Heads Up! HR 5 (Student Success Act) Coming Back As Soon As April 13th

A heads-up for those who celebrated on February 27, 2015, the pulling of HR 5 (Student Success Act) from a vote before Congress:

Word is that it is slated to return– without change– after Easter.

This means as soon as the week of April 6, 2015. (CORRECTION: April 6th is a House and Senate “work week.” Both House and Senate go back into session the week of April 13th. See 2015 Congressional schedule here.)

As was true of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), one of the major goals of HR 5 is to cement mandatory standardized testing into grades 3 through 8 by tying it to federal education funding to states.

And like NCLB, student test scores are supposed to be incorporated into grading schools.

Here is the Network for Public Education’s (NPE) distilled criticism of HR 5:

There are four crucial issues [regarding HR 5]:

• Requires that states test all children in grades 3-8 and once in high school, even though no high performing nation tests all children every year 

• Makes Title I funds portable, which will decrease funding to the schools in greatest need, and opens the door for vouchers

• Limits Title II funding to 10% for class size reduction

• Increases funding for charter schools and encourages the growth and expansion of Charter Management Organizations (CMOs), which will advance the privatization movement

In February,, Obama threatened to veto HR 5, mostly because of the portable money and federal budget capping, it seems:

“Rather than investing more in schools, [the Republican bill] would allow states to divert education funding away from the schools and students who need it the most through the so-called ‘portability’ provision,” said the OMB statement. “The bill’s caps on federal education spending would lock in recent federal budget cuts for the rest of the decade, and the bill would allow funds currently required to be used for education to be used for other purposes, such as spending on sports stadiums or tax cuts for the wealthy.”

The testing Obama is fine with.

Don’t be blindsided by its reintroduction immediately following a major holiday. Contract your congressmen now.

NPE has a form for this purpose here.

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Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education.

She also has her second book available on pre-order, Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?, due for publication May/June 2015.