By Alyson Klein
The big partisan education-legislation logjam seems to be breaking, at least a little bit, for more targeted bills. The U.S. House of Representatives is slated to consider not one, but two bipartisan education bills this week.
One piece of legislation would seek to make it easier for high-quality charter school operators to proliferate, while the other is aimed at making federal K-12 research more relevant to educators in the field. Both bills sailed through the House Education and the Workforce Committee. The research bill, a reauthorization of the Education Sciences Reform Act, was approved unanimously with almost no discussion. And the charter school legislation was approved 36 to 3, with only a few Democrats dissenting. The House approved a similar bill with broad bipartisan support in 2011.