EdCircuit Staff 
by Allie Bidwell
Clearing its first big hurdle, a bipartisan bill to overhaul the long-outdated No Child Left Behind Act is on its way to the Senate floor, after education committee members unanimously approved it following three days of debate and adjustments.
The Senate bill – dubbed the Every Child Achieves Act – was introduced by Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the committee’s chairman, and ranking minority member Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., weeks after the two announced they would work together to craft a measure to update the law, formally known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The bill strikes a balance between dueling priorities across the aisle by scaling back federal oversight and giving states much more flexibility in developing their own accountability systems, while also laying out minimum federal protections states must meet in those systems and keeping in place annual testing mandates.
[READ: No Child Left Behind: Senators Unveil Bipartisan Agreement on Rewrite]
Over the course of four sessions in three days, committee members passed 29 of 57 amendments ranging from issues of testing and data collection to funding for school counselors and programs for gifted and talented students.
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