DFER Statement on Chairman Kline’s ESEA Reauthorization Bill
Come for the Block Grants, Stay for the Lax Accountability
Today, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce will mark-up the Student Success Act (HR 5, or SSA), a bill introduced by Chairman John Kline (R-MN), to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The legislation would effectively eliminate federal accountability for K-12 schools and force the government to fork over billions of taxpayer dollars to states and school districts with no expectation for results.
“The Republican approach to education contradicts both liberal and conservative principles,” said Charles Barone, policy director for Democrats for Education Reform. “No business would invest billions of dollars in any venture without an expected rate of return. No parent, regardless of race, family income, or child disability should be told that schools have no academic aspirations for their child.”
While SSA would maintain federal testing requirements and would continue to compel states to have academic standards, it does not mandate that schools set goals for student progress or for narrowing achievement gaps. The bill would let even the most persistently low-achieving schools continue business as usual with little or no intervention to change them. That’s a great deal for the adults employed in public education, and a terrible one for parents and students.
The bill is not entirely without merit. Kline’s legislation does contain strong reporting requirements that would provide more transparency around school performance. It also has slightly stronger provisions for teacher evaluation systems than those that exist in either of the bills recently introduced by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) or Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN). Even here, however, the bill would do nothing to remedy the inequitable distribution of effective teachers according to race, family income, and zip code.
Due to the stunning lack of accountability or concern for remedying educational inequities, Democrats for Education Reform strongly opposes the Student Success Act. We urge the members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to reject this fundamentally flawed piece of legislation.