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Congress Begins Debate On Changes to 'No Child' Law

Kyle Stokes
/
KPLU
FILE - U.S. Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash., speaks during a news conference at Seattle's Franklin High School in April.

A proposal to re-write No Child Left Behind — an unpopular federal education law that now labels practically all schools in Washington state as "failing" — began its tightrope-walk through the full U.S. Senate Tuesday.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who helped shepherd the bipartisan proposal through committee, opened debate on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon by calling on her colleagues to "fix this broken law."

"We need to work across the aisle to help our students and our schools and our teachers get some much-needed relief from No Child Left Behind," Murray said in a speech. "We cannot let them down."

To that end, backers of the "Every Child Achieves Act" say it is the most promising effort to overhaul 'No Child' since that law originally expired in 2007.  

While 'Every Child' maintains the former law's requirements that students take 17 benchmark standardized tests from Grade 3 through high school, it gives states greater flexibility on they respond to the test scores. 

But Obama administration officials — while stopping short of issuing a veto threat — say they won't support the Senate bill in its current form because it remands too much oversight control to individual states.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, countered that the bill maintains the high expectations of 'No Child' but discards onerous federal government control over what should be a state matter.

"We should continue the law's most important measurements of students' academic progress, but restore to states, school districts, classroom teachers and parents the responsibility for deciding what to do about the results of those tests," said Alexander, the chair of the education committee.

Alexander and Murray say the "flexibility" baked into their proposal will relieve some of the pressure attached to high-stakes standardized tests students and educators face.

Yet conservative groups have said the Alexander-Murray bill doesn't do enough to shrink the federal government's role in education.

Republicans are also likely to attempt to offer a controversial amendment that would allow federal Title I dollars — intended to support schools that serve high-need and high-risk populations — to follow students, even if they were to move to less-needy schools, as The Washington Post explains.

Meanwhile, the White House and some Democrats say the bill does too much to diminish the feds' accountability powers. They want to preserve some of No Child Left Behind's focus on achievement gaps between rich and poor students by maintaining the requirement that states identify 5 percent of their schools that need the most help.

"We can’t backtrack on holding schools accountable for helping all students learn," Murray said.

House lawmakers have also proposed a bill to re-write No Child Left Behind, but U.S. Department of Education officials have said President Obama would veto that legislation if passed.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Kyle Stokes covers the issues facing kids and the policies impacting Washington's schools for KPLU.