The College and Career Readiness Act of 2010?

Thanks to Susan Weston over at Prichard for doing what I didn't do this weekend.

Friday, the U.S. Department of Education announced its "Blueprint" for revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I didn't read it for religious reasons. It's March and I'm in Kentucky.

Forced to choose between reading the Obama administration's plan for school reform through the reauthorization of NCLB - which has the potential to affect the lives of millions of American children forever - and watching UK and a bunch of bracketology which I enjoy, I chose badly. Heck of a game though, wasn't it?

In three parts this morning, Susan outlines the plan President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan hope will gain congressional consensus and become the "College and Career Readiness Act of 2010," or whatever they end up calling it.

In Replacing NCLB Part 1, Susan says that "College and career readiness by 2020" may soon replace proficiency by 2014" as the main goal of the federal P-12 education programs.

States will have will two options for reading and mathematics standards:

First, they can “upgrade their existing standards, working with their 4-year public university system to certify that mastery of the standards ensures that a student will not need to take remedial coursework upon admission to a postsecondary institution in the system.”

Second, they can adopt standards in common with other states.

Kentucky chose door # 2.

In Replacing NCLB Part 2, Susan reports on the $350 million part of the RTTT fund which Secretary Duncan held out for assessemnt.

The blueprint expects those assessments to allow reporting on students' growth from year to year, and it proposes federal grants to support improvements in assessment methods. Beyond that, though, it's hard to find details on what "high quality" will mean.

Everything I see suggests continued movement toward a value-added system.

And in Part 3, Susan finds that,

Accountability will be tougher on a few schools and easier under most if the U.S. Department of Education's approach to revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act becomes law.For the five percent of schools with the weakest growth, states will be required to use one of four aggressive interventions:

• closure
• restart under outside management
• turnaround by replacing the principal and half the staff
• transformation that includes a new principal, strengthened staffing, a new instructional program, and other steps ...

At the opposite end of the spectrum, schools with the strongest student growth will receive some type of recognition and reward. The recognition could play a valuable role in spotlighting schools that "beat the poverty odds" and building public confidence that high goals really are in reach even for students who have often been allowed to underperform.

And as long as you're there, check our Prichard's take on the House budget proposal in $59 million in cuts to state support for current P-12 students.

Comparing the original budget for this fiscal year to the budget the House just approved for the 2012 fiscal year shows a reduction of roughly $59 million in planned state spending for current educational services. $103 million in reductions to specific programs is only partly offset by $44 million in increases to other efforts.

Susan's got the itemized list of cuts.