Learning Forward Advocacy
Thank you for standing up for professional learning!
On December 5, 2023, more than 3300 people stood up for professional learning on advocacy day at the Learning Forward annual conference. This is a stand we must all make every day. Remember to collect and share stories of the impact of professional learning in your school or learning environment. Learning Forward wants to hear from you.
Call to Action - Save Title II-A
Members of Congress will return after Labor Day and appropriations and continued funding to keep the government open are going to be the issues front and center for every member of Congress. Now is not the time to be complacent. We need to remain vigilant in our efforts to save Title II-A. On July 18, Fred Brown issued a call to action to all educators to help save Title II-A. If you are reading this message, please take a moment to send a message to your members of Congress. Press the blue button below to get started.
Learning Forward Advocacy
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Federal lawmakers need to hear from Learning Forward members and network partners to ensure that professional learning is a policy priority. They need to know that professional learning, and in particular Title IIA, deserves their full attention and support now more than ever. As educators and students struggle to recover from the setbacks of the pandemic, high-quality professional learning is a path forward for equipping educators with the knowledge and skills they need. High-quality professional learning is a strong tool for retaining teachers that must be adopted by schools and districts during this era of critical shortages.
On Sept. 14, Learning Forward will host Learning Forward’s Virtual Advocacy Day, a free virtual event to help school and district educators and leaders prepare to make their personalized and compelling cases for policy and funding. These advocacy skills will help educators to sustain professional learning that is high-quality — standards-aligned, ongoing, and job-embedded.
Virtual Advocacy Day will offer a focused, interactive forum to inform and energize educators to make the case for professional learning as a solution for problems they are trying to address in their state or district. There will be a focus on collecting and presenting data and evidence of the impact of high-quality professional learning so that decision makers clearly understand how good policy and robust funding can help to address education needs.
The morning is focused on honing advocacy skills that all educators can use. Starting at 11 a.m. (EST), Learning Forward President and CEO Frederick Brown will set the charge for the day and kick off a session of education leaders assembled to share their experiences in successful advocacy. We will share tips with attendees who want to strengthen their advocacy and storytelling muscles.
In the afternoon, U.S.-based attendees can sign up to put those advocacy skills into practice in meetings with key staff from the Congressional offices representing their states and districts. This is a great opportunity to share compelling stories of professional learning making an impact for their constituencies. The timing is particularly important as the U.S. House and Senate will be working to finalize Fiscal 2023 funding appropriations, including Title IIA, this fall.
It’s going to be a full day and one that we hope you can take part in. I invite you to check out our advocacy website, Powered by Title II, to get up-to-date information, fact sheets, news, talking points, and social media posts that make the clear point that Title IIA improves schools and instruction in the classroom.
Attending Virtual Advocacy Day is just one of many ways to take an active role in Learning Forward’s advocacy practice. The focus is on helping policymakers to understand the critical role that professional learning plays in education, thereby strengthening federal education policy and investment for professional learning. The Standards for Professional Learning are another critical tool in our advocacy toolkit. By sharing research and facts around professional learning that is aligned to Standards for Professional Learning, the result is greater support for ongoing, job-embedded, systemic professional learning that results in equitable and improved outcomes for all students.
Millions of teachers, principals, and school leaders depend on #TitleIIA to improve schools and instruction in the classroom. I am in alliance w/ @LearningForward when I ask Congress to support an additional $100 million in FY 2023 for #TitleIIA. Click To Tweet
In April, as Learning Forward was preparing to release its newest iteration of Standards for Professional Learning, we invited policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to share how the standards deepen critical connections between policy and practice and contribute to systems for professional learning that result in high-quality, ongoing, collaborative, and job-embedded professional learning for teachers and leaders. On April 27, our experts participated in this virtual roundtable discussion, sharing how evidence-based, community-informed principles, structures, and tools at the system level can make a difference in recruiting and retaining teachers and leaders and increasing student achievement. We have made this session available to everyone as part of our permanent collection of standards webinars. I invite you to watch the recording if you haven’t already.
We are here for our members and community stakeholders as you navigate strategies to attract resources to your districts. And as always, we invite you to share your stories with us so we can add them to our growing collection.
On July 28, the Senate Appropriations Committee released drafts of all 12 of its fiscal year 2023 appropriations bills, none of which have been or likely will be marked up in the regular order of the Senate Committee process. The House, however, has marked up all 12 appropriations bill and passed six of them on the floor. The House version of the Labor HHS Education bill is not among those that have been approved and it appears increasingly likely that will not occur – if at all – until September.
As expected, the Senate’s education numbers were largely less generous than those found in the House version. Significantly for Learning Forward, Title II received a strong increase of $83 million, which is $17 million below the House’s bill.
Overall, the Department of Education would receive $87.93 billion, which represents a $7.2 billion increase over fiscal year 2022’s funding level but is about $2.7 billion less than the House bill. Nearly all K-12 programs also saw less money in the Senate’s bill than they did in the House bill. Most prominently, Title I received a sizable $2.6 billion increase over FY22 in the Senate’s bill, but still comes in $400 million below the House’s figure and well short of President Biden’s request for a nearly $20 billion increase. Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) lost nearly $1 billion between the Senate and the House. The other major Title programs – Title III (+$123 million), Impact Aid (+$53 million), Title IV-A (+$65 million), and CTE Grants (+$13 million) – all would receive decent increases in the Senate bill but incrementally less than in the House bill. The only real winners in the Senate compared to the House were the Charter School Program, which saw the restoration of the $40 million cut by the House, and CTE, which received a $15 million bump.
The bill’s legislative report contained positive language that recommends the department urge states and school districts expend other program funds to support school principals and school leaders:
“Supporting Principals and School Leaders —The Committee recognizes that principals and school leaders are critical to both student outcomes and teacher retention. Research shows that top-performing principals generate nearly three months of additional learning for students in both reading and math annually. Research has also found that the most predictive workplace condition for teacher attrition is a lack of administrative support. At the same time, 70 percent of superintendents identified recruiting and retaining principals as a challenge, and four out of 10 principals reported plans to leave the profession in the next three years. The Committee directs the Department to issue guidance to SEAs and LEAs on the use of federal funds across various programs, including Title I–A and Title II–A of the ESEA, for implementing evidence based-strategies to recruit, prepare, support, and retain strong principals and school leaders.”
Below is a chart of key K-12 program funding levels:
Learning Forward’s Powered by Title II campaign website puts all of the information, tools, and advocacy tutorials in one easy to access online location to enable educator advocates reach their Members of Congress and help convince them to support more Title II funding. On this site, advocates will find:
- The latest news on Title II
- Background facts, stories, research, and data on Title II
- A storytelling tool to assist you in researching and explaining how Title II supports your school district
- Sample letters, talking points, tweets and more to support your advocacy
Evidence, evidence, evidence
Evidence of impact is not optional. From your ESSA plans to Title II to talking with your district superintendent, everyone wants to know when professional development is making an impact and how you know. Learning Forward is here to help. We invite you to join your peers from across the U.S. to share your successes here.
Tell us what Title II funds in your school or district, and most important, what outcomes you see as a result. Outcomes might include improved graduation rates or assessment scores, improvements for specific populations of students, or other indicators that students are experiencing more meaningful learning.
ESSA Toolkits
A New Vision For Professional Learning: A Toolkit to Help
States Use ESSA to Advance Learning and ImprovementSystems. This toolkit helps leaders leverage professional learning as
an essential tool in overcoming systemic inequities and guaranteeing
excellence for all.
Agents for Learning Toolkit: A Guide to Amplifying Teacher
Voice and Stakeholder Engagement. This toolkit suggests ways to cultivate teacher voice and agency in policy decisions and the implementation of professional learning.
This webinar, originally created for our Virtual Advocacy Day, includes advocacy strategies and tips that are applicable to any advocacy effort. Watch to hone your skills, build confidence, and get excited about being an advocate.