Obama signs No Child Left Behind rewrite into law

On Thursday, President Obama signed the “Every Student Succeeds Act” into law.

While the Every Student Succeeds Act will continue the basic testing requirements of No Child Left Behind, it will end federal efforts to tie student scores to teacher evaluations.

The new law does away with the federally dictated consequences that schools faced under No Child Left Behind that became more severe each year they failed to meet performance targets.

While proponents say the new legislation provides greater authority to state and local governments than the plan championed by Bush and Kennedy, the law maintains annual standardized testing, which has been one of the chief complaints about NCLB. Schools will now be judged on other factors including high school graduation rates, helping English language learners reach proficiency, and student access to higher-level coursework, art, music and counselors.

Reducing over-testing and providing states with the responsibility for deciding how the test results are used to measure student achievement and school success.

States will also determine how they want districts to go about turning around struggling schools.

Senator Franken also says the bill will focus on mental health and supporting STEM teaching. Since 2012, the administration has offered grants through its Race to the Top program for states that adopted strong academic standards for its students.

“My hope is that our legislature recognizes local control is important and puts the emphasis of school improvement back in the hands of teachers in the classroom, local school boards and district leadership”, said Norman Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Joseph Siano.

No Child Left Behind is no more. At least 95 percent of students are required to take standardized tests under the new law.

The Every Student Succeeds Act passed both houses with overwhelming bipartisan support. “Now we won’t have to submit a waiver to do good things for kids”, he said.

“We have already started conversations with districts across Colorado about different ways of assessing students’ mastery of the standards and adding additional components to our accountability system”, said Interim Commissioner of Education Elliott Asp.

Cato Institute education analyst Neal McCluskey writes the measure – which has disappointed many conservatives – does at least eliminate NCLB’s “uber-intrusive” onerous state test to measure students’ “adequate yearly progress”.