With the passage of a federal education law that returns a significant amount of authority to the states, lawmakers and state school officials across the country are readying for an opportunity to reshape local education policies without the onerous requirements of No Child Left Behind.
Signed into law last month, the Every Student Succeeds Act puts strict limits on federal influence in schools, giving states more say over how they evaluate teachers and over academic standards. States will look to build their own systems for measuring whether schools are effective—and will decide what to do when they’re not.
The new law not only gives states the flexibility they sought after laboring under the strictures set by No Child Left Behind but also an opportunity to build academic standards and accountability systems from scratch. With that freedom, some states may choose to depart from the course set by the Obama administration...
