Education Bill Clears Hurdle

Education reform legislation won broad bipartisan approval Wednesday from a key House committee, a major advance for President Bush’s efforts to link increased federal funding for struggling schools to demands for better academic results.

The House Education and the Workforce Committee voted, 41 to 7, to reauthorize federal elementary and secondary education programs for the first time in seven years; six Republicans and one Democrat opposed the measure.

The bill includes $22.6 billion in spending for the next fiscal year, about $4 billion more than the current year’s total. But even if the bill or something similar to it becomes law, Congress would have to appropriate the funds through separate legislation.

Republican and Democratic supporters alike said the bill had survived a critical test in committee. It now heads to the House floor, where it could come to a vote by Memorial Day. A separate version is under debate in the Senate.

Before Wednesday’s vote, the White House worked hard to keep a fragile bipartisan coalition behind the bill. Bush himself called Rep. George Miller of Martinez, the committee’s ranking Democrat, on Tuesday to reiterate his oft-expressed desire for compromise. After the vote, White House education advisor Sandy Kress, who was monitoring the action in the committee room, patted Miller on the back.

“We’re pleased,” Kress told a reporter. “Obviously we have seven no’s. We’d just as soon have zero. But 41 to 7 is a pretty good mark.”

The legislation brokered by Miller and Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the committee chairman, would authorize major funding increases for Title I (an umbrella of programs for disadvantaged students); teacher recruitment, training and hiring; education programs targeted to English-learning students; and new school technology.

But in exchange for those investments, the bill insists that states test students in reading and math every year in first through third grades. It also calls for a second testing system to cross-check results from state to state.

Low-performing schools, as defined by state standards, would be given money to help them improve. Those that don’t would face a series of sanctions that get tougher year after year.

One such provision would require school districts to pay for transportation for students transferring to better public schools. Another would require the districts themselves to offer after-school tutoring; some of those services could be offered by religious groups that meet state approval. Ultimately, persistently failing schools could be shut down and forced to reorganize.

But the committee-approved bill did not include Bush’s call for federally funded vouchers to help parents in failing public schools move their children to private schools. That angered the six Republicans who voted against it.

One of those GOP foes, Rep. Bob Schaffer of Colorado, complained that the “core elements” of the Bush plan had been turned back by the committee--an assertion the White House strongly disputes.

“Some Republicans, working with all of the Democrats, ripped the heart of the president’s plan out of the bill,” Schaffer said.

He pledged to fight for vouchers on the House floor.