Elementary and Secondary Education Act Update

The best thing Congress could do is to not reauthorize this Act.  Elementary and Secondary Education are not included in the enumerated powers the states granted to the federal in the US Constitution (as written).  However, the Bill to reauthorize federal sabotage of education is out of the Senate committee and headed to the floor for a vote. Several Republican politicians have proposed closing the USDOE and we need to get them to fight and defeat this reauthorization. Here’s the update:

VERY COMPREHENSIVE EXPLANATION OF MOST DANGEROUS AMENDMENTS TO THE EVERY CHILD ACHIEVES ACT OF 2015

Posted on April 29, 2015 Written by Kate Kuhlmann, abcsofdumbdownblogspot.com

“Con­tro­ver­sial amend­ments includ­ing issues such as vouchers and teacher eval­u­a­tion require­ments were kept off of the bill, but those debates are still expected to be had when the bill hits the full sen­ate. Lead­ers have said that will be later this year, but no debate has been sched­uled yet.”

(What do bolded words above mean? Is “later this year” a typo? Do they mean “later this month” or what? We shouldn’t let our guard down; this bill could be passed at any time. Remem­ber, pas­sage of the Fed­eral Reserve leg­is­la­tion took place Decem­ber 23, 1913, the day before Christ­mas Eve… when most mem­bers of Con­gress were on vaca­tion. This blog will keep you informed, but you, your­self, could help us by search­ing, every sin­gle day, the Inter­net links related to this freedom-busting legislation.) More details on U.S. Sen­ate HELP committee’s ESEA reau­tho­riza­tion bill

The U.S. Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Health, Edu­ca­tion, Labor and Pen­sions (HELP) met last week to markup a bipar­ti­san bill to reau­tho­rize the Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion Act (ESEA) or No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The com­mit­tee con­sid­ered over 50 amend­ments to The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015, which is co-authored by Chair­man Lamar Alexan­der (R-TN) and Rank­ing Mem­ber Patty Mur­ray (D-WA), and ulti­mately passed the mea­sure unan­i­mously, 22–0.

The markup was con­ducted over a three day period that was closely man­aged by both authors in order to pre­vent con­tro­ver­sial amend­ments from jeop­ar­diz­ing the bill’s bipar­ti­san path for­ward. In the end, of the 57 amend­ments con­sid­ered, 29 were adopted. Con­tro­ver­sial amend­ments includ­ing issues such as vouch­ers and teacher eval­u­a­tion require­ments were kept off of the bill, but those debates are still expected to be had when the bill hits the full sen­ate. Lead­ers have said that will be later this year, but no debate has been sched­uled yet.

Below is a list­ing of the amend­ments passed dur­ing the com­mit­tee markup as well as a few note­wor­thy amend­ments either with­drawn or defeated dur­ing committee.

Amend­ments adopted:

• Amend­ment by Bald­win: cre­ates grants for enhanced assess­ment instru­ments and audits of state and local assess­ment systems.
• Amend­ment by Bald­win: requires the report­ing of stu­dents with career and tech­ni­cal pro­fi­ciency on report cards.
• Amend­ment by Bald­win: pro­vides grants to ini­ti­ate, expand, and improve phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion programs.
• Amend­ment by Bald­win: autho­rizes grants to encour­age the use of tech­nol­ogy to improve col­lege and career readiness.
• Amend­ment by Ben­net: reduces the bur­den on dis­tricts with regard to report­ing data for annual report cards.
• Amend­ment by Ben­net: per­tains to finan­cial lit­er­acy and fed­eral finan­cial aid aware­ness efforts.
• Amend­ment by Ben­net: allows funds to be used for the cre­ation of teacher and prin­ci­pal prepa­ra­tion academies.
• Amend­ment by Ben­net: increases engage­ment from the U.S. Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion to assist rural school dis­tricts with com­pet­i­tive grants.
• Amend­ment by Ben­net: cre­ates grants for edu­ca­tion inno­va­tion and research aimed at high-needs students.
• Amend­ment by Ben­net: estab­lishes a weighted stu­dent fund­ing flex­i­bil­ity pilot program.
• Amend­ment by Burr: alters the fund­ing for­mula for teach­ers and lead­ers to be based 80 per­cent on poverty and 20 per­cent on population.
• Amend­ment by Burr: adds a hold-harmless pro­vi­sion for Title II for­mula fund­ing for teach­ers and lead­ers by man­dat­ing a 14.29 per­cent reduc­tion each year over seven years. This amend­ment barely passed: 11–10.
• Amend­ment by Casey: autho­rizes fund­ing for Ready-To-Learn Television.
• Amend­ment by Casey: rein­serts hold-harmless lan­guage in Title II, Part A. This amend­ment was later amended by Burr’s nar­rowly passed hold-harmless amend­ment men­tioned above.
• Amend­ment by Casey: cre­ates a grant pro­gram for dis­tricts that wish to reduce exclu­sion­ary dis­ci­pline practices.
• Amend­ment by Collins: cre­ates an Inno­v­a­tive Assess­ment and Account­abil­ity Pilot.
• Amend­ment by Franken: rein­states the Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary School Coun­sel­ing program.
• Amend­ment by Franken: allows computer-adapted test­ing and adds other assess­ment criteria.
• Amend­ment by Franken: sup­ports accel­er­ated learn­ing programs.
• Amend­ment by Franken: adds lan­guage to improve STEM instruc­tion and achievement.
• Amend­ment by Franken: cre­ates a grant pro­gram for schools that uti­lize Native Amer­i­can lan­guages for instruc­tion with their students.
• Amend­ment by Isak­son: allows par­ents to opt out of testing.
• Amend­ment by Mikul­ski: adds the Jav­its Gifted/Talented Stu­dents Edu­ca­tion Act of 2015.
• Amend­ment by Murkowski: rein­states 21st Cen­tury Com­mu­nity Learn­ing Centers.
• Amend­ment by Mur­phy: ensures that states work to reduce phys­i­cal and men­tal abuse related to seclusion/restraint.
• Amend­ment by Mur­ray: requires report­ing of data on military-connected students.
• Amend­ment by Mur­ray: autho­rizes Project SERV allow­ing for ser­vices to schools in the after­math of vio­lent events.
• Amend­ment by Mur­ray: autho­rizes early learn­ing align­ment and improve­ment grants.
• Amend­ment by White­house: estab­lishes a pro­gram for lit­er­acy and arts education.
  Addi­tional amend­ments of note:
  Amend­ment by Scott: would have given states the option to let Title I funds fol­low a stu­dent to any school, includ­ing pri­vate schools. Scott ulti­mately with­drew his porta­bil­ity amend­ment because of the con­tro­ver­sial nature, but this is likely to be an amend­ment debated on the sen­ate floor. Chair­man Alexan­der said he looked for­ward to vot­ing for such an amend­ment in the full sen­ate.
  Amend­ment by War­ren: would have required states to describe how meth­ods used for eval­u­a­tion were rea­son­able and reli­able, if a state chose to imple­ment an eval­u­a­tion sys­tem. Chair­man Alexan­der said it would unnec­es­sar­ily put fed­eral require­ments on state eval­u­a­tion sys­tems. The amend­ment failed on a 10–12 roll call vote.
  Amend­ments by Alexan­der and Casey: would have dealt with bul­ly­ing. The two offered duel­ing amend­ments regard­ing bul­ly­ing and under­went exten­sive debate. Both even­tu­ally with­drew their amend­ments with the expec­ta­tion to debate the issue again on the sen­ate floor.
  Other amend­ment top­ics not adopted in com­mit­tee markup but that could be addressed on the sen­ate floor include Title I com­pa­ra­bil­ity (a means of equal­iz­ing fund­ing between schools with dif­fer­ing lev­els of need), inter­ven­tions for strug­gling schools, and addi­tional tar­geted sup­port for cer­tain stu­dent pop­u­la­tions. Stay tuned for updates once a floor debate is scheduled.  This entry was posted by Kate Kuhlman.
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  Filed Under: Education