Virginia educators and state leaders are soon expected to be able to exert more control over local schools across the commonwealth.
Lawmakers were supposed to overhaul No Child Left Behind in 2007 but they couldn't bridge the ideological divide. That's left a patchwork across the nation as the Obama Administration compelled states to embrace it's Common Core standards while granting waivers to some 43 states. Virginia Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott was a key player in scrapping No Child Left Behind. He says the new bill gives states the leeway they've been craving.
“We don’t tell you how to do it how to eliminate the achievement gap but we tell you, you have to eliminate the achievement gap and that’s in the bill that you have to take meaningful action.”
Scott is the top Democrat on the Education Committee. The new bill decreases the power of the Education Secretary but still enables the Department to compel states and school districts. Critics fear the bill allows states to go back to the old system and allow students to fall through the cracks, but Scott says the federal government retains carrots and sticks.
“The ultimate authority of course is to withhold funds but hopefully you never get to that. You just argue and ask for different improvements in the plan and work with people so that I mean the idea is not to way with the funding the idea is to educate the children.”
No Child Left Behind was intended to focus more resources on minorities and low income students, which Scott says he fears those groups could continue to fall through the gaps with the new bill.
“The achievement gaps racial and ethnic have been slowly closing over the years. One gap that is problematic is the income gap. Low income students are doing not nearly as well as upper income students.”
Virginia Republican Dave Brat is also on the Education Committee. He was one of just 64 lawmakers to oppose the bill. Brat says the final version worked out with the Senate just didn’t answer a simple question.
“Are we making our kids internationally competitive when it comes to business? So that’s your thesis. The House bill had some good moves in it that weakened as they went to conference and so in a nutshell there just wasn’t enough left.”
Still, Northern Virginia Democratic Congressman Don Beyer says the final bill represents significant progress.
“It is a compromise it’s not perfect from either perspective, but that’s the way things are supposed to work so it’s a good step forward.”
And Beyer says the bill will allow educators across the commonwealth to regain more control over their curriculum and classrooms.
“Well one of the core ideas for this bill was to try to give much more control back to state and local governments and even in Virginia most of this is still done at the local level. So I think you know if we believe in empowering people as close to the students as possible this is a good bill.”
It took eight years for lawmakers to agree on the changes needed to overhaul No Child Left Behind. Analysts say it may be another eight years or even a decade for them to assess how their reforms are working in classrooms across the nation.
