Last week, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) approved the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act of 2011 on a bipartisan vote of 15-7. The committee reported that the bill would change several aspects of the current federal education law known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The bill would replace NCLB’s accountability system, adequate yearly progress (AYP), which applied sanctions to all schools not meeting performance targets, in favor of a federal focus on the lowest-performing schools in a state. Additionally, the bill would require states to adopt college-and-career standards, consolidate 82 federal education programs into around 40, and it would retain NCLB’s current regime of testing in math and reading, as well as the requirement that states disaggregate data by particular subgroups of students. The committee considered a number of amendments, adopting several, including an amendment by Senator Lamar Alexander (R-IA) that would allow states to submit their own ideas for turning around their lowest-performing schools. Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) hopes to consider the bill on the U.S. Senate floor before Thanksgiving and place a final bill on the President’s desk before Christmas. The U.S. House of Representatives is continuing its strategy to reauthorize ESEA through a series of small, targeted bills; however, the House Education committee has not yet considered bills on accountability or teachers.

Link: Senate Approved Bill