Find comon ground and get moving . . .

Reflecting on the President’s and Mr. Duncan’s waiver proposal leads me back to a series of blogs from the previous week on four NCLB bills proposed by four republican senators. It leads to believe that there is some common ground to get moving with some sense of urgency on reauthorization.  I think the bills and the waiver opportunities have merit and are at least moving in the right direction, something that we have not yet seen from either house.


Key features of the proposed bills include the following.
• Removal of 100% at standard by 2014 and labeling of failing schools.
• Continuation of testing at grades 3-8 and once in high school in reading and math.
• Required reporting on subgroups.
• Adoption of college and career ready standards with similar flexibility to the proposed waiver standards.
• Required support for lowest achieving 5% of schools with additional intervention options.
• Scrapping the highly qualified teacher provisions.
• Consolidating 59 federal programs into two flexible funds.
• Expansion of charter options.

These are certainly a beginning and foundation for dialogue. Yes, others want more flexibility and the removal of mandated testing while still others see any change as rolling back progress on changes supporting all children. Unfortunately, as I shared in my previous post on the proposed waivers, the reauthorization process has now become an election issue with each party blaming the other. Below is a response from a House Democratic aide to the proposal from the four senate republicans.

. . . said the Senate GOP is "continuing to play politics with education policy, and not doing anything serious for kids." The move is "fully in line" with the GOP's desire not to give Obama a victory on education, the aide argued.

In this Democrats for Education Reform post they take a similar stance.

"In one fell swoop, Senators Alexander, Burr, Isakson, and Kirk have capitulated in the one issue area where Republicans could reasonably claim to stand with rank and file voters against the political and economic powers that be," said Charles Barone, DFER Director of Federal Policy. "By giving in to those in the education establishment for whom education reform recently has made life difficult, they have pulled the rug out from under parents and state and local advocates across the political spectrum who have used federal law to leverage unprecedented changes in their school systems."


What I find interesting is the similarity between the senator’s proposals and the proposed waiver conditions. These include no longer needing to meet the testing benchmarks and labels that go with it, adoption of a set of core standards, continued testing, and support for the bottom 5% of schools. Why can’t this agreement result in meaningful attempts to reach agreement on a reauthorization?

Senator Alexander, one of the authors of the senate bills is going further in an attempt to move legislation and accomplish reauthorization by the end of the year. In an attempt to move forward he will be resigning his Republican Senate Leadership position to work more closely in a bipartisan manner with democrats on education reform. We need more of this – the foundation is there for dialogue in these four bills, in the house action to date, and in the waiver proposal. It is time to move forward. Yes, there are very difficult issues that need to be resolved, but making it an election issue will only polarize positions, not move us forward.