Today, the Senate finished its debate and votes on amendments to S. 1177, the Every Child Achieves Act, a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In total, of the 79 amendments that were voted on, 66 were adopted and 13 failed.
The Senate has passed a bipartisan overhaul of the long-expired No Child Left Behind education law by a vote of 81-17.
The bill would continue to require annual testing in reading and math but restores power over low-performing schools back to states.
The partisan House-passed version, which passed earlier this month, goes to an extreme that Democrats and the White House have condemned. The most contentious point of the House version is that it would allow federal dollars to follow students to another public school of their choice.
To devise a version that can become law, lawmakers will have to satisfy White House concerns about the bill’s protections for poor and minority students and House GOP demands that the bill diminish the federal role in education.