CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, CLEVELAND, OHIO-WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11), a Warrensville Heights Democrat whose largely Black 11th congressional district includes the city of Cleveland and several of its eastern suburbs, released a press statement on Wednesday to Cleveland Urban News.Com after the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to reauthorize or rewrite the No Child Behind Act of 2001.

No Child Left Behind is, in itself, a re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a federal law that Congress passed in of 1965 under then president Lyndon B. Johnson.

Some 36 Civil Rights, education and disability groups reluctantly gave an endorsement a day before the Republican Dominated House, on Wednesday, overwhelmingly approved the ESSA bill, 368-64, a bipartisan compromise indeed.

“I thank my House colleagues for finally coming together to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)," said Fudge, who is Black. "While no bill is perfect, the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) addresses many of our nation’s most pressing public education issues."

The congressional measure, which follows more that eight years of infighting between congressional Republicans and Democrats, is expected to reach the Senate by next week for likely approval, and could become law before the new year, sources said yesterday.

The ESSA, said Fudge, gives states and local school districts more flexibility, preserves the federal role in education, and ensures that states and school districts honor the Civil Rights legacy of ESEA.

“Throughout this process, I have emphasized the final ESEA re-authorization must provide equal opportunities for all children, regardless of race, ethnicity, income, language, or disability," said Fudge. "I believe the Every Student Succeeds Act achieves this goal by striking a balance in the best interest of all our nation’s students, and I urge the Senate to take swift action and pass the ESSA.”

Fudge said that ESSA, in its amended or compromised form, protects Title I funding, which is the bulk of much of the funding under the act and what was most at risk, and of which right wing congressional Republicans initially sought to virtually eliminate. And she said that it promotes efforts for equitable allocation of resources to schools, and recognizes the importance of after-school education.

It also maintains subgroup dis-aggregation of data for reporting, the congresswoman said, among a host of other provisions.

ESSA acts largely to shift much education authority from the federal government to states and local school districts. But, say opponents, at the expense of some Title I funds earmarked for poor and minority at-risk students.

Fudge was appointed to the conference committee for the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind on Nov. 17 and is a ranking member of the Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Outgoing education secretary Arne Duncan praised the bill as an initiative to protect the Civil Rights of students, though data are clear in noting that since desegregation court orders became obsolete in the 1990s neither states nor the federal government have a federally-mandated assessment tool to effectively analyze ongoing educational disparities between Black students and their White counterparts .

The longstanding Cleveland schools desegregation case dubbed Reed v. Rhodes, which initiated crosstown busing in the largely Black major American city, the nations' second most segregated city behind Boston, was dissolved in 1998, the year that a state law that gives the city mayor control of the city's public school district took effect.

Then a junior senator for Illinois campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president, now President Barack Obama told now Cleveland Urban News.Com Editor-in-Chief Kathy Wray Coleman in a one-on-one interview in 2008 that was published as a cover story in the Call and Post Newspaper  that No Child Left Behind has provisions for monitoring the educational successes and failures of Black children. But he also said that he did not know, at that time, if the Bush administration had taken advantage of the option.

How a rewrite of the education legislation will impact poor, Black inner city children remains to be seen.

No Child Left Behind in its current form, which encompasses rigorous mandates for K-12 students, heightens standardize testing that public school teachers despise , a requirement minimized by the Obama Administration to states seeking leniency, and a mandate that will not change relative to the rewrite under ESSA.

No Child Left Behind is an unfunded mandate, say teacher unions across the nation.

Obama says that while it is not perfect, it is necessary to enhance educational outcomes nationwide.

Other opponents of the No Child Left Behind rewrite, including Civil Rights organizations that held out in support of the ESSA until this week, say that it minimizes the bare existence of a federal watchdog for monitoring the educational progress of Black children traditionally subject to a substandard public education in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.