Lawmakers Move to Limit Government’s Role in Education
WASHINGTON — Congress on Wednesday moved to substantially scale back the federal government’s role in education, particularly the use of high-stakes standardized testing to punish schools, in the first significant proposed revisions since the No Child Left Behind law was passed 14 years ago.
While there is near-universal agreement that the law should be retooled, the paths to change are starkly different.
The House on Wednesday passed its version, a measure laden with conservative prescriptions that congressional Democrats and President Obama opposed. The Senate began debate on its alternative, a bill with at least some bipartisan support, but one the White House still finds wanting.
No Child Left Behind, which passed Congress by overwhelming margins, had been considered one of the signature domestic achievements of President George W. Bush. But its provisions for using standardized tests has ignited debate ever since.
Those fights have intensified during the intervening years since Speaker John A. Boehner and Senator Edward M. Kennedy created their compromise that Mr. Bush signed.
The House version of a revised education bill includes a provision that would permit low-income students to transfer federal dollars between school districts, something the Obama administration has pledged to veto. The bill, which passed, 218 to 213 had almost no Democratic support.
In the Senate, there were calls for cooperation.
“We’ve asked senators to show restraint,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, who is working with Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, on a compromise bill. “Our goal is to have a success, and that’s to get President Obama to sign it. For us back home, No Child Left behind is the No. 1 issue.”
Both the Senate and House versions of education legislation address what critics of No Child Left Behind have opposed for years — a punitive system of testing overseen by the federal government — in favor of more local Lawmakers Move to Limit Government’s Role in Education - The New York Times: