Lamar AlexanderRepublican Sen. Lamar Alexander says he's close to reaching consensus with Senate Democrats on an overhaul of No Child Left Behind.
Alexander, who leads the Senate's education committee, has teamed up with ranking member Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to move beyond partisan politics and make changes to the education law.
"During the last several weeks we have been working together to build the base for legislation to fix the problems with No Child Left Behind. We are making significant progress in our negotiations. We are aiming to consider and markup legislation to fix the law during the week of April 13th," Alexander and Murray said in a written statement.
In November, when Alexander took chairmanship of the committee, he said he hoped to make inroads in overhauling NCLB, saying he wanted to bring curriculum and testing decisions back to state and local education officials.
Then, state education officials praised some proposed legislation by Alexander, the Every Child Ready for College or Career Act, because it would bring decisions to the states, and still provide federal funding to state and local school systems.
It's unclear how similar the legislation Alexander's drafting with Murray is to his previous proposed bill.