Topeka ? While Republicans in the Kansas Legislature are considering ways to prevent affluent school districts from receiving poverty-based aid, Republican leaders in Congress are doing just the opposite.

The U.S. House is expected to vote next week on a long-awaited bill to reauthorize and overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, more commonly known as “No Child Left Behind.”

That’s the bill that directs the spending of federal money for K-12 education, including Title I money, which targets schools that serve communities with high concentrations of poverty.

But the bill coming up in the House, known as the “Student Success Act,” would revamp the way that money is distributed, allowing states to allocate those funds to all districts on a per-pupil basis, based on the number of children living in poverty who attend those districts.

“This approach is backwards, and our teachers and kids deserve much, much better,” Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said during a conference call with news reporters last week.

But Kansas Rep. Lynn Jenkins, whose district includes Lawrence, said she supports doing away with No Child Left Behind.

“The problem with No Child Left Behind was it took power from state and local levels of government and placed it in Washington, D.C., forcing Kansas’ extremely talented educators to ‘teach to the test’ instead of teach to the students,” Jenkins said in a statement. “While far from perfect, the Student Success Act seeks to reduce the federal footprint in our school districts and empower parents and local education leaders to have more choice, greater decision-making authority, and the ability to hold schools accountable.”

According to an analysis by the White House, the Wichita school district would stand to lose $5 million, or 21 percent of its Title I funding, if Kansas adopted the formula allowed under the bill. The Kansas City, Kan., school district could lose $1.6 million, or 14 percent of its Title I funding, and the Topeka school district would lose $900,000, or 12 percent of its funding.

Estimates on the impact in Lawrence were not immediately available. Lawrence has six elementary schools that receive Title I funding: Hillcrest, New York, Pinckney, Schwegler, Kennedy and Woodlawn.

Another analysis by the left-leaning Center for American Progress said that districts with the lowest concentrations of poverty would gain, on average, $294 per student in poverty, while those with the highest concentrations of poverty would lose about $86 per student in poverty.

In the Kansas Legislature, the Senate Ways and Means Committee held hearings Feb. 3 on a bill that would change part of the state school finance formula dealing with “equalization” aid that targets districts with lower per-pupil property wealth.

Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, who chairs the committee, said the intent of that bill is to make sure wealthy districts like Blue Valley in Johnson County do not receive equalization aid. Under that bill, however, districts with high poverty rates, including Kansas City, Kan., and Wichita, would also lose significant amounts of equalization aid.

Meanwhile in the U.S. Senate, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is working on a similar bill. But Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who chairs that panel, recently agreed to drop the so-called “Title I portability” provision in an effort to produce a bipartisan bill.

The last reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was in 2001. It was called No Child Left Behind, and it tied eligibility for federal funding to student performance on reading and math, with the goal of having all students score proficient or better on those tests by 2014.

No Child Left Behind was due for reauthorization in 2007, but so far Congress has been unable to produce a bill that could pass both chambers and be signed by the president. As a result, in 2011, the Obama administration began offering states waivers from that law if they agreed to adopt other education reform measures such as adopting higher educational standards and tying teacher evaluations to student achievement.

Kansas received one of those waivers in 2012, which called for, among other things, adopting a new method of holding school districts accountable for improving student achievement. The Kansas State Department of Education began implementing that new system last year.

The White House said if Congress finally passes a reauthorization bill, that would supersede the waivers that were granted by the administration.