Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today

Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today

Post-obit a vote past the U.South. House of Representatives concluding calendar week, the U.Southward. Senate has overwhelmingly voted, 85-12, to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Human activity, ending more than than a decade of federal education policy nether the electric current version of the police force, the beleaguered No Child Left Behind Act.

The legislation now goes to President Barack Obama, who has indicated that he volition sign it.For full text of the law, go here.

Approval of the bill, titled the Every Educatee Succeeds Act, follows years of inaction and gridlock by Congress on the upshot. Passage of the bill in a Congress that is divided on well-nigh every other consequence came unexpectedly quickly, and with a loftier level of bipartisan support.

In the largest turn toward local control in 3 decades, states will regain the authority to set their ain educational goals, measurements of school performance and methods for school comeback.

From a California perspective, the new law would be  largely compatible with the management of instruction reforms in the state giving greater powers to local school districts, reducing the emphasis on standardized test scores in holding schools and students accountable, and moving away from top-down reforms coming from Washington.

Passage of the police force removes some of the dubiousness that has hovered over California'southward reform landscape — the unknown factor as to what kinds of reforms the federal government would come with to replace NCLB, and how they would complement or disharmonize with the country's reforms.

But at that place are notwithstanding many details in the 1061-page law that will have to be analyzed and sorted through.

The Land Board of Instruction is in the process of designing a new school improvement and testing system, and so it won't go clear for months whether aspects of the state program will conflict with the new constabulary.  One major consequence is how the state volition address the new law's requirement that information technology identify and intervene in the bottom 5 percent of schools, also as in schools where subgroups of students are "consistently underperforming." The state has been moving away from relying on a unmarried index to mensurate school success or failure.

For EdSource reports on implications of the new legislation for California, go here and here.

Afterward viii years of stalemate in Congress over how to reauthorize Elementary and Secondary Education Act , the passage of a new version reflects a rare bipartisan compromise, aided by skilled legislating by Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, and Patty Murray, D-Washington.

It also was fueled by congressional dislike of the waivers from NCLB that Duncan gave to 42 states and vi California districts, along with  conservatives' anger over Duncan'southward promotion of the Mutual Core Land Standards. He did this through incentive grants and state waivers from the penalties of NCLB, although some Republican critics characterized the tactics every bit coercion and a dorsum-door federal mandate that had not been authorized by Congress.

The revision will ban hereafter secretaries of education from mandating additional tests, prescribing forms of teacher evaluation and promoting versions of academic standards.

In remarks on the Senate floor urging his GOP colleagues to vote for the bill, Alexander said, "We are voting for the status quo or a change. You are voting either 'aye' to repeal the Common Core mandate or to keep it. You are either voting 'yeah' to get rid of the waivers, through which the U.S. Department of Teaching has been operating as a national school board for eighty,000 schools in 40 states. Or a vote 'no' is saying, 'I like the national school lath.'"

Murray said that the legislation would "reduce reliance on loftier-stakes testing."

"It volition invest in improving and expanding admission to early learning programs," she said just before the Senate voted on the nib. "And it will help ensure that more children have access to a quality education regardless of where they alive, how they learn, and how much money their parents make."

A cross-section of education organizations, including associations of land superintendents, schools boards and teachers unions endorsed the compromise.

In a statement, Eric Heins, president of the California Teachers Association, said the bill "marked the end to the one-size-fits-all approach to educating students and the misuse of standardized testing."

A coalition of civil rights groups gave a more tepid backing, worried that states, left more on their own, will retreat from a commitment to closing the achievement gap. Encouraged by the state'southward new funding police, which directs more resources to low-income students and English language learners, and requires community engagement, ceremonious rights groups in California expressed more optimism.

"California is a leader on many fronts, and we should bear witness the nation how the Every Student Succeeds Act can support states in developing a holistic accountability organisation that provides the transparency, supports, and assurances necessary to close achievement and opportunity gaps in our state," said Ryan Smith, executive director of the Oakland-based nonprofit Education Trust-West.

California's two senators, Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, voted for the pecker.  "This bill gives states and local school districts more flexibility to utilise federal funds to provide resources and to teach their students in a way that best works for them," Feinstein said in a argument.

Boxer focused on the continuation of one of her priorities: dedicated funding for later-school programs for i million children. "The neb helps states support high-quality afterwards-school programs, encourages parental engagement and ensures that subsequently-school activities complement the bookish curriculum," she said.

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