WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Student Success Act Thursday morning 218-213 renewing some portions of No Child Left Behind while eliminating others.
The House bill would prohibit the Department of Education (DOE) from exerting control over state academic standards and would instead apply existing provisions to the Common Core standards, which have been adopted in Alabama.
The bill eliminates the Adequate Yearly Progress Metric (AYP) which allows DOE to determine how every public school and school district in the country is performing academically according to results on standardized tests, and repeals the federal Highly Qualified Teachers (HQT) requirements that designate federal funds to educational agencies for the purpose of improving the student achievement through the professional development of teachers and principals.
Conservatives supported several amendments to the bill including one that would allow states to opt-out of No Child Left Behind standards, but the amendment failed 195-235.
Heritage Action, the Heritage Foundation’s political arm, key voted the amendment.
“The underlying bill is not worth passing unless this amendment is adopted,” Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham said in an interview with The Hill. Those at Heritage and other conservative groups believed that the opt-out feature was necessary for the bill to gain their support.
The Alabama delegation was divided on the bill with Reps. Bradley Byrne (R-AL1), Martha Roby (R-AL2), Mike Rogers (R-AL3), Robert Aderholt (R-AL4), and Gary Palmer (R-AL6) all voting in favor and Reps. Mo Brooks (R-AL5) and Terri Sewell (D-AL7) voting against it.
Roby, who helped write portions of the bill, said in a press release, “It is past time for Congress to replace ‘No Child Left Behind’ with sensible policies that return control back to the states and local communities where it belongs. I’m pleased the House passed the Student Success Act, and I hope the Senate will work with us to achieve final passage soon.”
Rep. Bradley Byrne agreed. “It’s time for the federal government to get some humility,” he said in an issued statement. “Washington bureaucrats don’t know how to educate our children, but our local superintendents, school boards, teachers and principals do. So let’s empower them.”
Although the supporters of the bill herald it as a significant step in Federal Education reform that gets Washington out of the way, conservative opposition claims that it is nothing more than Washington business as usual.
In an interview with Yellowhammer News, Rep. Mo Brooks warned “The actual bill that passed the house will not be the bill that becomes law when the senate is through with it.” He opposed the bill because “It advances the Federal Government’s intrusion and dictates into local education matters for at least another three years. I believe that the Federal Government’s intrusions and mandates into k-12 education have been counterproductive to the quality of public schools in America.”
“The federal government needs to butt out of all k-12 education matters and Congress should be repealing every one of the federal government’s k-12 mandates, not extending them for any number of years as the bill we voted on yesterday would do,” Brooks added. “K-12, throughout the history of America, has been a uniquely city, county, and state function. It is not by coincidence that the rise of Federal Government intrusion into local public school matters has coincided with a very significant decline in the quality of education being offered by public schools as measured by test scores of students going through the system.”
Representative Terri Sewell opposed the bill but for different reasons than her conservative colleague. Because of a provision that allows federal Title 1 funds to “follow” students from traditional public schools to public charter or private schools, Sewell wrote, “I cannot support the reverse-Robin Hood approach to educational funding contained in H.R. 5, the so-called Student Success Act. This bill would divert Title 1 funds away from poor school districts to wealthier schools, further tilting the playing field against underprivileged children.”
The Senate is currently considering a different piece of legislation to renew No Child Left Behind. If it passes, the houses will have to go to conference to hash out the differences.
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