President George W. Bush’s administration has been notable not only for one of the most significant shifts in federal oversight of education, under the No Child Left Behind Act, but also for new laws, programs, and developments in other areas affecting schools.

No Child Left Behind Act
President Bush made the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act a top priority upon entering office. The resulting NCLB law, which he signed Jan. 8, 2002, expanded student testing and introduced new accountability rules for schools that receive federal aid. It requires schools to assess students in reading and mathematics in grades 3-8 and once in high school. If schools fail to keep their students on pace toward proficiency in those subjects, they are identified as needing improvement and face a series of interventions, such as offering public school choice and free tutoring, and eventually being restructured. The law also added a requirement that all teachers be highly qualified according to federal and state rules.

Reading First
The NCLB law also created the Reading First program, which provided some $1 billion a year to pay for curricular materials and professional development focused on the primary grades. Although popular among educators, the Department of Education’s inspector general issued a series of reports questioning whether department officials overstepped their authority in pushing states to use specific curricula and assessments under the program. The department’s research office also released a report saying that the funding had been successful in improving students’ decoding and other basic skills, but not their reading comprehension.

School Choice
As part of his original plan for the NCLB law, President Bush had sought to allow students in low-performing public schools to use federal aid to attend private schools, as well as to transfer to higher-performing public schools. But facing staunch Democratic opposition, he agreed to drop the voucher element. The public-school-choice provision was enacted, but is widely viewed as ineffective, with very few parents transferring their children to other public schools.

In 2002, the Bush administration argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the constitutionality of including religious schools in publicly funded voucher programs. The court agreed, ruling that the inclusion of religious schools in such programs does not violate the First Amendment’s prohibition against a government establishment of religion. In 2004, the president signed into law the nation’s first federally funded voucher program, which targets students from low-income families in the District of Columbia. It was narrowly enacted in 2004 when Republicans held majorities in Congress, with most Democrats strongly opposed. It provides vouchers worth up to $7,500 per year, and they can be used at religious schools.

Special Education
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was reauthorized during President Bush’s first term, with language that ties the special education law to NCLB on such issues as highly qualified teachers for students with disabilities, and the importance of including students with disabilities in assessments. The administration introduced some testing flexibility for states by allowing different state assessments to be used for students with significant cognitive impairments, and students who could meet modified grade-level standards.

Educational Research
The 2002 passage of the Education Sciences Reform Act gave the Bush administration a rare opportunity to abolish the Department of Education’s existing research operation and create a new research agency out of the ashes. The newly christened Institute of Education Sciences, under Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, spearheaded the department’s campaign to transform education into an evidence-based practice, much like medicine.

Under Mr. Whitehurst’s six-year tenure, the agency increased the number of randomized experiments the department finances, revamped the agency’s peer-review process, retooled the federal education research laboratory system, and created new grant programs to nurture research talent for the field. The office’s best-known accomplishment, though, may be the What Works Clearinghouse, a sometimes-controversial project set up to vet the evidence base that undergirds many of the programs, policies, and practices used in the nation’s schools.

Gender Issues
First-term Secretary of Education Rod Paige in 2002 established a commission to study Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law that bars sex discrimination in federally funded schools and colleges. Some civil rights and women’s advocacy groups feared the effort was a bid to soften enforcement of the law. After receiving a report full of mostly minor recommendations about athletic participation at the college level, the Education Department largely ignored them, issuing a document in 2003 clarifying previous Title IX guidance.

Meanwhile, citing research that educating boys and girls separately was proving effective in some circumstances, the department in 2006 issued regulations making it easier for public schools to experiment with single-sex education.

Race Issues
The Bush administration weighed in against the use of race in education in a series of landmark Supreme Court cases. In appeals involving race-conscious admissions policies in higher education, the administration struck a cautious tone, and the Education Department issued reports emphasizing ways in which schools and colleges could achieve racial diversity without relying on racial preferences. In those cases, from the University of Michigan, the justices affirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action but struck down some practices.

The administration was more assertive when the justices took up race-conscious student-assignment policies from the Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky., school districts in 2006. It urged the Supreme Court to strike down the plans, which the court did in a 2007 decision that sharply limited the ways K-12 schools could rely on race.

Higher Education
Secretary Margaret Spellings helped spur a dialogue over student financial assistance and college accountability by convening a task force to study higher education. The panel’s 2006 report called for a major new investment in federal student aid. And, more controversially, it encouraged colleges and universities to use value-added assessments to measure students’ skills at the beginning and end of their college careers. Colleges and universities should make the results of those tests public, the panel concluded.

—David J. Hoff, Alyson Klein, Erik W. Robelen, Christina A. Samuels, Debra Viadero, and Mark Walsh

Again, as I think back to my days as a teacher in an urban school district, I noticed that some of the children in my class were simply not getting enough sleep. They came in late, saying that they overslept and leaned their heads on their hands for most of the morning. They seemed to recuperate a bit after lunch, but by then, had nearly slept through a lot of important instruction. Being a bit of a nosy teacher, I would talk to them privately and ask if they had gotten enough sleep the night before. I couldn’t believe some of what I heard. Between evening church services that lasted until 11 pm - 12 pm at night, television/movies, video games, visitors, grocery shopping and the like, it seemed that many children are up and about until 10 pm or later in the evening, which of course adversely affects their performance in school the next day. If you couple that with poor nutrition (see my previous post) then you’re setting a child up for failure.

How much sleep is necessary? Each child is different of course, but according to several sites, a school aged child needs about 9-10 hours per night. Furthermore, a teenager needs even more sleep to cope with puberty….but are children getting the sleep that they need? If we look at our busy lives, many of us would have to say no. Because of work schedules, homework, team sports, lessons and other extracurricular activities, many school children are not getting the sleep that they need. And lack of sleep can adversely affect their school performance, attitude and mood.

As an African-American, black, Mocha or whatever you want to call me – mom, I feel strongly that we as parents really need to pay attention to this important aspect of our children’s lives. Turn off the TV. Unplug the video games. At 7:30 – 8 pm, start winding them down with a book, a cup of warm milk, some cheese, or a bit of yogurt. Ease them down into sleep. Help them relax. Their little bodies need this sleep.

Now, I know you working parents’ schedule is sometimes later than you would like for the little ones. This is understandable as not everyone is at liberty to pick their own hours. But, whatever the time you are able, get the children to bed as soon as you can. It’s really, really important!

Oh, what time do my children go to bed? 7 pm. Yup. Maybe in the summer they can stretch it out till 8 pm, but no more than that. Between 7 and 8 pm, my 5, 3 and 2 year old are in the bed. Of course, they get up at 6 am, but that’s yet another story.

How many of you, dear readers, wish your children would go to bed earlier? Leave me some comments below.

Peace, love and a good night’s sleep!

Want to get your children to go to bed earlier? Stay tuned for my free e-course on “Children and Sleep” simplify your life, achieve an earlier bedtime. Be sure to subscribe!

N’Mama

Resources:

http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/sleep/sleep.html

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/sleep-children

http://www.plateaupediatrics.com/sleepinfo.html