School districts and educators chafing under the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act are hoping to prod the U.S. Department of Education into giving them a reprieve from the provisions they see as most onerous, as the prospects for an overhaul of the law by Congress anytime soon remain cloudy. The Obama administration and congressional leaders from both parties have long said the law, the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), is inflexible and intrusive. School advocates argue that cash-strapped districts shouldn't expend resources on requirements that will likely be scrapped in the rewrite of the ESEA, which has been pending since 2007. Now, organizations such as the American Association of School Administrators and the National School Boards Association are gearing up for a renewed push for regulatory relief, including items that have long been on their wish lists. But others say that a package of regulatory fixes--even in areas that the administration and Congress agree need to be addressed--could slow the momentum for a comprehensive, bipartisan reauthorization of the ESEA. Indeed, the Education Department says the push for regulatory changes underscores the need for a comprehensive renewal of the law. If U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan did decide to offer some form of regulatory change, it wouldn't be the first time the department used that process to tweak the No Child Left Behind law. His predecessor, Secretary Margaret Spellings--one of the architects of the law while she was a top White House aide under President George W. Bush--ushered in a series of fixes, including permitting states to meet achievement targets through so-called growth models, which measure individual student progress over time, as opposed to status models, which compare different cohorts of students with one another.