With Congress beginning to wade into the turbulent waters of reauthorizing No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Title I Monitor asked five of the nation’s top education experts and policy wonks (Jack Jennings, Mike Petrilli, Ellen Forte, Leigh Manasevit, Andrew Rotherham) to evaluate the leading proposals submitted thus far.

The biggest non-surprise: Virtually no-one believes that NCLB will be reauthorized on schedule this year. That item scored the lowest of all: 2.2 on a scale from 1 to 10 (See Chart)...  [T]here was a surprising consensus on some hot-button items, in addition to a significant disparity on some proposals...

For instance, even as members of Congress began voicing serious reservations about the Reading First program (see "Congress Grills Spellings..."), the expert panel gave a score of 8.4 to the likelihood of the program being maintained.... Despite signs that the program is improving reading among poor children, it has been plagued by accusations of mismanagement and bias.

In a recent report, the OIG suggested that during reauthorization Congress should examine the idea of narrowing Reading First’s criteria for program selection so only reading programs with actual evidence of effectiveness could be selected. But Mike Petrilli.... said it was more likely that Reading First’s eligibility criteria would be loosened instead. He rated the chances of Congress adopting the OIG’s recommendation a 2, much lower than the panel average of 6.2.....

Petrilli...  and Jack Jennings... don’t find themselves on the same side of many issues..... But together, they broke from the pack in predicting little chance that Congress would tie teacher effectiveness to student achievement or some kind of teacher performance-based pay system. Jennings gave the proposal a 2 and Petrilli, a 3, bringing the group average down to 5.2....

In addition to rating 23 oft-cited reauthorization proposals, the Monitor asked the experts to name their own “sleeper issues”— items currently below the public’s radar that may gain congressional traction as negotiations on the future of NCLB continue....

Ellen Forte... a leading national assessment specialist and president of EdCount, an education consulting firm.... predicted that Congress would separate accountability for English language proficiency (ELP) from Title III grants so that all districts are accountable for supporting ELP for all English language learners, regardless of whether they receive Title III funding. (She rated its chances a 7.)...

Jennings listed as his sleeper issue “a gutting of NCLB supported by a coalition of the right and the left.” He put the issue’s chances at a 3.... In an e-mail, Manasevit quipped, “I would like to commend Jack on his choice, as events of the past couple of days make him seem prescient. Can I change mine to his?”

Andrew Brownstein, Title I Online, March 29.