Be Informed on the Legislative Process - Part II

Part II:  How can a DKG member receive daily legislative updates and review pending legislation?

To obtain a daily update on legislation that is pending, go to www.govtrack.us and sign up for legislative updates.  You can choose to get updates on topics of interest via email. When you open the email and click on a bill title, you get a summary of the bill. If you don’t want daily updates, you can go to the site and click on a section called “Find Legislation that Affects You.”  The drop-down menu has various areas of legislation, such as “Education,” where users can review pending bills. If you want to review bills with a more limited focus in the area of Education, this site has twenty-two subcategories of Education.  These subcategories include such topics as “Special Education,” “Higher Education,” and “Preschool Education.”  This site uses the congress.gov information provided by the Library of Congress and organizes it for you.  When you click on a bill here, the sponsor, the history, and the current status of the bill in the legislative process are given.  The site also gives information about the likelihood of the bill becoming a law and includes legislators’ statements in regards to this piece of legislation.

Be Informed on the Legislative Process - Part I

 Part I:  How can a DKG member follow current legislation?

Bills that are before the U.S. Congress can be found at www.congress.gov. On this site, look for a section for the Senate and a section for the House of Representatives. For the House, find the link to bills being considered for the week. When you click on this, a link comes up displaying these bills. Bills for the House of Representatives start with H.R. while Senate bills start with S. On this site the title of the bill is given along with the sponsoring legislator and the text of the bill. The easiest way to locate House bills is to go to the section labeled House of Representatives and then click on bills to be considered.  For the Senate go to the top of the page on the right-hand side titled “Active Legislation.”  Clicking on this will take you to the senate.gov site where bills are listed. The Senate site gives pertinent information about bills in both the House and Senate.

The easiest way to locate education bills is to use the advanced search feature on the top of the left-hand side of the page. Scroll down to where it says “current legislation” and type in “education.”  All of the education bills will appear, and you can read a summary of the bill, a list of cosponsors, the names of committees that have heard the bill, and the text of the bill itself. 

Rumor Has It! #5

Rumor has it that international officers are only selected from the SE Region. Never has a statement been so FALSE. Where this has been true for a few international offices the last few biennia, the truth is that more qualified applications have come from the SE Region. If you look at the current slate of officers, you will see that not all hail from the SE.

If you have given great service to the Society, YOU could be one of the next international officers. Regardless of the region in which you live, apply now for an opportunity to serve the Society more. Let the Nominations Committee know that you are ready to take the challenge by submitting an application for an international office.

Value of Conference Themes: Part III

Given the DKG vision statement—"Leading Women Educators Impacting Education Worldwide”—how appropriate that the fifth and final international conference theme is global awareness. As technology has broken down physical barriers, allowing educators to expand the experiences of their students beyond classroom walls, the need to understand diversity, learn about other cultures, and recognize one’s place in the world at large—i.e., the need for global awareness--has intensified. If DKG members are indeed going to impact education worldwide, they must be ready to help students develop and embrace such awareness, and, if they are to lead young people effectively, they must develop and embrace such awareness themselves. Thus, like the other conferences, the international conference on global awareness will serve a dual purpose of expanding members’ personal and professional growth even as it helps them to promote excellence in education.

It does not escape me, furthermore, that one of the key benefits of the five international conferences in 2019 is that they will go a long way to increasing the international flavor of the Society as a leader in education. As noted in an earlier blog, regions were developed as a structural element at a time when travel and communication were far more limited than they are today, and, as members recognized by approving more than 100 amendments to the governing documents at the recent international convention, sometimes structures begin to become ends in themselves. Each of the upcoming conferences will provide broader opportunities for networking across regions rather than simply within regions. Focused on a key theme at each conference, that networking will also be richer as one connects with colleagues of similar professional interests and concerns. Such an emphasis on purposes over place and on professionalism over parochialism will ensure that we meet the vision of impacting education worldwide and that we are forward moving ever.

Rumor has it…

 Rumor has it that a member must have a Ph.D. or Ed.D. in order to be nominated to serve at the highest levels of the Society. This is absolutely NOT TRUE. Educational levels play a part of the decision, but service to the Society is a better indicator of predictable success in elected positions. When you hear the rumor about a member needing a doctoral degree - you can say “Not true!”