Sen. Harkin’s New ESEA Bill Includes Provisions for the Primary Grades, PreK-3rd

Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), the chair of the Senate committee on education, introduced legislation yesterday to update the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known for years as No Child Left Behind.  Since 2007, there have been attempts to reauthorize the law, but none have made it very far.  Here are a few measures in the Senate Democrats’ bill – called the Strengthening America’s Schools Act – that focus on the early childhood field and the primary grades of elementary school:

• Full-day kindergarten: The bill requires states’ plans for Title I to include how they are improving access to full-day kindergarten if they fund it.
• Effective teachers: States must report the distribution of effective teachers – information currently unavailable to most parents, researchers, and policymakers.
• State academic standards across the domains for the PreK-3^rd grades: – States would be required to make changes to their academic standards in preschool and the early grades.

On our sister blog, Ed Money Watch, Anne Hyslop analyzes several of the changes to Title I proposed by Harkin and the other Democratic Senators on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.  On standards, for example, she writes:

Sen. Harkin would require any state that uses Title I funds for early childhood education to develop early learning guidelines for preschool programs and early grade standards for students in grades K-3. These standards would be required to address multiple domains of learning, including social-emotional development and approaches to learning (ability to persist at a challenging task, work with others, and make decisions) and align with the state’s college- and career-ready standards. While this could help encourage states to address the specific needs of its youngest students and how they learn best, it should be a requirement for all states, though, and not just those who use their Title I dollars for preschool programs.

But there are also shortcomings of the bill when it comes to early education, Hyslop writes.

Harkin’s bill suffers in two areas: defining school improvement strategies and school report cards. In defining what schools must do to improve and what data must be reported for all schools to parents, every Democratic Senator’s favored approach or data point appears to be included, leaving a jumbled mess of burdens and requirements for states, districts, and schools.

School improvement strategies – in addition to the specific provisions of the transformation, turnaround, whole school reform, restart, and closure models – must include over 15 common elements, from professional development, to improving coordination and access to early learning, to data-driven instruction, to positive behavioral interventions and supports. While these are all important factors to consider (and New America has written about the need to include preschool and the early grades in school turnaround), it’s a vague and inordinately long list to tackle in three years, especially if state and district capacity for school improvement is lacking.

In the days ahead, look for more from Early Ed Watch and Ed Money Watch on new provisions related to teachers and English Language Learners as well as other changes proposed in the Strengthening America’s Schools Act. Stay tuned.