Two Democrats who played a key role in crafting the Every Student Succeeds Act, Sen. Patty Murray D-Wash., and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos Friday asking what her plans are for giving states guidance on implementing the law, now that Congress has scrapped a key set of regulations written by the Obama administration.
Among a lot of other things, those regulations, which dealt with the accountability portion of the law, included a “template” or application form for states to use in developing their plans. A number of states have already gotten started using the old template, posting the form on their websites for feedback. But now that Congress has scrapped the regs, that form doesn’t apply.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, questioning what the department will do after the removal of accountability regulations. The two members were “concerned about the potential chaos that will result” after the repeal of the ESSA regulations. Murray and Scott seek to “ensure stability for states” and wish to work with the secretary to “ensure the implementation process is as smooth as possible.” :Source
The Senate on Thursday voted 50-49 to block the accountability rules for the Every Student Succeeds Act created by the Obama administration.
Without the rules, the requirements for accountability and state plans will be found in the language of ESSA itself. The Obama-era accountability rules, finalized late last year, set ground rules for how schools must be rated for school-improvement purposes, specified the requirements of (and flexibility for) states dealing with high testing opt-out rates in individual schools, and outlined how states would have to handle the “school quality” indicator in accountability systems.
The rollback measure was introduced by Sen. Lamar…
By Rep. Bradley Byrne,who is in his second full term representing Alabama’s First Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. A Fairhope resident, he serves on the House Education and the Workforce, Armed Services, and Rules committees.
Much has been made recently about the new Secretary of Education, Besty DeVos, and the future of our nation’s education system. As a lifelong education reform advocate, I welcome the focus on education and the conversation about ways to improve educational opportunities for our students.
Education reform has been a key component of my career in public service. I served on the Alabama State School Board for eight years and later served as chancellor of Alabama’s two-year college system. In Congress, I am the only member from Alabama on the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
In each of these roles, I have had opportunities to visit with the teachers, support staff, and administrators that keep our schools running. I always leave these visits with a greater appreciation for the work our teachers do and the challenges they face day in and day out.
As such, I have concerns with the perception that the focus on education in America is moving away from public schools. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of students in Alabama and across the United States are in public schools. That fact is very unlikely to change.
To be clear, I support school choice efforts and remain open to finding ways to give students greater opportunities to escape failing schools. That said, we cannot lose sight of the most important responsibility when it comes to education in America: supporting public education.
My top priority when it comes to public education is to get the federal government out of the way so our teachers, administrators, and school board members can do their jobs. The heavy hand of the federal government only seems to complicate matters and takes the focus away from educating students.
For example, only about 10 percent of the funding for K-12 education is from the federal government. Yet, the Government Accountability Office found that 41 percent of the paperwork comes from the federal level. These numbers highlight the fact that Washington does more harm than good when it comes to education.
Time spent filling out paperwork and complying with federal mandates is time a teacher cannot spend working with at-risk students or planning future lessons. Sadly, many times a large chunk of the federal money is also caught up in bureaucracy and never even reaches the classroom.
In December of 2015, Congress passed, and the President signed, the Every Student Succeeds Act. This bill replaced No Child Left Behind and paved the way toward greater state and local control over education. The Wall Street Journal called this bill “the largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter-century.”
The Every Student Succeeds Act is an example of how Washington should work. After numerous hearings and debates, we arrived at a truly bipartisan bill that brought Republicans and Democrats together around a bill designed to get Washington bureaucrats out of our classrooms.
The focus now turns to the implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. Congress must work closely with the Department of Education to ensure the law is working and the burden is being lifted off our local public schools. Teachers deserve and need the flexibility to innovate and try new methods instead of being stuck in the failed, Washington-knows-best system.
So, as the public debate over school choice and charter schools continues, I want to ensure you that my top focus remains on improving public education in our country.
Ultimately, a strong, vibrant public education system is vital to our economic success and the health of our democracy.
This week, I led a group of 10 senators in introducing a resolution to rescind an Obama administration education regulation that violates the 2015 law I helped write to fix No Child Left Behind.
On Nov. 29, the U.S. Department of Education released its final regulation for implementing the accountability provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act – and the rule specifically does things or requires states to do things that Congress said in our law fixing No Child Left Behind that the department can’t do. In other words, the department’s regulation specifically violates the law. It’s not a matter of just being within the authority granted by the law. We said to the department, “You can’t tell states exactly what to do about fixing low-performing schools. That’s their decision.” This rule does that. And we said to the department, “You can’t tell states exactly how to rate the public schools in your state,” but this rule does that.
The resolution to rescind the regulation is co-sponsored by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Bill Cassidy, R-La., David Perdue, R-Ga., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., John McCain, R-Ariz., Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., and Pat Roberts, R-Kan.
This is really a question of whether you believe that the U.S. Congress writes the law or whether you believe the U.S. Department of Education writes the law. I believe under Article I of our Constitution, the U.S. Congress writes the law, and when it’s signed by the president, then that’s the law, and the regulations have to stay within it – and that is especially true when Congress has prohibited the department from doing these things the rule does.
And this isn’t a trivial matter. The whole issue around the bill fixing No Child Left Behind was to reverse the trend to a national school board and restore to states, classroom teachers and parents decisions about what to do about their children in public schools.
Teachers, governors, school boards all were fed up with Washington telling them so much about what to do about their children in 100,000 public schools. So this rule, which contravenes the law specifically, goes to the heart of the bill fixing No Child Left Behind, which received 85 votes in the U.S. Senate.
Lamar Alexander represents Tennessee in the U.S. Senate.
In last night’s speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, President Donald Trump called on Congress to “pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African American and Latino children.”
Trump said families participating in the program should be able to choose the “public, private, charter, magnet, religious, or home school that is right for them,” but he did not mention how much the program would cost or whether the money would come from existing education programs. Such details could come when President Trump sends his budget outline to Congress on March 16 or within his full budget proposal, expected in May.
Earlier this month, Politico reported that the Trump administration could pursue a “first-of-its-kind” federal tax credit scholarship program for the president’s school choice proposal. Such a program could be included in a larger tax reform bill that would only require a simple majority vote to pass the U.S. Senate. Perhaps hinting at his intentions, Trump recognized Denisha Merriweather, who was sitting in the audience last night, as someone who has benefited from a tax credit scholarship.
“As a young girl, Denisha struggled in school and failed third grade twice,” Trump said. “But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning with the help of a tax credit scholarship program. Today, she is the first in her family to graduate, not just from high school, but from college. Later this year she will get her master’s degree in social work. We want all children to be able to break the cycle of poverty just like Denisha.”
Also potentially impacting education funding is Trump’s proposal to significantly increase defense-related spending—an increase that Trump called “one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history” during last night’s speech. Trump is expected to fund the increase through cuts to other federal agencies, which could potentially include the U.S. Department of Education. More details are expected later this month.
Jason Amos is Vice President of Communications for the Alliance for Excellent Education.
(PBS NewsHour DECEMBER 10, 2015) — After years of debate, President Obama and Congress have finally agreed on a new education law. The Every Student Succeeds Act, the successor of No Child Left Behind, still requires annual testing of some students, but it does not give the federal government the power to impose penalties on underperforming schools. Alyson Klein of Education Week joins Judy Woodruff for a closer look.
This morning, August 31, 2016, the U.S. Department of Education posted the proposed supplement, not supplant rule that was sent to members of Congress and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The rule has not been formally published in the Federal Register, however once it is formally… >Read the full story here…
“Supplement, Not Supplant” Provision Ensures Federal Education Funding Provides Additional Programs, Supports, and Services to Help Schools and Students Most in Need”
Washington, DC – United States Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), along with seven other senators, urged the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to use the authority that it was given by Congress to fully enforce the “supplement, not supplant” provision in the recently-passed Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This provision helps ensure the law meets it goal of protecting the civil rights and educational opportunity for all students. The letter was signed by Senators Warren, Murphy, Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
The senators explain in their letter that the core purpose of the federal K-12 education law is “to protect the civil rights and educational opportunity for all students, especially our most vulnerable students,” and that the “supplement, not supplant” provision “is critical to ensure that states and districts spend federal education dollars to provide additional resources to low-income schools, and to not simply replace existing investments that states and school districts are already supposed to be making.”
The senators continue, “Simply put-we believe that state and local educational agencies should not use federal funds as an excuse to spend less money on low-income children…The Department has the authority and responsibility to enforce the fiscal accountability safeguards in ESSA through strong regulations and oversight, and that’s precisely what we expect to see.”
Read a PDF copy of the senators’ letter to ED here.
(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.
The Senate on Thursday voted 50-49 to block the accountability rules for the Every Student Succeeds Act created by the Obama administration.
