Senate passes education bill that shifts power to states

by **Admin** Tue Jul 21, 2015 8:32 am

Congress is finally on its way to rewriting the long-outdated — and widely hated — No Child Left Behind education law.
The Senate on Thursday passed an update to the country’s overarching education law that greatly rolls back the federal say in thousands of public schools.
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The chamber, with a vote of 81-17, cleared its bill just a week after the House eked out passage of its proposed rewrite of the 2002 law, a victory it took Republican supporters months to achieve. Now the two chambers and the White House must negotiate a bill that can satisfy the president and House Republicans — who passed their bill with no Democratic support and under the threat of a veto.
Unlike the original No Child Left Behind, which laid out the moonshot goal of all students eventually reading on grade level, the new Every Child Achieves Act is measured. It responds to widespread unrest about testing and the Common Core academic standards, diminishes federal oversight of schools and doesn’t set any new, ambitious goals for the education system as the original law did.
The most ambitious aspect this go-round is simply to get a bill signed.
The Senate passed the proposal without any big blow-outs, veto fears or lawmaker threats to jam the legislative process. The relatively smooth sailing was the result of painstaking bipartisanship from Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander and ranking member Patty Murray. Until now, the Senate has failed to get a proposal to the Senate floor, while the House passed several partisan iterations.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/no-child-left-behind-senate-updates-120240.html#ixzz3gWq63Oph