Tuesday, December 1, 2015

5 Things To Know About the Revised No Child Left Behind

5 Things To Know About the Revised No Child Left Behind:

5 Things To Know About the Revised No Child Left Behind



In the com­ing weeks, the House and Sen­ate will vote on a ma­jor over­haul of the fed­er­al edu­ca­tion law.
The fi­nal text of the Every Stu­dent Suc­ceeds Act, de­signed to re­place No Child Left Be­hind, was re­leased Monday. If a bi­par­tis­an co­ali­tion of law­makers has its way, it will be headed for the pres­id­ent’s desk be­fore the end of the year.
Next Amer­ica summed up a few high­lights of the full bill.
1. First, the ba­sics. If passed, the law would reau­thor­ize the na­tion’s Ele­ment­ary and Sec­ond­ary Edu­ca­tion Act for four years in­stead of the stand­ard five, which gives Con­gress the abil­ity to change it dur­ing the next ad­min­is­tra­tion. The move to this law would take place from 2016 to 2017, mean­ing par­tially un­der the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion and par­tially un­der the next pres­id­ent. Dozens of pro­grams would be rolled in­to a single block grant and states have more flex­ib­il­ity with how they use funds.
2. Broadly, the bill marks a roll­back of fed­er­al power. Wash­ing­ton wouldn’t have a say in teach­er eval­u­ations, a big win for both Re­pub­lic­ans and teach­ers’ uni­ons, who have balked at the idea. While states would still be re­quired to test stu­dents’ math and read­ing abil­it­ies each year between the third and eighth grades and once in high school, ex­actly what they do with the res­ults would be up to them. And al­though states would still be re­quired to ad­min­is­ter tests to at least 95 per­cent of their stu­dents, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment would not be able to set con­sequences for schools that fall be­low that mark.
3. Des­pite the weak­en­ing of fed­er­al muscle, Demo­crats and civil-rights groups have some things to be ex­cited about. States have to track how sub­groups of stu­dents—in­clud­ing Eng­lish-lan­guage learners and poor stu­dents—are do­ing, without lump­ing them to­geth­er, and identi­fy schools where dif­fer­ent sub­groups struggle.
4. After a bit­ter fight over so-called ac­count­ab­il­ity meas­ures, the fi­nal draft would still re­quire states to file plans for in­ter­ven­ing in schools where the na­tion’s most vul­ner­able stu­dents are strug­gling (see No. 3). States would have to in­ter­vene in the bot­tom 5 per­cent of their schools, high schools with gradu­ation rates be­low 67 per­cent, and schools where sub­groups are strug­gling. They, however, will get to lay out how they plan to close achieve­ment gaps. And al­though states will have to in­clude stand­ard meas­ures like per­form­ance on state tests as well as their choice of at least one new meas­ure, such as “school cli­mate,” states get to pick how much weight to give the dif­fer­ent meas­ures.
5. Com­mon Core isn’t out, but it’s not in either. States would need to pick aca­dem­ic stand­ards, but Wash­ing­ton can’t de­term­ine what those stand­ards look like. In oth­er words, one state might choose Com­mon Core and an­oth­er might go for something dif­fer­ent. What would be more defin­it­ively “out” is ty­ing teach­er re­views to how stu­dents per­form on tests.
If you’re look­ing for more de­tails, Edu­ca­tion Week has a roundup of where the bill comes down on Title I port­ab­il­ity, preschool de­vel­op­ment grants and the po­ten­tial for law­suits, here (be­hind a pay­wall).
What’s next? Votes in the House and the Sen­ate, no amend­ments per­mit­ted. As un­likely as pas­sage has seemed for years, the fi­nal bill passed through con­fer­ence with only one vote against it, from Sen. Rand Paul—a pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate who last year said, “I don’t think you’d no­tice if the whole [Edu­ca­tion De­part­ment] was gone to­mor­row.” While the pro­pos­al surely will re­ceive cri­ti­cism from both the Right and Left, it has already picked up sup­port from both con­ser­vat­ives and lib­er­als.5 Things To Know About the Revised No Child Left Behind: