The bizarre alliance between Republicans and teachers unions, explained
Hidden behind Thursday's overwhelmingly bipartisan Senate vote to get rid of No Child Left Behind is one of the strangest alliances in politics: Teachers unions have joined hands with Republicans.
That's because they share two goals. They both want to get rid of the testing and accountability regimen of No Child Left Behind, and they want to cut back on Education Secretary Arne Duncan's influence. Meanwhile, the Obama administration and national civil rights groups are on the opposite side of the argument.
Republicans and teachers unions aren't enthusiastically embracing one another; don't expect teachers unions to suddenly cut their historic ties with Democrats and start supporting Republicans instead. But the unusual alliance is evidence of how much the Obama administration has mixed up the traditional politics of education so that it no longer conforms to party lines.
Why Republicans don't like George W. Bush's law and never really did
No Child Left Behind is part of President George W. Bush's legacy, but it was never very popular with conservatives.
It had a lofty, laudable goal: getting every child proficient in reading and math by mid-2014. But it gave the federal government an unprecedented role in getting there — an approach at odds with conservative philosophies favoring local and state control.
The law required schools to test students on reading and math every year from third to eighth grade, and once in high school. Because the idea was to make sure all children were learning, regardless of racial or socioeconomic background, it meant that overall scores alone weren't enough.
Schools would suffer consequences even if subgroups of students, such as black or Hispanic students, English language learners, or children living in poverty, weren't progressing quickly enough.
And the law dictated the consequences for schools that weren't making "adequate yearly progress." Congress, not states, decided what "adequate yearly progress" meant and what states would have to do if schools weren't making it.
This was a huge expansion of the federal role in education, one that conservatives viewed with skepticism from the beginning. They thought states could hold schools accountable without intrusion from the federal government.
Unions didn't like No Child Left Behind either
Teachers unions didn't oppose No Child Left Behind when it was passed. But they've always hated the testing requirement, saying it made standardized testing too important for students and teachers. They decried its approach as "test and punish," saying it labeled schools as failing that really weren't because of the requirements that subgroups make progress.
They argued that schools shouldn't be judged on a test score, and that the emphasis on reading and math narrowed the curriculum and took creativity and joy out of teaching. More recently, they've also opposed systems that would link teachers' pay and promotion to students' performance on standardized tests.
"Schooling must be more about teaching and learning than testing and measuring," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement Thursday praising the Senate bill.
Teachers unions and Senate Republicans might not have shared the same rationale — unions were defending their members' interests, while Republicans were arguing in favor of small government. But they wanted the same result: an end to the federal accountability system for K-12 schools.
How the Senate bill brought opponents together
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The Senate bill, the Every Child Achieves Act, passed the Senate in an 81-17 vote. It keeps the standardized tests that were the highlight of No Child Left Behind. But it allows states to decide how they'll use the results of those tests to hold schools accountable for how children learn.
Both Republicans and teachers unions are hailing this as a victory.
"There is nothing bigger in the last 13 years for K-12 public schools than what just happened in the last hour in the Senate," said Lily Eskelsen García, the president of the National Education Association, on Thursday afternoon. "This is a seismic shift, in a very good way."
The best example of the unusual alliance wasn't the final bill, which got broad bipartisan support. It was a vote Wednesday afternoon on an amendment from five Democratic senators that would have brought back some elements of No Child Left Behind.
The amendment would have required states to intervene in schools if subgroups of The bizarre alliance between Republicans and teachers unions, explained - Vox: