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Barnes said that with a fraction of what the federal government spends annually on education, about $100 billion, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the administration tapped into an education reform movement taking place at the grass roots among governors and local communities frustrated with the prescriptive, one-size-fits-all mandates of No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration's education cornerstone. Congress has yet to approve revisions to No Child Left Behind, states are using up the stimulus money, and Obama's Race to the Top grant program faces spending cuts. But Barnes said Obama has given a boost to education law changes that now allow such things as connecting student performance and teacher evaluations. Barnes, chief counsel to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Obama also deserves credit for passage of a health care overhaul, legislation that she had worked on for eight years with Kennedy. The Massachusetts senator spent his career trying to restructure health care. There's also the auto industry bailout, expansion of Pell grants to help fund college education, the end of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays and work to advance civil rights, she said. "When you are worried about day to day, it's hard to step back and to take all those other things in," Barnes said. "Although at the same time, I'm literally in the grocery store and people come up to me and say, 'Hey, you work for the president. You keep on doing what you are doing.'" Married a few months into the president's first year, Barnes plans to spend more time with family. She is considering offers in the private sector but hasn't disclosed what those are. ___ Online: White House Domestic Policy Council:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/dpc
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