Blog

Your Education Road Map

Politics K-12®

Politics K-12 kept watch on education policy and politics in the nation’s capital and in the states. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: Federal, States.

Federal Q&A

Q&A: Sen. Patty Murray on the Next Education Secretary, COVID-19 Relief, and ESSA

By Andrew Ujifusa — December 14, 2020 5 min read
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., gives an opening statement during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing to discuss vaccines and protecting public health during the coronavirus pandemic on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020, in Washington.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state is the ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee and is poised to take over as the committee’s chairwoman if the Democrats take control of the Senate after special elections in Georgia next month. A former preschool teacher, she’s also a primary author of the Every Student Succeeds Act and a member of Senate Democratic leadership. We spoke with her on Dec. 10, five years after President Barack Obama signed ESSA, to ask her about the law, standardized testing, and the next secretary of education. The following Q&A with Murray has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve said recently the Education Department should provide some flexibility from the Every Student Succeeds Act, but that states should still give summative assessments this school year. What’s the middle ground you had in mind for ESSA, and why would directing more resources and support to vulnerable students without knowing those test scores be problematic for you?

Look, it is a very challenging time with COVID affecting our schools, and all the inequities being developed, or we believe are being developed, because of so many low-income students and students of color who don’t have the capacity to learn at home falling further and further behind. We will not know that unless we do some kind of assessments so that we know how to direct our resources to where they need to be.

As a parent and as a grandparent, I know nobody wants to get a call that their child isn’t ready for the next grade. They don’t want to get a call that their child’s school has been letting them down for years. As a parent and grandparent, you want your child’s teachers and schools to have the right resources. You want them to be prepared for the next step. But if we know that resources are not getting to our schools and educators who need them most, and inequities in our education system have left too many kids behind-with this pandemic making it worse-then we can’t put our public education dollars, without an assessment of what we need, in the right place.

I just think we have a moral responsibility to understand how all of our students are doing, where we are falling short, and we have to use data to make sure that we are doing the right thing and sending the dollars to where they are needed the most. That’s called education equity.

In your view, what are the things that need to be included or kept out of any COVID-19 relief deal when it comes to K-12 education that you guys are working right now?

The needs are so large. We know the challenges of getting our kids back into school with the safety that needs to happen, for the teachers and the students and everyone who works there. We know that some schools are going to have to do online learning, and know some are doing a hybrid. And we don’t know how long this is going to last. So schools are struggling. They need the resources. And that’s our public education system.

So in the COVID package, one of the most important things to do-I understand this is bridge funding until we have a Biden administration and can fight for more-but we have to make sure that the dollars that are in there are not redirected to private schools without the federal protections that we have always had in place to make sure that our federal dollars are treated equitably, and that private schools can’t discriminate against people.

There was a lot of controversy about whether federal COVID relief for schools should be in some way conditioned on whether schools have in-person learning. Is that still a nonstarter for you like it was this summer?

There isn’t a parent in this country who doesn’t want their kid back in school. But it has to be done safely. And if we just say, you only get money if you put them back in school, then those schools that have the toughest time are not going to reopen safely. So we have to be very careful in how we structure that language.

Aside from pandemic relief, what are your major priorities for education legislation heading into the next Congress and a new administration?

Well [coronavirus relief] is obviously going to be a huge part of it. I think one of the things we have to do with the new administration is really do some oversight and really look at ESSA. One of my frustrations has been that: You can write a law, but if it’s implemented incorrectly, then your law doesn’t really mean much. We’ve had a lot of challenges with President Trump and Secretary DeVos along the way in making sure that every single student has equitable access to high-quality education.

I’m looking forward to working with the incoming administration to make sure that our states and our school districts have the necessary guidance to carry out the law and it’s being done the way we wrote it. This pandemic has highlighted a lot of inequities and a lot of problems across our system. We have got to dive in and really double our efforts to [help] those students, whether its students of color, students with disabilities, or English-learners, or homeless students, or kids in foster care … We’ve got to make sure that the inequities that this COVID virus has caused in our school system are really focused on.

Anything beyond ESSA in terms of guidance on civil rights issues or administration action that you’re pressing the Biden team on?

We are obviously talking to them to make sure that in this really challenging time of COVID, where the systemic inequity is becoming larger, that we have to deal with that first and foremost. If I were a 3rd-grade teacher and my students had been out of school for the past year and a half, I would be so worried about coming in that first day of school and having such a divide in that 3rd grade class between the kids who’ve been able to do well out of school, had all the support at home, and all the kids who are just sitting at home, and trying to bring that 3rd grade class together to move them forward. It’s going to be tough. We need to recognize that.

What’s most important to you about who the next secretary of education is, and how important do you think it is that the person has experience working in classrooms or schools?

I’m thrilled that it’s going to be a secretary of education who is not Betsy DeVos. She had no experience in public education. We’ve seen her repeatedly turn her back on students and educators and families because she was focused on privatizing our education system, which would drain the resources from our public schools even in a pandemic. So going forward, having a secretary of education who understands their responsibility is to students first and foremost, and who really prioritizes tackling the systemic inequities our students face is really going to be important.

Have you made any recommendations to the Biden team about who the next secretary of education should or should not be?

No, I’ve stayed away from that.

Do you plan on being chairwoman of the Senate education committee if Democrats take control of the Senate in the next Congress?

Yes.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Politics K-12 blog.

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Artificial Intelligence Webinar
Teaching Students to Use Artificial Intelligence Ethically
Ready to embrace AI in your classroom? Join our master class to learn how to use AI as a tool for learning, not a replacement.
Content provided by Solution Tree
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Teaching Webinar
Empowering Students Using Computational Thinking Skills
Empower your students with computational thinking. Learn how to integrate these skills into your teaching and boost student engagement.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
IT Infrastructure & Management Webinar
The Reality of Change: How Embracing and Planning for Change Can Shape Your Edtech Strategy
Promethean edtech experts delve into the reality of tech change and explore how embracing and planning for it can be your most powerful strategy for maximizing ROI.
Content provided by Promethean

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Federal Here's How Much Linda McMahon's Foundation Has Donated to Education Causes
The president-elect's pick for education secretary has long given to education causes through her family foundation.
5 min read
Linda McMahon, former Administrator of Small Business Administration, speaks during the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee.
Linda McMahon, former Administrator of Small Business Administration, speaks during the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee. McMahon, Trump's choice to lead the U.S. Department of Education in his second term, has a long history of giving to education causes through her family foundation.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Federal Republicans Preview Their Education Priorities in a Second Trump Term
In a hearing, Republicans called for more civics education and expressed concerns over "critical race theory" in schools.
5 min read
Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., Chair of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, speaks during a hearing on antisemitism in K-12 public schools, Wednesday, May 8, 2024, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., chair of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, speaks during a hearing on antisemitism in K-12 public schools on May 8, 2024, in Washington. At a hearing on Dec. 4, 2024, the subcommittee discussed civics and government curriculum.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Federal Opinion The Trump Administration Should 'Devolve the Ed Dept.'s Responsibilities to the States'
After six years helming the House ed. committee, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx cuts loose on high points and frustrations of her tenure.
8 min read
The United States Capitol building as a bookcase filled with red, white, and blue policy books in a Washington DC landscape.
Luca D'Urbino for Education Week
Federal How Trump Could Roll Back Access to Free School Lunches
Project 2025 and a GOP budget proposal call for axing a federal rule that allows public schools to serve free meals to all students.
5 min read
Cafeteria workers serve student lunches at Firebaugh High School in Lynwood, Calif. on Wednesday, April 3, 2024. Demand for school lunches has increased after California guaranteed free meals to all students regardless of their family's income.
Cafeteria workers serve lunches at Firebaugh High School in Lynwood, Calif., on Wednesday, April 3, 2024. Demand for school lunches has increased after California guaranteed free meals to all students regardless of their family's income. A federal school lunch provision that makes it easier for public schools to provide universal free meals may be a target for elimination in President-elect Donald Trump's upcoming term if some conservative activists and lawmakers get their way.
Richard Vogel/AP