Senate HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander led the charge to kill the rule, arguing it would hamstring local decision-making and went beyond the scope of what Congress had intended when it passed ESSA in 2015. | AP Photo Senate dumps Obama rule for holding schools accountable

The Senate voted 50-49 Thursday to scrap the Obama administration’s rule for holding schools accountable for student performance despite strong opposition from business, labor and civil rights groups, as well as Democrats.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) was the only Republican who opposed the Congressional Review Act resolution, which has already cleared the House. It now heads to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it.


Critics of the repeal argued the rule developed under the 2015 law that governs K-12 education is key to efforts to close the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their white, more affluent peers. They want to maintain some federal oversight to ensure that state and local school officials are held accountable for disadvantaged students. And they say a repeal could throw states into chaos and confusion while they’re in the thick of designing new plans under the 2015 law, called the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Democrats also tried to make Thursday’s vote a referendum on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose poor confirmation performance and views on public schools have galvanized the left. ESSA sharply limited the Education secretary's authority but some Democrats argue that allowing DeVos to approve state plans without any accountability rule would actually enhance her power over states.

Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate education committee, said Wednesday that DeVos could “take advantage of the chaos that will follow” if the accountability rule is repealed.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, among other proponents of the measure, called the accountability rule a “prime example of the executive overreach” by the Obama administration and said it was “written in direct contradiction” to the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Senate HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander, a chief architect of ESSA, led the charge to kill the rule, arguing it would hamstring local decision-making and went beyond the scope of what Congress had intended when it passed ESSA in 2015.

“We said to the [Education] department, ‘You can’t tell states exactly what to do about fixing low-performing schools,'" Alexander said. "That’s their decision. This rule does that. And we said to the department, ‘You can’t tell states exactly how to rate the public schools in your state,’ but this rule does that.”

But the effort to kill it — in addition to DeVos' confirmation as Education secretary — may have eroded the last vestiges of bipartisan good will left over from the passage of ESSA, when Republicans and teachers unions, among other unusual allies, celebrated the return of more decision-making power to states.

While many groups disagreed when it came to drafting the regulation last year, civil rights groups, teachers unions, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a number of Republicans wanted to leave the final package in place.

“The final stages of these plans are already in place, so to suddenly pull the rug out from under states and local [school districts], that’s not a good place to be in," said Allison Dembeck, executive director of congressional & public affairs on education, labor, & workforce development at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. " … At the end of the day, you’re risking delaying implementation of the law and I think it’s really important to remember that there’s kids at the end of this.”

Getting rid of the regulation creates confusion for states while they’re drafting plans and even robs them of certain flexibility, critics argued. Many described it as a political move for Republicans who want to show the base that they rolled back Obama executive overreach.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten acknowledged in a letter to lawmakers last week that the accountability rule wasn’t perfect.

But she wrote, “These regulations took a full year to create and were crafted with much stakeholder engagement, including input (both positive and negative) from thousands of educators and parents. Repealing these regulations now would not just be counterproductive and disruptive, but would demonstrate a disregard by Congress of school districts’ operations and timelines.”

“Districts are planning for their next school year right now,” Weingarten added. “Delay reinforces that this law is being implemented in a top-down manner and that Washington is not listening to the needs of stakeholders — ironically, the opposite of what the large bipartisan majority intended in enacting ESSA.”

Portman, considered a moderate Republican, said earlier this week that the accountability regulation balances “state flexibility while reinforcing protections for students of color, students with disabilities, and students from low-income families.”

Former Obama education official Anne Hyslop recently teamed up with Michael Petrilli, a Republican and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, to note that the rule actually gives states more flexibility in some cases.

For example, “states can tailor their English language proficiency goals for different groups of English learners, rather than setting a single timeline for achieving [English language proficiency] that all students must meet,” Petrilli wrote in a recent post.

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DeVos can make such flexibility clear to states in letters or non-binding “guidance," Petrilli wrote. But “only regulations have the weight of law; guidance is just that — a suggestion."

And some advocates worry states will only do the bare minimum for students without the regulation.

"Compliance-oriented bureaucrats have learned to be careful about adopting policies or practices that aren’t explicitly codified in law or regulation," Petrilli wrote.