Coloradans’ views on education are “threaded throughout” a revised version of No Child Left Behind that the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on Thursday.
That should come as no surprise, considering that Michael Bennet, a former Denver Public Schools superintendent who became a senator in 2009, has been working for six years on updating the policy.
No Child Left Behind — the name given to the country’s education policy when Republican George W. Bush was president — was to have been reauthorized in 2007, but partisan gridlock has left the measure intact and school districts unhappy.
Two previous attempts never even made it to the Senate floor, Bennet said.
But the revised measure, called The Every Child Achieves Act, already has passed unanimously in the Senate education committee. Besides Bennet, the “yes” votes included Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., both of whom are running for president.
The bill, among other things, keeps federal requirements that students take a total of 17 tests during their K-12 career and the public reporting of those results so parents and teachers know how students are doing. But it would return to states the responsibility for deciding how to weigh those test results in evaluating school success.
Republican Chris Holbert of Parker, who serves on the Colorado Senate Education Committee, believes authority and flexibility belong to local school districts.
“Too much federal money comes with too many strings attached to it,” he said.
The U.S. House last week also approved an education policy measure, but it passed by only 218 votes and without any Democratic support. The Senate measure is expected to pass with bipartisan support.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who leads the Senate education committee, praised Bennet’s efforts.
“Michael understands that the Senate is a place where you have extended debate on important subjects and work across party lines until you come to a consensus — that’s how you get a result, and that’s how you govern a complex country,” Alexander said Wednesday.
Bennet said when he was a superintendent he wondered why Washington was “so mean to our kids and our teachers.”
“Now that I am here, I realize they are not mean. They are well-intentioned, but they have absolutely no idea what is going on in our schools and our classrooms,” he said.
Bennet said in drafting the bill, he included the lessons learned in Denver and from schools he visited statewide.
“The views of people from Colorado are threaded throughout this bill,” he said. “Many provisions relate to teachers and principals, measured growth and to early childhood education, all of which I have collected along the way. They are now showing up in the legislation.”
Colorado’s other U.S. senator, Republican Cory Gardner, introduced amendments the bill to make it easier for high school students to receive college credit, provide charter schools a seat in the plan development process, and extend flexibility to schools seeking to better prepare students for careers in math and science.
Bennet talked about the unpopularity of No Child Left Behind when the Senate education committee began its work on the bill.
“Although everybody loves to hate No Child Left Behind — and I put myself in that category — it has some good things,” he said. “It required us to face the facts about how our kids in poverty are doing in our schools. It shed light for the first time on the achievement gap — the brutal achievement gap — we have in this country.”
Lynn Bartels: 303-954-5327, lbartels@denverpost.com or twitter.com/lynn_bartels
