Franken amendments included in Senate NCLB reform

WILLMAR -- The U.S. Senate has a bipartisan federal education reform proposal ready for consideration, but the next steps in the process will depend on what is developed in the House, Sen. Al Franken said Friday morning.

There is agreement in both houses of Congress that No Child Left Behind, the current law, needs to be revamped. However, a path to rewriting the law is not clear.

The Senate has gone so far as to pass a bill out of committee that reforms NCLB and reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Several of his amendments are included in the bill, which was passed out of committee with bipartisan support, Franken said Friday morning in a telephone interview with the West Central Tribune.

A major goal of the Senate bill is to get rid of the Adequate Yearly Progress system, which has labeled about half the schools in Minnesota as failing to make progress as measured on annual standardizes tests.

The Senate bill replaces that system with one that measures student growth from fall to spring. Franken said teachers all over Minnesota have spoken to him about the need to measure growth.

Read more about our conversation with Franken in Saturday's West Central Tribune.