Education Week - March 18, 2015 - 22

goVeRnMenT & polITIcs
Congressional Efforts to Overhaul NCLB Law Inch Ahead
Talks continue in Senate,
despite setback in House
By Lauren Camera
Congressional efforts to rewrite the No Child
Left Behind Act, the latest iteration of the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act, are inching
forward in Congress, despite recent setbacks
in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the
House education committee and author of the
legislation in that chamber, said his endeavor to
give the federal K-12 law a much-needed facelift
is by no means over, and he hopes a vote on the
bill will be rescheduled for this week. Both the
chairman and the ranking member of the education
committee in the U.S. Senate, who are negotiating
in hopes of drafting a bipartisan measure,
announced last week that they plan to clear a
proposal through their committee in mid-April.
Leaders in both chambers had identified fixing
the widely unpopular law as an early priority
in the newly minted Republican Congress.
They hope to both overhaul the nclb's laws outdated
policies and diminish the influence of the
federal government by superseding the Obama
administration's waivers to states.
But the pace of legislative progress slowed
earlier this month after Republicans in the
House were forced to abandon a scheduled vote
on a reauthorization bill amid waning support
from members of their own party.
While it's still early in the year, Rep. Kline and
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who is leading
the negotiations in the Senate, had hoped by now
to be making steady strides toward negotiating
their measures with the White House.
As the legislative calendar begins to fill up
with other high-level priorities, including a
slate of upcoming spending bills, the delayed
timetables in both chambers could diminish the
chances lawmakers are able to give the esea for
its long-awaited renewal.
"There is definitely a sweet spot as far as
timing where an esea deal could happen," said
Anne Hyslop, a senior policy analyst at Bellwether
Education Partners. "You can either go
too quickly and things fall apart, or you go too
slow and you're getting into the appropriations
bills and the 2016 presidential election. I think
we're in that sweet spot right now."
House Inaction
Plans for a Feb. 27th floor vote on a Republican-backed
rewrite of the nclb law in the House
were foiled amid a larger squabble over funding
for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
that resulted in the proposal being withdrawn.
But Rep. Kline said the collapse in support
was also a result of a post on an anti-Common
Core State Standards blog that went viral. The
post falsely stated that the bill would force
states to continue using the common core,
which caused some members of the gop to withdraw
their initial support for the legislation.
The post wasn't the only expression of opposition.
Both the Heritage Action Fund and the
Club for Growth, two powerful conservative
organizations, blasted out emails urging Republicans
to block the bill because it was not
conservative enough, in their view.
As it stands, Rep. Kline's bill has not been
rescheduled for a vote, despite his hope that it
would be back on the floor for debate this week.
That didn't stop him from attempting to correct
any misconceptions about the bill.
On March 9, his education committee distributed
a fact sheet touting its conservative
qualities, noting that it eliminates "69 ineffective,
duplicative, and unnecessary programs"
and "programs the secretary of education has
used to coerce states to adopt his preferred
policies." The bill also protects "the autonomy
of religious schools, private schools, and home
schools," the fact sheet said.
Senate Action
Meanwhile, Sen. Alexander, the chairman
of the Senate education committee, and ranking
member Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced
last week that they were continuing
to make headway behind the scenes to craft an
overhaul of the law that might be acceptable to
both parties.
"
There is definitely a sweet
spot as far as timing where
an ESEA deal could happen
... I think we're in that sweet
spot right now."
ANNE HYSLOP
Bellwether Education Partners
"We are making significant progress in our negotiations.
We are aiming to consider and mark
up legislation to fix the law during the week of
April 13th," the two said in a joint statement.
That breathed new life into the prospects
of updating the law, the chances of which had
begun to look bleak after nearly three weeks of
no news.
Sens. Alexander and Murray did not elaborate
on the specifics of how-or even if-they
had closed significant education policy gaps
that existed between them on several issues.
Those gaps include whether to maintain the
current law's annual testing requirement and
how to use the resulting data in an accountability
system; whether to allow Title I dollars
to follow low-income students to the schools of
their choice; and whether to include early-childhood-education
language in the bill.
It was rumored that the two would begin floating
their bill to committee members this week
for feedback ahead of the April markup.
Timetable Concerns
Before the Senate negotiations began, Sen.
Alexander had planned to move through the
process quickly, using a conservative draft that
was largely based on a bill he wrote in 2013.
When that was still the plan, he had worked
with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.,
to pre-emptively reserve floor time for debate on
the measure for some time in March.
With that initial strategy-and timeline-
out the window, Sen. Alexander will have to
walk a tightrope to shape a bill that's conservative
enough that Senate leaders will want to
schedule it for debate, and one that can charm
enough Republicans and Democrats in order to
clear the Senate's 60-vote threshold for avoiding
a filibuster.
"We don't know what will be in a bipartisan
plan, but if Murray supports it, I think you might
have more trouble with the Republican caucus
holding together than the Democratic caucus,"
Ms. Hyslop said. "That's just a reflection of what
we saw in the House on a smaller scale."
It's also unclear whether Sen. McConnell
would even allow debate on the measure if the
House hasn't yet cleared its own version.
"The ultimate question comes down to whether
a Republican-controlled Congress wants to pass
a bill that the president can sign leading up to
a big presidential election," Ms. Hyslop added.
"Areas of compromise may not win you votes."
N.H. Gets Green Light to Pilot Local Tests in Handful of Districts
By Alyson Klein
Leeway a departure
from NCLB mandate
As it wrestles with a rewrite of the
No Child Left Behind Act, Congress
is contemplating allowing districts
to use local assessments, instead of
state tests, to demonstrate student
proficiency.
And now, the U.S. Department of
Education has signaled its openness
to the concept by letting several
districts in New Hampshire try out
their own set of competency-based
tests in lieu of statewide assessments
in certain grade spans.
The idea is to test-run a new assessment
system that can eventually
be taken statewide, if it's successful.
New Hampshire has been experimenting
with competency-based
learning, which allows students to
progress as they demonstrate mastery
of academic concepts.
The state will be allowed to use
performance-based tests, developed
through a collaboration of the state
and local school systems, in four of its
roughly 85 districts. Those districts
would still assess students every
year. If all goes well, the state could
expand the pilot to eight districts the
following year.
In some grades or subjects, the
pilot districts would use the Smarter
Balanced Assessment Consortium
tests, which are aligned to the Common
Core State Standards and
being used by the rest of the state.
In other grades or subjects, the districts
would use their own performance-based
exams. Those tests,
known as pace assessments in New
Hampshire, were crafted with input
from both state and district people.
New Hampshire is hoping the new
system will provide educators with
"richer, deeper information than
we're able to get through large-scale
state assessments," Paul Leather, the
state's deputy commissioner of education,
said in an interview last year.
Two-Year Tryout
This local testing pilot is a departure
from the nclb law, which calls
for states to test students using the
22 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 18, 2015 | www.edweek.org
same statewide, summative assessment,
in grades 3 through 8 and
once in high school. Instead, the
New Hampshire districts participating
in the pilot would only take
statewide tests once in elementary
school, once in middle school, and
once in high school.
The local-testing waiver is just for
two years, giving New Hampshire essentially
until the end of the Obama
administration to work on the pilot.
If the competency-based tests aren't
shown to be comparable to state assessments,
or don't end up being
workable for the Granite State, New
Hampshire has promised to go back
to using the Smarter Balanced tests
with all of its students.
What's more, New Hampshire
has agreed to put its competencybased
system through the rigors of
the Education Department's peerreview
system, in which assessment
experts take a hard look at tests to
see if they pass muster. However, the
peer-review process has been paused;
new criteria are being developed and
are expected to be released soon.
Kentucky, which also has experience
with competency-based
learning, is interested in asking for
something similar, the state's commissioner
of education, Terry Holliday,
said last year.
It's too early to say which other
states might qualify, said Deborah S.
Delisle, the assistant secretary for elementary
and secondary education.
But she noted that New Hampshire
has been working with competency
learning for five years, and that designing
performance tasks hasn't
been easy. They require coordination
between teachers and the state and
among teachers in different districts,
among other challenges.
"New Hampshire has been engaged
for quite some time," Ms. Delisle said.
"People say, 'Can't any other state do
this?' and the answer would be, 'Well,
yes, but ... ' " it's not simple, she said.
Nebraska Example
Local testing has been tried under
the nclb law before, in Nebraska.
But it was hard to make sure those
tests were comparable statewide,
something that New Hampshire will
be paying close attention to as part
of its pilot, Ms. Delisle said.
"
New Hampshire has
been engaged for
quite some time."
DEBORAH S. DELISLE
Assistant Secretary for Elementary
and Secondary Education
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, RTenn.,
included language allowing
for local assessments in a draft bill
to revise the nclb law, the current
version of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act.
What's more, when the House
considered an nclb rewrite bill
last month, it included language
that would allow districts to use
their own local testing systems in
lieu of the state's, as long as the
state gives its approval. The local
systems would become part of the
state's plan for using Title I dollars,
and those plans are submitted to
the department.
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - March 18, 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - March 18, 2015
