Obama signs No Child Left Behind rewrite into law

Gregory Korte | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President Obama reversed course on federal education policy Thursday, signing a bill to curtail the federal government's role in education from Kindergarten through high school and instead allow states to set their own standards.

Calling the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act "a Christmas miracle," Obama said the law would give states more flexibility in raising student achievement while maintaining a federal role for ensuring that all students have the opportunity to get a quality education.

The new law is a turnaround from 14 years of federally directed education policy that began with President George W. Bush's signing of the equally bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, an effort to raise performance through an emphasis on standards, testing and accountability.

But No Child Left Behind soon became known for its excesses, which enforced a teach-to-the-test philosophy and produced sometimes punishing consequences for low-performing schools.

The new law expressly prohibits the Education Department from imposing the Common Core model, which wasn't required by No Child Left Behind but often encouraged through a series of federal waivers to the law's other requirements.

Obama said the goals of No Child Left Behind were the right ones, but that its "cookie cutter" approach to standards didn't always achieve results. And he didn't apologize for how Education Secretary Arne Duncan implemented it. "Sometimes, in the nicest possible way, he's gotten on people's nerves because he's pushed them and prodded them," Obama said. "Had he not been, I believe, as tenacious as he was, we wouldn’t have had such a good product here today."

The Every Student Succeeds Act does keep some federal mandates. It requires schools to test 95% of students every year from the third through eighth grades, and again in high school. It requires schools to report those test scores for minority groups to ensure they're closing the achievement gaps. And it requires states to step in if a school falls into the bottom 5%, graduated less than 67% of students, or if subgroups are persistently falling behind.

The bill received broad bipartisan support, with the final version passing the Senate 85-12 and the House 359-64.