On December 10, 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Developed and passed with strong, bipartisan agreement, ESSA replaces the No Child Left Behind Act and provides significant flexibility around federal education policy by shifting authority back to states and communities.
PDE is committed to collaborating with stakeholders – including educators, policymakers, and community members – throughout the commonwealth to ensure coherent and thoughtful state-level implementation of ESSA.
Stakeholder Engagement and ESSA State Plan
ESSA requires that states develop and submit a State Plan to the U.S. Department of Education. To ensure that Pennsylvania’s State Plan is rooted in the day-to-day needs of educators, students, and communities, PDE designed a stakeholder engagement process that relies on participation from a group of diverse thought leaders and practitioners. We are also partnering with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to plan a series of stakeholder sessions and work group meetings designed to explore four key areas of the new federal law:
Assessment: State assessments serve as a barometer of whether or not students are on track to meet Pennsylvania Academic Standards. The current assessment system is time and resource intensive, is implemented relatively early in the school year, and delivers results on a timeline that is not optimal for informing instructional decision making. The Assessment Work Group will explore options for reducing testing time, decreasing turnaround time, and administering assessments later in the year, while attending to policies and practices that support fair and valid testing.
Accountability: The right accountability system ensures that every school, teacher, and parent can envision and achieve the goals for a given year. ESSA challenges states to consider comprehensive and holistic measures of school and student success within a statewide accountability system, including the development of non-academic measures of school quality. The Accountability Work Group will explore opportunities to develop valid measures of student growth and indicators that control for mitigating, out of school factors such as poverty.
Educator Certification: School districts should have the autonomy and flexibility to place teachers in roles that allow for more customization and personalization of programs to meet the diverse needs of students. ESSA eliminates the “highly qualified teacher” requirements of No Child Left Behind, and provides opportunities to identify strategies for recruitment and retention of talented educators. Members of the Educator Certification Work Group will explore PDE’s Certification and Staffing Program Guidance to identify avenues to place effective teachers in classrooms. Particular attention should be devoted to special education teachers and content certification, as well as flexibility for those teaching dual enrollment courses.
Educator Evaluation: While requirements for equitable distribution of effective teachers and paraprofessionals remain, ESSA is a significant departure from federal initiatives that tie teacher evaluation to student assessment results. The Educator Evaluation Work Group will explore whether there are opportunities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Pennsylvania’s current educator evaluation system while addressing the complexities of teaching and learning and still maintaining educator accountability for student success.
ESSA Transition and Implementation
The new framework under ESSA largely goes into effect in the 2017-18 school year, with 2016-17 serving as a transition year. Pennsylvania’s existing state plan remains effective until August 1, 2016. Under ESSA, states are expected to continue interventions in priority and focus schools through the 2016-17 school year.
Contact Information
Stay tuned for information about how you can sign up for email updates regarding ESSA, or send your comments and questions to RA-edESSA@pa.gov.
In his last major policy speech, U.S. Secretary of Education John King delivered what could be seen as a motivational speech for education advocates preparing for President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to expand school choice options for students through a $20 billion voucher program that would allow federal funds to follow students to private schools.
“For all who believe that strong, equitable public education is central to a healthy democracy and a thriving economy, now is the moment for us to set aside the policy differences that we have let divide us, and move forward together courageously to defend and extend this fundamental American institution,” King said on December 14.
King discussed progress over the last eight years, including a high school graduation rate at an all-time high of 83 percent, closing achievement gaps, and the largest and most diverse college graduation class in history. Still, he acknowledged that too many students fail to graduate from high school and those who do are frequently unprepared for the rigors of college.
“Ensuring more Americans get the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in our country matters more than ever,” King said. “It is not enough for those already prosperous to prosper. Unless we are ensuring that all Americans can meaningfully participate in our nation’s growth, our nation will not succeed. The simple fact, confirmed by the research, is that reducing income inequality positively influences economic output. When everyone has a fair chance, whole societies are healthier, better off and more productive.”
King said the Every Student Succeeds Act “rightly empowers state and district leaders to develop strategies that address their unique challenges and needs,” but he cautioned them to maintain “guardrails” for protecting students.
He spoke strongly in support of college- and career-ready standards and urged states to “fight the inevitable efforts” to water down high expectations. King stressed the need for accountability—saying, “Without accountability, standards are meaningless and equity is a charade”—and urged states to develop accountability systems that are “rich and varied” and include “measures such as chronic absenteeism, access to and success in advanced courses, or new approaches to discipline that help students improve their behavior and their academic achievement.”
Looking ahead, King discussed “growing bipartisan consensus” around increased access to preschool and free community college and other options to make high education available to more students without a mountain of debt.
King spoke passionately about equity and funding disparities that exist across the country. “Money is never the only answer, but money does matter,” King said. “It pays for higher salaries and for school counselors. Money builds science labs and repairs leaky roofs. Yet, in districts all across the country, students who need the most still get the least.”
He also encouraged schools to embrace diversity and inclusion and reject segregation. “Diverse schools are great preparation for all students,” King said. “They help more children succeed, help broaden students’ perspectives, and help prepare them to participate in a global workforce. And I am convinced that the growing conflicts in this country over race and religion and language would be profoundly reduced if our children were able to learn and play alongside classmates who were different from themselves and if they regularly encountered teachers and leaders of color in their schools.”
How many of the Obama administration’s education policies will continue into a Trump administration is an open question, but, with his passionate defense of equity and public education, King is betting that his words will remain with people even if some of his policies do not.
(SOURCE: USA TODAY) WASHINGTON — President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act into law Thursday, largely replacing the No Child Left Behind Act that was a hallmark of his predecessor’s domestic agenda.
Lawmakers have touted the new law as a more flexible approach to student testing and school accountability, once again making states responsible for fixing under-performing schools.
Here’s what’s changed in the two laws:
The Problem
No Child Left Behind:
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, was a civil rights law that provided education funding to states and attempted to ensure that every student had access to an education. The law would expire every three to five years, requiring Congress to reauthorize it. In 2001, Democrats and Republicans in Congress became increasingly concerned by the growing achievement gaps that left poor and minority students in failing schools, and devised a system of testing and accountability to fix it. “The fundamental principle of this bill is that every child can learn, we expect every child to learn, and you must show us whether or not every child is learning,” President George W. Bush said in the Jan. 8, 2002, signing ceremony.
Every Student Succeeds Act: The new law tries to preserve the spirit of No Child Left Behind, while fixing what were widely perceived as its one-size-fits-all approach. “The goals of No Child Left Behind, the predecessor of this law, were the right ones: High standards. Accountability. Closing the achievement gap,” Obama said Thursday. “But in practice, it often fell short. It didn’t always consider the specific needs of each community. It led to too much testing during classroom time. It often forced schools and school districts into cookie-cutter reforms that didn’t always produce the kinds of results that we wanted to see.”
Testing
No Child Left Behind: The law required states to test students on math and English every year in the third through eighth grades, and then again once in high school. It also required at least one science test in elementary, middle and high school.
Every Student Succeeds Act: States must still test students in the same grades but will now have flexibility in how and when they administer those tests. For example, a single annual assessment can be broken down into a series of smaller tests. There’s also an emphasis on finding different kinds of tests that more accurately measure what students are learning.
Common Core
No Child Left Behind: The 2002 law did not address the Common Core standards specifically, since they didn’t emerge until later that decade. And they emerged not from the federal government, but from a state-led effort to define what the states should be teaching and how it should be taught. But the Obama administration did play a role in expanding Common Core through waivers to No Child Left Behind requirements that encouraged states to adopt the standards.
Every Student Succeeds Act: The new law allows states to adopt Common Core but does not require it. In fact, it requires the Education Department to remain neutral: “The Secretary shall not attempt to influence, incentivize, or coerce State adoption of the Common Core State Standards developed under the Common Core State Standards Initiative or any other academic standards common to a significant number of States, or assessments tied to such standard.”
Accountability
No Child Left Behind: One of the fundamental principles of the 2002 law — indeed, the principle that gave the law its name — was that schools had to improve the performance of all students. To do that, it required school districts to break out test scores and other measures for minority subgroups to make sure they were making progress each year. In practice, many states found that goal to be unrealistic and got around them by either creating “super subgroups” that lumped all disadvantaged students together, or changing to more subjective measures like parent/teacher involvement.
Every Student Succeeds Act: The new law leaves accountability goals almost entirely up to the states. States must submit their accountability plans to the Department of Education, which still has a limited oversight role. And there are “guardrails” defining broadly what the accountability goals need to include, and test scores and graduation rates must be given “much greater weight” than the more subjective measures.
Remedies
No Child Left Behind: States that wanted their fair share of federal funding were required to fix schools that failed to improve test scores adequately. Those “interventions” started out with softer measures, but after five years the school had a limited number of dire choices: fire the principal and most of the staff, convert to a charter school, lengthen the school day or year, or close down the school entirely.
Every Student Succeeds Act: The new law is much more specific about which schools need intervention but much less specific on what those interventions should be. Schools at the bottom 5% of assessment scores (as defined by the state), high schools that graduate less than 67% of students, or schools where subgroups are consistently underperforming would be considered failing and could be subject to state takeover — although the law doesn’t say what the state needs to do.
Spending
No Child Left Behind: The education law sets policy, and does not spend money directly — that’s done through annual spending bills. The original law authorized up to $32 billion in spending in 2002 dollars, but Congress never spent anywhere close to that, appropriating just $23 billion in 2015.
Every Student Succeeds Act: The law authorizes the spending of $24.9 billion in 2016, again subject to the spending bill now being finalized by Congress. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that cost would grow to $25.8 billion in 2020.
Bipartisanship
No Child Left Behind: The architects of the 2002 law were on opposite sides of the Capitol and on opposite ends of the political spectrum: Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio (later the House speaker), and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. The vote on final passage was 381-41 in the House and 87-10 in the Senate. Bush signed the bill into law at a high school in Boehner’s congressional district.
Every Student Succeeds Act: The lead sponsors in the Senate were Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash, and in the House were Reps. John Kline, R-Minn., and Bobby Scott, D-Va. It passed the House 359-64 and the Senate 85-12. Obama signed it into law Thursday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
