Senate to revisit No Child Left Behind

When President Obama took to the podium at the White House last month to announce the rollback of key provisions of the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, he did so with an admonishment to Congress for failing to act on the measure in the face of nearly two years of exhortations from the administration.

"Congress hasn't been able to do it," Obama said. "So I will."

But two prominent lawmakers are reviving the push to overhaul No Child, in spite of the executive mandate Obama laid down in September.

Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) have developed a draft bill to update the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the nation's principal education statute that was most recently modified by the No Child Left Behind law, enacted in 2001. Harkin chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, on which Enzi serves as ranking member. The committee is set to take up the proposed legislation in an executive session scheduled for Oct. 18.

"The bill aims for a federal role that does fewer things--more effectively," Harkin wrote in a recent op-ed piece in Politico. "It sets a goal of ensuring that all students are college and career ready when they graduate from high school. It strives to improve the lowest performing schools, including America's 'dropout factories'--the 12 percent of high schools that produce half of America's dropouts--by focusing federal resources on them."

As a practical matter, the legislation would reauthorize the Education and Secondary Education Act, which has been overdue since 2007.

No Child Left Behind still leaving kids behind?

The push to overhaul No Child Left Behind comes in response to longstanding concerns that the law, though well intentioned, failed to implement a reasonable framework for school accountability. Instead, critics have argued, schools have diverted resources away from core curricular areas and focused on boosting scores under a rigorous standardized testing regime that penalizes under-performance.

A key plank of the Harkin-Enzi draft, which has not yet been made public, would seek to ease the compliance burden for the states, just as Obama sought to do with his executive action. As the law was written, states faced a deadline of 2014 to demonstrate 100 percent proficiency in the core subjects of math and reading. Obama's order relaxed that mandate, establishing a framework through which states could apply for a waiver through the Department of Education, a process that would require them to demonstrate an alternative set of college- and career-ready standards. Nearly all states are already developing such assessment systems. The administration has sided with numerous governors in arguing that the development of education standards should be left to the states and that the federal mandate under No Child Left Behind in many cases has had the perverse effect of lowering standards as teachers have watered down their curricula for fear of incurring penalties.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan praised the Harkin-Enzi draft bill, calling it a "very positive step toward reauthorization."

Striving for more state educational autonomy

In his Politico column, Harkin emphasized that the draft bill would pursue many of the same ends, handing over to the states a greater measure of autonomy while de-emphasizing the standardized testing regimen that has been one of the chief criticisms of No Child Left Behind.

"The bill focuses on teaching and learning, not testing and sanctioning," Harkin wrote. "It eliminates one-size-fits-all approaches like the 'adequate yearly progress' requirements and mandated federal sanctions for all schools. It replaces them with state-designed accountability systems, consistent with principles established by the Council of Chief State School Officers."

Easing the "teach to the test" burden would also free up teachers to re-balance their curricula in favor of subjects such as history, science and art, which critics argue have been neglected under the stringent math and reading testing requirements.