A Senate shot at reauthorization . . .

Could the Harkin/Enzi bill coming out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee be the second nail in the coffin for NCLB? The first would be the Obama administration’s waiver opportunity unveiled last month that I shared in this blog post. Based upon the reaction by many to the Harkin/Enzi bill, I think the waiver request has a better chance of success. Never the less, Senator Harkin in this New York Times article sees his bill as a partnership and the best that could be done given the current political climate.


“We are moving into a partnership mode with states, rather than telling states you’ve got to do this and this and this,” Senator Harkin said in a call with reporters. The bill is a product of more than 10 months of negotiations with his committee’s ranking Republican, Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, Mr. Harkin said.

Others don’t see merit in the bill. In this Education Week post we see that five key education groups are asking the Senator to put the brakes on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA. The groups are the American Association of School Administrators, the National Education Association, the National School Board Association, and the National Elementary and Secondary School Principal Associations. In a letter to the Senator they share their concerns with measures of student growth, flexibility in designing school turnaround models, the requirement to revamp teacher and principal evaluation models, and the focus on high stakes summative assessments.

It sounds like this group of key constituencies would rather roll the dice on Education Secretary Arne Duncan's waiver process, and perhaps even a Republican Congress, than deal with Harkin's bill.

In the same Times article, we learn that conservatives and special interest groups see this as rolling back the gains of NCLB but find themselves in a similar position of not supporting the Senate bill. 

By eliminating the law’s central accountability provisions, the bill would represent “a significant step backward,” returning the nation to the years before No Child’s passage, when many states did a slipshod job of promoting student achievement, they said.


Under the Harkin bill, “states would not have to set measurable achievement and progress targets or even graduation rate goals,” six groups including the Education Trust, the Children’s Defense Fund and the National Council of La Raza, said in a letter to Mr. Harkin on Tuesday. “Congress, parents and taxpayers would have no meaningful mechanism by which to hold schools, districts, or states accountable for improving student outcomes.”

Mike Petrilli at FLYPAPER makes this suggestion.

“Anyone one of these would be a poison pill for conservatives. Taken in combination, it makes Republicans’ decision easy. Scrap the bill and start over – with Senator Alexander’s proposal as the jumping-off point. It’s a much stronger bill, closer in many ways to the Administration’s own blueprint, a much more serious about re-calibrating the federal role in education. And if Democrats won’t go for that – well, wait for a more favorable environment in 2013.”

I shared the Alexander proposal in this post.

Finally, here is how Kevin Carey at The Quick and The Ed summarizes the Harkin/Enzi bill.

So now we’re left with (Maybe Standards) + (No Accountability) + (Continued Teacher Injustice). No bill is better than this bill.

All of this criticism and the gap between the Senate and House process probably means there is little chance of a reauthorized ESEA this session.  That leaves states with the waiver process for relief from the accountability requirement of 100% of students at standard in reading and math by 2014.