ESEA Compromise Lacks Attention to Equity, Will Move to Conference Committee This Week
It looks as though, before the end of 2015, Congress will try to vote on a reauthorization of the federal education law we now call No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Alyson Klein, reports forEducation Week, “It’s official: Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Reps. John Kline, R-Minn., and Bobby Scott, D-VA., on Friday announced that they have a framework for moving forward on a long-stalled rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The next step: a conference committee which could kick off in coming days. The goal is to pass a bill to revise the ESEA—the current verson of which is the No Child Left Behind Act—for the first time in 15 years, by the end of 2015.”
Klein reports that action will begin immediately: “Expect the conference to kick off next Tuesday night (tomorrow) and conclude by Thursday. And expect the bill to be on the floor of both chambers after Thanksgiving recess. That will give enough time for rank-and-file lawmakers to read it and make sure they understand what’s in it before they have to vote on it.”
The compromise, according to Klein’s report for Education Week, will prohibit “the education secretary from interfering with state prerogatives on teacher evaluation, testing, standards, school turnarounds, and more. That part of the bill seems to be a direct rebuke to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who has used waivers to push big changes, especially when it comes to teacher evaluation.”
Klein explains the details of the Senate-House compromise that will be presented to a joint conference committee this week. Annual testing of all children in grades 3-8 and once in high school in reading and math will continue to be required along with disaggregating and reporting the scores. States will also be required to identify their bottom-scoring 5 percent of schools along with schools that graduate less than two-thirds of their students in four years. However, the compromise bill requires the states themselves to decide what to do: “States would also have to identify and take action in schools that aren’t closing the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their peers. But importantly, the bill doesn’t say how ESEA Compromise Lacks Attention to Equity, Will Move to Conference Committee This Week | janresseger: