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TODAY ONLINE NEWS – EDUCATION

June 7, 2010 – 8:18 p.m.

Stakeholders Believe Education
Overhaul Will Not Be Completed This Year

By Lauren Smith, CQ Staff

Only a few months ago, Education Secretary
Arne Duncan pledged that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act would
be overhauled this year.

He also promised that the administration would support
an additional $1 billion in education spending if Congress renewed the law,
commonly known as “No Child Left Behind,” during this session.

But although Duncan
submitted a blueprint March 13 and House and Senate education panels have held
more than a dozen hearings, there is now little chance for passage of the
reauthorization this year, say a variety of stakeholders and other interested
parties.

Neither chamber has released a legislative road map,
let alone draft language, despite self-imposed timelines of July and August for
respective Senate and House markups. While hearings have addressed ideas to
revamp core standards and tie teacher evaluations to student performance, those
are still largely moving targets, with interest groups pushing different
proposals.

“I don’t see how the complex topics we
talk about can be wrestled that quickly in a bipartisan fashion,” said
Sandy Kress, former education adviser to President George W. Bush,
who signed No Child Left Behind (PL 107-110)
into law in 2002. “These are very, very tough, and to do them well, I
can’t see that timeline happening.”

“It’s an election year,” Kress
added. “So some of these issues get really tricky.”

Bipartisan
Calls for Change

For all the competing interests, there is broad
agreement on the need to update the law, which has been criticized as being too
prescriptive and rigid in its approach to improving schools and setting the bar
too low for success. But Congress’ last effort to overhaul the law, in
2007, was unsuccessful.

After Duncan released broad recommendations in March,
focused on pushing schools to adopt more rigorous college- and career-ready
standards, Tom Harkin,
chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee,
scheduled hearings and said he was committed to marking up legislation by July.
But on May 25, at what had been billed as the last of the committee’s 10
hearings on reauthorization issues, the Iowa Democrat suggested additional
hearings might be needed before a bill is drafted.

Harkin reported broad consensus on issues ranging from
promoting teacher development to an increased focus on early-childhood education.
He also said lawmakers had agreed to support the administration’s desire
to make grant money competitive — but only on a small scale.

One senior Republican aide disputed Harkin’s
characterization of lawmakers’ talks. “I think that he is
overstating the case,” the aide said. “To date, we’ve
probably reached consensus with six pages of statutory language of what will
likely be a 2,000-page bill.”

Many issues remain unresolved, that aide and others
said. Teachers unions, for example, criticize proposals to tie teacher
evaluations to standardized test scores, or to encourage development of charter
schools. Rural school districts object to a proposed shift of federal funding
away from formulas and toward competitive grants. Others criticize what they see
as insufficient flexibility in the blueprint for turning around failing
schools.

Given the complexity of the issues and the number of
stakeholders, resolving such issues would be difficult under the best of
circumstances. But given an overcrowded legislative calendar, rising partisan
tensions as the fall elections approach and the compromises likely to be
demanded from teachers and other key groups, many doubt the will exists for a
serious effort to finish legislation this year.

“Frankly, my assessment is that nobody likes
this thing enough to work their tails off for it to be enacted” this
year, said Margaret Spellings, who was Education secretary under Bush.
“What’s in it for teachers unions is merit pay, which they hate,
charter schools, which they hate. The question is, how do you put the political
pieces together . . . where you have enough impetus to pass the law? There has
to be a little something for everybody.”

Election
Year Complications

Democrats and Republicans in tough re-election battles
are wary of casting votes on contentious issues that could hurt them
politically. “In the past, everyone said if it doesn’t get passed
in 2007, it won’t get done in 2008, and they were right,” said Tom
Loveless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. “Well, here we are
again in another election year, and I don’t think it’s going to get
done this year.”

An Education Department spokeswoman said Duncan remains optimistic
about action this year. “Staff members on the Hill and at the department
are currently working on the bill, and we hope to see movement this
year,” she said.

A spokesman for California Democrat George Miller,
chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said Miller hopes to mark
up a bill this summer and clear legislation by the end of the year.

But Republicans have expressed no desire to move
things along quickly.

“NCLB is often criticized for its unintended
consequences,” Wyoming Republican Michael B. Enzi
cautioned at a Senate HELP Committee hearing. “If we are not thoughtful,
and instead work quickly because we are trying to meet artificial deadlines, we
could wind up being criticized even more than we are now.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander,
R-Tenn., who was Education secretary under President George Bush, agreed.
“An artificial timeline wouldn’t help us get a bill,” he
said.

Alexander said Duncan is “doing a good
job” working with Republicans and Democrats, and that a bipartisan group
— made up of the chairmen and top Republican members of the Senate and
House education committees and subcommittees — has made progress.

But analysts suggest that anything less than
reauthorization this year should be interpreted as a failure. “It can be
done, but more importantly, it has to be done,” said Bob Wise, president
of the Alliance
for Excellent Education and a former Democratic West Virginia governor and
congressman. “Otherwise, we continue in this sort of limbo —
education policy purgatory.”

A
version of this article appeared in the June 8, 2010, print issue of CQ
Today

Source: CQ Today Online News


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