Ultimately, parents and families are responsible for the successful education of their own children.

But since the mid-1980s, Texas and the Austin area governments have taken responsibility for ensuring that more and more of our young people graduate academically prepared for the world. From Governor Ann Richards in 1993 to near the end of Governor Rick Perry's term in 2011, a bipartisan state coalition for nearly 20 years ensured academic standards were defined, that student knowledge of those standards be tested and that minimum percentages of students meet those standards.

The intent of No Child Left Behind, passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President George W. Bush just a few weeks after 9/11/01, was to ensure that 100 percent of kindergartners in 2001 would graduate high school by 2014 proficient in all content areas and ready for the world they were entering. U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige called this "putting a man on the moon." Many national civil rights advocates called it the civil rights issue for our generation. An uneasy coalition supportive of NCLB was forged between teacher unions -- who appreciated the "highly qualified" teacher requirements for every classroom and promise of substantially more money -- with the center-right and business leaders who wanted results for substantial taxpayer investment.

The Every Student Succeeds Act, passed by both chambers of Congress and signed last week by President Obama, is a step back from the national aspiration that all young people succeed. But, as U.S. Senator from Texas, John Cornyn, said, "...the power to innovate, the power to set the standard and then to find the most creative and innovative way to achieve those standards, I believe, is best determined at the local level." He is correct.

Several key components of federal education law remain in effect:

• State and urban district academic achievement will continue to be assessed using a common measure: the Nation's Report Card;
• State governments will remain responsible for defining their academic standards and assessing all students in 3rd through 8th grade and at least once in high school on whether they have learned at least some of those standards;
• State governments must still publicly report student academic performance and disaggregate by race, ethnicity, income and language status;
• 95% of students in affected grades must take the assessments; and
• States are responsible for requiring the bottom 5% of campuses to improve or face consequences.

This is part one of a two-part blog series on the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Comments on Behalf of Drew Scheberle, SVP at Austin Chamber of Commerce.