As of Thursday, June 6, three bills have been introduced in Congress that would effectively reauthorize the sea changes made by George W Bush’s No Child Left Behind law to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We’ll refer to the three bills by the principal legislator who introduced them:
- Sen Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee chair
- Sen Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, former US Education Secretary
- Rep John Kline, Republican of Minnesota, Education committee chair
The bills were announced last week within days of each other. The Harkin bill (see music advocacy, teacher evaluations) cleared the Senate committee on Tuesday, with support from all the Democrats on the committee but no Republicans. Mr Alexander introduced his bill Thursday (see principals’ concerns), as he promised during the approval process for the Harkin bill. Mr Alexander is the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
Then, within hours of the Alexander bill, Mr Kline introduced his plan for NCLB reauthorization. No Democrats have shown support for his bill, a tweaked reincarnation of the bill he introduced in 2012.
The Congressional Research Service released a 31-page report last month, here, on teacher-related issues that Congress should consider during the reauthorization of ESEA. It describes ESEA provisions related to teachers and the evolution of the teaching field since NCLB.
This early in the process, it wouldn’t be prudent for us to figure out what the bills have to say. Hundreds of amendments are likely to be introduced to all of the bills once they get to the floor in their respective chambers. During debate, there’s also hope that compromises may surface.
The three bills differ on a few key points, though, as well as on length—the Harkin bill is 1,150 pages long, while the Alexander bill isn’t quite half that length when printed. But more substantive differences between the bills occur in the areas that have shaped the debate since 2007:
- Local and state control over the schools vs federal control
- The consequences for schools that fail to meet academic requirements
- The academic requirements themselves, such as the Common Core
- Money for charter and nonpublic schools from federal tax dollars