Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) offered a number of amendments to the Senate education bill.
Ohio’s two U.S. senators were successful in holding off an amendment to the education bill passed Thursday that might have cost Ohio schools $70 million aimed at programs for low-income students.Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman worked to change it so that new formula for dispersing Title I money requires extra funding, making it unlikely to become active for years.Brown also added an amendment that would open up for-profit charter schools to more public inspection.“This is the first time, I believe, that Congress has had any involvement in making charter schools more transparent, in bringing the community in more, in terms of running these charter schools, and making these charter schools more accountable to the public,” he said.The Senate bill also reduces the amount of testing students are likely to take."This legislation will end overreliance on standardized tests, which has led to over-testing and forced teachers to 'teach to the test,'" Portman said in a written statement.The newly named Every Child Achieves Act is meant to replace the George W. Bush era's No Child Left Behind Act.It reduces many of the federal accountability on states and their schools. Brown called it an improvement.“I think this is significantly better than No Child Left Behind," he said. "It’s better because of the charter school rules, it’s better because it rolls back some of the testing, it’s better because it modernizes some of the ways some of the schools operate, and again, retaining local control, but also having national standards and state standards. “The Senate bill must be merged with a more conservative House education bill.