The White House on Wednesday threatened to veto a Republican bill in the House of Representatives that would revise the No Child Left Behind Law on K-12 education.
In a statement, the administration called the proposed “Student Success Act” (HR 5) a “significant step backwards in the efforts to help all of the nation’s children and their families prepare for their futures.”
It said the legislation “abdicates the historic federal role in elementary and secondary education of ensuring the educational progress of all of America’s students, including students from low-income families, students with disabilities, English learners, and students of color.”
The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the measure on Friday. In the Senate, Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., have been working to try to come up with a bipartisan agreement on the Senate version of the bill.
The Republican legislation in the House would eliminate the federal government’s role in accountability for student progress and turn that job over entirely to the states. It eliminates more than 65 programs and replaces them with a grant for schools. It also would prevent the Education Department from coercing states to adopt any form of common standards or tests.
House Education and the Workforce Committee chairman Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., said at a press conference on Wednesday that the bill would “return control to parents and local school boards and states and get away from this one-size-fits all mandate program that we have coming from the federal government right now.”
House Speaker John Boehner, at the same news conference, called it a “good conservative bill” that “does not empower the bureaucracy here in Washington.”
The legislation also would allow federal money for low-income schools to follow individual students to whatever school they attend. The Obama administration says such a move would divert money from high-poverty schools that need it most. It also opposes the bill because it caps federal spending on education so that there would not be any increases for a decade.