ESEA Delays Prompt States to Threaten Policy Revolts

U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., left, the leading Democrat on the House education committee, listens as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan makes a point during a discussion of ESEA reauthorization last month at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think-tank.

—Andrew Councill for Education Week

By Alyson Klein and Michele McNeil

States and districts would get unprecedented leeway to move federal money around, under the latest in a series of bills to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

But the measure has already been decried by top Democrats and civil rights advocates as an attempt to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and an attack on students’ civil rights.

Meanwhile, with big questions still surrounding the fate of the nation’s chief education accountability law, states are beginning to put federal officials on notice that they plan to disregard key pieces of the No Child Left Behind Act—the current version of the ESEA—if Congress...