Civil rights, business, and education advocates are warning that Congress and the Obama administration may be willing to defang a key portion of the No Child Left Behind Act in their quest to make the law more flexible, shortchanging racial minorities and other historically overlooked student subgroups in the process. Their concern comes amid debate about whether the law can be revised to give greater leeway to schools and districts in boosting achievement for minority and special education students, English-language learners, and other subgroups. Subgroup accountability is one feature of the widely criticized NCLB law that has drawn praise from across the policy and political spectrum for shining a spotlight on students whose performance was often largely ignored in the past. But advocates worry that the administration's recent rhetoric and year-old blueprint for retooling the NCLB law, the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, opens the door to less accountability for states and districts where those students aren't measuring up. They also worry that a push in Congress to reduce the federal role in education threatens to ratchet down the pressure on states and districts to make such students a priority.