An education bill pushed by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin has passed the Senate Education Committee. Harkin, a Democrat, says the bill rewrites the “No Child Left Behind” education law and does away with the federal accountability requirements.
He says it eliminate the “one size fits all” approach of the “adequate yearly progress requirements” in the old law. “So I guess what I could says is that we have left No Child Left Behind, Behind,” Harkin said. The bill would keep focus on the schools that have traditionally not done a good job of preparing kids to graduate.
“The bill aims for a federal role that does fewer things, but does them more effectively,” Harkin says, “it gives priority to improving the lowest performing schools, including America’s drop-out factories, that’s the 12% of high schools that produce 50% of America’s dropouts. And we focus federal resources on those schools.”
Harkin says the bill passed the committee on a bipartisan 15-7 vote. He does not know when it will come to the full Senate for a vote.