Now That Arne Duncan Is Out, Is No Child Left Behind to Stay?
The education law’s death is just around the corner.
In a weird way, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s surprising resignation is good news for the people who want the beleaguered No Child Left Behind overhauled as soon as possible.
Duncan, one of the final two members left from President Obama’s original cabinet, announced on Friday that he will be stepping down in December. Known for his creation of his controversial Race to the Top grant program and push for teacher accountability, Duncan is widely seen as one of America’s most powerful education secretaries in recent history.
His imminent departure, combined with those of House Speaker John Boehner and Representative John Kline, may be nerve-racking for No Child Left Behind’s critics because Congress is—or at least was—so close to successfully reauthorizing the five-decade-old omnibus education law from which it arose. That law, known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was supposed to be reauthorized in 2007, but political infighting and other hiccups prevented that from happening year after year.
Now that the House and Senate have each passed bills to reauthorize it, Congress is closer than ever to actually doing away with the Bush-era policy—particularly because the Senate’s version is, thanks largely to its co-writers Lamar Alexander and Elizabeth Warren, a bipartisan proposal. But the pressure is on: As they stand, the House and Senate bills are substantially different, and the two chambers need to reconcile those differences for the legislation to make it to the president’s desk by the end of the year.
Boehner, Duncan, and Kline are key players in this process—Boehner is the last sitting member of Congress to have helped write No Child Left Behind, while Kline chairs the House education committee; Duncan because he is the chief executive of the department charged with carrying out the policy.
Now that all three are on their way out, it may seem like the rewrite is doomed. But it could be just the opposite, said Tamara Hiler, the education-policy advisor at the think tank Third Way. In fact, Duncan’s announcement on Friday, she said, could “actually be a sign that this is going to get done faster … that [it] could actually speed up the timeline.”
“Between him and John Boehner and John Kline all [leaving], this sort of sends a message to everyone that it’s now or never,” Hiler said. “There’s a culmination happening.” The four members of Congress chairing the education committees, she continued, “have a reason to want to get this [rewrite] done now, to take this issue off of the table” and focus on preparing for all the other impending uncertainties—who will replace Boehner as speaker of the House and Obama as president, to name a few.
Duncan’s announcement could also be an indication that the future of the rewrite is all but sealed, according to Hiler. The prospective law is likely to rein in the education secretary’s responsibilities, giving states more of a say in how schools are to be held accountable for student performance and progress. The amount of What Will Happen to No Child Left Behind Now That Arne Duncan Is Resigning? - The Atlantic:
