WASHINGTON — The House voted Wednesday to rewrite No Child Left Behind, the nation’s main education law, passing legislation that would significantly scale back the federal government’s role in public education and hand more power back to the states.
No Democrats voted for the legislation, which passed by a vote of 218-213. More than two dozen Republicans — including Colorado’s Ken Buck — joined the Democrats in their opposition.
Many Republicans hailed the legislation’s passage as a victory for local control, while Democrats feared that it would return the nation to the days before No Child Left Behind, when many states masked achievement gaps between affluent and poor students, English learners or the disabled.
The House GOP bill, which also would change how federal funds are dispensed to educate poor students, sets up the far-right boundary for negotiations with the Senate, which is working its way through its own bill, one written with bipartisan support.
Passage was a win for the Republican leadership, which corralled conservative members of its caucus who had threatened to defect because they thought that the bill did not go far enough to reduce the federal role in education.
President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the House bill, called the Student Success Act.
No Child Left Behind, which is widely regarded as an unworkable and overly punitive law, expired in 2007 but has remained in effect. Congress has been unable to agree on how to revise it.
Like the current law, the House legislation would require states to give annual math and reading tests to students in grades three through eight and once in high school. States also would have to continue publishing data showing how groups of students — including African-Americans, Latinos, poor children and those with disabilities — perform.
But in an important departure from current law, the bill includes an amendment that allows parents to opt their children out of standardized tests without putting school districts at risk of federal sanctions.
That provision is a response to complaints about overtesting, said Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., who introduced the amendment. It passed 251-178, with 19 Democrats voting for it.
The bill largely would let states determine how to spend federal dollars, and states would not be required to meet federal benchmarks of academic progress.
