The Year Recovery And Reinvestment Act

(Leon-Guerrero, 2014) Education reform scholars argue that racial segregation, funding, inequity and educational inequality go hand in hand. In the 1990s courts began to examine whether the achievement gap between minorities’ and whites was a vestige also known as the former segregated school system. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) Today education analyst contributes this to the achievement gap. Although state courts have held that the quality of education should be fair, the struggle to close the achievement gap still continues. For instance, children coming from a household making over $90,000 have a better chance graduating from college by the age of twenty-four. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) Children coming from families making less than $35,000 have a one in seventeen chance from graduating from college. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) The No Child left behind Act (NCLB), was intended to be the revalidation of the ESEA in 2001. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) The purpose of the NCLB was to close the achievement gap within the races, but ended up failing to drive the educational improvement where it was needed most. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) The NCLB mandated higher scores, but failed to provide low-income schools with resources to make the achievement possible. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) As a result wealthier

In 2008, the American economy broke down. Known as the Global Financial Crisis, this is widely considered to be the worst financial crisis since the 1930’s when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression hit.

Identifies skills, theories of change, program designs, partnerships, and ways of building schools where students achieve.

Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal policy. Both Clinton and Bush administrations regulated freedom of choice within their educational policies. Clinton’s Goals 2000 increased standards for student scores within core subjects. Legislation targeting Title I, required States and school districts to “turn-around” low-performing schools, and in 1993, public charter schools increased to over 2, 000 (www.clinton5.nara.gov). Bush’s No Child Left Behind’s structure demanded high-stakes testing and created provision for privatization of public education, as well as “school choice .” No Child Left Behind not only increased the Clinton’s strong accountability disposition, but it also superimposed a new set of accountability rules that would adversely affect public schools (Porter, Linn, & Trimble, 2005). One significant requirement of NCLB is that each state must adopt challenging academic content standards and challenging student achievement standards. Additionally, states must establish Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals for each year from 2002 to 2014—that would culminate in the 2014 goal that all American students would be at or above the proficient student academic achievement standard (P.L. 107–110, 2001). When local educational agencies (LEA) failed to meet their state’s AYP goals, in addition to other criteria, they [LEA] faced the inevitability of losing their accredited status and eventually face school

Although Ohio’s governor, Ted Strickland, signed and agreed to adopt a set of national standards in June 2009 to obtain 400 million dollars in Race To The Top (RTTT) money, he had not read or reviewed these standards as the completed CCSS were not published until July 2009. The Standards simply passed through the Ohio Congress without knowing the dangers. According to the article “Myths versus Facts” written by an anti-CCSS group called Truth in American Education, most states implemented Common Core to “ be eligible to compete [in] the federal Race to Top Funding.” At the request of Achieve Inc., the National Governor’s Association (NGA) and the Chief Counsel of State School Officers (CCSSO) wrote national standards called CCSS. David Coleman, the new president of the State College Boards, admits that he had to sell these national standards to the governors. Although Coleman does not have any background in education, he received instruction to rewrite the SAT and ACT to align these national tests to the Common Core State Standards. The question remains as to whether CCSS began as a state-led initiative or were established unconstitutionally? Did the 200 million dollars that Ohio received upon signing and the promise of an additional 200 million dollar at the full implementation of Common Core influence the

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed into law in 2009, includes the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act known as the HITECH Act. The act defined specific requirements for receiving financial incentives for ‘meaningful use’ of the electronic health record (EHR). Hospitals and providers could begin implementation of the requirements in 2011 to receive the incentives by meeting specific objectives, after 2015 failure to meet meaningful use requirements will result in penalties. Meaningful use is divided into 3 stages and each stage has objectives and requirements specific to that stage. Hospitals and providers must meet requirements for Stage 1 of meaningful use for two years before

The New York City Department of Education (DOE) serves 1.1 million students across schools (“About Us”). During the Bloomberg administration more than 140 schools were closed with no indication that the “administration’s closure policy improved outcomes for students in the city’s struggling schools” (“Standardized Testing Is Counterproductive, Corrosive and Corrupting”). Several studies have detailed the damage and disruption the city’s closure policy had on struggling schools in high-need populations with significant academic challenges (Fruchter). Bloomberg’s education policies were guided by The No Child Left Behind law, which required standardized test-based school reform including annual testing, greater flexibility for states and increased teacher qualifications in order to receive federal funding (Ujifusa). This standardized test-based school reform trend continued under the Obama administration 's with the Race to the Top program. Race to the Top rewarded states that used exams and data systems to track the performance of students and teachers, among other initiatives (Cite).

The EHR/EMR was mandated in 2009 it was a provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, they are encouraging the providers to start using the EHR. A of January 1, 2014 all public and private healthcare groups must have adopted and be demonstrating a meaningful use of the EHR so that they can collect the reimbursement from Medicaid and Medicare. The EHR/EMR have to be in facility in working order at the beginning of 2015. The definition of meaningful users to improve quality, safety, efficiency, and reduce health disparities. There is 3 stages of meaningful use, to meet the first deadline of stage one is October 2012. Stage two and three go over the health information that you exchange with the providers, in these stages you will

First, within the context of the video discussions, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) represents a top-heavy approach to education with the federal government mandating reform and placing emphasis on testing outcomes. Indeed, NCLB is part of the accountability movement that has led to the development of ongoing measures that are designed to create statewide assessment systems to measure student performance in mathematics and reading and thus address areas for improvement among students not performing at passable levels in such subject areas (Ravitch, 2014). This framework has extended into the Obama administration (i.e., Race to the Top – RTTT), with an even greater importance attached to outcomes, where high-stakes testing remains the basis by which student success is defined (Ravitch, 2014). Second, measuring student progress has historically been a prevalent feature of the American public education system with respect to policy and practice. However, the underlying assumption of present accountability systems is that attaching consequences to education reform will elevate student achievement (Hursh, 2010). Using high-stakes assessments to retain/promote students and to withhold a student’s graduation diploma for not passing an exit-level examination are examples of how the current NCLB/RTTT accountability framework supposedly ensures that high school

NCLB sets some new strategic directions to reform American education. The focus of President Bush's education agenda is to shift federal education dollars away from an emphasis on improving schools to an improvement of student performance and a closing of the gap between disadvantaged students and their peers. NCLB is structured to tie funding to accountability and results.

President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne announced the United States Department of Education’s Race to the Top competition, a $4.35 billion incentive program designed to make drastic reforms and improvements in education and student performance, as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. After a rigorous competition with other states, Tennessee emerged as one of the two states awarded Race to the Top funding and will receive $501 million over the next four years (The Public Agenda for Tennessee Higher Education 2010-2015, 2011).

Ravitch starts by explaining the ideas of charter schools and other market based reforms. Ravitch discusses the difference between the no child left behind act and a nation at risk. The Clinton administration Goals 2000 program gave the states federal money for individual academic standards. The Bush administration implemented the no child left behind act in 2002. Bush’s no child left behind program melded smoothly, with a central feature of the Clinton administration’s Goals program: namely leaving it to the states to set their own standards and pick their own tests (Ravitch, 2011).

Marzano, McNulty and Waters propose five steps for a plan of effective school leadership. The first step is developing a leadership team with purpose. The definition used for a purposeful community is one with the collective efficacy and capability to develop and use assets to accomplish goals that mater to all community members through agreed-upon process (Marzano, et. al, 2005). The second step is distributing some responsibilities throughout the leadership team. The third step is to select the right work. The fourth step is to identify the order of magnitude implied by the selected work. The last step is to match the management style to the order of magnitude of the change initiative. The last step incorporates whether this is first or second order change.

President Barack Obama announced his plans for the Race to the Top grants on June 24, 2009. During his address to our country he stated American schools must do a better job of educating children. He added, that as an education system, rigorous and challenging standards must be

George W. Bush in 2001 wrote an education-reform bill known as the “No Child Left Behind Act”. This education-reform bill was signed into law on January 8th in 2002. This law ideally was beneficial in some aspects for the United States as a whole. The purpose of this law was to dramatically increase the role of the federal government to guarantee quality public education for every student in the United States. The most beneficial aspects of this law were that it would increase funding for poor school districts as well as give higher achievements for poor and minority students. However, this law also made schools much more accountable for student progress and expanded standardized testing in the American Educational system to include grades 3 through 8 in testing in reading and math.