By leaving No Child Left Behind and embracing the Every Student Succeeds Act, Congress has returned more education control to states, although the new law doesn’t boot the feds out entirely.
Annual math and reading tests will still be required by the federal government in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school, but the scores won’t determine the sum total of a school’s worth. Instead, schools will be assessed on several factors, including a nonacademic category that could be climate, parent satisfaction surveys or absentee rates.
ESSA gives states more breathing and wiggle room than No Child. The law contains fewer trip wires that trigger dire consequences. Gone is the dread “failure to make Adequate Yearly Progress,” the label that became the Scarlet Letter of education.
Based on a reform model from then-President George W. Bush’s home state of Texas, No Child adopted a test-and-punish approach. Teachers and parents complained the law reduced learning to multiple-choice questions. Eventually, lawmakers agreed, overwhelmingly passing ESSA earlier this month.
“It took them 14 years to fix this,” said Lily Eskelsen García, president of the 3-million member National Education Association. “There’s no love lost between the right and left sides of the aisle, but they both came to see that what was passed in 2002 actually corrupted kids, corrupted data, put a fear factor in our schools and sucked out the joy of learning.”
As with any major piece of legislation — ESSA numbers more than 1,000 pages — the road to final passage came with compromises and concessions. It appears the law offers everybody a little something.
For example, the law encourages charter schools that operate with a “high degree of autonomy.” It also sanctions states to develop alternative teacher prep programs outside the purview of colleges of education, and endorses residency training similar to what medical students undergo.
The law’s emphasis on alternative paths to the classroom didn’t stop traditional teacher groups from applauding it, likely because ESSA allays a critical concern of theirs: It lets states decide how to evaluate and pay teachers. (Gov. Nathan Deal still intends to pursue some form of merit pay in Georgia.)
“Educators will have a seat at the table when it comes to making decisions that affect their students and classrooms,” said Sid Chapman, president of the Georgia Association of Educators. “Not only does it reduce the amount of standardized testing in schools, but it decouples high-stakes decisions and statewide testing so students have more time to develop critical thinking while educators do what they love — inspire a lifelong love of learning.”
ESSA puts a lot of faith in states to recognize problem schools and fix them. It was the failure of states to address educational inequities that led to No Child in the first place. The federal government was frustrated with sending millions of dollars to states that consistently produced poor results, especially for low-income students and students with special needs.
But yoking high-stakes testing to stricter accountability didn’t generate more learning; it just led to more testing. (And cheating.) No Child dinged schools for the poor performance of even a single subgroup of students. That led to thousands of schools earning a failing grade, even if most students met targets.
“What passed is not a guarantee all will now be well,” said Eskelsen García. “But it means we can get away from the mandates that hamstrung us so we have a fighting chance to do something different. We hope state legislatures will listen to the people who know what they are talking about, who know the names of the students.”
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