‘No Child Left Behind’ voted out
7th December 2015 · 0 Comments
By Della Hasselle
Contributing Writer
Marking the first time in eight years that Republicans and Democrats were able to agree on alternatives to a long-expired piece of education reform legislation, the House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to pass the Every Student Succeeds Act.
The bipartisan K-12 education bill, which passed in the House by a margin of 359 to 64 votes, will replace and effectively overhaul the No Child Left Behind Act. That Bush-era legislation, which expired in 2007, paved the way for an increased role of federal policy in local schools and used standardized test scores as a way to hold schools accountable.
If passed by the Senate, Every Student Succeeds will reduce the scope of the national Education Department, thereby limiting federal accountability and returning greater authority of about 100,000 public schools to states and local school districts.
The Senate is expected to take up the issue by the end of December. If passed, President Barack Obama has indicated that he will sign it into law.
“The bill rejects the overuse of standardized tests and one-size-fits-all mandates on our schools, ensures that our education system will prepare every child to graduate from high school ready for college and careers, and provides more children access to high-quality state preschool programs,” Obama’s administration said in a press release.
Changes would start to take place by August, when the bill would start to void waivers from more than 40 states that excuse them from No Child Left Behind as it undoes a system that relies on federal sanctions to enforce academic progress.
States would still be required to test students from third to eighth grades in math and reading every year, and publicly report those scores by students’ income, race and disability status.
The bill mandates “evidence-based” intervention plans in schools that are largely failing to graduate students on time or educating students whose test scores are in the lowest five percent. It also requires federal Education Department approval of the plans and timelines enacted for improving struggling schools.
Under the proposal, however, the authority of the education secretary would be largely limited, and the tactics used to improve school quality would be up to states and districts.
For instance, the secretary would not be able to mandate how states decide to use benchmarks like Common Core standards or teacher evaluations. Instead, the secretary would allow states and local districts to determine their own plans of how to evaluate academic progress, including how much weight to give standardized tests and whether or not to annually evaluate teachers.
In a statement, Obama’s administration said the new bill promised to encourage “tailored interventions” for struggling students and required states to set their own “ambitious goals” to close achievement gaps.
“The bill encourages a smarter approach to testing by moving away from a sole focus on standardized tests to drive decisions around the quality of schools,” the White House’s statement said. “It also includes provisions consistent with the Administration’s principles around reducing the amount of classroom time spent on standardized testing, including support for state efforts to audit and streamline their current assessment systems.”
The bill also addresses school inequity and how education is funded. A pilot program mandated by the prospective legislation calls for weighted student funding, requiring distribution of state and local dollars based on actual per-pupil expenditures to high poverty schools.
In exchange, districts would be allowed flexibility with Title I and other federal funding to support planning and improve student achievement.
The proposal also does away with vouchers for private school educations that are federally funded, and creates a grant program for $250 million annually that would help states plan enact preschool programs for low-income, underserved young children.
In a statement, National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial said the bipartisan compromise was “eight years overdue,” and requires “statutory obligation” to address inequities amongst public schools at state and local levels.
He praised parts of the plan that call for increased access to quality early childhood education and better science, technology, engineering and math learning opportunities, as well as what he said promised to be greater transparency about school achievement.
“We are pleased that this bill maintains the right of every student to a high-quality education that is measured against college- and career-ready standards and that families will receive greater transparency about their children’s progress, as well as information about the state of their children’s schools every year,” Morial said, adding that the National Urban League had worked alongside Congress to ensure civil rights protections for vulnerable children. “In serving the new majority of students in our nation’s public schools, these critical tools and supports are necessary.”
The bill didn’t pass the House without controversy, however. Conservative Republicans claimed the bill didn’t limit federal authority narrowly enough.
“The bill contains new programs that represent new federal encroachment on parents’ and local communities’ abilities to determine how their children are educated,” the Heritage Action for America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advance conservative policy, said in a statement.
The organization bemoaned federal intervention in the form of pre-K education grant funding and other “unneeded programs,” including the new Civics Education Program and the new STEM Master Teacher Corps program.
The bill reflects “the conceit that children will only learn important topics if Washington intervenes,” the organization said.
Civil rights activists, however – including Morial – leaned the other way, lamenting that the role of the national Education Department was too restricted under the plan. Many worried that, left to their own devices, states would ignore the needs of schools serving minority and low-income students.
“Our Congressional champions fought hard for civil rights priorities in this compromise. Nonetheless, we remain deeply concerned that the bill provides states more discretionary authority while unnecessarily restricting the federal role,” Morial said. “Indeed, states advocated for greater flexibility—but when given greater control in the past they have not been strong stewards of civil rights.”
This article originally published in the December 7, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
