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Senators Harkin and Enzi Introduce Comprehens?ive ESEA Bill
By Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance staff | October 3, 2011
From AASA . . .
After months of negotiations and missed deadlines, Senate Education Committee Chairman Tom Harkin is holding a mark-up of a comprehensive bill to re-authorize ESEA on October 18th. Harkin has been working with Senate Education Committee Ranking Member Mike Enzi (R-WY) on this draft for approximately ten months. Details of the bill are not available yet, but AASA will post them on the Leading Edge blog as soon as we have them.
The Harkin/Enzi bill is the only bi-partisan approach to re-authorizing ESEA introduced this year. It is also the only attempt to draft a comprehensive bill to address the problems of ESEA. Republicans on the House Education Committee have decided to take a piecemeal approach to ESEA re-authorization. Last month, a group of four Republican Senators led by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-KY) on the Senate Education Committee introduced their own package of legislation to fix the most problematic aspects of ESEA, but their bills did not make changes to all the titles and programs in ESEA.
There is a growing divide among Republicans in the Senate about who is leading their chamber when it comes to education policy. Some believe that while Enzi is the Ranking Member of the committee, the caucus trusts the opinion and policies presented by former U.S. Education Secretary Alexander over Enzi. Alexander said he could not overcome philosophical differences in trying to create a new accountability system and teacher evaluations, so he stopped negotiating with Harkin and Enzi earlier this year. It will be interesting to see how the Republicans on the committee, particularly those involved in the package of ESEA bills introduced a few weeks ago, respond to the bi-partisan ESEA legislation put forth by Harkin and Enzi.
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