Senate Passes Education Bill

In a triumph for President Bush, Congress cleared landmark education legislation Tuesday requiring annual math and reading tests for millions of students as part of an ambitious effort to boost classroom performance.

The 87-10 Senate vote came less than a week after the House bestowed its blessing on the measure, 381-41. Mr. Bush, who placed education atop his first-year list of legislative priorities, is expected to sign the bill into law within days.

"This legislation before us today is a blueprint for progress in all of the nation's schools," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., one of four key lawmakers who shaped the measure. "It proclaims that every child matters – every child in every school in every community in America."

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., added, "What we're doing is creating opportunities for local school districts, states and especially parents, to take advantage of using their federal dollars in a more effective way of educating the low-income child."

The bill mandates annual state reading and math tests for all students in grades three through eight. Poor-performing schools would have to give some of their federal aid to kids for tutoring or transportation to another public school.

In addition to requiring millions of students to be tested each year, the measure would also would focus new resources on schools that consistently fail.

In a statement, Mr. Bush thanked Congress, saying: "These historic reforms will improve our public schools by creating an environment in which every child can learn – through real accountability, unprecedented flexibility for states and school districts, greater local control, more options for parents and more funding for what works."

A few lawmakers, including Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., have complained that the $26.5 billion plan falls short, especially for costly programs to help disabled students. Jeffords, who headed the Senate's education committee until he left the Republican Party last May, said the shortcomings make the bill embarrassing.

"I believe it is better to approve no bill rather than to approve a bad bill," Jeffords said. "I am sincerely hoping, for the sake of our children, that history will prove me wrong."

The bill is also opposed by school board and superintendents' groups, who say state and local education budgets will be strained by its demands.

The House and Senate spent months refining the massive Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provides most of the funding and overall regulation for K-12 education.

Schools would be required to come up with plans to close the achievement gap between low-income and middle-class students as well as white and minority students.

Districts would have to submit annual "report cards" showing a school's standardized test scores compared with others schools, both locally and statewide.

Schools would have to test students with limited English skills in English after students had spent three consecutive years in a U.S. school. Schools also would also get a share of Mr. Bush's signature reading program, which provides nearly $1 billion per year for the next five years, in hopes that every student can read by third grade.

Overall, the bill authorizes $26.5 billion for elementary and secondary education in the 2002 budget year, which began Oct. 1. That would be about $8 billion more than the year before, and about $4 billion more than Mr. Bush requested, but nearly $6 billion less than Senate Democrats wanted. The actual amount could be lowered once Congress makes its annual spending decisions.

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