Senate clears major new education bill, sends it to Obama

The Senate overwhelmingly passed the bill on December 8, which would give state and local officials greater power in determining how to respond to underachieving schools.

The new Every Student Succeeds Act would prohibit the U.S. Department of Education from setting education standards and return control back to the states. As Murray said on the Senate floor yesterday, “Before I ever thought about running for elected office, I taught preschool in a small community in my home state of Washington…I’ve seen the kind of transformation that early learning can inspire in a child”.

Minnesota’s current accountability system uses a range of measures for school achievement, including how well individual student and subgroup test scores improve from year to year. Dr. Staples and the board have already been talking about what changes might be needed with the state’s accountability if the measure is passed.

Despite overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, some argue that removing No Child Left Behind does little to amend a deteriorating education system.

ESSA’s cross-party appeal stems from broad-based anger at No Child Left Behind.

The practice is known as “passing the trash”, and engaging in it now can cost school districts federal education funding because of the Toomey-Manchin measure.

“This historic legislation reduces the amount of standardized testing in schools as well as divorces high-stakes decisions from statewide testing so that students have more time to develop vital critical thinking skills and educators can get back to doing what they love – inspiring a lifelong love of learning”, Wendell Steinhauer, president of the New Jersey Education Association, said in a statement. States and districts will still be able to link scores or consider them as a factor in teacher performance reviews, but they will not be required to do so.

It also prevents the U.S. Department of Education from mandating that states adopt the Common Core academic standards, or from trying to entice them to do so.

“There is a continued commitment to high academic standards and to annual testing, but with more flexibility given to states on the establishment of those standards and administration of the assessments”, he said.

“They believe the federal government has no role at all in education”, Spearman said about the South Carolina Republicans who voted against the bill. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who called the new law a “Christmas present” to 50 million children across the country. That means it is vitally important to do all we can to make sure we target public resources in the smartest, most effective way possible. When we reached out to Seminole County Public Schools Superintendent Walt Griffin Wednesday, a spokesman for the school district says Griffin had not had a chance to read through the new bill, which is hundreds of pages long.

The bill also ends the waivers the Obama administration has given to more than 40 states, exemptions granted around the more onerous parts of No Child when it became clear that requirements such as having all students proficient in reading and math by 2014 would not be met.

“We don’t need to just look at a bubble test anymore, but that we can look at other indicators of success in schools, in school support”, he said.

But the new bill blocks the federal government from using incentives and mandates on teachers based on performance, stipulations in No Child Left Behind that were widely criticized by educators and parents. Those teachers must be educated by effective preparation programs created to meet the needs of both the schools and the students of tomorrow.

The bill includes a Franken provision to allow computerized tests that the senator said will give teachers and parents quicker and more accurate information on student progress.

No Child Left Behind expired in 2007 but stayed on the books because previous attempts at a rewrite failed.