The House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that would effectively erase the role of private lenders from the federal student-loan market; the bill also included a measure to strip federal funding from the controversial organization ACORN.

The vote on the entire education bill was 253 to 171, and largely along party lines.

The bill is intended to make college more affordable for more people, and to bolster opportunities for early-childhood education.

The legislation would basically remove for-profit lenders from the origination business for student loans, though they would still be able to service some loans.

Student-loan company SLM Corp. (SLM) saw its shares fall several percentage points in trading Thursday.

The House Committee on Education and Labor said that the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that switching the loan program will save $87 billion over 10 years.

The bill boosts the maximum annual amount of Pell Grant scholarships, one type of student aid; it provides $3 billion to improve access to college, as well as graduation rates, which are relatively low compared with those at other countries.

It provides competitive grants for partnerships between community colleges, states, businesses and other groups to modernize the work force; also, competitive grants to states for some early-childhood education programs.

The measure invests $2.55 billion in historically black colleges and some other institutions that serve minorities. And, it offers loan forgiveness for members of the military called up to duty in the middle of the academic year.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is going to consider similar legislation, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a senior Democratic aide.

The fact that a federal ban on funding of ACORN, an advocacy group for low-income people, was contained in the bill -- and passed -- was a surprise to some. However, ACORN has come under intense scrutiny in recent days as some of its workers have been caught on hidden cameras giving advice to people posing as prostitutes and human traffickers; ACORN has also been accused of committing voter fraud in recent months.

The Senate then approved a ban on funding to ACORN on a vote of 85 to 11, but the fate of the group’s federal funding (typically in recent years, several million dollars a year, which is about 2% of the group’s funding, according to one of its leaders) still will rest in the reconciliation process because the ACORN measures are contained in different bills in the different chambers.

--FOX News's Chad Pergram contributed to this article.