Dive Brief:
- Congress' No Child Left Behind rewrite process has opened divides between Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and teacher groups over federal involvement in school accountability.
- Murphy, along with the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the National Disability Rights Network, and other civil rights groups have advocated for continued federal accountability for how well vulnerable groups such as students with disabilities or English language learners perform on tests.
- That push has put these groups at odds with teacher unions, which traditionally lean Democratic but favor state-level oversight and an elimination of punitive accountability measures such as school closures.
Dive Insight:
The ongoing NCLB rewrite process has made for unusual alliances and divisions. Teacher unions are finding themselves in a rare alliance with Republican lawmakers in pushing for less federal involvement in accountability measures. Meanwhile, Democrats have split over how hard to push for more protections for minorities, students with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has signaled the Obama administration’s backing of more federal protections, but it’s not clear if that would result in a veto if a bill without more protections made it to President Barack Obama’s desk. Connecticut offers a good example of how the divides play out.
"The principle of accountability is not negotiable to us," Leslie Proll, director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s Washington office, told the Connecticut Mirror. "This was the raison d'etre of the original act. Educational systems must be held responsible for narrowing and eliminating gaps in opportunity and achievement for students of color.”
Meanwhile, Sheila Cohen, president of the Connecticut Education Association, told the news outlet, “All punitive measures must be deleted from what comes out in a final bill…Doing anything punitive in nature eradicates what goodness is going to come out of this bill”