District 299 The Chicago Schools Blog

Budget Shaping Up

The state budget impasse may be breaking quickly, according to this update from States School News Service:

"It appears the House and Senate are about to pass a full-year FY 2008 budget this weekend."

Read below for all sorts of scoop on special ed, school construction, and funding source fun.

 

What Would Be Really Fair To Schools? A Year.

ISBE's Jesse Ruiz should just let this go, but instead he insists on defending the use of a May 1 enrollment cutoff for NCLB scores (Rule helps evaluate schools more fairly) and -- this is rich -- claiming that the 283,000 not-counted scores are still used for statewide averages and to gauge the performance of individual students.  Riiight.

So maybe October 1 (the old cutoff) is too late to be fair to schools.  But May 1 seems arbitrary.  How about September 1, or -- if you're really concerned with being fair to schools -- the first day in March when the previous year's ISAT testing is completed, or nearly a year before the next round of testing?