After a nearly year-long struggle, the Senate today gave final congressional approval to a far-reaching plan to use federal education aid as leverage to force improvements in low-performing schools and to assure more help for needy students.
The measure, approved by a vote of 87 to 10, was overwhelmingly approved by the House last week and now goes to President Bush, who made it one of the top priorities for his first year in office and plans to sign it early next year. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president was "just delighted" with the bill.
The legislation, probably the most ambitious education reform effort since passage of the landmark Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965, will require testing of every student in grades three through eight in reading and mathematics. Poorly performing schools would get extra aid to help them improve, but continued failure would invite sanctions, such as conversion to charter school. Children in lagging schools would get federal aid for tutoring, summer school programs or transportation to another public school.
The bill aims to close the achievement gap experienced by many poor and minority students, have all children reading by the third grade and to put a qualified teacher in every classroom. Local school districts would have greater flexibility in spending federal aid.
The bill was the product of intense bipartisan cooperation that is rare for such a major piece of legislation. It is one of the few big domestic bills not related to terrorism that kept moving in Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Although the bill did not include Bush's proposal for vouchers to help children in failing public schools pay tuition at private schools, it gave the president most of what he wanted, and many Democrats came away happy too.
"The legislation before us today is about America's future," said Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) as today's debate began. "It is about enabling all children to fulfill their dreams and to build a future for themselves, their families, their communities and our country."
But some lawmakers, including Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), Kennedy's predecessor as chairman of the panel, faulted Congress for demanding more of schools than it is willing to pay to improve them. He had never voted against an education bill in his 25 years in Congress but would do so this time, Jeffords said. "I fear that this bill, without the sufficient resources, will merely highlight our shortcomings. .?.?. I believe it is better to approve no bill rather than to approve a bad bill," he said.