No Child Left Behind, Every Student Succeeds, and Now Choices in Education

I'm just a bill.
Yes, I'm only a bill.
And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill.
Well, it's a long, long journey
To the capital city.
It's a long, long wait
While I'm sitting in committee,
But I know I'll be a law someday
At least I hope and pray that I will,
But today I am still just a bill

~I'm Just a Bill
Schoolhouse Rock

Last week, I saw a post on Facebook. It read as follows:

It drew my eye because it discusses pending legislation and it concerns education, particularly education of children with disabilities.

"ESSA" refers to the "Every Student Succeeds Act," which is a 2015 amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. ESSA was enacted to replace No Child Left Behind. NCLB, enacted in 2002, required schools receiving federal funds meet certain benchmarks. If a school did not meet the benchmarks, students might be given the option of attending a school that did meet the progress goals. 

On January 23, 2017, Rep. Steve King and other Republican Congressmen introduced H.B. 610, which they are calling, "The Choices in Education Act." The bill, if enacted would do some of the things that the Facebook post claims. According to information provided on Congress.gov:

• The bill repeals the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and limits the authority of the Department of Education (ED) such that ED is authorized only to award block grants to qualified states.
• It also establishes an education voucher program, through which each state shall distribute block grant funds among local educational agencies (LEAs) based on the number of eligible children within each LEA's geographical area. From these amounts, each LEA shall: (1) distribute a portion of funds to parents who elect to enroll their child in a private school or to home-school their child, and (2) do so in a manner that ensures that such payments will be used for appropriate educational expenses.

The post is incorrect, however, when it says that H.B. 610 will abolish the No Hungry Kids Act. It does, amend the Act and water down the effect of the Act. Under the No Hungry Kids Act, lunches served by schools must meet minimum nutritional requirements, except that the minimum nutritional requirements do not prohibit the substitution of foods to accommodate medical or other special dietary needs of individual students. The new bill adds that the nutritional requirements cannot establish a calorie maximum for individual school lunches or prohibit a child from eating a lunch provided by the child's parent or legal guardian.

Before you pick up your phone to call your Congressman or start typing that email, there are some things you should know:

• When the bill was introduced in January, it was referred to Committee (as is done with any proposed legislation) and no further action has been taken, except that one of the four sponsoring Congressmen withdrew his sponsorship.
• The Committee, in this case the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, must consider the legislation before it can be sent to the House floor. Most likely, before it would be considered by the whole committee, it would first fall under the purview of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education. The Subcommittee is comprised of seven republicans and six democrats whose job it is to explore the implications of the bill, the cost of the bill, and maybe hold hearings on the bill.
• The bill could also die in Committee. In fact, it is likely it will die in Committee. According to USHistory.org, more than 90 percent of congressional bills die in committee.
• With only three sponsors, this bill doesn't appear to be viable. If members of the House of Representatives thought the bill would succeed, they would be jumping on the bandwagon to sponsor it.

If you've been watching the news, you know that Congress has been busy trying to create a replacement for the Affordable Care Act (also known as "the ACA" or "Obamacare"). After that, there is talk of tax reform, so for now, education reform appears to have been put on the back burner, but it is likely to return to the forefront before long. When it does, it could be H.B. 610 or it might be another bill. It might also be a combination of bills. Either way, this is unlikely to be the last we hear about education reform. 

Stay tuned for further developments.