The President Just Signed A Bill That Will Transform Education

President Obama on Thursday signed a sweeping overhaul to the No Child Left Behind law that mandated aggressive federal involvement in the nation’s public schools over the last decade.

The chief goals of the Every Child Succeeds Act, which passed the House and Senate with overwhelming support, focuses on higher academic standards in states in order to push US schools to be on a par with worldwide competitors.

ESSA would keep the key feature of No Child: annual reading and math testing of children in grades three through eight and once in high school. But the new law encourages states to limit the time students spend on testing, and it will diminish the high stakes for underperforming schools.

Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who chairs the House’s education panel, said under the new approach, American classrooms will no longer be “micromanaged” by the Education Department in Washington. He said the goals of NCLF were the right ones – high standards, accountability and closing the achievement gap – but they fell short, not considering individual needs and implementing too much testing.

“But it has enough ambiguities in it that you could still see the door open for the secretary of education to still impact what standards states use and how schools are evaluated”, he warns.

Barber says, “State test scores do not measure the impact teachers have on students”.

Bush’s signature 2002 No Child Left Behind law required schools to make “adequate yearly progress” on standardized tests administered by states, which was used as the measure’s strict accountability system. “This legislation begins to close the opportunity gaps for students by providing a new system that includes an “opportunity dashboard” with indicators of school success and student support”.

“The governor has shared a few times he wants us to move away from the test-taking culture”, he said.

He said the new law will build on the momentum from the NCLB and “gets rid of the stuff that doesn’t work”. It becomes more of a state decision. “Under No Child Left Behind, the federal government drove everything that happened in education and it was never our conversation as a state”.

The new law won praise from Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Casselius. “I can say now with great pleasure that No Child Left Behind is now a thing of the past – it is not the education law of the United States”, Bennet said afterward in an interview.