U.S. House Passes Harmful Version of an ESEA Reauthorization Yesterday Afternoon
Lauren Camera, who has been following the Congressional debate on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act for Education Week, reported last night: “The U.S. House of Representatives reconsidered and ultimately passed Wednesday a Republican-backed reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act…. After considering 14 amendments, including a failed Democratic substitute, members passed the ESEA rewrite, formally known as the Student Success Act, with a very close vote of 218-213. Twenty-seven Republicans crossed party-line to join the entire Democratic caucus in voting against the bill.”
Here is Camera’s summary of the bill’s substance: “Overall, the bill represents a dramatic departure from the current version of the federal K-12 law, the No Child Left Behind Act, and would turn much of the decision making over to states. It would eliminate the current accountability system, known as adequate yearly progress, and despite requiring states to intervene in schools that aren’t performing well, it wouldn’t tell states how to do so or how many schools to try to fix at a time. The measure would also allow states to set their own academic standards, and would prohibit the U.S. Secretary of Education from requiring states to adopt the Common Core Standards, or any other set of standards. While the bill would keep in place the current federal testing schedule and the requirement that states disaggregate student achievement data, Democrats argued those provisions aren’t enough to protect the most disadvantaged students. They took particular exception to provisions in the bill that would allow Title I dollars for low-income students to follow them to the school of their choice.”
This specific provision of the House version, “Title I Portability,” would significantly undermine the Title I Formula. (This blog has critiqued Title I Portability here and here.) In an article posted by the Washington Post last night, Lindsey Layton and Emma Brown define the Title I portability provision that the House passed yesterday: “One of the most contested aspects of the bill would change how federal funds are allocated to help educate poor students. Public schools now receive those federal funds according to a formula based on the number of disadvantaged students enrolled. Under the Republican plan, known as ‘Title I portability,’ the money would ‘follow the child’—if a poor student transferred from a high-poverty school to a wealthier one, the federal money would follow the student to the new U.S. House Passes Harmful Version of an ESEA Reauthorization Yesterday Afternoon | janresseger:
