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In the com­ing weeks, the House and Sen­ate will vote on a ma­jor over­haul of the fed­er­al edu­ca­tion law.

The fi­nal text of the Every Stu­dent Suc­ceeds Act, de­signed to re­place No Child Left Be­hind, was re­leased Monday. If a bi­par­tis­an co­ali­tion of law­makers has its way, it will be headed for the pres­id­ent’s desk be­fore the end of the year.
Next Amer­ica summed up a few high­lights of the full bill.

1. First, the ba­sics. If passed, the law would reau­thor­ize the na­tion’s Ele­ment­ary and Sec­ond­ary Edu­ca­tion Act for four years in­stead of the stand­ard five, which gives Con­gress the abil­ity to change it dur­ing the next ad­min­is­tra­tion. The move to this law would take place from 2016 to 2017, mean­ing par­tially un­der the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion and par­tially un­der the next pres­id­ent. Dozens of pro­grams would be rolled in­to a single block grant and states have more flex­ib­il­ity with how they use funds.

2. Broadly, the bill marks a roll­back of fed­er­al power. Wash­ing­ton wouldn’t have a say in teach­er eval­u­ations, a big win for both Re­pub­lic­ans and teach­ers’ uni­ons, who have balked at the idea. While states would still be re­quired to test stu­dents’ math and read­ing abil­it­ies each year between the third and eighth grades and once in high school, ex­actly what they do with the res­ults would be up to them. And al­though states would still be re­quired to ad­min­is­ter tests to at least 95 per­cent of their stu­dents, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment would not be able to set con­sequences for schools that fall be­low that mark.

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