Reforming the “No Child Left Behind” act

If the Every Student Succeeds Act passes Congress and is signed into law as expected, it will roll back the testing requirements in the 13-year-old No Child Left Behind Act through 2020. States that fell short faced consequences, including the loss of federal education dollars.

House lawmakers showed a rare moment of bipartisanship on Wednesday, as they overwhelmingly voted to approve legislation to rewrite the No Child Left Behind education law.

“For more than a decade, Washington has been micromanaging our classrooms”, said House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-Minn.) said.

The No Child law has been due for renewal since 2007, but previous attempts to reauthorize it have gotten caught in a broader debate over the federal role in public education. Next year, the State Board of Education and the Legislature will flesh out a new school accountability and student testing system that the state funding law outlined.

The bill originally passed by the House included an amendment authored by Freedom Caucus member Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) to allow parents to exempt their children from testing requirements. The legislation would encourage states to set limits on the total amount of time students spend taking tests. In its waivers, the administration added conditions that states tie performance ratings of teachers to student test scores and that states adopt rigorous academic standards.

Murphy opposed the bill when it originally came before the Senate because it lacked civil rights guarantees that would obligate states to collect data on progress of historically underachieving student populations including minorities, non-English speakers and students with disabilities. Finally, the bill makes one of the best investments we can make in our children’s future by providing high-quality preschool to more students. “We believe numerous provisions now being considered complement our state’s policies”.

Under No Child Left Behind, schools that fail to show sufficient improvement on standardized test scores, attendance and graduation rates are labeled failing and face sanctions. If it becomes law, it will permit each state to set its own goals for districts and schools, and to determine how to measure progress in meeting them and identify and fix the worst-performing schools.

ESSA still requires states to focus special attention on the bottom 5 percent of struggling schools, especially those with the highest dropout rates.

Katko said the bill will give local and state school leaders a bigger role in forming education policy. That’s a major victory for Wisconsin Republicans who have long opposed the state’s Common Core standards. Since 2012, the administration has offered grants through its Race to the Top program for states that adopted strong academic standards for its students.

The legislation also calls for the U.S. Department of Education to study how Title I funds are allocated – seeking to address Thompson’s long-held concerns that children are put at a disadvantage based upon the population of their school district, rather than concentration of poverty.