Several civil rights and education advocacy groups have a simple message for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos: Just say no to Florida’s Every Student Succeeds Act plan.
The Thursday letter to DeVos argues that the plan should be ditched because of the way it handles English learners, among other reasons.
Written by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, League of United Latin American Citizens, and others, the letter argues that the Sunshine State’s plan is a bad idea and doesn’t follow ESSA because it doesn’t offer state tests in languages other than English, including to the 200,000 students in Florida who are learning English and speak Spanish.
They also took issue with the plan for excluding English-language proficiency from the state’s proposed accountability system.
In addition, the groups say that Florida’s plan doesn’t appropriately identify schools with low performance for student subgroups. All three moves, the groups say, run counter to ESSA’s requirements…
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Read the full letter below. This piece has been corrected to accurately reflect the civil rights’ groups concerns with student subgroups’ performance.
Source: Education Week Politics K-12