Something for Everyone on Capitol Hill in Schools Bill

Congress is about to draw the curtain on one of Washington’s longest-running disputes: how to reshape the federal role in education to improve foundering public schools.

House and Senate negotiators are expected today to approve a proposal to settle the argument, enabling nearly every player in the debate to take a bow.

President Bush, who campaigned on school reform and pledged that his administration would ensure no student was “left behind,” will have a bill requiring schools for the first time to test all children in reading and mathematics from grades three to eight.

His Republican allies can claim they are writing into law the strongest consequences to date for repeatedly lagging schools: federal education dollars diverted to private tutoring agencies, subsidies to bus children to better public schools and a real threat of state-mandated overhauls for the worst cases of failure.

And Democrats can say they routed more money than ever to the neediest students in America--many of them in the urban centers of Southern California--while defeating school vouchers and other pet conservative causes.

By many accounts, the legislation now ready to move through Congress would be the most significant revision to federal education law since Washington began large-scale aid to elementary and secondary schools in 1965.

The bill would require states to offer new help immediately to parents of children in persistently failing schools. It also would require states to install testing systems and benchmarks within four years to measure how well schools are doing in closing achievement gaps between rich and poor school districts, white and minority students and those who speak English as their primary language and those who don’t.

The goal would be to bring all groups of students to proficiency, as defined by each state, in reading and mathematics within 12 years. The reformers seek to upgrade struggling schools using the carrot--extra federal aid--as well as the stick--a threat of sanctions.

“What we’ve done brings a new purpose to a federal program that has lost its focus and never met its promise,” Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said Monday. “I think the bill will bring new hope to the poorest of our children who are trapped in failing schools.”

Boehner said he expects the bill to clear a 39-member committee of House-Senate negotiators today and reach the House floor as early as Thursday. Senate action would come soon afterward. White House aides and lawmakers have said Bush supports the bill.

Education is one of the few major areas of domestic policy that have not drawn Democrats and Republicans into pitched battle this year.

In Bush’s first days as president, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts appeared at the president’s side to support his goals. The leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Kennedy was a key participant in negotiations concerning the bill. As he brokered the measure with Boehner and Bush, Kennedy acknowledged that something major needed to be done to fix the public school system--not a position that Democrats had universally embraced in recent years.

“In too many schools, in too many communities across the country, students have been shortchanged,” Kennedy said. “These are bipartisan reforms, and I expect they will make an important difference.”

But it is one thing to envision education reform and quite another to make it happen, especially when Washington pays only about 7 cents out of every dollar spent on public schools. American educators have a long and jealously guarded tradition of local control.

As Bruce Hunter, associate executive director of the American Assn. of School Administrators, put it: “Somebody’s going to have to explain to [school districts] that the people who give them 7% of the money have acquired a major voice in school evaluation and teacher qualifications. I don’t think that’s going to be an easy sell.”

Indeed, the last time Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--in 1994 under President Clinton--it required states to define common standards of achievement and test students as to whether those benchmarks were met. But dozens of states failed to meet deadlines to implement those systems. Now, Bush and Congress are proposing requirements and mandates that are even broader and in some ways more difficult to implement.

But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say this year’s reforms have a better chance of being carried out. One key, they say, is money. The federal government is adding even more to an education budget that has grown dramatically in recent years.

Under the education bill and companion appropriations legislation, elementary and secondary school programs in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 would get a $4-billion funding increase, up more than 20% from the previous year. California is in line for a large share of that money.

According to Democratic aides, funding for Title I, the main federal program for children from low-income families, is expected to rise to $1.46 billion in California, up from $1.16 billion--a 26% increase.

For Los Angeles County, Title I funding is projected to grow 38%--to $308 million from $222 million. Those totals reflect the bill’s goal of funneling more money to the neediest children.

Whether those amounts will be enough to accomplish what Congress and Bush want remains to be seen. States and schools everywhere, squeezed by the recession, are slashing budgets.

Here are some of the reform bill’s key provisions:

* To improve the teaching corps, it would require states to have a “highly qualified” teacher in every classroom within five years. This is a steep challenge in a state such as California, which has trouble filling all job openings in many of its fastest-growing districts. The bill also would shield teachers from parent lawsuits--a growing concern among educators.

* To shed light on student performance, states would be required to report test results for subgroups of students in each school, such as those with limited English skills. Parents would be given report cards concerning these results and other gauges.

* To give parents options when their children attend persistently mediocre schools, the bill requires school districts to set aside a portion of their federal money to pay for private tutoring or for transportation to a better public school.

This provision is touted by conservatives who were otherwise disappointed that the bill failed to launch a federal pilot program to give students vouchers for private school tuition. As many as 3,000 schools nationwide could be affected in the upcoming school year by the new school-choice mandates.

“This is huge,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a top negotiator, “because it means that if you’re a parent of a low-income child, and you’re stuck in a school that’s failed year after year, you’re going to be able to get your child special help.”