Pessimism on the Rise in NCLB Reauthorization

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee has previously been the resident optimist in Washington encouraging colleagues not to throw out NCLB. But that is changing.

Rep. Miller said last week it would be difficult for him and other supporters of the NCLB law to overcome the combination of its unpopularity with Democrats and the size of the president’s fiscal 2009 budget proposal, which Rep. Miller and other Democrats consider inadequate. “I just don’t see the Congress passing this legislation if the president is not willing to support it with the resources everyone knows are necessary,” Rep. Miller [told Education Week].

Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., who is the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, said he hasn’t met with Miller to discuss the NCLB law since October.

“We’re in a climate where it doesn’t look very favorable to get the reauthorization done,” Rep. McKeon told a meeting of the Education Industry Association last week. In that meeting, Rep. McKeon said, the two still hadn’t agreed on more than a dozen significant issues, such as the measures to be used for school accountability and how students qualify for tutoring under the law.