Congress Prepares to Replace 'No Child Left Behind' - The Atlantic

Congress Prepares to Replace 'No Child Left Behind' - The Atlantic:

Congress Prepares to Launch a New Era in Education Policy

A bipartisan agreement to replace George W. Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind law could pass next month.

In the next few weeks, a bipartisan majority in Congress is likely to pass a law that, in various ways, repudiates the education legacies of both the Bush and Obama presidencies.

House and Senate negotiators last week agreed to a legislative frameworkreplacing George W. Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind law, a landmark reform of K-12 education placing strict federal requirements on states and schools that proved unworkable over time and led to a culture of testing that drew criticism from liberals and conservatives alike. While some federal benchmarks for accountability will remain in place, the new bill gives much more latitude to the states and restricts the ability of the secretary of education to punish or reward them based on their progress.

The overhaul is years in the making—Congress has been due to reauthorize the underlying Elementary and Secondary Education Act since 2007. And in the absence of action on Capitol Hill, the Department of Education has amassed even greater power by negotiating waivers with 42 of the 50 states to exempt them from the law’s sanctions, which included the potential closure of schools. Ultimately, the mounting frustration both with the original law and the waiver system that took its place propelled an alliance among Republicans, Democrats, and even the teachers unions that have battled the leadership of both parties over the years.

The final bill is still being drafted, but a House-Senate conference committee approved its framework in an overwhelming vote—of the 40-member panel, only Senator Rand Paul voted against it. Despite concerns about the restrictions the new law would place on the secretary of education, the White House “is pleased with the framework,” said Roberto Rodríguez, an education adviser on Obama’s Domestic Policy Council. Advisers and advocates in both parties described the bill as a genuine compromise between a bipartisan plan that passed the Senate and a more conservative House bill that would have eviscerated the federal role in education policy and shifted more resources away from needy schools.

Praise has come from unlikely corners.

“It corrects what the federal government has gotten wrong in terms of policy, but it maintains what the federal government has right in terms of policy,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, told me in a phone interview. “Is it perfect? Of course not. But by doing those two things simultaneously, it’s a very big step.”

“It corrects what the federal government has gotten wrong in terms of policy, but it maintains what the federal government has right in terms of policy.”

Unions have railed against No Child Left Behind’s mandates for teacher evaluations as an excuse to scapegoat educators. While the new law would keep in place requirements for yearly testing of students in grades three through eight and once in high school, it scraps the federal evaluation requirement. And instead of mandating that schools demonstrate “adequate yearly progress” through test scores, the government would allow states to submit their own plan for accountability that could take into account factors beyond testing.

“Our bipartisan agreement will reduce reliance on high-stakes testing, so students and teachers can spend less time on test prep and more time on learning,” said Senator Patty Murray, the lead Democratic negotiator.

Democrats successfully pushed for what they called “federal guardrails,” or Congress Prepares to Replace 'No Child Left Behind' - The Atlantic: