Obama Administration Rethinks Education Plan
By SAM DILLON
Published: December 11, 2010
WASHINGTON — For two years, backed by a friendly Congress and flush with federal stimulus money, President Obama’s administration enjoyed a relatively obstacle-free path for its education agenda, the focus of which is the $4 billion Race to the Top grant program.
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But with Republican deficit hawks taking control of the House next month, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will no longer have billions of dollars to use at his discretion.
The administration is also having to recalibrate its goals for working with Congress to overhaul the main federal law on public schools. Fortunately for the administration, its ambitions for the law, the Bush-era No Child Left Behindeffort, are shared by Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican who will be the chairman of the House education committee.
“It doesn’t matter who I’m talking to — everybody has complaints about N.C.L.B.,” said Mr. Kline, who would oversee any revision of the law by the House. “So we’d love to fix it.”
Mr. Kline and Mr. Duncan said in separate interviews that they had a good