Congress: Let nation's districts improve struggling schools

Congress is close to overhauling the federal No Child Left Behind Act in ways that curtail the federal government's control over efforts to improve schools where students do not perform well on standardized tests.

Both the House and Senate have passed bills that give local districts more control over how to turn around struggling schools.

Passed in 2001, No Child Left Behind aimed to ensure that all students became proficient in reading, writing and math by 2014. Signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, it required annual statewide testing of students. It labeled schools in which students consistently performed poorly as failing, threatening them with sanctions and closure.

But its goals were never met and educators criticized the scope of the federal approach. Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken said the heavy-handedness of the program made it ineffective.

"We learned a lot over the last 13 years about what works in No Child Left Behind and I think we learned more about what doesn't work," Franken said.

The House and Senate bills passed in recent weeks still require annual standardized testing to measure student proficiency. But both bills also give states and school districts the power to decide how best to improve test scores in schools where students do not do well on the tests.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan still wants the federal government to require that states identify at least the 5 percent of schools with the lowest scores and develop improvement plans for them. Franken said that could make its way into the final compromise.

"I expect that there will be a stronger accountability piece in this," Franken said. "I think everyone is entering into those negotiations with eyes wide open."

U.S. Rep. John Kline, a Republican who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, said there are similarities between the House and Senate bills. That could help the compromise process, he said.

"I remain confident that at the end of this process we will have a bipartisan bill which will be agreed to by the House and Senate and sent to the president," said Kline, who represents Minnesota's 2nd District.

The bills in Congress do not reduce the number of assessment tests students take.

Kline, who wrote the House bill, wants federal money for low-income students to follow them if they move to other public schools. That's something Obama administration officials have said they oppose. It's also an issue that failed to make it into the Senate version of the bill.

States like Minnesota that have put their own accountability systems in place in recent years won't have to worry about changes if No Child Left Behind is replaced. Minnesota received a waiver from No Child Left Behind in 2012 that let the state put in a system that ranks schools on multiple measures, not just test scores.

"If you like changes you made because of the waiver you can keep them," Kline said. "If you don't like changes you made, you don't have to keep them."

Minnesota's multiple measurements rating system still considers test scores. But the state's schools also receive credit for students who show year-over-year test improvement, even if their scores don't yet show them to be proficient.