After Congress dropped the Early Learning Challenge Fund from health care reform one of the brightest remaining legislative opportunities to improve early learning this year was K-12 reform.  But, as legislative days pass, it is unclear what, if anything, policymakers will do.

So far this year there has not been a lot of public movement – a series of congressional committee hearings and a wish list from progressives are some of the highlights – and that inaction raises questions about what Congress will accomplish in 2010 on rewriting the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

While key policymakers want to introduce and hopefully move a bill this year, progress may become difficult.

“I think that’s a pretty ambitious timetable,” Kathy Patterson, a senior government relations officer at the Pew Center on the States who follows the issue, said in an interview.  “I am not sure I would bet on it, but I wouldn’t rule it out.”

While Patterson wouldn’t rule it out, as someone who covered Congress for a decade, I know with annual spending bills and other legislative priorities backing up, the odds are not good.

Congress has taken some steps.

Last week, Politics K-12 reported the Congressional Progressive Caucus included expanded support services for pre-kindergarten in its wish list for ESEA reform.  
The Caucus list had an entire section on early learning, which included:

• “Include integration of quality early learning programs into the ESEA reauthorization process as one of the foundations of education reform.”
• “Low-income children and English Language Learners must be prioritized to receive both child care, preschool and full-day Kindergarten services.”
• “Make competitive grants available to states for quality early childhood education.” –

 CPC Principles for the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Congressional Progressive Caucus, 6/14/10.

But, when key education policymakers met earlier this month about the bill none of them would say to Politics K-12 that “the reauthorization will definitely get done by the end of this Congress, the time line the administration had originally been shooting for.”

(Check out the Education Week blog’s full stories on the meeting and the caucus, and check the blog to track K-12 reform work in Congress.)