to study the regulations and assessment systems in Colorado and Tennessee schools and determine their effectiveness.

Read an op-ed Bennet penned for The Hill on the need to cut red tape and increase flexibility in education.

Click here to share your experiences with red tape in education or your ideas to remove unnecessary barriers to improve our schools.

End Inequality

We can no longer allow children's Zip codes to determine the quality of their education. We are one of only three developed countries to invest more money into the most advantaged schools than the low-income schools. We need to build a school system in this country that addresses the profound inequality that exists and provides equal opportunity for all our children to succeed in the classroom and after graduation.

Bennet joined with Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) to introduce a bipartisan bill to ensure that our sparse federal dollars go to the disadvantaged children they were intended to serve, while also encouraging more equitable spending locally among schools. Title I is designed to provide low-income schools with additional resources to meet high needs. To receive Title I assistance, districts must demonstrate they are allocating their state and local resources equally among their high- and low-poverty schools.

Due to a loophole, however, school districts can comply with this requirement without accounting for actual dollars going into each school, but rather by using the average teacher salary across the district within their school budgets. But lower-income schools often do not attract more experienced, higher salaried teachers, so districts often inadvertently end up providing more local funding to schools in affluent areas because they attract higher salaried teachers.

As a result, even with Title I assistance, low-income schools end up with less funding than higher-income schools. In effect, low-income schools end up subsidizing their higher income counterparts. The Fiscal Fairness Act would close this long-standing loophole. For a simple video explaining the comparability loophole, click here.

Another significant challenge to bridging the achievement gap is improving programs for English language learners, the fastest growing student population within the United States, having grown by 60 percent since the late 1990s. The fastest growth has taken place in regions of the country with relatively limited experience serving English learners, creating a major challenge for schools struggling to close the achievement gap with limited resources.

That's why Bennet has introduced a bill to help ensure that English learners have access to high-quality instruction that enables them to acquire English and prepare for college and beyond. The English Learning and Innovation Act would create two competitive grant programs to promote new solutions. This new focus will help test and drive new approaches to educating English learners, which will prepare them for success in the 21st century job market and to contribute to the economy. He also successfully pushed to have English language learning programs be considered in evaluating applications for the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge.

Update Standards and Assessments for the 21st Century to Teach More, Test Less
We need fewer, higher, and clearer standards, and an accountability system that measures student growth year to year, such as the Colorado growth model, and assessments that accurately measure school performance. We need high quality tests that measure critical thinking skills and provide teachers with real-time information about students' performance. But we also need to incentivize more streamlined testing, effective use of technology, and coordination to reduce duplicative and unnecessary testing.

Bennet joined Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) to introduce a bipartisan bill to establish a national task force to examine testing and assessment systems governing public schools. The task force would analyze the findings to make recommendations for policymakers improve the quality of assessment systems. In addition to the long-term, nationwide task force authorized in the bill, Bennet and Alexander established a working group that will begin immediately to study the assessment systems in Colorado and Tennessee schools and determine their effectiveness.

Michael, along with Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), introduced the Growth to Excellence Act, which is base on the growth model developed in Colorado and would allow states to consider individual students' academic growth year-to-year in evaluating schools, instead of comparing this year's 4th graders to last year's 4th graders.

Accountability

We need strong accountability for teachers, schools and school districts, especially with large achievement gaps. Schools should adopt college and career ready standards, and we should incentivize common core standards, so there are consistent, clear and high standards across the country.

In addition to common core standards, we should support states making meaningful progress toward high goals and ensure that parents and education officials have accurate information about the progress individual students and schools are making. But we need to ensure our system of accountability is fair and is measuring growth. We should not evaluate a teacher based on how last year's 5th graders did compared to this year's 5th graders, but comparing how one 5th grade did this year compared to how she did last year.

And Colorado is already leading the way with this type of accountability with the Colorado Growth Model. This system of accountability actually shows us how much progress students and schools are making toward our goals. Michael, along with Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), introduced the Growth to Excellence Act, which is based on the Colorado growth model and would allow states to consider individual students' academic growth year-to-year, among other factors, in evaluating schools.

For schools that consistently fail to meet these standards, we should take aggressive action to turn them around. Turning around the lowest performance schools is incredibly difficult work. We need to provide local schools and leaders with the flexibility to do something rather than allowing them the flexibility to do nothing.

Spur Competition and Innovation

We know that in order to improve our education system, states and school districts will have to take bold new approaches to delivering a quality education. The federal government can play a critical role in promoting opportunities for innovation at the local level and high-quality research and development to replicate effective strategies and bring them to scale across the country.

We can encourage states and districts to try new approaches to teaching and engaging students that drive results and empower schools to reach the cutting edge of using new technology for teaching and learning. We can also help local school districts and states use technology to disseminate effective practices, share great lesson plans and connect students to one another.

Programs, such as Race to the Top, incentivize states and local school districts to innovate, raise their standards and commit to fixing schools that have persistently failed students by creating a competition among states for additional federal resources. Michael cosponsored a bill to make the Race to the Top program permanent. While he was disappointed that Colorado deserved to but did not win funding during the first two rounds of the competition and that the scoring system needs updates, he continues to support Race to the Top because it spurred innovation in education from coast to coast. He is hopeful that innovations will expand and Colorado will receive resources if it continues. In just 18 months, Race to the Top led to more meaningful education reforms across the country than we've seen over the last eight years.

Michael pushed for the Secondary School Innovation Fund Act to award grants to implement innovative strategies to improve student achievement and prepare at-risk students for postsecondary workforce-driven education. He also helped secure resources for the Investing in Innovation Fund, which provides competitive grants to applicants with a record of improving student achievement and attainment in order to expand the implementation of, and investment in, innovative practices that are demonstrated to have an impact on improving student achievement or student growth, closing achievement gaps, decreasing dropout rates, increasing high school graduation rates, or increasing college enrollment and completion rates.

Achievement Through Prevention

When we create a safe and positive learning environment and identify and resolve problems early, we can improve academic achievement for all students. Bennet led a bipartisan group of Senators to introduce a bill to improve student academic achievement, reduce over-identification of children with disabilities and reduce disciplinary problems in schools by intervening early. The Achievement Through Prevention Act makes it easier to implement school-wide programs that create a positive learning environment, as well as a system to provide early interventions tailored to the needs of each child.

By increasing implementation of school-wide positive behavioral intervention and supports and early intervening services, we can help prevent school bullying and create a safer learning environment for all students. We need to support and expand proven programs that raise achievement through prevention in education. To learn more about bullying, how to recognize the warning signs and what to do to prevent it, go to stopbullying.gov.

Nutrients to Learn

At a time when childhood obesity rates are skyrocketing and child poverty is increasing, it is more important than ever to ensure our kids are getting three meals a day and that those meals are healthy and full of the nutrients growing kids need. In 2010, nearly one in five kids in Colorado lacked access to enough food to meet their basic needs, and that is unacceptable. For kids to be successful in the classroom, they must be well nourished -- kids who eat right, learn better.

Michael has successfully fought for monumental investments that will tackle childhood obesity and childhood hunger, improve child nutrition and reduce red-tape to make sure all kids receive the nutritious school meals they deserve.

With Michael's support the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act was signed into law. This bill will create a path to end childhood hunger, promote health and reduce obesity, and improve program management and integrity.

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