Many educators are looking to President-elect Barack Obama to revise a much-maligned federal initiative requiring annual tests to chart the progress of every school in the country.
But with a faltering economy and two foreign wars dominating the attention of the administration-in-waiting, even the sharpest critics of the No Child Left Behind law are resigned to waiting their turn.
"I think it will take us a while to do this," said Joel Parker, director of education policy and practice at the National Education Association, a teachers union. "It is politically complicated."
With no consensus on how to change the law, a trademark of the Bush administration, representatives of mainstream education groups said that revisions would be unlikely before late next year or early 2010. Parker, for example, expects Obama to spend time listening to various viewpoints before the administration pushes one position. What is clear is that no one expects the law to disappear.
While principals, school boards and governors disagree over the details of President Bush's program, the foundation of the law - that schools be held accountable for teaching every child, even those who are poor, minority, disabled or learning English - is now ingrained in the way American schools operate.
Yet many aspects of the law have been criticized. Some say that its goal - to have all children reading on grade level by 2014 - is absurd. Others say that the federal government is micro-managing school curriculum, an issue usually left to state and local school officials.
Obama has called for reform of early childhood education and higher pay for teachers, also saying he would "demand higher standards" from schools. But during the transition, education has taken a back seat to the economy and jobs. Names of possible candidates for education secretary are receiving scant attention.
During the campaign, Obama said the annual testing that is perhaps the most visible feature of No Child Left Behind should be de-emphasized, but he gave few details about how to accomplish that, said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy.
Among the issues being debated are whether national standards are needed for schools, whether states themselves can decide what happens to failing schools and whether a school's progress should be measured by how much students learn each year rather than by students passing the state test.
