The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has been revised by Congress several times. In 1965, Congress created the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which was later reauthorized as The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and was most recently reauthorized in 2015 as The Every Student Succeeds Act. This act is important because it means that States and school districts are responsible to ensure that every child achieves.

According to the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), this bill is important for Special Education because it “…goes even further than the original NCLB in many ways to assist these students to successfully graduate and become college and/or career ready.” The ESSA ensures three important things for students with special needs including ensuring:

  • Access to the general education curriculum
  • Access to accommodations on assessments
  • Concepts of the Universal Design for Learning will be used The Every Child Succeeds Act includes provisions that require schools to provide evidence of interventions in schools with consistently underperforming subgroups. The ESSA also requires states to address things like how they will improve conditions for learning, reduce harassment and bullying, and prevent overuse of discipline practices including restraints and seclusion.

The ESSA does other important things to help students in Special Education including:

  • Takes a proactive role in making sure students with learning and attention issues have access to general education curriculum and are not off track from being able to receive a high school diploma
  • Maintains annual reporting of assessment data disaggregated by subgroups of students including students with special needs
  • Maintains a 1% cap (with some modification provisions) of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities who can take alternative assessments that are aligned to alternative academic achievement standards
  • Requires disaggregation of key data about student progress to ensure that students with disabilities receive the supports they need The Every Student Succeeds Act also recognized that the IEP team (including parents) is in the best position to make important decisions related to a student’s academic, assessment, and social emotional needs.

The Every Student Succeeds Act also recognized that the IEP team (including parents) is in the best position to make important decisions related to a student’s academic, assessment, and social emotional needs. The ESSA also mentions Specialized Instructional Support Personnel (SISPs) which are able to implement early intervention programs for students who need specific support and help them to transition into a general classroom. For states that allow parents or guardians to do, the ESSA acknowledges the rights of parents and guardians to opt their children out of statewide academic assessments.

As part of each episode of Transition Tuesday, we provide additional tips, teacher tools, and resources related to the topics we cover. For this week’s bonus, we are providing a PDF with three great resources regarding the Every Student Succeeds Act, which can be accessed by clicking this link – http://tensigma.org/episode84bonus

To learn more about Ten Sigma’s educational resources for teachers or parents, please visit our website http://tensigma.org and you can also connect with us on social media at:

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If you know anyone else who would benefit from the information we share in these videos, please share this video and invite them to visit http://transitiontuesday.org We hope you enjoyed this episode and that the information we shared about the Every Student Succeeds Act is helpful to you.

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