Education reform advocates are growing impatient with the U.S. Senate’s inability to pass a bill that would reform federal education policies set in place by No Child Left Behind. Advocates are hoping to see the federal role in K-12 education reformed by the time students return to school in the fall, a goal that seems increasingly unlikely to be accomplished.
Ten groups, which typically lean to the left side of the political spectrum, called on the Senate Tuesday to vote on the Every Child Achieves Act. Included among the groups are the nation’s two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, as well as the School Superintendents Association, the National PTA and the National School Boards Association.
After the bill first passed the Senate education committee with unanimous bipartisan support on April 16, it was expected to get a vote in the full Senate by Memorial Day. That date came and went with no action. Last week it was reported that the bill could get action on the Senate floor by the end of the week. That too never came to pass, and it’s unclear whether the bill will get any attention by the end of this week.
Next week, the Senate is off for Independence Day. When the Senate reconvenes, it will have just five work weeks to pass the bill before taking a four-week recess through Labor Day. Before final implementation, the bill would need to be approved by the House of Representatives and probably go through a complicated conference committee process before being signed into law by President Obama. It will be difficult to get all that done before students go back to school.
Since the initial bill cleared its committee vote, the Senate has been occupied by a number of other issues needing urgent action: the confirmation of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, human trafficking, the Iranian nuclear deal, setting a budget framework, the depleting Highway Trust Fund, the expiring Patriot Act and President Obama’s trade legislation, to name a few.
The groups’ impatience is understandable given that No Child Left Behind was supposed to be reformed in 2007. First signed into law in 2002, NCLB has now lasted more than twice as long as it was supposed to. The law sets the bar unreasonably high in a number of areas. For instance, it requires all students in all schools to be proficient in reading and math by 2014.
The growing impatience may reflect not only a sense of urgency but also concern that education reform might never have its day on the Senate floor. If other priorities and issues of the day have kept education reform from coming up so far, who knows how long that will persist?
The House education committee passed its own bill in February, which has yet to receive a vote in the full House. That bill is more conservative than the Senate version, which prompted President Obama to issue a veto threat. This is likely why groups are calling for the Senate to act rather than the House.
The Every Child Achieves Act would roll back some of the federal role in K-12 education by letting states develop their own school accountability systems. It maintains the federal requirement of standardized tests in math and reading every year from grades 3 through 8, plus once more in high school. Although standardized tests are generally unpopular, they’re supported by some advocates because the tests provide academic information on the state of all schools, so struggling schools can be identified and targeted for improvement.
Under current law, the Obama administration has been granting states waivers from No Child Left Behind’s burdens, as long as states adopt Obama’s preferred education reforms. The Every Child Achieves Act would allow the secretary of education to grant states and school districts waivers, but would prohibit the waivers to be conditional on adoption of certain reforms.
