WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., has been named a member of the joint House and Senate conference committee tasked with reauthorizing and fixing the No Child Left Behind Act.
The bipartisan conference committee will reconcile differences between bills passed earlier this year by both the House of Representatives and Senate to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main federal law governing K-12 public education.
No Child Left Behind, the latest iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was passed in 2002 and expired in 2007.
“We are on the precipice of finally fixing the problems with No Child Left Behind,” said Bennet, a member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “We must maintain the strengths from that law which allow us to monitor our kids’ progress and ensure we are preparing them for future success while re-empowering those closest to our kids to make decisions about their education.”
The compromise bill being worked out will reportedly limit the government’s role in overseeing K-12 education and would allow states to have a greater say in the use of state-level assessments for accountability purposes.
The U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday to appoint all 22 members of the Senate’s HELP committee to serve on the conference committee. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., respectively announced the selection of 10 House Republicans and seven House Democrats to the committee.
Bennet, who previously served as superintendent of Denver Public Schools, helped to write the Senate version of the ESEA reauthorization bill, the Every Child Achieves Act that passed the Senate this past July in an 81-17 vote.
That bill included dozens of provisions, authored by Bennet, to address issues such as inequality, school and district budgetary issues, and the lack of resources provided to rural school districts. In announcing his selection to the conference committee, Bennet said he would continue to push for legislative solutions that address these issues.
“While this bill is just one step to addressing the challenges facing kids living in poverty, we will work to ensure it includes important tools to help our states, school districts, principals and teachers prepare our kids for the 21st century,” Bennet said.
egraham@durangoherald.com. Edward Graham is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.
