Back in 2010, it appeared that education might be the one area where Congress could make progress in a bipartisan way. Fast forward two years and now that notion seems like a fairy tale.

While ESEA reauthorization is long overdue, I don’t agree that something is better than nothing, nor do I think the President would sign just any bill. What is in the bill definitely matters. The House Education and Workforce committee’s proposal to give states more flexibility with federal dollars, for example, would need some serious revision to move forward in the Senate. It dilutes federal funds that support high-need kids by allowing districts to combine funds from several programs and use them as they see fit, possibly to the detriment of certain students. We don’t know what the final two bills on teacher qualifications and accountability look like, but my guess is they will include a weaker role for the Department of Education and allow for even more state flexibility than the Senate Republican proposals introduced last September. This could seriously undermine strides we have made in school accountability, particularly with regards to the performance of low-income and minority students, over the past 10 years.

Even though a bill to reauthorize ESEA moved out of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions committee, there is still little agreement on some big issues, namely accountability. This will likely be a sticking point in both the House and Senate. Discussion on ESEA is useful, sure, but there needs to be more than just discussion.

I was hopeful that this reauthorization would offer an opportunity to include a stronger focus on early education. But even if reauthorization wasn’t stalled, this would be an uphill battle, since not every relevant legislator is convinced that early childhood education belongs in ESEA. During the Senate mark-up of the Harkin-Enzi ESEA bill, Senator Robert Casey, Jr. (D-PA) introduced and then withdrew several amendments related to early education. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), ranking member of the HELP committee, thanked him for withdrawing them and said, “ESEA is not the place for more early childhood programs.” Enzi argued that several other federal programs, such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant, are the place to focus on early childhood.

I disagree. More lawmakers need to start thinking about education as a coherent system from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade if they want to ensure more children are ready for kindergarten, reading by the end of third grade and on the path to graduate from high school ready for college and career.

The most pressing issue is not whether a NCLB reauthorization bill is partisan or not, but whether it helps improve teaching and learning.

NCLB has seriously damaged U.S. educational quality and equity. FairTest explains why in our just-released report, NCLB’s Lost Decade for Educational Progress: What Can We Learn from this Policy Failure? The combination of high-stakes testing overuse and unsound sanctions has undermined good schools, hindered and misdirected reform efforts in weaker ones, and perpetuated the dangerous illusion that schools alone can solve the problems of poverty and segregation.

Secretary Duncan’s waiver scheme does remove the boot of “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) from the necks of schools in states that accept the bad deal of judging teachers “in significant part” on the basis of student test scores. Despite rhetoric from President Obama and his education secretary about the low quality of standardized exams and the harm of teaching to them, they are intensifying the pressure on school people to narrow the curriculum and teach to the tests.

The Senate HELP bill likewise scuttles AYP. It at least limits the requirement to judge teachers by student test scores only to states that choose to use some ESEA discretionary funds to construct a teacher evaluation system. It also takes a more reasonable approach to school improvement in calling for a tailored plan based on a review of the particular school. Unfortunately, it undermines this sensible approach (strongly recommended by the Forum on Educational Accountability, FEA) by also insisting that districts pick from a menu of rigid options that closely resemble NCLB’s sanctions.

So what should the House do, hopefully as bipartisan legislation but even if Republican only? It should also drop AYP. It should not require any state to use student test scores to judge educators. And it should entirely scrap any remnants of the misguided NCLB sanctions structure.

But it should go well beyond these steps and follow the recommendations outlined in FairTest’s report (which in turn overlap with both FEA and the Broader, Bolder Approach). These include:

- Reduce the amount of mandated testing to once each in elementary, middle and high school. No other advanced nation tests more than this. For example, top-performing Finland does not test at all for school evaluation. Over-testing in the U.S. has simply produced state test score inflation, not real gains in learning, as demonstrated by stagnant NAEP scores for almost all groups.

- Provide serious support to enable states to work with districts to construct assessment systems rooted in ongoing student schoolwork. There are ways to do this that are unobtrusive, avoid teaching to the test and narrowing the curriculum, produce adequately reliable and strongly valid evidence of student learning, and support strengthening the capacity of the teaching force.

- Provide serious support to states willing to build a school quality review system.

Taken together, these systems of assessment and evaluation can produce rich information to use in school improvement, as I’ve explained in an Education Week Commentary. By building on the school improvement ideas in the Senate HELP bill but jettisoning the continuing link to NCLB sanctions, the rich evidence of student learning and school strengths and weaknesses can be used to foster systemic school reform.

To succeed, these reforms will require additional funds for schools serving our most impoverished children. Even then, Congress should not perpetuate the falsehood that schools can overcome the consequences of poverty. Solving that vast problem goes well beyond an education bill, though ensuring high quality pre-school and wrap-around services are steps that Congress can take in reauthorizing ESEA.