No Rewrite Yet for NCLB
Nick Anderson at the Washington Post reports that the overhaul of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) seems to be stalled in Congress.
Despite pleas from Duncan and Obama, it also appears increasingly unlikely that the Democratic-led Congress will provide a bailout for schools this summer to prevent teacher layoffs and program cuts related to local budget troubles.
“I have a suspicion we’re going to have a deadlock for the next two years,” said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy and a former Democratic congressional aide. He said that Republicans might not have an appetite to work with Obama on education and that the president’s political capital on the issue “has pretty much been spent.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has successfully used Race to the Top (RttT)– a competition among the states for federal grant money– to encourage reform. Like it or not, for instance, 28 states (and counting) and the District of Columbia have signed on to national standards in math and English– something that’s necessary for a shot at federal funds.
RttT is considered the blueprint for the revision of NCLB, a bill which had bipartisan support when it was passed at the start of the Bush administration in 2001. That support’s not in evidence this time around:
But no bipartisan bill has been introduced, and there have been no committee votes. Prospects for action are dimming rapidly as November’s elections approach.
Meanwhile, not everyone is sure that rewarding states that successfully compete for federal funds is the right approach to improving education:
This week, the NAACP, the National Urban League and some other civil rights groups criticized elements of the administration’s policy that favor competition. “If education is a civil right, children in ‘winning’ states should not be the only ones who have the opportunity to learn in high-quality environments,” the groups wrote in a 17-page proposal for revising No Child Left Behind. They said Obama should put more effort into spreading education resources equitably.
We’ve discussed this conflict of visions before.
H/T: Heritage Hotsheet
