“Every Student Succeeds” act signed into law

And I made sure Alaska’s small high schools can calculate their graduation rate appropriately.

WASHINGTON (CNS) – When President Barack Obama signed the sweeping bipartisan legislation Every Student Succeeds Act Dec. 10, he described it as a “Christmas miracle”. We can’t afford to have large numbers of people who are under-educated, who are languishing in poverty and who are stuck in low-wage jobs because they lack the skills and they lack the education. The challenge has been to figure out the right role for the federal government to do that. It replaces the 2002 No Child Left Behind education law.

The new law changes that, saying federal agencies are prohibited from incentivizing, requiring or conditioning the acceptance of federal funds based on their adoption of Common Core standards or any other set of specific academic standards. Other factors will influence the school report card, such as school climate and how many students go on to some sort of higher education. “It gives a lot of flexibility and control back to the states”. It will provide children with more access to high-quality preschools, which will provide them with a strong start in their education.

And that is why I’m glad this final bill includes the text of an amendment that I offered with Senator Cory Booker to ensure that states address the 1,200 high schools in the United States where fewer than two-thirds of students graduate every year. We can’t just turn our backs.

“States with waivers had to be even more focused on federal accountability benchmarks”, she said.

Jordan Matsudaira is an economist who studies the impact of education and labor market policies and institutions on the outcomes of low-income Americans.

Rhodes said with the new change, teachers’ success won’t be determined by their students’ scores. Teachers complained they spent more time preparing students to pass tests, instead of actually learning.

The Atlantic is one of the news outlets breaking down what exactly this means for the education system, if you want some details. NCLB brought us “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) that gave our schools 31 ways to fail and nearly no chance to succeed.

Pedro Noguera, shown in 2013, is a professor of education at UCLA and director of the Center for the Study of School Transformation.

Bloomberg expressed concerned that ESSA doesn’t do enough to replace poorly performing teachers. That’s been one of the things that has been at the root of some of the places that have had big disputes over teacher evaluations, so I think it takes a very positive step in that direction.

National civil rights groups have also been cautious about their hopes for the bill.

While No Child Left Behind is no more, some vestiges still remain. This law is more important today than it has ever been.

That conversation is expected to take a while before state reform is felt at the classroom level. Time was, conservatives were demanding accountability from public schools. This legislation was unpopular because it created a great gap among traditionally underserved students and their peers.