My Take on the Harkin-Enzi ESEA Proposal
by Frederick M. Hess • Oct 17, 2011 at 10:18 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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ShareThe horrified shrieking you heard last week was the anguished cry of liberal NCLB enthusiasts denouncing theHarkin-Enzi ESEA proposal as a dreaded retreat into the distant past. They fretted that it would whip us back to the primitive year of 1994--when Bill Clinton was president and the feds didn't mandate school improvement plans based on the performance of racial subgroups. The keening will continue apace, as this is the week for the big mark-up.
For my friends at Education Trust and the Center for American Progress, the Harkin-Enzi proposal marks an unfortunate retreat from the Bush-era ambitions of NCLB. For most of the rest of us, the proposal elicits a more positive reaction. Now, I don't think the Harkin-Enzi proposal is nearly as good as the Alexander et al. proposals rolled out a few weeks ago. But the five Alexander bills are elegant and appealing because they don't