President Obama signs sweeping overhaul to No Child Left Behind

The U.S. Senate yesterday morning overwhelmingly passed The Every Student Succeeds Act – the successor to the 14-year old No Child Left Behind Act- and sent it on to the president for his signature.

The law will change the way teachers are evaluated and how the poorest performing schools are pushed to improve. Sen.

In a rare sign of support, Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly supported the measure in both the House and the Senate. But now No Child Left Behind has been left behind by the new federal education plan called Every Student Succeeds.

“This state loves local control, and so the hope is that we turn control over to our local school districts, our local school boards”, said Marisa Perez, the State Board of Education member representing San Antonio. “This is great example of good governance, and we are happy that the resulting legislation will allow each state the opportunity to set its own goals for success among their students”.

Don’t start applauding yet, kids. It becomes more of a state decision.

With regard to the new law’s encouragement to states to limit the time students spend testing, Rivera said department staff are working on revising the state exams given to third through eighth graders to shorten the tests while maintaining their validity.

“Wyoming is better poised than most states to immediately implement and move forward with what works best for us because we will not be back-pedaling out of a waiver”, said Balow.

School administrators say they are happy that students will be graded by their overall performance in school.

The legislation requires that test scores be broken down by race, family income and disability status.

– Reduce the often onerous burden of testing on students and teachers, making sure that tests don’t crowd out teaching and learning, without sacrificing clear, annual information parents and educators need to make sure our children are learning.

Obama praised the ESSA as a law that focuses on boosting the high school graduation rate while preparing students for college and the workforce. The excessive testing and test prep created by that accountability system narrowed the curriculum and fueled outrage among parents and teachers across New York State.

The law leaves it up to the states to develop and design their own evaluation systems.

Heather Mueller says, “It really does give some local control to not only our school district but the state”.