My sense is that a split Congress will make it more likely that a reauthorized ESEA will be a real bipartisan product. The Administration and Senate Democrats will need to find areas of agreement with House Republicans and be more open to compromise then what we’ve seen over the last year with the jam it through strategy used for healthcare, stimulus, and financial regulatory reform. Both sides have intra-parties struggles (see Obey v. Obama) so it will be a test of leadership with both parties, and the Administration, to pull together the coalition needed move forward with meaningful reforms.

Also, the prospects of Rep. Boehner becoming speaker could be good for education. He knows education policy since he previously chaired the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. And he knows how to form bipartisan coalitions and negotiate on the details. He was instrumental in the last ESEA reauthorization which passed in both the House and Senate with nearly 90 percent support.

I don’t think we’ll see Congress take up ESEA in 2011, and a July Education Insiders poll showed that more than 40% of Insider believe it won’t happen until after 2012. The weak economic recovery and challenges with healthcare implementation will continue to dominate the policy agenda. WIA reauthorization is a possibility given the need for more and better job training assistance. The only way ESEA could happen is if Congressional leaders and the White House agreed to make it a priority as a way of demonstrating that both parties can work together on at least one issue.

The real place to watch for education reform in the 2010 midterms isn’t the Congressional races but the 37 governor races, 29 of which are leaning Republican. While most ed reform groups haven’t really reached out to these candidates to help inform their platforms, but there are some really strong education platforms nonetheless:

• Nathan Deal running in George touches on Common Core, STEM, charters, and proficiency-based learning models.
• Tom Corbett running in Pennsylvania is proposing more support for charter schools, pay for performance, and more flexibility for schools.
• Meg Whitman running in California wants to adopt Florida’s A-F school rating system, eliminate the charter school cap, and offer parents the option of converting their “F” schools to a charter school.
• Rick Snyder running up in Michigan has a plan that touches on pay for performance, establishing a P-20 system, and embraces college readiness. And taking on the data-isn’t-sexy camp, he proposes to implement “a longitudinal data warehouse and decision-support system.”

So there are some promising reformers, they’re just not necessarily headed to Congress. And that’s ok, because most reform will happen, as it always has, at the state level.

Hard to be hopeful about congress on any front these days. There are some weird scenarios like a coalition of union supporters and tea baggers rallying for local control and dismantling most of NCLB in 2011, but more likely the overdue fixes will be punted to 2012.

As Lomax said, let's do what we can and celebrate what's underway. The RttT fund assessment consortia and Common Core will frame the next decade of US education the way NCLB did the last. RttT work is initiated, charters are expanding, turnarounds are underway, and most states will retain some form of accountability.

In December the Digital Learning Council, chaired by Governors Bush & Wise will launch a policy platform for the decade to come--a 'constitution for the revolution' as one member puts it. Online learning is bigger than charter schools and doubling every 3 years. New tools are reshaping schools, and new blended schools are reshaping community options.

Is George Miller Superman? Perhaps, but no need to wait and find out. Let's make the most of what's underway.

If the Republicans take the House, I am currently inclined to agree with those who predict no reauthorization until after 2012. If the Democratic Party holds a slim majority in the House and a narrower majority in the Senate, this may hold as well. There are multiple reasons for this prognostication:

D’s control Senate, R's control House, cannot agree; R's don't want to give Obama anything before 2012; R's cannot agree among themselves on what they want, while there are also differences among D's on at least some important issues. Other commentators have brought up some of these points, as well.

There are two possible winning coalitions in getting a bill through: the essentially pro-NCLB D’s and R’s find agreement on enough points, and both think it is in there interest to push a bill, and there are enough of them to come together. That option is based on what I hear about the current efforts, more on which below – but this effort has already been enormously difficult, and I expect it will get more so after the election.

The other possible alliance is Rs and Ds very unhappy about NCLB and is mutation, RTTT This position is backed by a public that does not like the law because they recognize is it not making schools better (and indeed is causing far more harm than good). The new law would do away with the destructive aspects of NCLB and RTTT such as over-testing and mandated punishments (some of the things some people on this list tout as reform). This has its logic, but issues such as funding will certainly get in the way, and even if funding could be overcome, it seems a slightly longer shot than the first scenario. In addition, R’s consistently propose anti-union legislation, which will make a deal with more leftish D’s far less likely (Since Checker praised Waiting for Superman, I recommend this excellent critique by Rick Ayers and friends.) Would R’s trade money and not attacking unions for less federal intrusion via tests and sanctions, and enough D’s realize this is educationally and politically a good move?

For those willing to read more, here are some thoughts on the current situation in Congress, but a number of key topics - testing, accountability, AYP and school improvement, sanctions, paying teachers for students' scores, and opportunity to learn:

1. Mandated testing in 3-8 and high school. Very few people in Congress want to touch this, though it is a real sore spot for many. There is some push to increase the testing (e.g., require grades 9-11), but that is not so likely. Before Obama, Congress especially did not want to actually grapple with the "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) test-score-gain requirements. Now the 'third rail' seems to be the amount of testing. Interestingly, the House Education Committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. Kline, told Education Week when he took that job that he opposed mandated testing in grades 3-8. I don’t know if he will actually push that.

2. The use of test scores as the primary tool for "accountability" will largely remain, but likely to be somewhat softened by giving states some leeway to use other factors - although most of the other factors are likely to end up being tests in other subjects, as well as graduation rates.

3. Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) as we know it will go, but it still remains unclear what will replace it. Duncan especially wants to focus on lowest-scoring schools (bottom five percent), and there likely will be some sort of reward for the top five percent. I get the sense Democratic leadership does not want to simply ignore everyone else, but no one really knows what that could mean, especially since they assume there won't really be more money (to buy change, good or bad, in more schools). Meanwhile, states will get flexibility on combining test score gain measures (mislabeled as "value added" when "valueless addition" is more accurate given it only includes mostly multiple-choice test scores) with status scores (that is, the actual test scores), perhaps combining them with some other indicators, in order for each state to rank all its schools. Without the rankings, cannot identify the bottom. How fast the bottom will be re-identified (e.g., new rankings every 3 years) is still under consideration. In any event, AYP will probably be less bad than it now is.

4. Sanctions and/or assistance. Duncan's four models (replace half the staff; replace principal and maybe some staff; close the school; privatize control over the school via charters or educational management organizations) seem quite dead. The idea seems to be what the Forum on Educational Accountability recommended: identify key areas that good schools do well on and improving schools focus on, tell those in bottom five percent they have to have a plan to improve that addresses these issues, but don't tell them how to do it. Then monitor the improvements. This could include "leading indicators" (improved school climate, positive changes in staff, professional development) or a school quality review/inspectorate approach. (There is real interest at least among D’s in an SQR not only for the bottom five percent, but some larger range of schools, but on a pilot basis of say 10-15 states.) Then in time outcomes will have to improve (still means test scores mainly, though also grad rates and some other indicators). It is likely that if improvements on the areas to work on don't show up in say three years, or later scores do not rise, that there will be a mandate to close the school, or take other strong action.

The overall claim is that a) this will shift focus from punishment to improvement, and b) that will lead to a different reaction to testing so that schools will be less focused on narrowly teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, etc. Maybe. But research has shown that even publishing test scores in local papers affected curriculum and instruction. And the changes would come on the heels of years of NCLB's punishment approach, so educators will correctly view the whole thing with great suspicion.

Meanwhile, if ESEA is not reauthorized, it continues. States, taking their cue from Duncan, may largely ignore most of the schools that don't make AYP - a number rising each year, and accelerating, as the "deadline" for all schools to have all kids proficient nears. Predictions have had 70 to 100 percent of kids failing.

However, not reauthorizing means Duncan continues Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants with their four destructive models. Whether Congress will continue to fund RTTT and if so at what level is uncertain. Funding SIG may for many be more palatable, but those models will wreak havoc unless Congress manages to create new strings on the funding that force Duncan to back off imposing his models. My hunch: some money continues as do the four models, though I hope I am wrong.

5. RTTT also unleashed another storm of destruction, paying teachers and administrators for student test score gains (mislabeled "merit pay" when "meritless pay" would be more accurate). A growing number of states are taking this step that will further damage schools. Whether it will be in a new ESEA remains to be seen. It is of course more federal meddling, which R's oppose - but since it helps attack unions, R's may find that overrides the meddling. Some D leaders clearly want it, but D's may find ever more clearly that not only do they need unions, but the incessant attacks on teachers (as in Waiting for Superman) really won't play out well.

6. Opportunity to learn and the relationship of schools to race and class will remain fundamentally not addressed. Congress needs to acknowledge not only that hugely more education money will be needed if all kids are to leave school well educated (and yes it has to be used well, which has nothing to do with the so-called reformers new status quo), but that growing poverty and segregation by race and class undermine efforts to improve school. It is far easier to test and punish, even to send some money to some schools for improvement, than to grapple with the consequences of decades of economic and political decisions that have worsened life for tens of millions of people.

Updated at 4:23 p.m.

If recent history is any indication, don't expect dramatic changes in the way of education policy regardless of which party owns the committee-chairman's gavel in 2011. The fact of the matter is this: Other than a few true reformers, Members of the House and Senate Education committees are nearly impossible to distinguish in terms of partisan identity – other than the seating chart.

Stated another way, if you had to guess the party affiliation of Congressional Education Committee Members (in either chamber) based only upon their speeches, comments and committee votes, you'd guess three-fourths or more of them are Democrats. Especially on the important topic of education, it matters not whether the majority tips a little toward one team or the other.

The result will truly have no appreciable impact on a sustained Congressional instinct to tinker with America's classrooms from the blindest recesses of Capitol Hill. Education lobbyists will still rule the day. The NEA and AFT will continue to dominate American education policy.

Members of Congress will continue to spend enormous sums of cash they don’t have to prove they care about schoolchildren they've never met in school districts they can't name. They'll lob larger and larger money bombs at serious problems much the way solders toss grenades over walls toward the general direction of enemies.

Sometimes they come close. Usually they don’t. But at least their heart is in the right place.

Neither party has recently demonstrated the aptitude to do what really needs to be done. Moving education authority out of Washington, D.C., back to the states, school districts, schools and kitchen tables of America doesn’t appeal to too many in Congress.

Fully funding existing education mandates, starting with I.D.E.A., won’t make anyone a hero by the next election. Treating parents like real customers in a legitimate academic marketplace might make parents the heroes instead of their Congressman.

Cutting bureaucratic strings and red tape associated with federal education dollars would make more heroes out of school principals and local school-board members. But you can’t name such a plan after yourself.

The minute a new House Speaker or Senate Majority Leader announces he’s going to swap out the old Members of his education committee and replace them with legitimate reformers is the precise moment we’ll have a noteworthy signal of meaningful change.

Until then, dust off some old news reports of the last ESEA reauthorization. Change the names and increase the dollar amounts. The result will be substantially the same.

Oh, and kids in Finland, Singapore and China (and two dozen other countries) will be even further ahead of America’s in math and science since the last time we checked.

Will there be enough reform-oriented Republicans to join with reform-oriented Democrats to make a majority?

The answer to that question leads to the answer to your question.

Whoever said that prediction was difficult, especially about the future, would love this question. With more than a month left before election day, we have no idea what the partisan division of the next Congress will be. Even if we did, we’d have no idea how that division would affect education legislation in general or ESEA reauthorization in particular, especially since ESEA reauthorization hasn’t passed even with both houses of Congress and the White House controlled by Democrats.

Let’s talk about something we can control: How friends of education and education reform can make their case to the new Congress, regardless of which party controls the House or Senate.

In truth, it shouldn’t matter. As the question notes, education policy debates have not always divided along strictly partisan lines, either in Washington or around the country. The list of the signatories to the Education Equality Project (co-chaired by Joel Klein, Janet Murguia and me) includes both Democrats like Sen. Michael Bennet, Mayor Cory Booker, and Rep. Chaka Fattah, and Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Rod Paige, and Margaret Spellings, as well as a host of reform advocates not identified with either party.

Which is exactly as it should be. More than ever, and more than in almost any other policy area, the leading ideas in education and reform can claim roots on both the left and the right. The set of policies that make up the reform agenda being pursued by the Democratic Obama administration partakes liberally, so to speak, of approaches traditionally associated with conservative thinking, like school choice, incentives, and competition.

Beyond the Beltway, out in the country, better schools and better education is a cause behind which Americans of every ideological stripe can—and do—unite. Despite the upsurge in private and charter schools, the vast majority of American students, children of Democratic, Republican and independent parents, attend public schools together. All their parents want their children to get a good education, from preschool through college.

This is, in fact, education reform’s (largely unplayed) ace in the hole—the potential for building a support constituency that brings together parents, citizens and the business community from across the political spectrum. Education reform has been largely top-down so far, the product of dedicated reformers on the local and national levels. But reforms instituted by one superintendent, one mayor or one president can be reversed by the next one.

Policies built on a foundation of broad-based public support, however, are highly resistant to being blown away by shifting political winds. Building such a foundation is exactly the mission of the Education Equality Project. The kind of bipartisan and non-partisan national grass-roots constituency the Project is cultivating could make education reform a force to be reckoned with, no matter which party controls city halls, state houses, Congress or the White House.

Good education has both a non-partisan tradition and the potential for a non-partisan future. We should work to make that potential a reality—and avoid speculating about future election results and the risk of partisan division, speculation that, ironically, could make such divisions more likely.

Updated at 11:41 a.m.

If the GOP takes one or both houses, Obama will gain more support for his misbegotten education agenda. He will have more votes for his plans to close and privatize hundreds or thousands of the nation's public schools, especially in inner cities. There will be more votes for the Billionaire Boys Club, who hope to take charge in city after city with noblesse oblige policies. There will be more support for naming and shaming teachers by publishing test scores, even though this approach produces high error rates and demoralizes teachers. There will be increased support for policies that ignore poverty while blaming teachers for low scores. And even greater demands to rely on testing of basic skills as the best and only way to measure quality.

So if the President loses control of either House, he will gain votes for a lot of destructive ideas. And the dumbing down of our nation will continue unchecked.

The combination of policy, pressure, and politics makes me the federal reform optimist who thinks that education reform can occur in 2011 regardless of the election results.

The policy demand comes from the straightforward premise that a ten-year-old No Child Left Behind (NCLB) simply lacks the remedies and flexibility to deal with today's challenges. Race to the Top, I-3, and other stimulus package incentives introduced new incentives and spurred widespread state and district actions that do not square with the NCLB accountability structure.

The pressure comes from whether the approximately forty states that undertook legislative heavy lifting to compete in Race to the Top see continued federal support and encouragement for their efforts. Also without a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the NCLB machine rolls on with increasing numbers of schools failing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress. More sanctions, higher expectations, and less ability to respond is a genuine policy pressure-cooker.

Finally the politics are right for action. True bipartisan negotiations have been underway during the past year. Regardless of the election returns, both parties will want to show an early positive result. Even more importantly, both parties will want to show that after two years of bare-knuckle partisanship, they can work together on a major issue.

So federal education reform can happen in 2011. But one caveat...

Legislative action must be underway and completed early in 2011 before the presidential reelection campaign is actively underway. All bets are off once the snow is falling during the Iowa and New Hampshire presidential contests.

When it comes to education, the likely impact of this election is not yet well understood. Some seem inclined to presume that K-12 bipartisanship will breezily return after November's election. My take: anyone expecting that Republicans elected in 2010, Tea Partiers or no, are going to cheerfully wade into NCLB (nee ESEA) reauthorization, a push to extend Race to the Top, or the President's plans for community colleges may be in for a rude surprise.

For instance, my good pal Mike Petrilli has been arguing that energized conservatives and a more NEA-dominated Democratic caucus will happily move on the administration's ESEA "blueprint"--embracing its gutting of NCLB accountability and targeting only a small number of the worst-performing schools. He told Education Week, “I’m optimistic about a bill in 2011... I do suspect there will be an interest in finding a few issues where they can find some common ground."

I think Mike is misreading the tea leaves. I don't think 2010 Republicans are going to want to touch any bill associated with NCLB or federal efforts in schooling, whether or not the wonks regard it as dialing back federal micromanagement. I don't think they're going to want to grow, or even maintain, the spending levels in the manner required to do a deal with NEA Dems. And the NEA Dems are going to be a larger share of the post-November caucus, as the Dems most at risk are the purple-district moderates. So it’s going to be tough to find common ground. After all, the primary education talking point for Tea Partiers is abolishing the Department of Education. They're not running to reform schools; they're running to tame Washington and reduce spending.

It's easy for enthusiasts of edu-bipartisanship to forget that the famed bipartisanship that we recall is a feature of the pre-NCLB era. That tradition hasn't been put to a strong test since. Meanwhile, lots of conservatives felt hoodwinked by the Bush administration on NCLB--with Senator Jim DeMint and Congressman Pete Hoekstra eventually rallying scores of colleagues in an effort to undo the statute.

It's not just about the 2010 Republicans. Rather, as Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus observed, prospects for "a more robust cadre of moderate Republicans" are diminishing while it's becoming more "plausible to envision a bolstered Jim DeMint caucus" in the Senate. Second, she noted that veteran Republicans looked at the upset of Mike Castle in Delaware and think: "There but for the grace of the Tea Party go I." Marcus predicted, "[Republican members] will be that much more watchful of protecting their right flank... [and] that much less likely to take a political risk in the direction of bipartisanship."

Lots of promising developments in U.S. education are occurring in a number of states and localities, and some good things have been coming out of the U.S. Department of Education, but for the most part the U.S. Congress remains an education-reform wasteland. That's true on both sides of the aisle.

Hill Democrats haven't exactly distinguished themselves on school choice (see what they did to DC vouchers and tried to do to charter funding), on unconventional teacher compensation schemes (see what they tried to do to TIF), or on teacher quality (look at the huge loophole in the middle of "highly qualified teachers".) Yet they're glad to lavish money on states and districts--including foolish money designed to prop up the education status quo--and to add layers of regulations and conditions to everything in sight. On a bunch of education issues, Congressional Democrats appear to belong to a different party than their President and Education Secretary. Leaving Congress in their hands is a depressing prospect from the standpoint of education reform.

But the GOP doesn't look very promising in this domain, either. After evicting Mike Castle, most of the Republicans who remain--and the tea party types who want in--either ignore education (it's not even mentioned in the brand-new "Pledge to America") or are resurrecting their tired old faith in states' rights, local control and parent choice--and telling Uncle Sam to butt out. Well, that just doesn't work very well, not when it comes to reforming American K-12 education.

States’ rights in most places today mean weak standards, shaky accountability, ed school monopolies in preparing teachers and principals, limited (and resource-starved) school choices, meaningless certification and regulation requirements, and scant freedom for those running schools to ensure that they’ll be effective.

Sure, some states are honorable (partial) exceptions to this glum litany but—honestly—not many. Without cajoling, bribing, nudging, and scolding from Washington, there would be fewer, not more. The fact is that state legislatures are where the traditional public-school establishment wields the most power and is best able—often working behind the scenes—to keep anything much from changing.

Local control of education is an honorable mantra but its track record, too, is pretty bleak. If school boards, superintendents, and local teacher unions put top priority on raising standards, narrowing gaps, emphasizing quality in the classroom and running world class schools, America wouldn’t be where it is. In our big cities and many suburbs, local control means union dominance. (Check out Waiting for ‘Superman’.) Elsewhere, it means smug complacency.

Parent choice, another GOP stalwart, is a fine thing but (a) there isn’t nearly enough of it (the establishment at work again via statehouse and union contract, usually abetted by Democrats), (b) too many of the available choices are abysmal, and (c) a lot of parents—painful as this is to say—make mediocre education choices and then stubbornly persist with them. This doesn’t do much for either kid or country, at least not by way of academic achievement.

In sum, the old GOP education agenda isn’t what 21st America needs and recycling it isn’t going to do the job.

A plague on BOTH their houses!