In 2008, America’s governors and state education officials came together to develop a new set of college- and career-ready standards for their schools.
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Ashley Berrang, a spokeswoman for Sen.
Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who led the House-Senate conference committee on the legislation, said Washington has been micromanaging the nation’s classrooms for too long.
Wendell Steinhauer, president of the New Jersey Education Association, said the union supports the bill.
The House of Representatives voted 359 to 64 last week for the new “Every Student Succeeds Act”. Instead, No Child Left Behind – despite good intentions, and despite some good things it did – ultimately hamstrung good and creative educators.
Under the bill, the Education Department would have a much-diminished role and no longer be able to sanction schools that fail to improve.
Without the waiver, the Mountain State would have to label as failing all schools where less than nearly all of students are meeting “proficiency” on statewide standardized tests given near the end of each year.
The federal government only provides about 7 percent of state education budgets, and since the funding law was passed in 1965 the money has been largely used to support impoverished students. It’s always been about what was expected of our kids, what quality of education we’d offer them, and whether there would be change if they weren’t making progress. It also allows districts to use Title I funds for low-income children in early education programs if they meet Head Start performance standards, recommends that preschool teachers are included in training about the development of ELL programs, and requires states to use at least 15% of funds from Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grants for programs aimed at children below kindergarten age.
The impending congressional rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act gives Texas an enormous opportunity to recast our public school accountability system into one that better serves students and teachers.
Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said in an interview.
Board of Education vice chairman A.L. Collins, a critic of the state practice of linking test scores to teacher evaluations, said the law may give the state the chance to reassess it. For the first time, states will be required to evaluate schools on how well they support students in other ways – from counselors, school nurses and librarians to high-level courses, music and arts programs.
“The increased flexibility for states provided in the Every Student Succeeds Act reflects a bipartisan national acknowledgement that states and local educators are best situated to determine how to improve our schools”, Greene said.
Robert Gomez is the director of higher education outreach at the U.S. Department of Education and part of the student engagement team. It also does so by allowing for the use of multiple measures of student learning and progress, along with other indicators of student success to make school accountability decisions.
Though no one can foresee how the new bill will impact the individual districts, schools, and students, those in support feel it is a vital step in the direction toward student success.
“In the modern day I think what we want is a fair evaluation, that the effort that most teachers put forth is actually what teachers are evaluated on”, she said. It also ensures that states and districts continue the work they’ve begun this year to ensure that all students – including students from low-income families and students of color – have equitable access to excellent educators.
The Senate is poised to vote Tuesday on legislation that maintains No Child Left Behind’s annual testing in reading and math, but substantially reduces the federal role in education. West Virginia now goes beyond existing requirements by testing all grades from three through 11.
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The conservative policy advocacy group Heritage Action For America is urging lawmakers to vote no on the bill. An earlier version of the House bill that very narrowly passed the chamber in July included portability, something that was ditched in the compromise measure with the Senate. (I couldn’t find a state that does this now in the same way they would have to under ESSA, although some folks floated Arizona.) And they won’t have to designate 10 percent of so-called “focus” schools, with big achievement gaps or other problems (although they would have to flag schools where subgroups are struggling). CT in 2010 adopted its own state-developed Common Core standards and tests, which themselves have proven controversial.
