The Every Student Succeeds Act replaced which education policy?

• A. The No Child Left Behind Act
• B. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act
• C. The Education for All Act
• D. The Federal Education Act

Answer: (A)

The main idea is how accountability for K–12 education shifted under a new federal framework. The Every Student Succeeds Act replaced the No Child Left Behind Act as the federal policy governing public-school accountability. NCLB, enacted in the early 2000s, relied on strong national testing requirements and punitive consequences for schools that didn’t meet targets. ESSA, a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, preserves annual testing and the goal of closing achievement gaps, but it hands more control to states and districts to set goals, design the accountability system, and choose interventions, within a federal structure that still protects disadvantaged students.

So, the policy that ESSA replaced is the No Child Left Behind Act. (The other options reference related laws: ESSA reauthorizes ESEA, not as a replacement for it, and the Education for All Act and the Federal Education Act are not the policy in question.)