[L]eading Democrats are struggling for the formula that can attract bipartisan support to extend the life of President Bush’s education law, No Child Left Behind. In doing so, they are proposing to ease the pressure on suburban schools....
Amy Wilkins, vice president of the Education Trust, a rights group, said the authors were succumbing to pressure from “well-financed and ill-informed defenders of the status quo.... "The heart of the law has been hollowed out"...
2001.
Michael J. Petrilli, a former Department of Education official who is a vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, has nicknamed the education committee’s draft “The Suburban Schools Relief Act of 2007” because he says it is intended to appease the middle class.
Samara Yudof, a spokeswoman for the education secretary, Margaret
Spellings, said, “We have serious concerns that the draft creates
loopholes in accountability measures, provides fewer options for
parents, increases complexity and provides less transparency.”....
On the other hand, Edward J. McElroy, president of the American Federation of Teachers said, “This draft encourages a serious discussion of reauthorization.”
You heard precisely this prediction in School Improvement Industry Week - the Podcast on July 31, an analysis of Congressman Miller's speech to the National Press Club. Petrilli followed in Fordham's Education Gadfly on August 31.Your editor remains convinced that NCLB II will not be reauthorized until after the 2008 election, but that - other things being equal - the law will look more like whatever the House passes beforehand than the NCLB we know today.
The interim is a long time. Providers can do two things: subject their business planning assumptions to the law that looks to be shaping up, and start thinking about how their actions as an industry might make that law more favorable on the margins.