'No Child' Rules to Be Eased for a Year

But until yesterday, the administration did not seem inclined to change policies to accommodate their concerns.

Advocates for schools are also clashing with homeless advocates over whether Washington should grant waivers to the 1987 McKinney-Vento law.

Spellings has indicated more willingness to seek waivers of McKinney-Vento, but that stance is drawing ire from advocates of the homeless. The law prevents schools from segregating the homeless, and allows officials to move students to new schools only with the consent of parents and if administrators can show it is in the best interest of the child.

Schools in Houston -- which had swiftly moved to place children in shelters in the school system -- were now expected to transport children to those schools even after their families have found homes miles away, said Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.

"If they were living in the Astrodome and were initially enrolled in a school three miles from the Astrodome and then they moved to an apartment that is 10 miles from the school, under McKinney-Vento they are required to provide them busing 10 miles -- even if they are passing four other elementary schools on the way," she said.

School officials wanted the authority "to provide these children transportation to the nearest school or at some point not to be required to provide transportation services," she said.

But Barbara Duffield, policy director at the nonprofit National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, said that such waivers would be discriminatory and have unintended consequences. She called for better funding of schools to meet their legal obligations.

"The rights that children have shouldn't vary from place to place based on a process that is very likely to be political," she said. "This is a civil rights law in spirit, and civil rights are not the kind of thing that should be subject to a waiver."

Spellings also tried yesterday to clarify a proposal to offer states and schools $7,500 per displaced student. Under the proposal, which must approved by Congress, any school hosting displaced students could receive money to defray costs. Families with children in private schools will have to apply for the money. "We must not penalize parents who had already chosen private school for their children," Spellings said in her testimony.