Four months after President Barack Obama made education a centerpiece of his State of the Union address, lawmakers charged with reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are beginning to sketch out their own visions for aspects of the law's renewal. The prospects that Congress will meet the president's goal--a comprehensive, bipartisan reauthorization by the start of the next school year--remain cloudy, however. Bipartisan talks continue in the Senate, but lawmakers are still puzzling over issues at the heart of the ESEA, including just what the federal role in school improvement and accountability should be. The current version of the law, the 9-year-old No Child Left Behind Act, greatly expanded Washington's role in holding schools accountable for their students' academic results. Meanwhile, Republican members of the GOP-led House are preparing a series of bills on such issues as funding flexibility and the elimination of certain education programs. Even though neither the House's nor the Senate's education committee has released a comprehensive reauthorization bill, lawmakers are working on more targeted legislation dealing with important pieces of the ESEA, which has been the flagship federal law in K-12 education since 1965.