By Alyson Klein
(Originally published December 30, 2016)
One year ago, President Barack Obama and longtime education leaders in Congress burst through years of deadlock to pass the Every Student Succeeds Act, the first update to the nation’s main K-12 law in over a decade.
Now the law remains a work in progress, as states, districts, and a shifting cast of federal officials work furiously to prepare for its full rollout this fall.
ESSA’s architects said the law struck a careful compromise. On the one side, it moved away from what they saw as the worst aspects of the No Child Left Behind Act—the previous version of the landmark Elementary and Secondary Education Act—including what many deemed an overemphasis on standardized tests and a too-heavy federal footprint. At the same time, it kept key safeguards for historically overlooked groups of students…
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