Arne Duncan: Just in Case Congress Can't it Done

It is quite refreshing to see an agency in Washington be proactive for a change. Instead of waiting for Congress to wait until the last minute, Sec. Duncan will have a back up plan just in case. Congress has a history of holding important legislation hostage in some political power game. Unfortunately, if this happens this time, our children will suffer greatly. How can we 'win the future' if our children today do not have the resources that they need? Hopefully, even the talk of Sec. Duncan doing something will spur them into action. We can only hope!!!

Six months after President Barack Obama called on Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law by the start of the school year, the administration is preparing a backup plan that would give states regulatory relief from some of the law’s provisions if Congress does not act.

“We want to start to explore how we would move forward if Congress doesn’t produce a bill,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who called the continued burden of regulation under the current law a “slow-motion train wreck.”

“The best way to fix the law is through the bipartisan process that addresses everything,” he continued, but he added, “We need to make these changes on real people’s time not on Washington’s time.”

The program would exchange regulatory relief, likely in the form of waivers to states, in exchange for significant reforms, Duncan said. It would be modeled after Race to the Top, the competitive grant program that the administration has credited with spurring education reforms across the country.

Members of Congress on Friday responded to the news, which was embargoed until Sunday, with a mixture of skepticism and cautious optimism.

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