Could a significant investment in evidence-based education funding signal the beginning of the end of partisan gridlock in Washington? There is certainly some modest cause for hope.
Earlier this year, both houses of the U.S. Congress agreed on a bipartisan spending plan and in the last several days passed a long-stalled bill dealing with American infrastructure. Then, in the last week, Congress broke more than 8 years of stalled action with the first major, bipartisan legislative overhaul to our nation’s education system since the 2002 No Child Left Behind law. And it could be a game changer for federal education funding.
To be sure, there are critics of the new education bill on both the left and the right. But this education legislation includes important provisions that turn us to the future by ensuring that data and evidence are used to invest in what works.
The new bill, called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), includes provisions that could shift more than $2 billion in federal funds, in each of the next four years, toward building and using evidence to improve education outcomes. It passed the U.S. House by a strong bipartisan vote of 359-64 and sailed through the U.S. Senate with a vote of 85-12. President Obama is expected to sign this bipartisan bill into law quickly – just a day after the Senate passed it.