Recognition of Outstanding Leadership Related to Child and Education Advocacy

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Representative Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson recently received the National PTA Congressional Voice for Children Award.  Thompson was recognized for the award, along with U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), on Thursday, March 8, 2012, during National PTA’s Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C.  National PTA’s Congressional Voice for Children Award is given to two Members of Congress each year in recognition of outstanding leadership related to child and education advocacy.

 ”Representative Thompson has been a member of the House Education and Workforce Committee since being sworn into office in 2009.  Earlier this year, Representative Thompson played a critical role in saving the Parent Information and Resource Centers from elimination when he supported the Platts Amendment during the Education and Workforce Committee’s markup of the Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act,” National PTA stated, in a release issued earlier today.  “In addition, Representative Thompson has advocated for Title I formula fairness and college and career-ready initiatives.”

 ”We see that parents are very engaged early on in their child’s education, but when they get to high school, that involvement tends to fade.  At that time, we need to focus on getting parents out of the bleachers and reengaged in students academic lives,” said Representative Thompson. “I commend the National PTA for working to ensure that parental involvement extends throughout the educational development of each child. I am quite honored to receive this award and look forward continuing our work on behalf of America’s young learners.”

 National PTA’s Legislative Conference consists of a series of workshops, skill building training sessions, panel discussions and guest speakers, which this year included U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  The full news release from National PTA and downloadable pictures from the event, which were published earlier today, can be accessed by clicking here.

To view additional highlights of National PTA’s 2012 Legislative Conference, click here.

 The Formula Fairness Campaign congratulates Congressman Thompson on this prestigious and well-deserved award from the National Parent Teachers Associaiton.

House Committee Rejects All Children are Equal Act

Democrats Say Change is Needed, But Not Now. 

 The U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce debated the All Children are Equal Act (ACE) for 28 minutes on Tuesday, February 28, then voted against adding it as an amendment to the Student Success Act. 

 ACE would have phased down the use of “number weighting” in the formula for distributing funds for the education of disadvantaged children.  Number weighting has the effect of diverting funding from small and medium sized urban and rural districts, no matter how high their poverty rates, to larger urban and suburban districts, no matter how low their poverty rates.  The amendment was offered by Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-PA). 

 The vote was the only one taken by the committee that day that did not fall squarely along party lines.  However under the strong recommendation of the

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The All Children are Equal (ACE) Act which addresses inequities in the formula for distributing Title I funds to public schools, will be considered as an amendment to a bill that will be “marked up” (amendments considered and a vote taken on whether to send the bill to the full House).  The bill to be marked up is the Student Success Act.  The mark up will likely be during the week of February 27.

This week (February 20-26) Congress will be in recess and

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Urge Your Member of Congress on the Committee to Support ACE

The All Children are Equal (ACE) Act which addresses inequities in the formula for distributing Title I funds to public schools, will likely be considered as an amendment to a bill that will be before the committee sometime during the week of January 23.

You can make a difference by contacting

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Democratic Congressman Tim Bishop of New York’s 1st congressional district has added his name to the list of co-sponsors of the All Children are Equal (ACE) Act (H.B. 2485).

ACE would change the way federal funds for the education of disadvantaged children are distributed to public schools by reforming a part of the formula that discriminates against small and moderate sized, high-poverty schools.

Under ACE, a weighting system that was intended to target more money per disadvantaged student to districts with the highest concentrations of such students would be reformed. The current weighting system favors very large districts no matter how low their poverty rate, diverting it from all other districts no matter how high their poverty rate. If ACE is adopted, the weighting system would be based on the poverty rate in a school district, with higher poverty districts getting larger amounts per disadvantaged student.

Rep. Bishop becomes the seventeenth co-sponsor of ACE, which enjoys bi-partisan sponsorship, a rarity in this Congress. He is a member of the Education and the Workforce Committee which will likely consider ACE soon after Congress reconvenes in January. Eight of the 17 co-sponsors are members of the committee. Ten are Republicans and seven are Democrats.

Lead sponsor is Republican Congressman Glenn “GT” Thompson of Pennsylvania’s 5th congressional district.

Thompson’s Title I Monitor, the most widely read and respected newsletter covering issues involving the federal education program for disadvantaged students, has featured the Formula Fairness Campaign in a special report.  Normally available only by subscription, this special report was posted on Thompson’s open-site Blog because the firm anticipated

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Congressman Phil Roe (R-TN), representing Tennessee’s First Congressional District, is the latest Member of Congress to add his name as co-sponsor of the All Children are Equal (ACE) Act (H.R. 2485).

ACE addresses the unfair discrimination against small rural and urban school districts that is part of the formula for

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Here is the latest bombshell regarding the Title I formula.  It turns out that the “number weighting” system that the Formula Fairness Campaign seeks to end actually discriminates against

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The latest co-sponsor of the Formula Fairness Campaign (FFC) is the Montana Rural Education Association (MREA).  This brings the co-sponsor list to 27 organizations.  You can see the entire list by clicking here.

FFC is a national campaign to end discrimination against rural and small districts, including small urban districts, in the federal formula for distributing funds under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

MREA membership consists of rural and small school districts throughout Montana.  It has an active policy advocacy program that emphasizes equal access to a quality education, equitable funding systems that recognize the higher costs of educating children in rural areas, and local control of schools.  It opposes forced consolidation of school districts.

Welcome Montana Rural Education Association!

Thompson Publishing Group, a large publisher of educational handbooks, periodicals, and technical manuals including the encyclopedic two-volume Title I Handbook, ran a story in one of its email alerts to subscribers that got my attention last week.  Chuck Edwards, the Executive Editor of the Title I Handbook mailed an alert (and also posted the same message on their blog) quoting a senior education staffer of the House Education and the Workforce Committee predicting there would be a Title I formula fight during re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

That’s not what caught my eye, as anyone anywhere near the re-authorization process would hardly find that news.

I was not even surprised to read that “The groundwork has already been laid. The Rural School and Community Trust, with the endorsement of the American Association of School Administrators, has initiated a “formula fairness campaign” claiming that children in some rural areas and smaller cities with high poverty are underfunded relative to their counterparts in the largest metropolitan areas.”

Clearly, we’ve been urging formula reform and getting more and more people to agree to the need for it, especially around the number weighting issue.  That doesn’t mean we want a formula fight, to be sure, but as a practical matter even reasonable reforms don’t get a fight-free ride when someone’s advantage has to give way to someone else’s need for fairness.

What caught my eye first was

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