Senate alters course on school accountability

50-49 vote strips away federal layer; passage expected.

WASHINGTON — The Senate narrowly approved a measure Thursday to scrap Obama-era regulations outlining how states must carry out a federal law meant to hold schools accountable for their students’ performance.

The vote was 50 to 49, nearly along party lines: Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, split with the GOP to vote against the measure. The House approved the measure last month with almost all Republicans in favor and all members of the Democratic caucus against. It now goes to President Trump, who is expected to sign it.

The GOP majority in Congress argued that the rules, written by President Barack Obama’s Education Department, contradicted congressional intent and amounted to executive overreach. Democrats said that repealing the rules would remove important guardrails meant to ensure that schools are serving poor children, minorities, English-language learners and students with disabilities.

Democrats also argued that repealing the rules would empower Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s advocacy for private-school vouchers. “It will give Secretary DeVos a blank check to promote her anti-public-school agenda,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

The chairman of that committee, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., dismissed that argument as a baseless scare tactic. He said that repealing the rules “does not in any way” give DeVos a pathway to creating a national voucher program, arguing that it in fact restrains her authority by asserting that the executive branch cannot stretch the law to fit its own philosophy.

The regulations were meant to give states details about how they must meet their obligations under the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act, which 85 senators voted to approve in 2015 as the successor to the No Child Left Behind Act. The rules clarify how states should identify struggling schools, lay out a timeline for state intervention at those schools and explain what information must be included on annual school report cards sent to parents and the public.

Without the regulations in place, states must rely on the law’s statutory language, which in some cases is less clear or specific than the regulations.

Alexander, speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday, outlined 23 ways in which he says the regulations overstepped or contradicted the law.

Democrats disputed that notion, arguing that the regulations supported the balance in the bipartisan law between flexibility for states and guardrails to protect vulnerable children. Democrats — along with civil rights advocates, the American Federation of Teachers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — have said that nullifying the rules would open loopholes for states to shield poorly performing schools from scrutiny.

They also argue that repealing the rules would create chaos and uncertainty for states just as they are developing new plans to hold schools accountable.

Jillian Balow, Wyoming’s state schools superintendent, rejected that view. The federal education law is “such a robust and specific law that it doesn’t cause a great deal of consternation without rules and regulations,” she said. With or without the regulations, she added, Wyoming is “going down the same path.”

“We can’t allow this to be a distraction,” said Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. “All the political back-and-forth on this isn’t helping the states. But they’re going forward and they’re producing strong plans regardless.”

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, was the sole Republican to vote against a measure that would eliminate some regulations impacting school accountability.