Impending Retirements Shape ESEA Debate

By Joetta L. Sack

Washington

The upcoming departures of some influential policymakers and the impending re-election campaigns of others could lend a new urgency to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act this year.

Several mainstays of federal education policy in the 1990s will leave office after the 2000 elections, from President Clinton and Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley to the majority and minority leaders of the House education committee. And several key senators are facing re- election battles in November and hope to cite passage of the ESEA reauthorization among their achievements during an election cycle in which education is again expected to be a popular theme.

Rep. Bill Goodling, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the Education and the Workforce Committee, has shepherded through most of the GOP's education legislation in the House for the past decade—first as the ranking minority member on the panel and later as its chairman. But having decided to retire rather than seek a 14th term in Congress, the chairman now has his first—and only—chance to guide the renewal of the nation's...