The Shake Shack summit that saved the education bill

While most of the Senate spent the week wrestling with a human trafficking bill and arguing over the confirmation of a new attorney general, the Senate education committee was collegially zipping through its rewrite of No Child Left Behind.

The bill includes toxic education topics like testing and school performance ratings. It’s been notoriously difficult to tackle: The last three Congresses have tried and failed to rewrite it. Education policy wonks and observers are so pessimistic, they’ve declared it will never be updated, though it’s already seven years overdue for a rewrite and considered broken by those on the left and the right.

But Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray, one the son of a teacher and the other a former teacher, have quickly forged a formidable working relationship in the new Congress that is lifting the spirits of even the most discouraged observers. The HELP Committee unanimously passed its rewrite of the education bill on Thursday afternoon, with the polarizing Sens. Rand Paul, Tim Scott, Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren all lined up behind the committee chairs.

Earlier in the week, Franken told Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in the Senate subway he thinks the committee’s progress was the byproduct of having committee leaders who truly know what they are doing, Whitehouse said. The under-the-radar progress is one small sign of hope for bipartisanship in the new Senate, which also passed a fix to Medicare payments this week in another bipartisan victory.

But it might not have turned out this way.

In fact, the year started quite differently. Alexander unveiled a Republican draft of what he’d like to see in the law and was holding meetings with moderate Democrats, including former governors who might throw their support behind a bill that gives power over education back to the states, to discuss NCLB. He frequently spoke of moving a bill through the Senate and picking up Democratic support along the way to make it bipartisan enough to yield 60 votes — a far cry from the tight relationship between committee leaders on display this week.

But Murray, newly in the minority and new to the ranking member post, had her own plan that she brought to Alexander: The two should step behind closed doors and negotiate a bill together. Though Murray wasn’t in control of the committee, she could help bring along the White House down the line — and help sell House Democrats on a bill, too.

“I listened to her; I took her advice, and it was good advice,” Alexander said.

And so the two took a classic schoolyard lesson into the Senate: Play nice with others.

Soon committee aides were working seven days a week to lay out a way ahead for NCLB, huddling over shared pizza and grub from Shake Shack. The two parties’ visions for the law were miles apart: Alexander preferred handing control over education back to states, leaving it up to them how to deal with standardized tests and poorly performing schools. Murray wanted stronger federal powers to ensure students — especially low-income, minority, and disabled students — were being well-served by their schools. Alexander was eager to include school choice provisions that allowed federal money to follow low-income students from school to school, while Murray and the Obama administration were firm they wanted the law to incorporate more early education.

Negotiations were private — but a cacophony was building outside. The country’s largest teachers union launched a major ad buy in February while senators were home for recess to pressure HELP Committee members to dump of the law’s annual testing mandate. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and civil rights groups were tugging from the opposite side, demanding the law retain its yearly testing regime and do more to ensure states and schools focus on educating low-income students.

And in the House, the tea party reared its head. Conservative lawmakers, the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth mounted opposition to the House’s bill the week it was supposed to be put up for a vote, eventually derailing the bill from a floor vote at the end of February.

The senators rounded their next base — preschool — the following week as Washington braced for early spring snow and both HELP Committee leaders attended the contentious King v. Burwell Obamacare arguments at the Supreme Court. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, angry about a school choice provision in the House’s partisan bill, also attended.

The trip to the Supreme Court got Alexander thinking about how to work through the divisive pre-K issue, a GOP aide said. He didn’t want to add new federal programs to the bill, but Murray and President Barack Obama had been clear the issue was paramount. So he and Murray huddled with aides in Murray’s hideaway in the Capitol and came up with a way to handle the issue: Pass it off to Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

Isakson, who is passionate about early education, had negotiated with Murray in the past. He and the Washington senator set to work and eventually hammered out an agreement. The bill released by the Senate included some early education provisions and a grant program helping expand preschool in states was added during the markup as an amendment. It had Alexander’s vote.

Other elements of the bill were also falling into place, but a litany of issues related to the way states measure and improve school performance were “a moving target,” a Democratic aide said. Soon after the pre-K agreement, however, compromises and trades on other pieces of the bill emerged.

Soon the committee leaders were pulling in their colleagues, who had been shut out of the negotiations, to discuss the other — for the most part, less divisive — parts of the bill. Senators lined up behind Murray and Alexander, who put in time listening to their ideas for the law. By the time the lawmakers returned from Easter recess, they had a deal: a bill that would keep NCLB’s annual testing requirement but strip out much of the federal accountability that has led to cries of executive overreach from Republicans. Many existing federal programs and rules are gone, but guidelines designed to keep states in line are written into the text to please Democrats.

The unanimous vote on the bill in committee Thursday reflects HELP Committee member’s faith in the way Alexander and Murray have gone about tackling NCLB. It doesn’t mean they still don’t have serious qualms about the bill: Several Democrats including Warren, Franken and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) were clear Thursday that they have serious concerns with the way the bill handles accountability and would prefer it have a stronger federal role from a civil rights standpoint. Civil rights groups feel the same way and could mount opposition.

Conservatives, meanwhile, were mostly silent during the markup about their preference for stronger school choice provisions as Alexander led the show — but they have said they plan to get more involved as it heads to the floor.

Alexander credited the Republican Senate’s more open amendment process for helping the markup run smoothly, because senators will get to make their case for their proposals in front of a bigger audience on the Senate floor. Franken, for example, has decided to hold off on a vote for an amendment aiming to reduce bullying of LGBT youth that was controversial among Republicans, especially given the recent fights over Indiana’s religious freedom law. And Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said he’ll wait to bring up Title I portability — a school choice measure that Democrats liken to school vouchers that would have been a poison pill.

“We might not have gotten to the floor if either one had been offered,” Alexander said.

Alexander and Murray are closely tied to Senate leadership, which could help make their education bill a priority for the chamber. Alexander held a leadership post in the Senate before stepping down to do legislative work and is close with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Murray holds the No. 4 post in the Senate and has become a talked-about potential whip after Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced his retirement in March.

On the floor, the bullying and school choice amendments will face the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, which helps neutralize the possibility that they’ll derail Alexander and Murray’s carefully crafted compromise bill.

“I’ve been through this,” Murray said. “It takes a lot of work to get a bill all the way to the president. There’s a lot of work left.”