Behind rewrite passes

House passes No Child Left Behind rewrite

By Maggie Severns

After eight years of failed efforts, the House of Representatives voted 359-64 to replace the widely loathed No Child Left Behind Act, setting up a Senate vote as soon as next week, and a new law likely by year’s end.

The compromise to rewrite the central law governing American education attempts to strike a balance between Democrats’ desire to protect poor and minority students from neglect in failing schools, and Republicans’ goal of returning more control over public education to states and local school districts.

It’s one of several bipartisan agreements, including a budget deal and a highway bill, that have been struck on Capitol Hill in recent weeks as lawmakers race to tick off legislative priorities before the holidays.

“It’s almost like Pope Francis created some aura that you have capitalized on,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) said Wednesday to Reps. John Kline (R-Minn.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.), chief House negotiators on the deal.

The bill, S.1177, would dispense with No Child Left Behind’s requirement that schools move towards having all students reading on grade level or face consequences, but still oblige states to establish ways to identify failing schools and improve them. It would keep standardized testing requirements, but encourage states to pare the number of tests students must take. Test results would be reported for groups that often lag behind, such as minority or disabled students.

And the bill would prevent the education secretary from pushing national standards like the Common Core — a set of reading and math standards spread in part through Obama administration incentives.

A year ago, the notion that the two parties would rally around such an agreement was almost unimaginable, given the history of failed attempts and the wide gulf between the parties on education.

This year’s attempt took months of negotiating and almost came undone multiple times. Most notably, Republican leaders had to pull an earlier version of the bill from the House floor amid concerns from the right that it wouldn’t do enough to restore local control in education.

This week, the bill’s Republican supporters finally caught a break.

A Wall Street Journal editorial deemed the No Child Left Behind rewrite the “largest devolution of federal control” in 25 years, giving Kline and others ammunition to sell the bill to their colleagues. They also had support from the National Governors Association, which is dominated by Republicans and gave the bill its first official endorsement of legislation in close to 20 years. And lawmakers had other priorities crucial to the GOP, like the forthcoming spending bill, to worry about.

“It’s a binary choice: You can vote for this new direction and give our children a better opportunity, or you can vote to keep No Child Left Behind,” Kline said.

In the end, 178 of the 246 House Republicans backed the bill, though Heritage Action and others on the right opposed it.

The agreement appears headed for smooth sailing through the Senate. President Barack Obama is all but certain to sign it into law, but he did not take an official stance on it, likely to avoid alienating potential Republican supporters, according to sources familiar with the administration’s thinking. As soon as the House voted Wednesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement the vote was "good news for our nation’s schools."

“We are encouraged that the bill passed by the House today would codify the vision that we have long advocated for giving a fair shot at a great education to every child in America – regardless of ZIP code," Duncan said, listing administration priorities such as a new early childhood program that made it into the bill.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest also praised the bill and said the White House looks forward to Senate passage.

Democratic lawmakers have meanwhile rallied behind the agreement and the lawmakers who negotiated it, Scott and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). The bill has support from teachers unions and many education groups, who overwhelmingly believe that No Child Left Behind needs replacing, even though many would prefer to maintain a stronger federal role. Unions pushed hard for a bill that placed less emphasis on test scores — which have been used in recent years to rate and, in some cases, fire teachers. The bill would allow states to focus much less on test scores than under current law.

Many civil rights groups debated whether to line up behind the final deal. Advocates for underprivileged children fear that more state power will translate into a slackening of efforts to improve the performance of poor and minority students; they point out that, prior to No Child Left Behind’s enactment, many states did less for vulnerable kids than they do now.

Ultimately, most influential groups came out in support of the agreement this week. They acknowledge that they have concerns about the final bill, but see little hope for getting a better deal in the near future and hope it will be an improvement over the status quo.

Scott said Wednesday he shared their trepidation about loosening the federal government’s reins but believes the bill will ultimately be an improvement for students.

“The federal government, left to its own devices, wasn’t doing so hot either,” Scott said.