Hearings on the renewal of NCLB begin this week. Here's an EdWeek article that quotes DFER's Charles Barone:

The finish line remains a long way off in a Congress bitterly divided over issues such as health care, hurtling toward the 2010 midterm elections, and still without a specific proposal from the Obama administration about how it would revise the ESEA, currently called the No Child Left Behind Act.

Still, in announcing the hearings last week, leading Democrats and Republicans on the House Education and Labor Committee declared that the NCLB act is "a law that we all agree is in need of major reform," and that the panel would "work to ensure an excellent education is available to every student in America."

The statement was issued by Reps. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the committee; John Kline of Minnesota, its ranking Republican; Dale E. Kildee, D-Mich., the chairman of the subcommittee on elementary and secondary education; and Michael N. Castle of Delaware, the senior Republican on that subcommittee.

…"Once you get outside the Beltway, you have Democratic and Republican governors, as well as Democratic and Republican state lawmakers, who've embraced the [Obama administration] agenda," said Charles Barone, the director of federal legislation for Democrats for Education Reform, a New York City-based political action committee. "It's clearly bipartisan, but it's just not clear that the agreement on policy will trump the politics in Washington."

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