STRAIGHT A’s PASSES OUT OF HOUSE COMMITTEE:

House Floor and Senate Next

On Wednesday, October 13, the House Education and the Workforce Committee passed Straight A’s – a bill that would give governors and school districts the option of “opting out” of all of the provisions of several major education programs, including Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Straight A's will likely go to a vote on the House floor on October 20th or 21st. It is expected to come up in the Senate sometime in the following few weeks (perhaps the first week of November). It is essential that all members, but particularly Republicans who tend to vote moderately on education block grant issues, hear from their constituents now. Senator Kennedy has asked for copies of your letters to Republican Senators. CLE will collect copies of your letters and deliver them to Senator Kennedy so that he can use them in conversations and debates with those members.

The “Academic Achievement for All -- Straight A's Act" (H.R. 2300 in the House, and S. 1266 in the Senate) is a block grant. It is an irresponsible piece of legislation which would eliminate almost all accountability for federal education funds, wipe out parent and student rights to quality and equity, and do major harm to efforts to raise academic standards and improve student achievement for all children.

Under Straight A's, governors could choose to take all of the money (and none of the requirements) from a host of federal education programs and use that money for any educational purpose determined by the governor and state legislature that is permitted by state law. Even if a state chooses not to block grant these programs, it could allow a local educational agency to do so. Programs which could be wiped out at the behest of Governors and school districts include: Title I, the Carl Perkins vocational program, the McKinney Act, and then Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Project.

States and districts would have free reign for five years. They could use the money for whatever educational program, and focus it on whichever groups of students they choose. After five years, the sponsors of the bill represent that there would be accountability for outcomes. However, that "accountability" is really "ANTI-ACCOUNTABILITY," as noted by United States Secretary of Education Riley. States get to use their own goals for reducing performance gaps, and there is very little federal authority to review, much less disapprove, those goals. After five years, if a state is not meeting 80% of these self-imposed goals, it would have to start complying with federal requirements. This is no accountability at all. Further, states which are egregiously behind in meeting their own goals would risk, after five years of this failure, losing only one half of their administrative funds (limited to 1% under Title I). Thus, for the first five years, children in ineffective programs would have no recourse at all. After that, they have little, if any, recourse.

Straight A's is irresponsible governing and very bad for children.

The Straight A’s Challenge:

Please send letters to your Republican Senators and members of the House. Send blind copies of these letters to Christine Stoneman at the Center for Law and Education: e-mail (cstoneman@cleweb.org), fax (202/986-6648), mail (1875 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Suite 510, Washington, D.C. 20009). We will forward them to Senator Kennedy’s office.

A few Key Republican Senators (send letters to any members, however):

HR 2 PASSES OUT OF COMMITTEE; SENATE ESEA DISCUSSION DRAFT OUT ESEA

Reauthorization Contains Top Down Accountability, but No Parent Centers

HR 2, the Student Results Act, passed out of the Education and the Workforce Committee and is set for a vote on the full House floor on October 20th. The bill contains a number of strong accountability provisions regarding dissemination of student progress data and accountability for progress for subgroups of students (positions supported by CLE). However, the bill fails to include any provisions for independent parent centers. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) brought an amendment to add such centers to the bill. Republican leadership took a five-day recess to rally Republican solidarity on this and other amendments. They were successful, and the Sanchez amendment failed on a party-line vote.

In addition to parents, advocates for limited English proficient students, Hawaiian students, and girls were dealt blows in the reauthorization process. HR 2 contains a potentially discriminatory requirement that parental consent be obtained for students receiving English language acquisition instruction in Title I programs. An amendment brought by Mr. Martinez (D-CA) to strike this provision failed in Committee and will be brought again on the floor. The Bilingual Education Act has also proven to be a sticking point in negotiations. So much so that it was not included in HR 2 at the Committee level. Plans are to add it to the bill on the floor. Depending upon the results of negotiations, there could be an enormous struggle over bilingual education on the floor. HR 2 also strikes a number of gender equity provisions and the Women’s Educational Equity Act. Finally, Republicans struck out against the Native Hawaiian education program, eliminating it from the base bill. Each of these issues promise to continue to be raised on the House floor and in future negotiations.

On the Senate side, Senator Jeffords has issued a discussion draft outlining his plans for reauthorizing all of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the Senate, unlike the House, has kept all of ESEA together as a package). The discussion of Title I is brief and offers little insight into what changes may or may not be contemplated.

The Jeffords outline contains no provision for Local Family Information Centers to assist families of students in Title I programs to get involved in their children’s education, to press for quality programming, and to understand and press for appropriate implementation of the standards, assessment, and accountability systems. In addition, Goals 2000 Parent Information and Resource Centers would be focused entirely on supporting parents and parenting of children ages birth through five. Thus, the draft rejects the notion that parents of students in Title I K-12 programs ought to have independent sources of information and support.

Nor does the draft contain any of CLE’s recommendations for strengthening the accountability system by requiring separate progress for subgroups of students and in each subject area and by creating a 10-year deadline for getting all students proficient.

The draft consolidates Goals 2000, class size reduction, and current Title VI program into what is essentially a $2.236 billion block grant to support local educational agency “innovative assistance” such as professional development, reducing class size, improving the academic performance of educationally disadvantaged students, technology activities, and other broad categories of assistance.

Finally, the draft outline includes a new High School Initiative which would give States funding to award grants to high schools for “the development of activities to motivate students to complete their high school education.” Many conversations have taken place about creating a new high school reform initiative in ESEA, but they were focused on improving the program at the school to better integrate academics with technical and vocational programs. Instead, by appearing to focus on “motivation” rather than the underlying program provided at the high school, we are concerned that Senator Jeffords may miss an opportunity in terms of supporting high school reform.

“CATCH-ALL” BILL NEXT UP IN HOUSE

The final bill in the three-part reauthorization process in the House Education and the Workforce Committee will be taken up after the full House considers HR 2. Staff refer to this final bill as a “catch-all” which may look a lot like a block grant of Goals 2000 and other programs “left out” of the Teacher Empowerment Act and HR 2. Democrats expect to push for reauthorization of Goals 2000 Parent Information Centers in this bill, but to strengthen the authorizing language, and to separate the PIRCs from block granting language. CLE will continue to provide updates on the “catch-all” as more information becomes available.

APPROPRIATIONS UPDATE

As of early October 18, 1999, the House and Senate were nearly $3 billion apart in their education spending bills. The Senate bill, passed last week, would increase the Education Department’s discretionary programs by $1.7 billion to $35.2 billion annually. This includes increases in funding for Title I, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, and special education. The House version, which made it out of the appropriations committee but not the full House, would cut ED spending by $200 million to $33.3 billion, including zero-funding for parent assistance centers and class-size reduction. The House plans to move forward with negotiations with the Senate, using the House Committee bill as its starting point – an unusual approach to avoid what promised to be a drawn out and potentially politically damaging House floor fight. President Clinton issued a veto warning against any compromise that seriously threatens his funding requests, particularly in areas of key concern to the White House, such as class size reduction. Congressional leaders will meet with the President to attempt to resolve these issues this week. The remainder of the Congressional schedule, including mark-up on the Senate’s ESEA bill, will largely depend upon the timing of budget negotiations. The longer the budget process drags out, the more likely we are to see movement on ESEA and Straight A’s in the Senate this session.