McKeon Introduces SES Legislation

Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Education and Labor introduced a bill revealing a top Republican NCLB reauthorization priority. On Tuesday, McKeon introduced H.R. 2203, the Improving Supplemental Education by Ensuring Parental Awareness Act, a bill designed to increase student access and participation in supplemental educational services (SES).
The bill’s notable provisions include:


• Allowing students attending public schools that do not make AYP for two years to take advantage of the law’s SES services provision;
• Requiring LEAs to document parental awareness that free tutoring options exist for their children or, alternatively, have certain policies in place which have been found to lead to greater participation in SES programs;
• Requiring LEAs to roll over unused SES funds into an SES program account to be used during the following school year(s);
• Allowing school districts to reserve up to one percent of their SES and public school choice transportation funding for activities directly related to the implementation of tutoring programs for eligible students;
• Expanding the current state administrative cap under NCLB to allow additional funds to be used for the sole purpose of improving implementation and oversight of SES programs; and
• Requiring that key data pertaining to these programs be included in the report cards currently provided to parents.

Of those provisions, the first, that SES is available in the first year of school improvement, is the most likely to emerge in a reauthorization bill, but the value of the bill is more political than substantive. It suggests that the Republicans on the Committee are taking a traditional Republican approach to SES, which is to bolster the SES market by expanding the range of available providers, assuring that LEAs do not restrict the funding to the providers and providing parents and the community more information about the services.

Extrapolating that traditional Republican position to the reauthorization, it suggests that the Republicans will likely slow the process in order to challenge the expanded role of the federal government in education. This party, after all, sought to eliminate ED just 9 years ago. If that is true, then an on-time 2007 reauthorization just became less likely.
Resources:

“McKeon Introduces Bill to Strengthen Free Tutoring Options under NCLB,” Committee on Education and Labor, Republicans, Press Release, May 8, 2007, http://republicans.edlabor.house.gov/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=132.
Author: DAD