It's been just days since President Obama signed into law the new Every Child Succeeds Act, doing away with No Child Left Behind. State lawmakers likely will not be dealing with the law's effects during the next session, but anticipate big changes in 2017.
Education officials are still poring over more than 1,000 pages of the new law, which takes most control about student testing and teacher accountability out of federal hands and throws it back to the state and local level.
State Sen. John Legg, the chair of the Senate's education committee, said he's still analyzing the new federal education law, but at first glance it seems that many of the waivers granted to Florida under No Child Left Behind have now been codified. But, he said, it probably won't have much of an effect on Florida's upcoming legislative session.
"Florida has a significant amount of latitude in terms of how it uses its school grading and assessment," Legg said. "It looks as though they've put that into the base bill, if you will, the base authorization. But it's a little too early to have much of an impact on 2016, but it will have a major impact on 2017."
Legg also said that issues of standardized testing won't dominate the legislative session as they have in recent years.
