Education committees signal that time has run out for NCLB reauthorization
The leaders of the Senate and House education committees are signaling that time has run out for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act this year, leaving prospects for rewriting it uncertain during the presidential campaign in 2008. Despite dozens of hearings, months of public debate and hundreds of hours of Congressional negotiation, neither the House nor the Senate has produced a bill that would formally start the reauthorization process. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), chairman of the Senate education committee, has postponed introducing a new version of the law until next year, Melissa Wagoner, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy, said. The education committee in the House has worked for months on negotiations to produce legislation to renew the law. But in recent days, its chairman, Representative George Miller (D-CA) has been working on a higher-education bill. Mr. Miller’s spokesman, Tom Kiley, said the Senate postponement of reauthorization for No Child Left Behind had complicated the work of writing a House bill. Lobbyists for educational organizations who have watched the process closely said it appeared that Mr. Miller had been unable either to find enough votes among the committee’s Democratic majority to pass a reauthorization bill or to stitch together a bill that could attract enough Republicans to form a winning bipartisan coalition. Alexa Marrero, a spokeswoman for Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, the ranking Republican on the committee, said: "Chairman Miller has signaled that the committee is turning its attention to higher education. Looking at the calendar, it’s difficult to see how NCLB could move through the process this year." But negotiations continue on some points as lawmakers seek to put together a bipartisan bill that could be introduced next year, Ms. Marrero said.
New York Times By Sam Dillon
[Editor’s Note: Background and resources on NCLB reauthorization are available starting from the first link below, which is to information on the debate over the discussion draft of the House bill. The second link is to a side-by-side prepared by NSBA’s Office of Advocacy comparing provisions of the current law to NSBA’s recommendations and to the provisions of the House discussion draft.]
NSBA School Law pages on House discussion draft
NSBA side-by-side