Obama to sign ‘No Child Left Behind’ overhaul

“It gives states the flexibility to create accountability systems that work for their students, ending the federal government’s punitive role in education”, Curbelo said on the law.

ESSA would keep the key feature of No Child: annual reading and math testing of children in grades three through eight and once in high school.

Katherine Clark, a USA representative from MA, was one of seven Democratic representatives from the House who was chosen to work with Senate members on the final version of the bill.

The President praised the bipartisanship behind this bill, “I just want to point out that it’s not as if there weren’t some significant ideological differences on some of these issues”.

While mandated testing will still be a factor in education, it will now be one of many pieces in determining student achievement. “Under this new legislation, schools, teachers and students will no longer be forced to adhere to restrictive one-size-fits-all federal mandates that do nothing to help prepare our children for college and careers”. Before signing the bill the President concluded his statement by saying, “A Christmas miracle!”

States and districts will now be responsible for coming up with their own goals for schools, designing their own measures of achievement and progress, and deciding independently how to turn around struggling schools.

The legislation reduces the federal government’s control over the nation’s public schools by transferring decision-making power back to state and local governments in areas such as school performance and accountability.

“The Every Student Succeeds Act unfortunately continues to propagate the large and ever-growing role of the federal government in our education system-the same federal government that sold us failed top-down standards like Common Core”, said Sen. Under the new legislation, states will be required to intervene to improve the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools and schools that graduate less than two-thirds of their students. This bill ends that practice and ends Common Core, allowing Oklahoma to sets standards and accountabilities for Oklahomans.

The new law is the culmination of years of lobbying by the UFT, the national teachers unions and parent groups to replace the controversial Bush-era No Child Left Behind law of 2002. While Mitchell School District Superintendent Joe Graves believes the law is an improvement over No Child Left Behind, he doesn’t expect teachers or students will feel the change’s impact. He said the legislation will allow Oklahoma to put education choice back in the hands of parents, teachers, school boards and state leaders.

“This is the biggest rewrite of our education laws in 25 years”, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday.

“That’s something that you don’t always see here in Washington”, Obama said.

Plus, States’ will now have more say on curriculum.