Eight years past its expiration date, the sweeping No Child Left Behind education law could soon be replaced, as both houses of Congress are set to pass bills shrinking the federal role in local schoolhouses.
Then comes the hard part: melding two drastically different bills together in a form that President Barack Obama will sign.
The U.S. Senate is expected to wrap up debate this week and pass a bipartisan bill, while House Republicans passed their own version last week on a mostly party-line vote.
“One of the good things in both of them is there is a recognition of local control,” said Angela Palm, the policy director for the Georgia School Boards Association.
States gain new authority
Both would keep the 17 federally required tests in math, science and reading for children from kindergarten through 12th grade, while giving states new leeway on how to evaluate schools, teachers and students beyond test scores.
Mary Kusler, the director of government relations for the National Education Association teachers union, said the proposals could help ease the high-stakes testing culture that contributed to the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal.
“As long as you’re grading and pushing everything on the community schools, educators and students based off one single test, the system itself is corrupted and children are the ones who lose,” Kusler said.
“So we really need to work hard to make sure we get rid of that high-stakes nature of the test and work for educational outcomes that serve the whole child,” she said.
House, Senate split on key money issue
A key difference between the two bills — and a reason why the White House has threatened to veto the House version — is the issue of "portability."
The federal government sends money to high-poverty schools through a formula. The House would allow that money to move along with students if they switch schools, which Democrats and advocates say would bleed money from schools that need it most. The Senate did not include that provision.
"Instead of supporting the schools and educators that need it most, this bill shifts resources away from them," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement after the House passed its bill. "Instead of ensuring states and districts improve struggling schools and serve all students, it makes that optional."
But lawmakers on both ends of the Capitol expressed optimism that they can resolve their differences, as both parties and an array of interest groups support an education law update.
“People finally started recognizing that failure for Congress to reauthorize the law made the positive things of No Child Left Behind become negative,” said U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican who helped craft the original 2001 law.
Congressional inaction called problem for law
No Child Left Behind required schools to produce gains each year on state tests, called “adequate yearly progress.” But No Child Left Behind was only meant to be a six-year law, and a gridlocked Congress continually failed to update it.
The Obama administration seized unprecedented power as schools bumped up against an impossible ceiling. The federal Department of Education approved new standards from Georgia and 42 other states, waiving the No Child Left Behind standards. Georgia created a school report card called the College and Career Ready Performance Index, allowed middle school students to take high school courses and made other changes to qualify.
The Obama administration also has used funding carrots to entice states to join the Common Core standards, an idea conceived in part by former Georgia Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue as a way to get states together on tougher learning guidelines.
Conservative groups have relentlessly attacked Common Core as a federal intrusion, and some Republican-run states have abandoned the standards, though they are being implemented in Georgia. Both the House and Senate bills have anti-Common Core language, preventing the federal government from mandating or providing incentives for states to adopt the standards.
“Georgians sent me to Washington to fight for more local control of education choices, and I am encouraged that the Senate is working to eliminate the federal mandate for Common Core and push control of education back to the state and local level where it belongs,” Georgia Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue said in a prepared statement.
But tea party organizations and conservative pressure groups have said the bills do not go far enough to take down Common Core or the federal role in education more broadly. Among Georgia’s House Republicans, freshman U.S. Rep. Jody Hice of Monroe was the only one to vote against the bill last week.
“I wanted it to go further than it did,” Hice said, “not just an opt-out, but grab Common Core by the jugular and kill it.”
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