Lawmakers have spent months behind the scenes crafting a deal that would scale back the federal role under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—the 14-year-old NCLB law is the latest iteration—for the first time since the early 1980s.
The compromise, the Every Student Succeeds Act, sailed through a conference committee this month, with just one dissenting vote, from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who is running for president. It’s expected to be on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives next week. The measure’s prospects in the Senate are rosy, but it could run into trouble with House conservatives.
The bipartisan agreement seeks to give states miles of new running room on accountability, school turnarounds, teacher evaluation, and more, while maintaining No Child Left Behind’s signature transparency provisions, such as annual testing in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school.
And it calls for states to incorporate new measures into their accountability systems that get at students’ opportunity to learn and postsecondary readiness. States could choose to include school climate, student engagement, and teacher engagement, for example.
“This agreement, in my opinion, is the most significant step towards local control in 25 years,” Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate education committee, told House and Senate conferees.
The Senate panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, said that the framework includes “strong federal guardrails … so that students don’t get left behind.”
Alexander and Murray worked out the deal with their House counterparts: Reps. John Kline, R-Minn., who chairs that chamber’s education committee, and Bobby Scott, D-Va., its ranking member.
For their part, state education chiefs are excited Congress is poised to move beyond the NCLB era.
“There’s been a lot of emphasis on math and reading, and it’s really limited our curriculum,” said Stephen L. Pruitt, the newly appointed Kentucky state chief, a former science teacher. “Math and reading drove our accountability system. We want to educate all the areas of the child, not just one part.”