StickWithANose

With the ignoble and well-deserved death of Reading First now behind us, Congress appears to be re-visiting federal literacy programs. Sen. Pat Murray is leading a well-intentioned move to encourage adolescent literacy and has introduced a bill to replace the failed literacy initiatives of the Bush debacle era. However, [as with all things] the devil is in the details.

The bill introduced in the Senate on Nov. 5 is similar to a draft comprehensive-literacy bill circulated in Congress this past summer. Then, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who had co-sponsored the Striving Readers legislation with Sen. Murray, was expected to be a sponsor as well. But neither Sen. Sessions nor any other Republican was listed as a sponsor of the bill introduced last week. Likewise, no GOP sponsor was listed for the one that Reps. Yarmuth and Polis were poised to introduce in the House.

As I’ve noted previously, there are very few differences between the two political parties on education policy. This “informative” article gives us almost no details as to what’s actually in the bill, so I’ll keep on looking. However, I would note that any piece of legislation that was/is supported by Jeff Sessions is a priori suspect. In the long run, the replicants may oppose this legislation in order to beef up their “tea-bagging” credentials, but that should not be interpreted as a “progressive” victory. What is today labeled “progressive” was often once conceptualized as being “neo-liberal.” We’ll have to see what kind of sausage comes out of the legislative process…