Congress is finally close to a vote to rewrite the outdated and highly criticized No Child Left Behind education law.
Advertisement
Both the Senate and the House have passed long-term bills this year, though the two bills, while similar, are not the same.
The full text of the bill will be available November 30, and the House is expected to vote the first week of December, said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House education committee.
The measure, which requires tighter screening for applicants from those countries, passed by 289-137, a wide-enough margin to override a promised presidential veto. But when it became clear that the goal was unattainable, the Obama administration began to issue waivers to states. In exchange, the states had to submit federally approved plans to raise student performance.
The law has been up for renewal since 2007, but contentious disagreement over such things as the role of the federal government in education stymied passage of an updated bill.
The tests include math and English six times each from grades 3 through 8, plus once more for both subjects in high school. The compromise measure would continue that testing requirement.
The House bill also contains a provision that would establish a pilot program authorizing states to conduct environmental reviews under state, not federal, environmental laws, and another that would direct commenting agencies to “afford substantial deference” to a lead agency’s preferred alternative instead of considering other options.
Notably, the new legislation will go to great lengths to tie the hands of the secretary of the Department of Education by putting strict language where NCLB had left discretion to the department.
Republicans and Democrats since then have made a few progress developing a framework to use to negotiate a new bill.
An amendment from Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) standing by his side, it aimed to hold schools accountable using standardized tests and funding pressure, shutting down or overhauling persistent failures.
“We’d never permit an employer or school staff to search our homes, read our mail, look at private videos or photo albums”, said state Sen. “It’s the testing done for accountability purposes that needs serious re-evaluation”. Paul, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, has railed against any involvement by the federal government in public schools. However, states would be required to intervene in the nation’s lowest-performing 5 percent of schools, high school dropout factories and schools with persistent achievement gaps.
Advertisement
The invoice doesn’t embrace so-referred to as portability, which might have allowed federal cash to comply with low-revenue youngsters to public faculties of their selection as an alternative of present law, which has these dollars stay on the struggling faculties. 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.
