Congress and US Department of Education: Top Leadership Turnovers Complicate Unfinished K-12 Agenda
The K-12 policy agenda of the Federal government still has unfinished business up to the present time. With the upcoming leadership turnovers in the Congress and the United States Department of Education in the next few months, there is a probability that completing this unfinished business will cause difficulties.
The K-12 policy agenda of the Federal government still has unfinished business up to the present time. With the upcoming leadership turnovers in the Congress and the United States Department of Education in the next few months, there is a probability that completing this unfinished business will cause difficulties.
With the U.S. Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, and Speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, stepping down from their positions in the next months, the transitioning of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) poses complications. The incumbent administration is faced with the challenge on how to enforce the mandates of the said education act considering that the some of the nation's competitive grants funding are thinning and becoming limited.
The situation gets tougher when the Chairman of the House Education Committee, Rep. John Kline, R-Minn, announced his plan of retiring from Congress. Rep. Kline is the author of the bill that aims to rewrite and revise the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
"Certainly no one was expecting Secretary Duncan to leave at this time," according to the National Education Association's Director of Government Relations, Mary Kusler. As she desires for the renewal of the said law, she said that the resignation of another primary player presupposes that things should be immediately finalized and settled.
Kusler said that ESEA proceedings could be hastened considering the forthcoming departures of these three leaders.
The former Commissioner of Education in Kentucky, Terry Holliday, said that, John B. King Jr., the former chief of the state schools in New York who will become the acting secretary, should Duncan steps down, will be working hard with the states "to honor their work over the last several years."
The incumbent administration is working with another alternative as a response to this issue by passing the "No Child Left Behind Act", a rewritten version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. However, with respect to the concern about how this act would shape up, it remained in question. Congress and US Department of Education: Top Leadership Turnovers Complicate Unfinished K-12 Agenda : News : ISchoolGuide: