After No Child Left Behind, will shift to states help or hurt students?
The Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on the Every Student Succeeds Act, which passed the House by a wide margin Dec. 2 and, among other things, shifts power from the federal government to the states.
Across Minnesota, the number of native American kids heading to college is on the rise. The reading and math scores of black students are catching up to those of whites. Low-income students, kids whose native language isn’t English, and kids with disabilities are meeting the higher expectations teachers have been setting for them.
The state – a high performer by many education measures – still faces many academic gaps between groups of students. But it is well on its way toward a goal it set in 2012 to cut those disparities in half by 2017.
Minnesota offers an example of what can happen when a state puts a priority on closing achievement gaps. It developed its approach through a waiver to some of the requirements of the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
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Now that old, and many say, broken, law is on its way out. State leaders for years have been clamoring for more flexibility in how they hold schools accountable for academic improvement – so they can prioritize and tackle issues as they see fit, not as the federal government dictates.
And Tuesday the Senate is expected to clear the long-awaited law that will finally grant them their wish. The bipartisan compromise known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) alreadypassed the House by a wide margin Dec. 2.
ESSA will leave the main tools in place to track achievement by categories such as race, income level, disabilities, and English-language learners. But a big question remains: Will this shift to empowering states help or hurt the equity agenda embedded in the original law from the 1960s civil rights era?
Historically, not all states have shown the political will to set high standards for all students, and some observers worry they’ll again feel somewhat off the hook. “There probably will be less attention now on the achievement gap: The [new] law doesn’t force that conversation the way it did under NCLB,” says Chad Aldeman, an associate partner at the nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners.
Others are more hopeful that many states will stay the course or come up with newinnovations to address achievement gaps – recognizing the impact those can have on their future workforce and economic health.
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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.
The state legislature expanded the system in 2013 to cover all public schools, not just those that receive federal dollars for low-income students. It set up regional “centers of excellence” to provide assistance to schools that were struggling. And it’s dedicating more than $180 million in state funds to the effort.
“We’re focusing on the strengths of our schools and teachers and asking them to do more,” says Brenda Cassellius, the state’s first African-American education commissioner.
So far, two-thirds of the schools are on track to meet their gap-reduction targets.
At TrekNorth, a charter middle and high school in rural Bemidje, the state goals align with a mission to prepare as many students as possible for college through participation in Advanced Placement courses.
The school has been recognized five times in the state’s annual list of Reward Schools, recently scoring an 81 out of 100 on the Multiple Measurements Rating, which takes gap reduction into account.
The more sophisticated accountability system has contributed to a healthy “pressure to hone the subtleties of the craft of teaching,” says the charter school’s executive director Dan McKeon.
Many of the low-income or native American students that make up much of the TrekNorth After No Child Left Behind, will shift to states help or hurt students? - Yahoo News:
