By Alyson Klein
EducationWeek
State and school district officials who have complained for years that an inflexible, overprescriptive federal role in public education is at the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act seem to have finally gotten their wish: a replacement law that scales back Washington’s K-12 footprint for the first time in more than a quarter-century.
Now, big questions loom about just where states and districts will take the leeway granted to them under the newly minted Every Student Succeeds Act—and just how their decisions will affect the perennially foundering schools and traditionally overlooked groups of students and schools the NCLB law was designed to help.
It’s equally unclear just how much power the U.S. Department of Education will have when the law, the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is fully implemented.
The new law—already widely known by the acronym ESSA—slims down the U.S. Department of Education, consolidating nearly 50 programs, including elementary and secondary counseling, into a giant block grant…
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