It looks like a long-awaited new federal education research law hasn’t fallen to the bottom of the legislative pile after all.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold an executive session next Wednesday on the “Strengthening Education Through Research Act,” along with another bill and some committee business. There’s no debate in an executive session, so this could be a prime chance for reauthorization to move—though the reauthorization proposal doesn’t have a bill number, suggesting it hasn’t yet been reintroduced in this session of Congress
Education watchers were disappointed last month, when a promising bipartisan-backed bill failed to make it through the lame-duck session. The Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department’s research arm, has been waiting on new legislation since 2008.
There was less mention of education research in the recently introduced proposal to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act than there had been in the No Child Left Behind Act, but this may prove a boon to getting an education research law passed under the radar of what are sure to be contentious debates around the larger federal education bill.