CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
May 27, 2011 – 7:39 p.m.
Gaps Are Clear in First Effort at Education Bill
By Lauren Smith, CQ Staff
The first marker in the rewrite of No Child Left Behind, laid down last week by House Republicans, underscores the chasm between the two parties’ approaches and how difficult it may be for the House and Senate to find common ground.
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Education policy experts say the first bill, approved along party lines May 25 by the Education and the Workforce Committee, is evidence that bipartisan conceptual agreements do not necessarily carry over into the details of proposed legislation.
The initial offering (
Democrats say they support elimination of duplicative or ineffective programs, but they want to redirect the money. For example, the Republicans’ bill would cut at least five literacy initiatives. Democrats would use that funding to create one central literacy program.
“When you get down to real stuff, as opposed to conceptually we want to do x, y and z, it’s just harder,” said Sandy Kress, a counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and former education adviser to President George W. Bush.
With so many issues yet to resolve, lawmakers acknowledge there is no chance Congress will meet President Obama’s request for a bill on his desk before students go back to school in the fall. Some following the debate question whether a bill will be cleared this year.
Accountability, But To Whom?
Agreement on the details of a rewrite will not be any easier to reach when lawmakers turn to issues like accountability and teacher effectiveness. Democrats and Republicans say schools should be held accountable, but have different ideas about for what, and to whom, schools should be accountable. The Obama administration and Senate Democrats have proposed requiring the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools in each state to implement one of four turnaround strategies. But Republicans have been quick to call the options too prescriptive, and have voiced concerns about allowing schools in the middle of the pack to drift.
Education experts expect that the next bill that comes out of the House committee will get no Democratic support. Chairman
Democrats and the Obama administration have backed increased flexibility for schools but oppose giving schools complete freedom, especially for programs like Title I, which helps low-income students.
“I think Democrats are going to be hugely upset when the rumored flexibility bill comes out and allows 100 percent transferability of funds,” said Cynthia Brown, vice president for education policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. “That will cause a huge partisan divide that may be difficult to recover from.”
Kline, who says his No. 1 goal in overhauling the law is to shrink the federal government’s footprint, said in a radio interview last week that his committee will produce five or six bills. He said he hopes to move three out of committee before August and take up the “really big” issues of accountability and teacher effectiveness in the fall.
Gaps Are Clear in First Effort at Education Bill
Senate Plans
Those two issues are likely holding up work by
Harkin is also aiming for a comprehensive bill, an approach Kline has repeatedly rejected.
Miller said his staff is working with Kline’s and that he hopes they will be able to move some bills with bipartisan backing. “We have to,” he said.
“We do hope to have bipartisan bills,” Kline spokeswoman Alexandra Sollberger said. “We are actively negotiating proposals for upcoming bills with our counterparts on the minority side.”
Education policy experts, however, are less hopeful.
“The question now, particularly with the House being Republican, is how able will they, in the midst of an increasingly partisan and election-oriented environment, reach out to the other side and deal with things more complex than: ‘We don’t like NCLB,’” Kress said. “A bipartisan deal is going to have to involve both sides really reaching out far to the other, and doing things that are not easy.”