(DFER Note: We obviously don’t know what goes on behind closed doors in Congressional committees and such, which made trying to read the action on NCLB reauthorization the last few weeks somewhat puzzling at times. For some additional perspective and context on what is happening in Washington, we asked Charles Barone, a former staffer with the House Education and Labor Committee and a longtime aide to Rep. George Miller (pictured here) to offer his thoughts. Barrone played a key role in the work leading up to the original passage of NCLB in 2001.)
Secretary Margaret Spellings and Congressman George Miller, Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee will, as they say in Texas, “visit” on Monday to dedicate the new Department of Education building in the name of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who pioneered the federal approach to education that Miller and Spellings supercharged in 2001.
Miller and Spellings have a long and, at least sometimes, productive history.
They worked closely together on NCLB, beginning in Austin in late 2000 before Bush even took office, while Warren Christopher and James Baker were still duking it out in Florida. The result was the most significant change in federal education policy since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was launched under Johnson in the 1960s.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with their respective views, it is undeniable that both have a sincere interest in quality public education, coupled with finely honed political skills and an information-driven approach to policy-making.
Miller and Spellings have been sparring all week. Overall, it’s been a fairly civil, albeit at times blunt exchange. For those who are more WWF than PBS, check out the exchanges between Miller and the nation’s largest teachers unions – NEA and CTA – at Eduwonk.
Depending on how one reads it, Miller and Spellings are either on the verge of a stalemate or about to find ample common ground. Miller accuses the Bush Administration of opening regulatory loopholes in NCLB, such as by allowing large numbers of poor and minority students to be exempt from NCLB’s accountability system under the guise of statistical “reliability.” Miller is spot on. States have used specious technical arguments to game the system. And Spellings (following the path of her predecessor Rod Paige) has, for whatever reason, let them get away with it. Miller’s bill would close these loopholes. It is a needed and significant change in current policy.
Spellings claims that the draft bipartisan bill issued by the House Education and Labor Committee would open up new loopholes in the NCLB statute. A close reading of the bill suggests that she is correct. The Committee bill is a discussion draft. While some are rushing to judgment (NEA and CTA have already issued “action alerts” urging members of Congress to oppose the bill before it has even been introduced), judgment should be reserved until the Committee has a chance to review the comments they have solicited both online and in a marathon Committee hearing last Monday. It should be noted that this may be the most open legislative process in recent memory. It stands in stark contrast to NCLB 2001 and for that Miller also deserves credit.
What is troubling is that the Committee draft bill’s changes comprise a remedy more deadly than the ills it is trying to cure. It patches holes in NCLB’s walls, but at the same time takes a sledgehammer to NCLB’s foundations. The most insidious and least thoughtful of the bill’s provisions would allow local school districts to substitute their own measures of student achievement in the place of objective and road-tested, albeit imperfect, state measures. Local assessments cannot be compared across districts, no matter how hard unions and other interest groups might try to convince policymakers otherwise. If you start trying to compare apples and oranges, gap-closing is impossible. Game over. This is certainly unintentional on the part of the bill’s authors. But it is an inescapable result of the draft bill’s provisions nonetheless.
A lot of politicians and interest groups would like to see this bill die an early death.
But Secretary Spellings and Congressman Miller have long histories of putting the long-term interests of children ahead of the short-term interests of their respective parties. Perhaps each has learned that more often than assumed, these interests are compatible rather than mutually exclusive. Time will tell whether each of them can rise to the extraordinary political circumstances in which the reauthorization process currently finds itself.
Charles Barone is an independent consultant on education policy issues. From 2001-2003, he was Democratic Deputy Staff Director for the House Education and Labor Committee under Congressman George Miller, prior to which he served as Miller’s Legislative Director from 1997-2000. He first came to Capitol Hill as a Congressional Fellow in 1993 and subsequently became Chief Education Advisor to Senator Paul Simon. Before coming to Washington, Barone was a fellow in the Department of Psychology at Yale University.