No Child Left Behind Out, Every Child Succeeds In

Joined by lawmakers, students and teachers in a White House auditorium, Obama praised the George W. Bush-era No Child Left Behind for having the right goals. The Republican-led Senate passed the measure in overwhelming bipartisan fashion Wednesday, and President Obama signed it into law Thursday afternoon.

Said President Barack Obama: “After more than 10 years, members of Congress from both parties have come together to revise our national education law – a Christmas miracle, a bipartisan bill signing”.

Another positive in the new law over the old is ESSA’s $250 million for preschool education, given the lasting effects pre-K has on a child’s learning, and its particular importance to the low-income children at risk of being left behind.

Dubbed as ESSA, the new legislation includes provisions that will enhance success for both students and schools. According to Politico, fellow senators and presidential hopefuls Marco Rubio and Bernie Sanders didn’t vote either; Rand Paul, who also is still running for president, voted against it. This critical legislation – which essentially replaces No Child Left Behind – gives Oklahoma education stakeholders at the state and local level the authority and responsibility they have long sought. Interestingly, this could mean an end to Common Core, a perfectly reasonable set of standards in basic courses, devised by state school officials and the nation’s governors.

Copeland said that even though a school such as Encampment K-12 achieved a rating of “exceeding expectations” in a recent State of Wyoming assessment, the district was saddled with paperwork and funding burdens because they did not meet their NCLB “adequate yearly progress” goal toward the 100 percent.

There really was a broad recognition across the ideological spectrum that No Child Left Behind was unfortunately leaving most of our students behind.

A new state test for high school juniors has not been chosen yet.

There are still federal standards that have to be met for career and college readiness, as well as testing – but states will have the flexibility to design those standards, and use additional factors on top of test scores for evaluation. Sid Chapman, president of the Georgia Association of Educators, said the major improvement over NCLB is that “educators will have a seat at the table when it comes to making decisions that affect their students and classrooms”.

“I think states are better able to understand what works in their schools”, Smucker said.

The new law also clearly specified which schools will be needing intervention.

“Most kids, when they take tests they get very aggravated”.