The U.S. Senate voted 85-12 Wednesday to pass a bill that would eliminate federal mandates regarding teacher evaluations and increase flexibility in how states hold their schools accountable.

The Every Student Succeeds Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives 359-64 last week, and President Barack Obama plans to sign it Thursday morning. Lawmakers from both parties, teachers unions and other groups have endorsed the bill, which would replace the much-criticized No Child Left Behind law that George W. Bush signed in 2002.

Federal rules require part of math and English/language arts teacher evaluations to be based on standardized exams, and the bill’s removal of that requirement would be a win for teachers unions — although states still could continue the mandate.

In October, the West Virginia Board of Education voted to again delay basing 15 percent of annual evaluations for math and English/language arts teachers on students’ improvement in test scores.

Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., voted in favor of the bill Wednesday.

“Many provisions in the bill will directly benefit West Virginia’s nearly 300,000 students, including funding for STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] programs and drug prevention education,” Capito said in a statement.

The bill also includes three provisions she introduced, including one that seeks to improve students’ access to the Internet at home.

Manchin, according to a statement from his office, also made several successful amendments. They include one he sponsored with Capito that allows school systems to use certain funds to hire site resource coordinators, which can help schools provide services for academic support, nutrition and physical and mental health.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and sponsor of the bill, called it the “single biggest step toward local control of schools in 25 years.”

“The last thing we should do is tell states they must evaluate teachers and how they should evaluate teachers,” he said on the Senate floor. “It’s hard enough to do without someone watching over your shoulder.”

Alexander said the bill doesn’t include all the changes he supports, but he argued that a vote against it would mean maintaining the “Common Core mandate” and continuing the U.S. Department of Education’s ability to act as a “national school board” through the requirements it has imposed on states in exchange for giving them waivers to escape some of No Child Left Behind’s regulations.

The Every Student Succeeds Act bans the federal government from requiring or incentivizing states to adopt the national Common Core math and English/language arts standards, or any specific standards.

According to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, although several parts of existing law ban the federal government from requiring states to adopt specific standards, the law doesn’t appear to stop the federal government from incentivizing adoption of standards.

While not specifically requiring Common Core in its grants process, the Obama administration promised states money based, partly, on them adopting standards that were “common” with other states, and it provided money to develop tests for Common Core and promoted it through the No Child Left Behind waivers.

The Congressional Research Service noted that, for states competing for federal Race to the Top grant money, the Department of Education established guidelines for reviewers to assign points to states. Out of 500 points overall, a state could get “up to 40 points for its responses related to developing and adopting common standards and up to 10 points for implementing common, high-quality assessments.”

Reviewers were supposed to give “high” points to states that collaborated with a majority of other states to develop common standards.

“It should be noted that, aside from the Common Core State Standards, there was no other set of standards being developed by a consortium of states that included enough states to meet the criteria to receive ‘high’ points,” the report stated.

Despite the new bill’s language regarding Common Core, two national groups that led the development of the standards — the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers — support the bill. So does West Virginia Schools Superintendent Michael Martirano.

According to a summary on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s website, the legislation would abandon No Child Left Behind’s mandate that all schools meet “adequate yearly progress,” replacing it with state-designed accountability systems. West Virginia already has a waiver from the adequate yearly progress requirement, but the waiver puts other requirements on the state.

Without the waiver, the Mountain State would have to label as failing all schools where less than almost all of students are meeting “proficiency” on statewide standardized tests given near the end of each year. Statewide, only 27 percent of students scored at least proficient in math last school year, and only 45 percent did so in English/language arts.

The waiver, according to the state education department, would become void Aug. 1, if the new bill becomes law.

According to the House Committee on Education’s summary, the bill also would bar the U.S. education secretary from prescribing specific improvement strategies in struggling schools, allow states and school districts to use federal funds to study their tests to find ones that can be eliminated and allow rural school districts more flexibility in using federal funds.