Steven Singer, teacher in Pennsylvania, tries to figure out the meaning of ESSA. It was debated, passed, and signed. It is very long. What does the future hold?
Does it reduce the federal role in public schools? Maybe.
Does it destroy Common Core State Standards? Possibly.
Is it an improvement on previous policies? Potentially.
Will it enable an expansion of wretched charter schools and unqualified Teach for America recruits? Likely.
The problem is this – it’s an over 1,000 page document that’s been open to public review for only two weeks. Though it was publicly debated and passed in the House and Senate, it was finalized behind closed doors and altered according to secure hurried Congressional votes. As such, the final version is full of legal jargon, hidden compromise, new definitions and verbiage that is open to multiple meanings.
How one reader interprets the law may be exactly the opposite of how another construes it.
Take the much-touted contention that the ESSA reduces the federal role in public schools. Even under the most positive reading, there are limits to this freedom.
The document continues to mandate testing children each year in grades 3-8 and once in high school. It also mandates academic standards and accountability systems. However, what these look like is apparently open to the states.
For instance:
The Secretary [of Education] shall not have the authority to mandate, direct, control, coerce, or exercise any direction or supervision over any of the challenging State academic standards adopted or implemented by a State.
That seems pretty clear. The federal government will not be able to tell states what academic standards to adopt or how student test scores should be used in teacher evaluations.
But it also says that states will have to submit accountability plans to the Department of Education for approval. It says these accountability plans will have to weigh test scores more than any other factor. It says states will have to use “evidence-based interventions” in the schools where students get the lowest test scores.
That sounds an awful lot like the test-and-punish system we have now.
What if your state decides to take a different road and reject the high stakes bludgeon approach to accountability? In that case, some readers argue schools could lose Title I funds – money set aside to help educational institutions serving impoverished populations.
Will that actually happen? No one knows.
Singer admits that he doesn’t know how matters will shake out. There is much in the law that is open to interpretation. For sure, we must be grateful to buy NCLB.
But he finds another lesson:
Education needs [to be] reformed. We need to repeal the bogus policies that have been championed by the 1% and their lapdog lawmakers. We need to get rid of test-based accountability. We need to trash high stakes testing, Common Core, value added measures, charter schools and a host of other pernicious policies. We need to initiate a real anti-poverty program dedicated to attacking the actual problem with our schools – inequality of resources.
But more than any of that, we need to reform our government.
We need to find a better way to make our laws. The process that shat out this ESSA must go.
Think about it. No Child Left Behind was an abject failure by any metric you want to use. It didn’t close achievement gaps – it increased them. And the major policy of this law – annual standardized testing – remains intact in the reauthorization!
There has been massive public outcry against annual testing. Parents are leading an exponentially growing civil disobedience movement shielding their children from even taking these assessments. Everyone seems to agree that we test kids too much – even President “I’ll-veto-any-bill-that-deletes-testing” Obama.
Yet our legislators did next to nothing to fix this problem.
Instead preference was given to lobbyists and corporatists interested in making a buck off funding set aside to educate children. The focus was on smaller government – not better government. These aren’t mutually exclusive, but they aren’t exactly one-and-the-same, either.
This can’t continue if we are to keep pretending we have a representative Democracy. The voice of lobbyists must not be louder than voters. Money must be barred from the legislative process. Demagoguery must not overshadow the public good. We need transparency and accountability for those making our laws.
Until that happens, we will never have a sound and just education policy, because we don’t have a sound and just government.
Opt out remains the single greatest weapon against Reformist policy. The Reformers continue trying to find a way to give parents reasons to not fight the testing. Method of choice now appears to be moratorium.
A case in point about the confusion to reign with this law and the wording:
“The Secretary [of Education] [why is that in brackets?] shall not have the authority to mandate, direct, control, coerce, or exercise any direction or supervision over any of the challenging State academic standards adopted or implemented by a State.”
Singers response:
“That seems pretty clear. The federal government will not be able to tell states what academic standards to adopt or how student test scores should be used in teacher evaluations.”
I guess that comes under “pretty clear” because it’s not clear at all to me that the federal government will not be able to tell states . . . ” because of one word in that part of the law: “challenging”. Larry the Loophole Lawyer would recognize that for what it is. The Sec of Ed determines that a states standards aren’t challenging enough, therefore he needs to intervene and force the state to do his bidding.
Or does that section mean that the Sec of Ed doesn’t have the authority IN “the challenging [OF] State (why is that capitalized anyway, what significance does that have?) academic standards”? Can he/she assign a subordinate to do the dirty work of doing the challenging, or perhaps appoint a committee to do so?
I think it’s completely meaningless. Duncan didn’t mandate CC. He did what the federal government has and will have continue to have the authority to do, which is condition grants or funding.
“Coerce” is political language intended to appease the Republican base.
I think the Obama ed dept is horrible, and even I don’t think Duncan “coerced” anyone to do anything. 5 billion dollars over 50 states isn’t enough to “coerce” states. RttT didn’t come near to covering the (ongoing) cost of Duncan’s reforms in these states and that’s not even counting the cost of the Common Core. So, one of two things is true- state leaders can’t add and subtract and didn’t know RttT wouldn’t come near to covering the cost of Duncan’s reforms, or they knew and went along with it anyway. They went along with it because they supported it.
Duncan gave ed reformers, Republican and Democrat, in both DC and at the state level, political cover for what they wanted to do anyway.
At the practical level “guidance” on how states are supposed to interpret this law is soon to be determined by Secretary Duncan and his successor and staff, likely in the next couple of weeks, according to Politico.
The need for “guidance” is not exactly a tribute to Congress. It also provides an opportunity for some re-writing of the law via this “administrative” process.
A lot of people who have been victimized by USDE “guidance letters,” and by “waivers,” and by long appeals to get “waivers.”
The double speak from USDE is well-known. The forthcoming “guidance” may well trope in the direction of keeping as much power in USDE as possible. It is doubtful if anyone involved in creating this garbled legislation will look back… or care.
Thank you so much for writing about my article, Diane. There are an awful lot of varying opinions about what this reauthorization is going to do, and almost any of them could be correct. I’m still hoping for the best, but we need to remain vigilant. Personally, this is the first time I’ve looked so deeply into how the sausage factory works and it really turned my stomach. There’s got to be a better way to create our laws than THIS. Yuck!
Yes, Mr Singer, there are better ways to create our laws, but none of them are available to us, so just move on. I’d guess the best way forward is to take what ever is in this law and run with it. Remember, ‘it’s always better to apologize later than to ask permission in advance’.
I don’t understand why the Gov’t stepped in with the NCLB Act in the first place. Weren’t the teachers, parents, and local school boards pretty much doing what they wanted? And weren’t they doing a wonderful job, graduating well educated people ready to enter society? Then, for reasons unknown to me, the Feds – and Bill Gates & friends – stepped in to “improve” the system. That didn’t work, it seems, and was loudly criticised by the people and groups in control before. Now, it looks like the old crowd could be back in charge again, if they play there cards right. Isn’t this GOOD news??
Steve Angst
Check out this link…
http://www.publiccharters.org/press/charter-schools-step-closer-big-win-senate-passage-essa/