By Dr. Elizabeth V. Primas, Program Manager, NNPA ESSA Awareness Campaign
In 1951, Langston Hughes laid bare the anxious aspirations of millions of Black people in America with his poem, “A Dream Deferred.” In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded America of the promissory note written to its citizens guaranteeing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in his “I Have a Dream” speech.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to make good on that promise by signing the Civil Rights Act into law. And in 1965, President Johnson sought to ensure equitable access to these unalienable rights by signing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law.
As a part of Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” ESEA was supposed to assist students of color in receiving a quality education, thereby helping lift them from poverty.
To date, ESEA remains one of the most impactful education laws ever ratified. ESEA established education funding formulas, guided academic standards, and outlined state accountability.
Since Johnson, presidents have re-authorized and/or launched new initiatives safeguarding the intentions of ESEA. Some of the most notable re-authorizations have been “No Child Left Behind” (2001, George W. Bush) and “Race to the Top” (2009, Barack Obama). The most recent re-authorization, the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA) was signed into law by President Obama in 2015.
In previous re-authorizations of ESEA, emphasis was placed on students’ ability to pass rigorous standards in order to proceed from one grade to the next. However, data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that a measurable achievement gap has persisted.
As education leaders review the individual state plans that have been developed and approved in keeping with the Every Student Succeeds Act, it is obvious that many states are making an attempt prioritize equity over performance. Some states have set timelines for their accountability measures, signifying the urgency of the problem, while other states continue to miss the mark by setting goals that are too distant, including the proposal of a twenty-year timetable to close the achievement gap.
I am concerned about ESSA State plans such as these, that pass the buck to future generations of educators and set the bar too low for vulnerable student populations.
In several states, schools that perform in the bottom 5% will receive funding to assist in closing the achievement gap. But, again, I wonder if we are setting the bar too low. I am not convinced that assisting schools in the bottom underperforming 5% will make a significant impact on closing the achievement gap in any city.
Still, I find hope in the new reporting guidelines outlined in ESSA. ESSA requires State Education Agencies (SEAs) and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) to develop school report cards so parents can compare which school is the best fit for their children.
District report cards must include the professional qualifications of educators, including the number and percentage of novice personnel, teachers with emergency credentials, and teachers teaching outside their area of expertise.
States must also report per-pupil spending for school districts and individual schools. Expenditures must be reported by funding source and must include actual personnel salaries, not district or state averages.
Parents must get engaged to hold legislators and educators accountable for their ESSA State Plans. Parents must also hold themselves accountable in prioritizing the education of our children. Research shows that just one year with a bad teacher can put a child three years behind. Now, think about what happens after years of neglect and lack of advocacy.
So, what happens to a dream deferred?
Parents hold tight to your dreams for your children’s futures. Be present in the school, be the squeaky wheel and don’t be afraid to demand the best for your children. Don’t stop at the classroom or schoolhouse door if you aren’t satisfied with the education your children are receiving. The race for educational advocacy is a run for your child’s quality of life.
Be the Parent Teacher Association’s (PTA) president. Be the neighborhood advisory commissioner. Be the next school board member. Be the next mayor of your city. Be on the City Council. Run for Congress. Be all that you want your children to be. Be the example.
Be Engaged.
For more information on how you can get engaged, go to www.nnpa.org/essa
Elizabeth Primas is an educator who spent more than 40 years working to improve education for children. She is the program manager for the NNPA’s Every Student Succeeds Act Public Awareness Campaign. Follow her on Twitter @elizabethprimas.
Along with the various cuts to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget proposed by President Donald Trump, the other part of Trump’s fiscal 2018 spending plan getting a lot of attention is the $1 billion the president wants to add to Title I in order to encourage open enrollment in public schools. There are a lot of questions about how that, along with many other parts of Trump’s education budget blueprint, would work. Let’s explore some of them.
First, it’s important to point out this increase isn’t necessarily and strictly a $1 billion bump for Title I. The budget says it’s an increase from the $14.9 billion that Title I grants technically get now. But ESSA gets rid of the Obama-era School Improvement Grants and instead shifts that money over to a portion of Title I money states can set aside for their own school improvement activities. That means that once Congress gets around to doing a regular fiscal year budget, Title I is already slated to rise to $15.4 billion.
So once (or if, for you pessimists out there) that happens, Trump’s proposed Title I funding increase would only be roughly $500 million…
Mick Zais, President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the No. 2 spot at the U.S. Department of Education, has some big things in common with his would-be boss, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
They’re both believers in school choice and a smaller foot-print for the federal government in K-12. They both like the idea of a slimmer bureacracy.
Democrats: Are you already missing the Obama administration’s Education Department?
Now you don’t have to go far for an Arne Duncan or John King fix. A small group of former Obama political appointees who worked to promote Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, and many of the president’s other greatest (or worst, depending on your take) edu-hits have put together a website, Education44.
Liz Utrup, who worked in the communications office during Obama’s tenure, is one of the driving forces behind the site. It also has roots in Education Post, the advocacy organization run by Peter Cunningham, who worked as a top aide to Duncan when he was secretary…
This past week over 4,200 advocates, teachers, policymakers, administrators, consultants, and board members attended the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ (NAPCS) 2017 National Charter School Conference in Washington DC.
The conference boasted over 135 sessions, which were broken into five different strands—governance, policy, leadership, operations, and instruction. Some of the “featured” topics included social-emotional learning, innovation in K-12, in-house teacher prep, the role of charter authorizers, and how ESSA will impact charter schools, to name a few.
Importantly, Tony Simmons, Executive Director for Minnesota’s High School for Recording Arts, and a board member at Education Evolving, was a co-presenter for a session on “Mission-Driven Metrics for Reengaging Opportunity Youth.”
Chartering and the Trump Administration: A Delicate Relationship Between the Two
One unavoidable topic of the conference was the Trump administration and charter schools. In the opening, all-group session, NAPCS President and CEO, Nina Rees, encouraged attendees to embrace the Trump administration’s support of charter schools. She noted that even though President Bush and President Obama had some controversial education policies (NCLB and Race to the Top), charter advocates still got behind their support of charter schools.
While Rees did not explicitly speak to the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts at the conference, NAPCS released a statement in May on the topic. In the statement, they indicated their support for his expansion of charter schools, but also expressed concern with his proposed cuts: “The proposed $54 billion in overall cuts to nondefense discretionary spending—over $9 billion coming from the Department of Education alone—would have long-lasting, far-reaching negative consequences for children, families, communities, and our country as a whole.”
Secretary DeVos Reinforces Choice and Calls for More Innovation
USDE Education Secretary Betsy DeVos spoke at the conference, despite the controversies surrounding her stances on school choice and school vouchers. In an email to the conference attendees, NAPCS explained that since the launch of the conference in 2000, “Secretaries of Education from both the Bush and Obama Administration have addressed our attendees,” and so in the spirit of “bipartisan tradition” Secretary DeVos would give an address.
In her speech, Secretary DeVos reinforced the Trump Administration’s support for school choice and allowing families to choose the school that best fits the needs of their child, “I suggest we focus less on what word comes before ‘school’ – whether it be traditional, charter, virtual, magnet, home, parochial, private or any approach yet to be developed – and focus instead on the individuals they are intended to serve.”
Additionally, Secretary DeVos’ called for conference attendees to “re-engage and recommit to the entrepreneurial spirit” of the original charter school leaders. She cautioned against “playing it safe” and indicated that somewhere over the past twenty-five years, the innovation and creativity that charters were originally intended to have has been lost. She asserted that, “Embracing more change, more choices and more innovation will improve education opportunities and outcomes for all students.”
Success Academies Receives Broad Prize
The prestigious Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools, which recognizes charter management organizations (CMO) that have “demonstrated the best outcomes, particularly for low-income students and students of color” was awarded at the conference to New York’s Success Academy. The high-performing, high-profile, and sometimes controversial CMO will receive $250,000 that must be used for college-readiness efforts.
While accepting the award, Success Academy founder and CEO, Eva Moskowitz, said, “I wanted to show what was possible for children if we were only willing to rethink, reinvent, and reimagine schooling.” She went on to announce that, later this week, Success will launch a digital platform where they can share their curriculum, training, school design, and other materials with charter schools around the country.
Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The administration would channel part of the savings into its top priority: school choice. It seeks to spend about $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools, and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.
President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have repeatedly said they want to shrink the federal role in education and give parents more opportunity to choose their children’s schools.
The documents – described by an Education Department employee as a near-final version of the budget expected to be released next week – offer the clearest picture yet of how the administration intends to accomplish that goal.
Though Trump and DeVos are proponents of local control, their proposal to use federal dollars to entice districts to adopt school-choice policies is reminiscent of the way the Obama administration offered federal money to states that agreed to adopt its preferred education policies through a program called Race to the Top.
The proposed cuts in longstanding programs – and the simultaneous new investment in alternatives to traditional public schools – are a sign of the Trump administration’s belief that federal efforts to improve education have failed. DeVos, who has previously derided government, is now leading an agency she views as an impediment to progress.
“It’s time for us to break out of the confines of the federal government’s arcane approach to education,” DeVos said this month in Salt Lake City. “Washington has been in the driver’s seat for over 50 years with very little to show for its efforts.”
The proposed budget would also reshape financial aid programs that help 12 million students pay for college.
A White House official said Wednesday (May 17) it would be premature to comment on any aspect of “ever-changing, internal discussion” about the president’s budget prior to its publication. “The president and his Cabinet are working collaboratively to create a leaner, more efficient government that does more with less of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars,” the official said.
The Education Department had no immediate comment.
The budget proposal calls for a net $9.2 billion cut to the department, or 13.6 percent of the spending level Congress approved last month. It is likely to meet resistance on Capitol Hill because of strong constituencies seeking to protect current funding, ideological opposition to vouchers and fierce criticism of DeVos, a longtime Republican donor who became a household name during a bruising Senate confirmation battle.
Asked for comment, a spokesman for Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate education committee, referred to Alexander’s response in March to the release of Trump’s budget outline. That statement emphasized that while the president may suggest a budget, “under the Constitution, Congress passes appropriations bills.”
With the dust finally settling on the passage of ESSA—the Every Student Succeeds Act—the implications are clear: The pendulum has swung. No matter who becomes our next president, we are entering an era in which the federal government is loosening its grip on public education policy. Without that backstop, the onus of school accountability will rest squarely on the states with the start of the 2017-18 school year. As a result, public and private leaders at the state and local levels will need to fundamentally rethink their roles.
This has been a long time coming. The No Child Left Behind Act, the ESSA predecessor passed by Congress in 2001, created a fairly muscular federal role in public school accountability. Through legislative authority and funding allocations, the federal government inspired a shift toward rewards and sanctions based on student assessments developed by each of the states.
The Obama administration’s Race to the Top challenge, in 2009, took things further. By offering hundreds of millions of dollars of grant funding in exchange for important but hard-to-implement state strategies, the U.S. Department of Education catalyzed higher standards; aligned assessments; stronger teacher and school accountability; better college access; classroom innovation; and a raft of efforts to support these ideas at the classroom level.
Today, 14 years after No Child Left Behind was signed into law and six years after Race to the Top—its dollars spent and scrutinized—the country has repositioned the role of the federal government in education. Despite several unknowns about the path ahead, the left and the right seem to agree that power and influence should swing from the feds to the states…
Mick Zais, President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the No. 2 spot at the U.S. Department of Education, has some big things in common with his would-be boss, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
