Education Next – Frederick Hess
“On Friday, House Speaker John Boehner announced that he’ll be stepping down at the end of October. This decision concluded five long years of caucus clashes between Boehner and the House’s Tea Party wing and, in edu-world, occasioned much speculation about what this means for ESEA. After all, for the first time since 2001, the House and Senate have both passed reauthorization legislation which they’re now working to reconcile. The conventional wisdom was that Boehner’s announcement makes the odds of ESEA reauthorization much longer. I see things a little differently. First, keep in mind that 99.9% of the currents buffeting House Republicans have nothing to do with education. They have to do with more fundamental fights, some rational and some less so. Whether the outcome of these fights helps or hurts education legislation is purely incidental. Nobody knows how all the leadership shuffling or budget fights will play out, or what that’ll mean for the policy agenda.”(more)