Conservative Group Pushes ESSA Agenda Among State Leaders

by Daarel Burnette II
State EdWatch
24 October 2016

This post was written by Andrew Ujifusa and originally posted on the Politics K-12 blog.

Amidst various players like the teachers’ unions looking to influence the Every Student Succeeds Act at the state level, a group led former Secretary of Education William Bennett is seeking to make its mark.

Conservative Leaders for Education, which formed last July to push for accountability, high academic standards, local control, and school choice under ESSA, officially announced Monday it had signed up four state lawmakers and a state school board as new members in five new states: Alabama, Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

The five new members of the organization are:

Colorado Senator Owen Hill
Alabama Board Rep. Mary Scott Hunter
Ohio Senator Peggy Lehner
Wisconsin Senator Luther Olsen
Nevada Assemblywoman Melissa Woodbury

All of them are Republicans. And all, except for Hunter, are leaders of their respective legislative education committees. Last July, the group indicated that they had signed up lawmakers from all these states, except Nevada, but didn’t name names.

During the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, our own Lisa Stark moderated a panel discussion about early education in which Lehner of Ohio participated. Click here to watch some of that panel.

In an interview, Bennett, the group’s chairman, said the group wouldn’t be developing model legislation. But he said the participating lawmakers would share bills they are working on, as well as thoughts on which policy approaches might work well in their states and which ones might run into problems. Conservative Leaders for Education, he said, is looking for “agents of policy change” in statehouses when it comes to ESSA.

“We’re going about this with all deliberate speed. We’re being very careful about the people we’re selecting,” said Bennett, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s education secretary. “These are all people that are very committed to the issues.”

Bennett said he had discussed the group’s work with several well-known players in the conservative K-12 policy world, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Thomas B. Fordham President Chester E. “Checker” Finn, and Center for Education reform founder Jeanne Allen. None of those people, however, are formally involved with Conservative Leaders for Education at this point, Bennett said.

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Read this entire article on EdWeek’s blog State EdWatch.