(From Education Week, May 17, 2010)
By ALYSON KLEIN
This was supposed to be the year that Congress finally completed the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a task which has been lingering since 2007.
But the wait may go on.
Although the legislative machinery seems to be clanking along, with an Obama administration blueprint for renewal on the table and House and Senate education panels holding hearings on a variety of issues related to the law, the political prospects for the renewal are much more dicey.
Numerous hurdles–including a crowded legislative calendar, the tensions of an election year, and a lack of agreement about where to take what is likely to be a very complicated bill–have many observers doubting that Congress will complete work this year to reauthorize what is now known as the No Child Left Behind Act, signed in 2002.
“It’s getting harder and harder to see how they get there from here,” said Charles Barone, the director of federal legislation for Democrats for Education Reform, a New York City-based political action committee that finances Democratic candidates who support charter school expansion, among other policies. “It takes a while to move a bill through committee, and on to the floor, all that ‘School House Rock’ stuff.”
Continue Reading “Push to Renew ESEA Faces Steep Policy, Political Hurdles”…