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WASHINGTON – Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., today praised passage of legislation to improve K-12 education by replacing No Child Left Behind with new policies to help every child access a high-quality education.

“As a grandmother, educator and former school board member, I know students are best served when teachers, parents and administrators are the driving force behind improving education,” said Foxx. “This legislation does just that by reducing the federal footprint in the nation’s classrooms and restoring control to the people who know their students best.”

The House passed the conference report accompanying S. 1177, the Every Student Succeeds Act, by a vote of 359-64. The Senate is expected to consider the conference report next week. Foxx participated in the committee that ironed out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the legislation.

The compromise between the House-passed Student Success Act and the Senate-passed Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 gets Washington out of the business of running schools. It protects state and local autonomy by prohibiting the Secretary of Education from coercing states into adopting Common Core and by preventing the secretary from imposing requirements on states and school districts through executive fiat.

The legislation eliminates the burdensome, one-size-fits-all accountability system that has done more to tie up states and school districts in red tape than to support local efforts to educate children. It also reduces the size of the federal education bureaucracy by eliminating 49 ineffective and duplicative federal programs and requiring the Secretary of Education to reduce the department’s workforce accordingly.

The legislation also provides eligible school districts the ability to have federal, state, and local funds follow students to the schools they attend, which will encourage excellent schools to enroll students who are harder to serve.

“Currently states are forced to choose between the fundamentally flawed policies of No Child Left Behind, which doubled down on federal programs, mandates and spending, and the Obama administration’s controversial temporary, conditional waiver scheme, which has imposed the administration’s preferred policies and heightened the level of uncertainty shared by states and school districts,” said Foxx. “America’s students deserve better. By reversing Washington’s one-size-fits-all micromanagement of classrooms, Congress is giving parents, teachers and local education leaders the tools they need to repair a broken education system and help all children reach their potential.”

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U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx represents North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District and is the elected Republican Conference Secretary. Dr. Foxx is the chair of the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and serves as Vice Chair of the House Rules Committee.