He said this new law will help students and schools improve while reducing the burden of high-stakes testing.
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President Obama has officially signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act, once and for all doing away with the long-expired No Child Left Behind Act.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate approved the measure 85-12 following overwhelming approval from the U.S. House, 359-64, last week. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who helped write the current legislation and played a role in ushering the legislation through Congress, was among the lawmakers to attend the bill signing ceremony. States must continue to disaggregate test results by student race, income and disability and make them public, a key provision for civil rights organizations.
The overhaul ends more than a decade of what critics have derided as one-size-fits-all federal policies dictating accountability and improvement for the nation’s 100,000 or so public schools.
“This is an early Christmas present”, Obama said.
Some GOP presidential candidates, however, believe the bill does not go far enough in stripping educational control from the government.
“I think it allows that flexibility, which is important, and reduces a lot of what I’d say is unnecessary anxiety and gives the schools and districts more control over their own destiny”, he said.
The Every Student Succeeds Act, signed Thursday by Obama, dramatically curtails the federal government’s role in students’ education.
Rivera, the former Lancaster School District superintendent, hopes to see an accountability model emerge that measures performance by more than just standardized test scores but also takes into account such factors as attendance and graduation rates, how well as school does in meeting the needs of English language learners and special education students, course offerings, and career pathways.
The bill, which passed both chambers with broad bipartisan support, replaces the current elementary and secondary education law “No Child Left Behind”. However they say the bad part is the hidden words as well as the federal government having too much say in education.
“Laws are only as good as the implementation”, Obama said.
This legislation begins to close the opportunity gaps for students by providing a new system that includes an “opportunity dashboard” with indicators of school success and student support. But the law also encourages states to set caps on the amount of time students spend on testing.
ESSA will not be fully implemented until the 2017-2018 school year, giving the state about 18 months to make the transition.
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The state’s response to the new law is also an increased focus on quality early education. While ESSA officially marks the end of the NCLB era, the majority of states have for several years received waivers from the Obama administration, exempting them from some of the law’s toughest requirements.
