It looks like health care, which got a lot more attention during the presidential campaign than education, is going to take precedence over K-12 school legislation, at least in the Senate, when Congress comes back in January.
Michael Myers, a top aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, told Families USA, a health care advocacy group, that health legislation will be Kennedy’s “first, second, and third priority” in the new Congress.
That would mean that the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, and other education bills, are, at best, fourth.
Kennedy, a key architect of the NCLB law, was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and had been working for his home on Cape Cod, but returned this week to Washington for Congress’ lame duck session.