It was about time that Congress worked together to come up with new legislation to overturn the much-maligned No Child Left Behind education law.
That law, which is widely considered broken, was up for reauthorization eight years ago, but there was no consensus on how to fix it.
A few days ago the logjam broke. Democrats and Republicans from both houses voted 39-1 in a conference committee to approve new legislation that seems to hit all the right notes. The next step is approval by both chambers and a signature from the president.
The changes are vast and address weaknesses in the Bush-era education doctrine that ushered in a system of testing and accountability.
The new bill transfers some powers and authority over public schools from the federal government to states and school districts.
The legislation continues to require standardized testing in math and reading for third- through eighth-graders and one test in high school. States would have to publicly disclose the scores and break them down by a student’s race, income, disability and for English language learners.
Kudos for Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, who were on the committee and made substantive changes.
Bennet pushed to require states to intervene in the bottom 5 percent of schools based, in part, on their scores. He also authored a successful amendment to allow states to set caps on the time students spend on testing.
Polis successfully pushed to keep a rule that maintains a limit on the number of students with disabilities who can take less rigorous tests. The House version of the bill eliminated the 1 percent cap, which Polis correctly feared could push schools to force kids into taking an alternative test to improve their scores.
The federal education law has been a source of controversy for years. This new legislation should help quiet the critics while still pushing students toward higher achievement.
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