The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was established in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson's War On Poverty. Federal funds were directed to poor schools, communities, and children.

In 2002, ESEA was reauthorized and amended under George Bush's administration as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The pillars of the bill were accountability, to ensure that disadvantaged children achieved academic proficiency; flexibility for the schools in using federal funds to improve student achievement; research-based education, to ensure that schools used programs and practices that have been deemed effective; and parent options, giving parents of students in Title I schools more choices.

Now, in 2009, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan hopes to have ESEA   reauthorized and amended again.

Duncan's version seeks to ensure effective teachers and principals for underperforming schools, expanded learning time, and an accountability system that will measure individual student progress and use data to inform instruction and teacher evaluation. Duncan credited No Child Left Behind for "exposing achievement gaps, and requiring that we measure our efforts to improve education by looking at outcomes, rather than inputs. . . . [However] it places too much emphasis on raw test scores rather than student growth."

Secretary Duncan has already been to thirty states as part of his "Listen and Learn Tour." More meetings are being scheduled this fall with Duncan's top deputies and the policy community, hopefully again to listen and learn.

When veteran teachers reflect on their first few weeks in a classroom, nearly all of them say, "I wish I'd known . . ."

One of the best resources for new teachers is a veteran teacher--that teacher down the hall who always seems to know the right answer. It may take some time in your new school to find the right person to mentor you, so how do you handle the first few weeks?

Subscribers to Teaching Magazine's free newsletter can check out Teaching Secrets: The First Days of School, which is a compilation of hints from teachers, former student teachers, and mentors. One useful suggestion is to make quick notes about student behavior during the school day. These dated observations can be helpful if you have a student with special needs or disruptive behavior.

Other sites that offer some terrific new-teacher resources include TeachersFirst  (downloads include "Survival Guide for New Teachers" and "Baptism by Fire: 100 Essential Tips and Resources for Student Teachers") and TeacherVision (downloads include "Top Ten Things Every Teacher Needs in the Classroom" and "Tips from Veteran Teachers on Dealing with Parents").

I invite veteran teachers to complete the sentence from the first paragraph: "When I was a new teacher, I wish I'd known . . ."

A growing movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in school aims to engage students and turn them into lifelong readers. The approach, called reading workshop, allows students varying amounts of freedom in selecting the books they read.

A recent New York Times article follows teacher Lorrie McNeill after she was inspired to start a reading workshop in her middle-school class. Literary experts say that giving students a say in what they read is a powerful motivator. However, they caution that the choice of reading material should be limited to quality literature. Some proponents feel that almost any book is okay, as the teacher can then guide the student to choose books that are more challenging. For example, one of McNeill's students read a memoir by a popular rhythm-and-blues star. McNeill used that as an opportunity to suggest Maya Angelou's autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, followed by Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and finally A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

Those who favor the traditional method of teaching literature point to the importance of a shared literary experience and exposing students to books that are rich with language, nuance, and layers of meaning. Sharing books as a group can lead to deeper insights, and many educators feel it is the best way to prepare students for standardized tests.

Books selected for the purpose of instruction are--and should be--different from books for independent reading.

Some schools take the best of both approaches, with some books read and explored as a group and others chosen by the students. After all, isn't instilling the habit of reading as important as creating a common standard?

Our local newspaper is part of a consortium to promote literacy through journalism. I learned more about that when I read an article by 11-year-old Alan Cheng. Cheng writes engagingly about the annual egg drop competition at his middle school. Fifth-grade teacher Mark Olbin challenges his students to engineer a delivery system that will protect an egg dropped from a 100-foot-tall fire-engine ladder. Students cannot use a parachute, box, or soft toy. These fifth-graders protected their eggs in some ingenious ways, including a straw fort and a device that descended like a helicopter. I love the way Olbin has created a vehicle for learning that is eagerly anticipated, and I love seeing an 11-year-old with a byline under his belt.

Activities of this sort address the critical and creative thinking as well as the collaborative learning skill standards being advocated by the 21st-century skills project now embraced by fourteen states. Science is a great vehicle for delivering these skills. I know that during the years I taught science, my students always looked forward to the special projects we regularly did along with the annual science fair. It is also why we have provided resources in our Science A-Z website for doing science-fair projects and other project-based learning.