PARCC practice tests in the Sheridan School District (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post).
U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, both Colorado Democrats, were named to a conference committee of several House and Senate legislators that will work on the No Child Left Behind rewrite.
The conference , and is expected to meet again Thursday.
, officially the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was . The reauthorized federal education law required annual testing and progress monitoring from those results, putting schools and districts on a path to restructuring and state take-overs if they continually failed to show improvements.
In 2012, under President Barrack Obama, the federal government began to offer waivers to let states off the hook for some of the stringent rules. , and is currently waiting to have the waiver renewed.
Earlier this year, the Senate and the House each passed their own versions of the re-write of the bills. It is now up to the conference committee to bring both proposals together to end up with something that has a chance of passing both chambers.
Bennet, former Denver superintendent, and Polis, a former chairman for the Colorado State Board of Education, have each worked on the bills passed in their chambers.
Sen. Michael Bennet teaching reading class for 11th and 12th graders at South High School in 2013. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)
which would have maintained testing and reporting requirements, but would have allowed states to decide how to use results to evaluate schools or districts.
In a statement on Wednesday morning, he reiterated support for a similar proposal.
“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,” Bennet said in the statement. “Our chief priority on this conference committee will be to produce a final bill that promotes equity and helps provide great educational opportunities for our kids in poverty. It must create and support new opportunities for teachers and schools to expand upon the innovative strategies that are helping kids learn and grow in the classroom.”
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis
Polis also worked introducing an amendment that would improve collaboration with charter schools and an amendment “to allow federal funds to be used for open source textbooks and open educational resources.”
for less testing.
“We need a bill that relieves schools from the burden of over testing and a system that forces them to move from waiver to waiver, both results of the outdated No Child Left Behind policies,” Polis said in a statement.
Now, Polis is also calling for the intent of the original law, passed in 1965 to be prioritized. “When ESEA was originally passed, it was first and foremost a civil rights law, and itap critical that this year’s reauthorization maintain that original intent.”
