A Breakthrough on Education Reform
At long last, House and Senate conferees announced agreement yesterday on a sweeping bipartisan education reform plan that strongly and clearly bears the imprint of the New Democrat "3R's" bill.
Like the "3R's" bill, championed in the Senate by Sens. Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, and Mary Landrieu, and in the House by Reps. Cal Dooley, Adam Smith and Tim Roemer, the conference report overhauls federal education assistance to states and school districts around the principles of accountability for results, flexibility as to means, a stronger focus on disadvantaged students, improved teacher quality, and enhanced public school choice. It also provides significantly increased resources, better targeted to the schools and students most needing help, and linked to better performance.
In essence, the final bill was constructed around common features of the "3R's" bill and President Bush's education reform proposal -- both of which were based in large part on the Progressive Policy Institute's 1999 blueprint for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act ("Toward Performance-Based Federal Education Funding"), written by Andrew Rotherham, director of PPI's 21st Century Schools Project.
While the legislation, like most big, bipartisan compromises, is not perfect, it does make big changes in the overall thrust of federal education policy in the most important areas:
- Accountability: each state must ensure that all students are proficient in reading and math within twelve years, with real consequences for districts and schools that fail to make measurable progress toward that goal, especially for racial and ethnic subgroups.
- Flexibility: states and school districts are given greater flexibility to transfer money between programs, and some programs are streamlined and refocused.
- Low-performing schools: students in low-performing schools will benefit from provisions that increase public school choice, require interventions in chronically under-performing schools (including mandatory restructuring), and create new options through public charter schools.
- Targeting of resources: thanks to an amendment by Sens. Lieberman and Landrieu, most new money will go to the poorest school districts.
- Teacher quality: requires all teachers to meet a new definition of "highly qualified" by 2006, including new standards of content knowledge.
- Bilingual education reform: thanks in part to the efforts of Sen. Lincoln, the whole system is overhauled to streamline bureaucracy, dramatically increase federal investment, and refocus the program on a goal of proficiency in English and other academic subjects.
- Public school choice: thanks to an amendment by Sen. Tom Carper, charter school funding is increased, and new options are made available to parents for choice among public schools.
- Resources: as a down payment for the investments needed to make a performance-based system work, federal education assistance is increased by $4.6 billion.
Summing up the results, DLC Chairman Sen. Evan Bayh said: "We have reached a bipartisan agreement that puts the interests of America's children above partisan politics. This is a historic break from the tired education debates of the past, in which Democrats said, 'spend more money,' and Republicans said, 'get the federal government out of the way.' From now on, we will no longer measure success in terms of how much we spend. Instead we will focus on how much our children learn."
Sen. Joe Lieberman, who served with Bayh as a Senate conferee on the bill (itself a testament to New Democratic involvement in the effort, since neither is a member of the education committee), added: "The agreement we reached reflects the best thinking of both sides and the hard work of a lot of members, particularly Senators Kennedy and Gregg and Congressmen Boehner and Miller. But I am particularly proud of the role that we New Democrats played in shaping the framework and ideas behind this reform plan, which I believe will help catalyze revolutionary changes in our public schools if it is properly funded in the years ahead."
As Winston Churchill once famously said about a turning point in World War II, passage of this legislation "is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." We hope that this bill is the beginning of a renewed push to ensure that America's public schools deliver a high-quality education for all students.