Responding to the Every Student Succeeds Act With the PLC at Work ™ Process. Richard DuFour
student achievement in the United States the highest in the world have clearly failed.
Since the founding of public schools, there has been a history of fierce independence. While many European nations settled on national curricula, the colonies were as independent about education as they were about governance. Despite calls for education reform from leaders such as Thomas Dewey in the late 19th century and A Nation at Risk in the late 20th century, education remained firmly within the control of local and state governments. The 21st century ushered in sixteen years of a dramatic increase in the influence of the national government on education policy, first with No Child Left Behind and then with Race to the Top. While there was a bipartisan support for the legislation, and a nearly universal pursuit of the dollars attached to it, the price of federal control ultimately exceeded its value. Thus, in December 2015, a bipartisan majority of Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed by President Obama, while Republican senators and members of congress stood behind him. This legislation appeared to turn the tide of federal control of education and a range of matters, from testing to curriculum to teacher evaluation, back to the states. In the next chapter, we consider the implications of this important law.
CHAPTER 2
The Passage of ESSA
By the time NCLB came up for reauthorization in 2007, Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who could agree on little else, were united in their dislike of the law. More and more schools were deemed failing. Conservatives were concerned about federal overreach in a matter they felt should be reserved for the states. Liberals were concerned that the NCLB provision that endorsed and funded the creation of more charter schools, many of which are run by private companies, and the inevitability of every school failing represented an attempt to abandon public education and privatize schooling. They also objected to the fact that the law was never fully funded. But despite common distaste for the law, politicians on the right and left could not agree on a plan for amending it.
As mentioned in chapter 1, the Obama administration tied approval of state petitions for waivers from NCLB sanctions to plans that reflected its agenda for education reform. This tactic only magnified the opposition of those against any attempt of the federal government to influence K–12 education.
Even though the idea of Common Core State Standards and national assessments originated with U.S. governors and chief state school administrators, conservatives disapproved of the U.S. Department of Education’s efforts to tie those initiatives to state waivers. The department’s insistence that teacher evaluation, retention, and compensation be tied to a single test that purported to demonstrate a teacher’s impact on a student’s learning was attacked by teacher unions and denounced by almost all education assessment experts.
Yet, year after year, Congress was unable to come up with an alternative to NCLB and RTTT. Democrats wanted to remove test results as the way to evaluate teacher effectiveness and guarantees that the law would protect racial minorities and children of poverty, the targets of the original ESEA in 1965. Republicans wanted states and local districts to be free to establish their own education policies with little or no federal intervention or influence (Huetteman & Rich, 2015).
Finally, in 2015, the two parties were able to agree on a compromise bill with overwhelming bipartisan support—85 to 12 in the Senate and 359 to 64 in the House of Representatives—which later became ESSA.
Democrats were pleased that states would still require schools to test all students in grades 3–8 and once in high school in mathematics, language arts, and science. They also were pleased that schools would continue to report student scores by subgroups, so student performance in general could not mask the underachievement of a particular group; states would no longer be required to use test results in evaluating teachers; and test scores would become less of a focus under the new bill (Severns, 2015).
Republicans were pleased that the new law dramatically reduced the role of the federal government in K–12 education. In a thinly disguised rebuke of former Secretary of Education Duncan, one of the major changes under the law is a reduction of the influence any secretary of education might have on policy. The secretary is expressly prohibited from the following.
■ Influencing the adoption of any particular standards
■ Impacting the nature of assessments
■ Prescribing any aspect of the accountability system
■ Advocating for specific school supports or improvement strategies
■ Prescribing any aspect of educator evaluation systems as measures of effectiveness
The federal government could no longer prescribe goals or punishments. States assumed authority for establishing their own standards, tests, goals, accountability systems, and what to do with schools that underperformed (Klein, 2016a).
ESSA is a clear departure from federal laws and regulations that extended the reach of the federal government in K–12 education.
ESSA is a clear departure from federal laws and regulations that extended the reach of the federal government in K–12 education. While NCLB required states to have academic standards and accompanying tests, and RTTT explicitly provided financial incentives for grant recipients to adopt the Common Core State Standards, ESSA categorically prohibits sanctions and penalties on matters involving standards, curriculum, assessments, and teacher evaluations. Senator Lamar Alexander, a sponsor of the legislation, said that it restored “to states, school districts, classroom teachers, and parents the responsibility for deciding what to do about improving student achievement” (Rubin, 2015). The New York Times agreed and characterized the law as a restoration of local control of schooling (Huetteman & Rich, 2015).
The Wall Street Journal described the law as representing “the largest devolution of federal control” to the states in twenty-five years (Wong, 2015). The Brown Center on Education Policy, however, bemoaned the federal retreat from U.S. classrooms and the fact that the federal government’s fifty-year effort of trying to improve educational opportunities for poor and minority students had accomplished so little (Shober, 2015). The Brown Center, part of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, notes that the timing of ESEA in 1965 was closely related to civil rights legislation, and that local states and school districts had not distinguished themselves in education policies that benefitted all students. The center is, therefore, alarmed at what it regarded as a retreat from federal responsibility that is implied in ESSA.
In essence, ESSA includes some old ideas from NCLB but combines them with improved ideas, giving the states more flexibility.
Something Old and Something New
NCLB required every state to adopt academic standards in reading, mathematics, and science. It also stipulated annual testing in reading and mathematics of all students in grades 3–8 and once in high school. Teachers were asked to administer science tests once in grades 3–5, once in grades 6–8, and once in high school. In addition, schools were required to issue an annual report card on the achievement of all students as well as subgroups, such as special education, racial minorities, English learners, and children living in poverty (Klein, 2015b).
ESSA continues the NCLB policies of annual testing and reporting but also expands subgroup reports on test scores and graduation rates to include students who are foster children, homeless, or from military families (Klein, 2016a). Gone are the federal government mandates for annual yearly progress and stipulated penalties for failure to meet proficiency targets. States are free to set their long-term achievement goals, measurements of progress, and what consequences, if any, they apply to a school for poor performance.
Gone too is the idea that governments should determine a school’s failure or success solely from student performance on a single comprehensive test. Under ESSA, states can opt to administer shorter-interim assessments throughout the year that result in a single score rather than one comprehensive test. They also can choose to substitute nationally recognized tests, such as the SAT or ACT, for their high school state