US Sen Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chair of the Senate Education Committee, introduced a massive piece of legislation Tuesday that he said would “replace the failed tenets” of the No Child Left Behind law, the New York Times reports.
Reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) has been pending since 2007, and with this bill, reactions are widely mixed.
“Senator Harkin’s bill is a good first step that sensibly helps public schools help all kids and recognizes the need to do things differently,” Education Week quoted Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, as saying. “We’re gratified that it provides more flexibility than the current law and offers more ways to fix, not reflexively close, schools.”
The bill does codify changes the Obama administration has instituted by relieving states of some of the more stringent accountability requirements, but the relief isn’t nearly as strong as changes proposed in a 2011 bill that received almost no Republican support. This one doesn’t have any Republican sponsors yet, either, although all 11 Democrats on the Senate Education Committee have signed on. The bill therefore faces tough political hurdles.
Sen Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, for example, characterized the bill as one that would add to the trouble at the federal Education Department, saying it would simply add to the general feeling that the US Education Department is more like a national school board and make “the congestion worse,” Education Week reported. He plans to introduce a competing bill later this week, the Times reported.
Basically, testing and accountability requirements wouldn’t change much under Senator Harkin’s version of the bill. But instead of using just tests, states would be allowed to use portfolios or projects to determine how well students had mastered the curriculum. States would also have greater flexibility to prescribe a set of supports for troubled schools, except perhaps for the worst ones.
Organizations outside government are just as split on the bill as the Republicans and Democrats. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which includes about 200 civil rights organizations that strongly opposed the 2011 legislation, supported this bill, saying it “seeks to make the American dream a reality for all children by focusing on closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, and improving school climate,” according to the Education Week article.
But other education advocates weren’t as star-struck: “Rather than embracing policies that would improve learning and teaching, the bill drafted by Senate Education Committee Chair Tom Harkin follows the counterproductive path of the Obama-Duncan administration,” explained Dr Monty Neill of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). “It also ignores the growing grassroots movement against high-stakes standardized exams,” Diane Ravitch’s blog quoted him as saying in a statement.
Dr Neill also pointed out that despite states’ increased flexibility, this will, in practice, manifest itself only in affluent suburban schools. “Focusing sanctions on the lowest-scoring schools will lift the worst punishments from most suburban communities while leaving low-income, minority neighborhoods at continued risk,” his statement said.
