MASA... "At the Capitol" w/Charlie: Washington, DC

MASA Members traveled to Washington, DC last week. This is a report on the Federal Advocacy front. By Charlie Kyte, Executive Director.

The podcast above is 8 1/2 minutes long.

TESTING IN MINNESOTA..... NO HELP FROM WASHINGTON

As we left for Washington, DC, Minnesota was just beginning the 'testing window' for many of our tests. From the e-mails I was receiving it was apparent that most of our schools were much more concentrated on testing than on instruction.

THE FEDERAL ADVOCACY GROUP

Our group that traveled to Washington this year included Dan Brooks--Sauk Centre, Gary Amoroso--Lakeville, Kevin Wellin--NRHEG, Craig Oftedahl--Warroad, Nan Records--Sherburn-Wright Coop, Jamie Skjeveland--Crosby-Ironton, Luther Heller-SW/WC Service Coop, Jim Hess-Bemidji. Mary Law from MASA served as staff support on the trip.

Over our 4 days we met with all of Minnesota's Congressmen, Senators Coleman and Klobuchar, many House and Senate Education Committee staff persons and also attended the AASA Federal Advocacy Conference. We learned a lot and also saw how difficult it is to have the folks in DC be cognizant about what is actually happening in our schools.

CONGRESSMAN TIM WALZ

A bright spot was a talk given by Minnesota's freshman congressman Tim Walz to the whole group of AASA Federal Advocacy Conference attendees. This happened on Thursday morning with about 150 of us in attendance. Congressman Walz is a teacher from Mankato and his wife Gwen is the Testing and Assessment Coordinator for that District. They understand the difficulty of applying NCLB at the local level. Many people in the room wished they had Congressman Walz representing their states. We were proud of him and his ability to communicate with educators.

MEETING WITH THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE STAFF.... NO FIX FOR NCLB

The staff of the federal education committees are far removed from education. They mean well, but in our conversations with them it quickly became apparent that any 'fix' to NCLB was just going to make it more complicated. What is needed is a strong dose of reality and simplicity. When the federal government finally gets around to the re-authorization of this law, they should just start over.

Going back to the old ESEA would be a good idea. The federal government could concentrate resources on the neediest schools and hold them accountable. For the rest of the schools, they would do us a favor by just leaving us, and our states, to our own improvement models.

MEDICAID CLAIMING

The federal government has written new rules to prohibit medicaid claiming for schools that are working with medically fragile children. This is a result of school sin several states taking unfair advantage of this provision.

A Bill is working it's way through congress to block this new rule for one year while a new set of rules is worked out that will still permit a reasonable level of medicaid claiming for transportation and administrative costs.