(Originally published December 30, 2016)
With just months to go until the nation’s overhauled K-12 law goes into effect, state policymakers are still scrambling to firm up the infrastructure for their education systems, under the new blueprint laid out in the Every Student Succeeds Act.
They’re doing it at a time of political change and policy uncertainty at the national level, with a new team taking the field at the White House—and at the U.S. Department of Education—that may have its own ideas about how details of the new law play out on the ground.
There’s plenty about ESSA that remains familiar from the No Child Left Behind Act, the previous version of the half-century-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act. That includes mandatory state testing at certain grade levels, tagging and intervening in low-performing schools, and federal sign-off on state accountability plans…
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