ESEA and the 112th Congress

Yesterday, the Washington Post published an op-ed by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. In the op-ed, Secretary Duncan sets the stage for a potential bi-partisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as the No Child Left Behind Act. Indeed, education is considered to be one of the few policy areas where Democrats and Republicans may find some points to agree on, though previous attempts at reauthorization have fizzled. The Obama administration has made its priorities for reauthorization somewhat clear, particularly through a document it released last March called the Blueprint for Education Reform. But what does Congress want for the new ESEA? A look at recently proposed education legislation in the House and Senate can give us a preliminary picture.

1. A new take on teacher comparability – a provision of ESEA that determines whether districts are equitably funding low-income schools.
In April of 2010, Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA) introduced the ESEA Fiscal Fairness Act which would correct some of the major flaws in the existing teacher comparability provision of ESEA. The provision is supposed to ensure that school districts provide equitable state and local resources to both their high- and low-poverty schools, but loopholes exist. Currently, the provision allows districts to demonstrate comparability in several ways including providing evidence of a set teacher salary schedule or similar student-teacher ratios across schools. The Fattah bill would have changed the provision so that districts could only demonstrate comparability by showing that low- and high-income schools have similar state and local per pupil expenditures, including all salaries and non-personnel expenditures (except any additional funds spent on English language learner or special education instruction). Such a change would ensure that districts do not opt to use less rigorous methods to demonstrate comparability — methods that misrepresent the amount of state and local funds Title I schools actually receive. The legislation would also mandate that districts include any staff salary variations due to years of experience, incentive pay, bonuses, and other compensation in their per pupil expenditure calculations for low- and high-income schools. The current rules allow districts to overlook such variation in teacher pay, perpetuating the uneven distribution of teachers where more experienced teachers tend to teach in higher-income schools.

Teacher comparability is a hot-button issue in education today. It often draws the ire of teachers’ unions because it threatens to upset the way teachers are currently compensated and assigned seniority. To make major improvements to the comparability provision in the law, legislators will have to tread carefully on these issues. For a full explanation of comparability, see here.

2. Less stringent models for the School Improvement Grant program.
In December of 2010, the Senate version of the Omnibus Appropriations Bill for fiscal year 2011 included language that would have overturned a requirement set by the Department of Education in late October to limit the number of schools that employ the transformation model for their school improvement efforts. The transformation model is considered the least intrusive of the four strategies for school improvement defined by the Department of Education and districts overwhelmingly selected this model in their applications for the funds.

In general, Congress has been less than thrilled with the Obama administration’s changes to the School Improvement Grant program, which have made the program stricter. Representative Judy Chu (D-CA) released a report describing how the program’s models do not provide schools enough flexibility to take students’ needs into consideration. Representative Glenn Thompson (R-PA) complained in a congressional hearing that the program represented federal intrusion in local control of education and did not have proper congressional oversight. And Senator Michael Enzi (R-WY) has expressed concern that the program is inappropriate for struggling rural schools. Given this vocal criticism of the program, it seems likely that Congress will limit the Obama administration’s influence over the School Improvement Grant program to ensure more flexibility.

3. A greater focus on increasing high school graduation rates.
The 111^th Congress submitted several pieces of legislation focused on improving high school graduation rates in the reauthorization of ESEA. These include the Graduation for All Act (Miller, D-CA), the Graduation Promise Act of 2009 (Hinojosa, D-TX and Bingaman, D-NM), the Turning Around Low-Performing Public High Schools Act (McCarthy, D-NY), the Fast Track to College Act of 2009 (Kildee, D-MI), and the Graduate for a Better Future Act (Burr, R-NC), among others. These bills mainly focus on providing grants for schools with low graduation rates to partner with local organizations or institutions of higher education to improve student achievement.

Currently, ESEA has a limited focus on the high school grades and improving student achievement in those grades. While students are currently tested in either 10^th or 11^th grade for NCLB accountability purposes, many districts choose not to give Title I funds to their high schools in favor of elementary and middle schools. The numerous bills submitted in the last congress that focus on high school suggest that the reauthorization of ESEA will likely include more programs directed at improving high school graduation rates.

Though it’s impossible to know exactly what Congress has in mind for ESEA, especially given the new Republican majority in the House, these recently proposed pieces of legislation give us some important insight. But many questions still remain:

Is there a future for Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation? What will become of the Early Learning Challenge Fund or other efforts to include early education in the law? And perhaps most importantly – Will the 112^th Congress get around to ESEA reauthorization at all?