This is the third in a series of exchanges with the staff of Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. David P. Cleary, chief of staff, responded to my questions.
What about the bottom 5% of schools by test scores? There is always a bottom 5%. Close them and another group will be the bottom 5%. What does the law say about the way these schools are treated?
States are required to identify the lowest performing 5 percent of schools every 3 years, based on the state’s individual accountability system. From there, a state will decide what to do about helping those schools improve. We ended the NCLB model of prescribing one-size-fits all solutions to apply to poorly performing schools, and we ended the requirement that states determine which schools are poorly performing based just on the federally required tests.
ESSA does not require states to close the schools in the 5 percent category, or convert them to charters, or fire the teachers or the principal, or any of the sanctions required under NCLB. States will now have the flexibility to determine what to do about these schools. In fact, the law explicitly prohibits the Secretary from specifying how states identify the bottom 5 percent of schools and any school improvement strategy or activity that a state or school district uses to improve those schools in section 1111(e)(1)(B)(iii)(V) and (VI) of the new law. Some states will choose to keep the existing types of sanctions, others will take entirely different approaches, but the key issue is that it is now for the state—and not Washington, D.C—to decide what to do about these schools that are struggling with improving student achievement.
Additionally, the law does not require that a new bottom 5 percent of schools be identified every 3 years. States determine what schools are identified as the bottom 5 percent, and some of these schools may still be in the bottom 5 percent 3 years later. All decisions about identification of schools are left up to the states.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“ESSA does not require states to close the schools in the 5 percent category, or convert them to charters, or fire the teachers or the principal, or any of the sanctions required under NCLB.”
Closing 5% may not be “required”, but in Pennsylvania ALEC legislators are already trying to change the School Code to have 5% of “low performing”(due to underfunding by the legislature) schools in Philadelphia turned over to charters by the state each year. http://goo.gl/L4s9Ov
Correction: The changes in the PA School Code would allow the state to turn over five Philadelphia schools per year to charters, not 5%.
The long arm of ALEC has been used to policies in many states that are beyond the reach of ESSA.
Utah has just passed a bill doing the same thing.
Roosevelt school in Gary, IN was taken over a few years ago by EdisonLeaning, a for profit charter school. There is a legal battle between the Gary Community Schools and EdisonLearning as to who is responsible for fixing up the school which is falling apart.
Here is a partial quote from The Times of NW Indiana.
GARY — As temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, Gary Roosevelt students and teachers stood outside the school Wednesday protesting a lack of heat in the building and the ability to get a quality education.
Students have rarely been in the building since they returned from the Christmas holiday. The school was dismissed a half-day on a couple of days because of problems with the boilers that heat the building. It closed Jan. 8 due to the lack of heat and again Wednesday.
The school is scheduled to be closed Thursday and Friday for development days.
The students say enough is enough.
Roosevelt senior Cary Martin said it’s really bad inside the building.
“Some of us have come to expect not being in the building because it’s too cold,” he said. “This happens every year, but it’s time for a change. This is affecting our education. This is really sad.”
He said there are also problems with water inside the building, with few water fountains working and none of the showers in the locker rooms.
“Some of my colleagues and friends stink after class because they can’t wash up,” Martin said.
Food is also an issue, along with mold and damage in the school’s band room.
In January 2014, due to the heating failures, a number of pipes burst causing the hallways near the gym to flood with up to 2 inches of water. In June 2014, Indiana American Water Co. turned off the water due to a lack of payment on the bill.
Freshman English teacher Brandi Bullock said the temperature in the hallways ranges in the 40s, while the classroom temperatures are sporadic with some warm classrooms and others freezing.
“The problem is that we can’t be in the classrooms because there are not enough warm spaces,” she said. “It used to be that the library was a warm respite from the cold but the boiler that supported that room is not working.”
Thanks, Carol, for connecting this ESSA travesty to conditions in actual children’s lives. Can we say “tragedy” when we talk about the enabling legislation, instead of waiting for Detroit, Flint, Chicago, and Philadelphia to fall under the control of “emergency managers” and “turnaround partners”?
Roosevelt School in Gary, Indiana, was “taken over” under NCLB accountability mandates. It’s those intolerable mandates that are preserved in ESSA, whoever gets to designate the target.
Democracy is suspended, dead in our cities, and if you supported vultures setting any conditions whatsoever for “state take over” of the “bottom 5%”, your fingerprints are on the knife.
It’s so easy now to click on memes attacking a Republican Governor, and wringing our hands righteously for the “bottom 5%” of kids we let slip through this crack, poisoned in flint, trying to learn in a rotting shell of an education system in Detroit.
No, you don’t have to close the schools and charterize them to suck the wealth out of a people. You keep them open, and eager entrepreneurs can sell cultural competency workshops and community engagement modules to the captives in the broken buildings, as the cities die.
And “allies” don’t see any connection? And our unions signed off on THIS particular outrage, because it is only against black and brown babies, because no legislation is perfect?
This is why Unions are important and that education NOT be turned over to the DEFORMERS. Unions, STAND UP and protect the teachers and do not play footsies with the DEFORMERS. Playing in the sandbox with the DEFORMERS does no good one bit.
I think ESSA will be a net plus for existing public schools, but that’s only because I have completely given up on DC supporting public schools.
It’s hard to celebrate something that is only a plus because our schools have no advocates at the federal level.
This is “first do no harm” and I can’t help but ask why they were doing harm in the first place.
Add this account to the shameful pictures and teacher/student reports from Chicago and Detroit. City officials should be required to have their offices in these buildings.
I think that would be an excellent idea, Laura! Those sitting in offices far above the hoi polloi need an upfront view of the hard work that goes on everyday and the ofttimes substandard conditions in which children spend their days.
I thought I read that the feds would have to review a state’s plan for fixing the bottom 5% and COULD REJECT that plan. If so, it sounds like it opens the door for King to backhandedly mandate some reformista ideas. I hope I’m wrong.
What happened to the democratic control of low-income schools, by the communities whose children are in them? Can you not even IMAGINE that equal representation is worth considering, let alone defending? Do you agree that such communities are somehow unqualified for democratic governance?
There is no justification on earth for mandating that any state will identify, target, and take control of the public schools of low-income and minority children!
Mary, the state takeover idea has failed everywhere. Ask Senator Warren why she voted for it. The Democrats on the left supported the punitive aspects of NCLB more than the Republicans, who preferred to shift the burden of punishments to the states.
Did you misinterpret my question, Diane? You’re talking about political gamesmanship, and I’m talking about the living children in Holyoke, Lawrence, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Flint. There is no circumstance under which it is tolerable to allow democratic governance for specific communities to be set aside under force of law.
No Democrats, and very few Republicans, could evade the trap you helped engineer, with the national teacher unions joining you in your demand for urgent passage.
I offered you my continuing trust, Diane, and you’ve chosen to forfeit it. Now you are demanding unity behind your allegiance to Lamar Alexander’s take over proposals. You’ve taken a very high-handed tone, calling opponents of your own position divisive, but it is you who have divided the movement.
Mary,
I have no idea what you are talking about. I have not asked anyone to fall in line behind ESSA. I did not join with the unions to urge its passage. i stringly opposed annual testing and still do. I have criticized it as have others in posts on this blog. You really won’t get far by attacking your allies. I am not your enemy.