EdWeek: NCLB-Renewal Ideas Circulate on Capitol Hill

This Education Week article summarizes what's currently happening on Capitol Hill regarding the reauthorization of NCLB. You can read the beginning of the article here; click the link above for the rest of the story. Also of interest, Margaret Spellings issued a press release supporting the version of the bill filed by Senators Gregg and Burr (the "two Senate Republicans" referred to in the second paragraph below). You can read the press release by clicking here.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, has signaled to freshmen in Congress that he’ll propose some major changes to the 5½-year-old No Child Left Behind Act when he releases his reauthorization bill, possibly in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, two Senate Republicans last week introduced their own NCLB reauthorization bill, which would also add more flexibility to the law while retaining its core accountability principles.

Rep. Miller’s anticipated revisions include ideas that have been popular in a number of recent NCLB reauthorization proposals, such as allowing “growth models” as a gauge of student progress and instituting a more tailored range of consequences for schools that don’t meet achievement goals.

Rep. Miller outlined his thinking in a memo distributed last month to freshman House members.

Under the outline, schools could get credit for individual student gains in proficiency—using so-called growth models—and not just for gains by cohorts of students compared with those in previous years. Schools struggling to meet the law’s goals would be subject to interventions appropriate to their needs, according to the outline. And those that continually missed achievement targets would receive more intensive support.

The outline also calls for changes to assessments and accountability systems for English-language learners and students in special education, although it doesn’t offer specifics.

Rep. Miller, who was a key architect of the NCLB bill that President Bush signed into law in 2002 and has strongly supported federal accountability measures, also wrote that he would like to allow states to use “more than test scores” to determine whether students are making progress under the law. He suggested such measures could include “real-time classroom tests that allow teachers to adjust their instruction as necessary.”