Editorial: Senate bill positive step to fix law on education

Under No Child Left Behind, the over-reaching federal education law signed in 2002, every public school in Spokane is failing students. So are most others in Washington.

But the fault is not with the schools, but with the law. Newly passed Senate and House legislation could replace NCLB – if the partisanship that haunts all congressional deliberations can be left behind.

In the Senate, the Every Child Achieves Act co-sponsored by Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., passed Thursday with overwhelming, 81-17 support.

The House passed its measure, the Student Success Act, by a vote of 218-213. All Democrats and more than 20 Republicans opposed. President Obama has said he will veto the House bill.

Here we go again.

The bills differ in the degree of accountability they impose on the states.

The House bill allows parents and schools to game the system. Think your student or students might fail “high-stakes tests”? Keep them home.

The child – particularly those from poor households, or with a disability – suffers, but not school.

Freed of federal benchmarks, states could allocate money from Washington, D.C., as they see fit; not necessarily where it could best help lagging student performance. Students who transfer from a school in a poor area to a wealthy area would take federal support with them even though there might be no need for those dollars at the new school.

The Senate bill retains the requirement all students be tested, but leaves it to the states to set criteria for struggling schools, and what remediation might be necessary where students are underperforming.

Murray says the bill eliminates the one-size-fits-all testing standard included in NCLB. Where they did not meet standards – virtually everywhere – states could obtain waivers. Washington became the first not to get a waiver because state legislators refused to require any measure of student achievement to weigh in teacher evaluations.

The pushback on accountability united two frequent enemies: Republicans and teachers, who alienated their civil rights constituencies.

Even if states choose to lower their standards, Murray says, testing indicates how schools compare, and whether students in one state would be prepared to meet standards in another. And results would continue to be broken down by income, race and disability.

The House and Senate bills must be reconciled in a conference committee that will include Murray, Alexander and their House counterparts. She is optimistic they can find a middle ground, territory that has eluded Congress since NCLB expired in 2007.

Almost everyone acknowledges the flaws in the original legislation, which had the noble goal of improving all schools. That bill was sponsored by now-Speaker John Boehner. Rounding up the votes in his fractious caucus will again pit him against conservative Republicans unconvinced the rewrite goes far enough returning control to the states.

They want a blank check. Murray and Alexander should bring a shredder.