Obama to sign education law rewrite; power shift to states

WASHINGTON (AP) — With his signature Thursday, President Barack Obama is setting the nation's public schools on a sweeping new course of accountability that will change the way teachers are evaluated and how the poorest performing schools are pushed to improve.

Obama will sign a bipartisan bill that easily passed the Senate on Wednesday and the House last week — long-awaited legislation that would replace the landmark No Child Left Behind education law of 2002, now widely viewed as unworkable and overreaching.

By turning more decision-making powers back to the states, the law would end more than a decade of what critics have derided as one-size-fits-all federal policies dictating accountability and improvement for the nation's 100,000 or so public schools.

There are risks that states may set goals too low or not act quickly enough, said Daria Hall, vice president for government affairs and communication at the Education Trust.

More children from low- and moderate-income families will have access to preschool through a new grant program that is to use existing funding to support state efforts.

The administration offered grants through its Race to the Top program for states that adopted strong academic standards for students.

To make sure all children get a fair shot at a quality education, states will be required to intervene in the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools, in high schools with high dropout rates and in schools with stubborn achievement gaps.

The measure also ends the waivers the Obama administration has given to more than 40 states — exemptions granted around the more onerous parts of No Child when it became clear that requirements such as having all students proficient in reading and math by 2014 would not be met.