House ESEA Draft Would Reduce Federal School Role

Draft mirrors some aspects of a bipartisan Senate proposal, but would go further in other areas

House Republicans released two draft bills that would significantly scale back the federal role in K-12 schools and go further than any other proposal yet to dismantle the accountability tenets at the heart of the decade-old No Child Left Behind Act.

The measures, put forth by U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee last week, take some of the same steps as a bipartisan Senate rewrite of NCLB—and the Obama administration's own vision for rewriting the law. Like those proposals, the Republican bills would entirely scrap the law's signature yardstick, adequate yearly progress, or AYP, while largely keeping NCLB's current testing schedule in place. ( "Obama Outlines NCLB Flexibility," September 28, 2011.)

However, the proposals take sharply different turns in other areas. They would, for example, significantly water down the federal role in intervening in schools, including the lowest performers, and would grant broad...