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Senate vote overhauls 'No Child Left Behind'

With bipartisan support, the Senate followed the House in backing legislation that would reduce federal oversight of schools. President Obama is expected to sign the legislation into law this week.

The US Senate on Wednesday voted to effectively eliminate the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, a move that would hand substantial power back to state governments.

The new act would also limit federal power held by the US Department of Education since聽 was installed in 2002 to better track student performance data based on a bevy of testing among the country鈥檚 100,000 public schools, with 50 million students and 3.4 million teachers.聽

The after the House backed the legislation last week with the support of Democrats and Republicans. President Obama is reportedly set to sign the new bill, called the , into law this week.

The legislation would allow states to create their own systems of accountability and halt federal overview of rules measuring the quality of schools.

鈥淲hereas No Child Left Behind prescribed a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach to struggling schools, this law offers the flexibility to find the best local solutions 鈥� while also ensuring that students are making progress," .

The bill also boosts funding for , while also requiring states to continue tracking categories such as race and poverty, and to close gaps on achievements and failing schools.

鈥淚t does that by establishing a competitive grant program for states that propose to improve coordination, quality and access to early child education for kids from low-income and disadvantaged families,鈥� (D) of Washington.

But the new bill blocks the federal government from using incentives and mandates on teachers based on performance, stipulations in No Child Left Behind that were by educators and parents.

Two national teachers unions supported the new law. Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, that eliminating No Child Left Behind would put an end to 鈥渙ur national nightmare" and mark the beginning of something better for students.

Randi Weingarten,聽president of the American Federation of Teachers, indicated the unions because it moved away from over-testing that many educators saw as counterintuitive to educating the nation鈥檚 children.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a fundamental course correction for education policy in the United States,鈥� she said this week.

Despite overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, some argue that removing No Child Left Behind does little to amend a deteriorating education system.

鈥淪ince 1969, test scores in reading and math have hardly budged for public school students of all ages, even while per-pupil spending has nearly doubled and school staff has increased more than 80 percent,鈥澛� Sen.聽Mike Lee (R) of Utah to The Wall Street Journal. 鈥淥ur 1960s-era, top-down model of elementary and secondary schooling has endured, essentially unchallenged, for so many decades that the education establishment has come to take it for granted.鈥�

Thomas Toch, an education policy expert at Georgetown University鈥檚 McCourt School of Public Policy, the reason a federal system was launched in the first place was because local districts failed to act effectively on their own.

鈥淢any students were left behind in the era of local control, and now we鈥檙e going back to that era. It puts school districts in charge of fixing failing schools, the same school districts that are running the failing schools now,鈥� he said.聽