The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which goes into full effect in the 2018–19 school year, rolled back much of the federal government’s big footprint in education policy, on everything from testing and teacher quality to low-performing schools. And it gave new leeway to states in calling the shots. ESSA’s goal is ensure that every student, regardless of race, income, disability, ethnicity, or proficiency in English, is ready for a fulfilling career, college, and life.
Gayle Pauley, Assistant Superintendent for Special Programs and Accountability at the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), outlines Washington’s ESSA plan and how you can get involved.
Moderated by LEV communications director Arik Korman.
The Revised ESSA Consolidated Plan is now available! There are four main ways to get involved.
Read the Revised ESSA Consolidated Plan
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on December 10, 2015. It is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESSA will be fully operational in school year 2017-18.
Take a minute to let us know what you think of the plan! You can provide feedback through September 5, and your feedback will be considered as OSPI completes the plan for submission to the U.S. Department of Education.
Tell Your Friends & Colleagues!
Share this page on Facebook, Twitter, through email, wherever! We want to hear from as many Washingtonians as possible about the changes coming to our schools!
Last week, Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill to create more equitable education opportunities for students in K-12 public schools, including changes to the way local districts fund their schools.
Washington State Governor, Jay Inslee
The changes are in response to the state Supreme Court’s McCleary decision, which determined that the state was not meeting its constitutional duty to fully fund basic education. Part of the decision found that schools were relying on local levies to pay for their basic needs, such as teacher salaries, a responsibility that should fall to state government.
“This is a big day in the state of Washington,” Inslee said. “For the first time in decades, we have a budget that fully funds education. Our work isn’t over, but we’ve met the constitutional and moral obligation to our students, and we’ve set the course for the future of education in Washington state.”
“I think it’s a little bit of both. Kids who come from broken homes go to school to try and express themselves for the most part but once they get to school and have a teacher, a strong teacher, that will work with them, kind of straightens them out. I think that works, but we don’t have a lot of strong teachers. That’s why I say it’s the parent and the teacher, it depends who the teachers are and what they’re doing at home as well.”
Clarissa Knight…
“I would say its primarily up to the parents as far as children and their education. It’s up to the parents to raise their children to want to be educated and successful outside whatever learning environment that they choose to place their children.”
Jazz…
“I think that it has to be a partnership. I think the teachers should be working with parents and visa versa. I don’t think that one should wait on the other to reach out. But I think it’s pretty narrowly the parents responsibility and if there is something that the parents feel is lacking then they should be reaching out to the teachers as well. But I think that it ultimately falls on the parent.”
Ayana Henley…
“Ultimately, I think the parent has the responsibility, although the parent and teacher need to work hand in hand. I feel the parent has the ultimate responsibility because education starts at home. We are the ultimate teachers of our children and therefore that should spread out throughout the community. Whatever we’re instilling in our children at home, maybe we can influence our teachers and in that way keep the educational process going.”
Sista Yolanda Theodore…
“It can’t be either/or, it has to be a combination of both due to the fact our children spend up to six to eight hours in school and they are in the households before they even attend school. So, parents are the first primary teachers of children, but once they go to school it will take a combination of the parent and teacher correlating and talking together. If they can do that then that child can stay on track towards graduation or college or whatever their plans may be.”
Brook Riggio…
“I think it is shared between parents and teachers. Both have a key role to play. Teachers spend so much time out of the day with students that they will influence students immensely no matter what. So there comes a huge responsibility with that as well as trusting your children to teachers for that time period. At the same time, parents have to provide supplementary role models to give them all the other factors that they need to succeed. They need a loving and supporting environment at home to give them the encouragement they’ll need and the values instilled, especially at the early stages.”
Fifty Democrats in Congress have urged Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to nominate a “qualified individual” to run the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights, and are continuing to criticize her approach to issues ranging from sexual assault to transgender student rights protections.
In a letter Tuesday, the Democratic lawmakers specifically singled out Candice Jackson, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights, for displaying a “hostility towards the very mission and functions of the office she is charged to lead.” More broadly, the lawmakers criticized the department’s approach to investigations involving students of color, English-language learners, and LGBTQ students, among others.
DeVos’s approach to civil rights has become one of the most controversial parts of her work during her first six months on the job. The secretary has said that the education department’s office for civil rights under Obama was too aggressive and too eager to pursue broad cases against institutions, leaving individual students’ civil rights complaints to languish…
The top two Democrats for education in Congress have warned U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that her department’s new approach to reviewing states’ Every Student Succeeds Act plans is riddled with problems.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the ranking Democrats on the respective Senate and House education committees, wrote in a Friday letter to DeVos that the U.S. Department of Education’s plans to begin conducting two-hour phone calls with states about their ESSA plans before providing states with formal comments will “limit the public’s knowledge” about ESSA-related agreements between states and the department.
“We are deeply concerned that this decision will result in inconsistent treatment of state agencies, leading to flawed implementation of our nation’s education law and harm to our nation’s most vulnerable students,” Murray and Scott wrote…
If the Senate’s attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act that crashed and burned Friday morning comes back to life, it could push congressional action on education further down the priority list.
Why? Several senators, Democrats in the main, complained that the health-care legislation was not considered by the “regular” process. If Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., decides to start over and try to move a bill through the relevant committees, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., suddenly becomes a very important figure in the process. That’s because, as many readers know, he chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions…
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is shooting back at one of her biggest political foes and defending her approach to civil rights enforcement.
In a July 11 letter to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., DeVos said that while upholding the nation’s civil rights laws is “among the most important missions” at her department, the Obama administration’s decision to expand the scope of investigations into potential violations meant that too many individual students’ complaints went unaddressed. That approach, DeVos said, created a “justice delayed is justice denied” situation.
Murray, however, didn’t respond directly to DeVos’ message. In a July 14 response, the top Democrat on the Senate education committee told the secretary that her department still hasn’t provided information Murray had asked for, including on open cases involving transgender students and sexual harrassment as of the end of January and on all the civil rights probes at her department that have been closed…
By: Michelle Croft and Richard Lee ACT Research and Policy
Despite (or because of) the federal requirement that all students in certain grades participate in statewide achievement testing, stories of parents opting their student out of the testing gained national attention in the media in the spring of 2015. Ultimately, twelve states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin—received a notice from the U.S. Department of Education that they needed to create a plan to reduce opt-outs due to low participation rates.
When statewide testing came in spring 2016, there were more stories of opt-outs, and information about districts failing to meet participation requirements will follow in the coming months.3 Early reports from New York indicate that 21% of students in grades 3–8 opted out in 2016, which was slightly more than the prior year. (See attached PDF below for reference information.)
Participation Rate Requirements
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (both the No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds authorizations) requires that all students annually participate in statewide achievement testing in mathematics and English in grades 3–8 and high school as well as science in certain grade spans. Ninety-five percent of students at the state, district, and school level must participate; otherwise there is a range of consequences.
Under the No Child Left Behind authorization, the school would automatically fail to meet Adequate Yearly Progress if the school—or subgroups of students within the school—did not meet the participation rate requirement. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides states with greater flexibility to determine how to incorporate the participation rate into the state’s accountability system. However, in proposed regulations, the state will need to take certain actions such as lowering the school’s rating in the state’s accountability system or identifying the school for targeted support or improvement, if all students or one or more student subgroups do not meet the 95% participation rate.
Michelle Croft is a principal research associate in Public Affairs at ACT. Richard Lee is a senior analyst in Public Affairs at ACT.
This report highlights significant investments made by both Republican and Democratic policymakers in state-funded pre-k programs for the fourth year in a row. In the 2015-16 budget year, 32 states and the District of Columbia raised funding levels of pre-k programs. This increased support for preschool funding came from both sides of the aisle–22 states with Republican governors and 10 states with Democratic governors, plus the District of Columbia.
In contrast, only five states with Republican governors and three states with Democratic governors decreased their pre-k funding.
Overall, state funding of pre-k programs across the 50 states and the District of Columbia increased by nearly $755 million, or 12 percent over 2014-15. While this progress is promising, there is still work to be done to set children on the path to academic success early in life. Still, less than half of preschool-aged students have access to pre-k programs.
Increasing the number of students in high-quality preschool programs is broadly viewed as a way to set young learners on a path to a secure economic future and stable workforce. This report includes several state examples and an overview of the pre-k programs they have in place. Data tables on total state pre-K funding and state pre-kindergarten funding by program are appended. [Megan Carolan contributed to this publication.]
Education Commission of the States. ECS Distribution Center, 700 Broadway Suite 1200, Denver, CO 80203-3460. Tel: 303-299-3692; Fax: 303-296-8332; e-mail: ecs@ecs.org; Web site: http://www.ecs.org
