The complete statement of July 30 below. Follow by commentary:

McKeon Statement on NCLB Reauthorization

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), Senior Republican Member of the House Education and Labor Committee, today issued the following statement on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act:

“No Child Left Behind is the law of the land because it balances real accountability with state and local flexibility and expanded parental choice like no education law before it.  Changes to the law that weaken any of these three pillars of NCLB – accountability, flexibility, and parental choice – will be met with strong opposition from House Republicans and are likely to be a fatal blow to the reauthorization process.

“Republicans began laying the foundation for NCLB’s reauthorization more than a year ago by kicking off a slate of bipartisan hearings on topics most important to the law’s future.  More than halfway through 2007, I am disappointed with the pace of negotiations and hopeful that we can reach an agreement soon.

“However, the content of the legislation is far more important than the calendar, and any attempts to weaken the law will be met with stiff resistance from House Republicans who have already joined with the civil rights community and business leaders in expressing concerns that some of the Democrat proposals will undermine transparency for parents and the ability to hold schools accountable for student performance.”

So what?

• McKeon et al will fight hard against multiple measures of accountability and changes to the SES program that limit the market. No surprise here.

• There may be some common ground with Democrats on ways to relieve states and districts of NCLB's restrictions - "flexibility" is another word for waivers, or writing today's waivers into law.

• The ranking Republican thinks his best bet for expanding support to undecided colleagues lies in leveraging the alliegance of inner city civil rights organizations and mainstream business community to his positions.

Reading First and SBR: No Barking

Noticeably absent from everyones' NCLB agenda are support for Scientifically Based Research (SBR) and Reading First. What will happen with the former, aside from not being excised from the law, is unclear. The latter seems likely to be reduced to irrelevance. Just as the Republicans moved the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program off the market reform agenda because it was considered a "Democratic" initiative, Democrats wlll take some pleasure in killing off a Republican President's pet project and moving the funds back to Title I Part A.

To your editor this is another case of throwing out the "market" baby with the "political" bathwater.  CSRDP was advancing the state of the art in scientifically based research capacity and market expectations of quality. It was also nurturing the developent of the school improvement industry, by creating and enforcing market regulations that advantaged these young firms over the dominant publishers. There was no strong basis for killing it off beyond the political fact that the name "Obey" was attached to the program. 

NCLB's Reading First and SBR provisions actually strengthened the principle of provider accountability for student performance, otherwise called "what works."  Had they been implemented by the Department of Education in a manner consistent with the law, the $4 billion of sales Reading First represents would have gone some way towards building up k-12 providers with a cultural committment and corporate capacity to embed ongoing research and evaluation in their products, services and programs. That it did not was a tragedy for the school improvement industry.

The problem with Reading First is not a flawed concept, but grossly negiligent execution by the Administration. Frankly, that point seems to have been recognized by Congressman Miller and Senator Kennedy. So rather than throwing the program out to "punish" Republican's out, the two ought to be seeing that it is properly implemented to help kids, for surely they still agree with the importance of provider accountability for student outcomes.

The problem with Scientifically Based Research is that it has no operational significance in the regulation of purchases/sales under NCLB. Education evaluators can't come to a definition that incentivizes innovation while setting a meaningful floor on quality. Most providers treat the matter as one of legal compliance rather than corporate culture, and have figured out that the practical hurdle is any kind of positive rating from the What Works Clearinghouse. Educators can't make sense of the studies they read and, unless the finding is one of complete failure and irrelevance, they don't really mean much to any prospective purchaser. But the source of the problem is not these parties, but the Department of Education's lack of any effort to bring the stakeholders together to establish a plausible regulatory regime.  The fact that no one in the Congressional debate has taken on the central challenge to leaving no child behind is most dissapointing.

Unless SBR is given some material significance (listen here), there will be no material change in the quality of k-12 providers offerings. Without programs like Reading First, implemented as Congress intended, there is no place for the school improvement industry to achieve critical mass.