House and Senate negotiators approved a compromise framework Thursday that merges two different education bills that cleared the House and Senate in July. “This clean extension provides time for that process to occur and for the House and Senate to vote on the final legislation, without shutting down transportation programs and projects in the meantime”.
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Both chambers have passed highway bills that contain at least three years of guaranteed transportation funding, but lawmakers are still haggling over a potential bicameral agreement on the disparate measures.
It had lofty goals – to get all children up to par in reading and math by 2014. “The Obama administration has concurred with that legal analysis”. In exchange, the states had to submit federally approved plans to raise student performance. It had been up for renewal in 2007; eight years later it is getting the attention it needed.
The invoice would let states determine whether or not or how to use scholar check efficiency to assess academics and college students, ending federal efforts to tie the scores to instructor evaluations, one thing academics’ unions have railed towards. Critics have complained there is too much testing and the law is too punitive for schools deemed to be failing.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, joined others in lamenting the failure to find a dedicated funding stream to augment the trust fund. Hatch said, however: “There will be ample time to continue working on infrastructure funding and financing issues”.
Bennett says the federal requirement for assessments isn’t the problem, but that it resulted in additional layers of state and district level tests, and a few of those may be redundant or unnecessary. “Green energy is extremely important, but I think we need to watch for the ratepayer and what is going on here, and that is probably the most hard part here”. “It’s the testing done for accountability purposes that needs serious re-evaluation”. “New and unprecedented restrictions are placed” on the secretary of education’s authority.
The congressional agreement also retains the current formula for funding schools with the highest concentration of poor students, which receive extra federal money. For the nation’s lowest-performing schools, states would have to intervene and action plans would have to be created to support schools and narrow achievement gaps. Although the federal bill would require 17 tests over seven years of schooling, many states and districts have gradually added tests to help students prepare for the federally mandated exams.
As recently as last summer, the House and the Senate remained far apart, with the House passing a conservative version that President Barack Obama promised to veto. It now goes to President Obama, who has indicated he’ll sign the extension via autopen while traveling to Malaysia. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and a group of selected Republicans and Democrats from both chambers, agreed on the legislative framework after holding its first conference committee meeting Wednesday.
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-“We are on our way to a new environment in public education”.
