Valerie Strauss reports that Secretary of Education John King is utilizing the drafting of regulations for the Every Student Succeeds Act to try to snuff out the opt out movement. The new regulations demand a 95% participation rate on state tests. Schools that can’t reach that target will be subject to sanctions.
Critics say he is engaging in the same federal overreach that ESSA was supposed to curtail.
Will Senator Lamar Alexander let King get away with this disregard of Congressional intent?
New Secretary of Education John King must have thought he could follow in the footsteps of his predecessor Arne Duncan and tell the states and districts what to do. Congress made it clear in the Every Student Succeeds Act that it was curtailing the Secretary’s power. King is now overseeing the drafting of new regulations to implement ESSA, and Senator Lamar Alexander–who led the effort to write ESSA–didn’t like what he saw. He gave King a strong reprimand at Senate hearings yesterday.
Here is a report from a Knoxville newspaper on some of their exchanges:
“U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander angrily accused the U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday of blatantly ignoring part of the new school reform law that Congress passed last year with overwhelming bipartisan support.
“In an unusual public scolding, Alexander told Education Secretary John B. King Jr. the department is not adhering to a key section of the law that relates to funding for low-income schools.
“Not only is what you’re doing against the law,” Alexander said during a Senate committee hearing, “the way you’re trying to do it is against another provision in the law.”
“King tried to assure Alexander the Education Department is not circumventing the law, but is merely proposing regulations to give guidance to states and local school districts. But Alexander was not convinced.
“I can read,” he said bluntly…..”
“At Tuesday’s hearing, Alexander accused the Department of Education of overstepping its authority and trying to work around a provision that says federal funding must be used to supplement state and local spending on education.
“Another section of the law requires comparable spending between Title I schools — those with large numbers of disadvantaged students — and schools that are not Title I.
The “comparability” provision has been in federal law since 1970, and Congress did not change it when the new school reform law passed last year.
“But Alexander charged the department is trying to implement new regulations that would require equal, not comparable, spending per pupil. He also accused the department of trying to dictate the methodology that local school districts must use when calculating whether funding between schools is comparable — a move he said is not allowed under the law.
“King disputed that. The department is not requiring any particular methodology, he said, but is simply trying to give schools the flexibility to measure the goal of comparable funding.
“How can you sit there and say that?” Alexander asked, arguing that the proposed regulations clearly dictate how states must go about measuring comparability.
“Alexander warned he would use “every power of Congress” to make sure the law is implemented the way it was written, even if it meant using the appropriations process to block the regulations or overturning them once they are final.
“If the department tries to force states to follow regulations that violate the law, “I’ll tell them to take you to court,” he said.”
As Peter Greene wrote, Senator Alexander took John King to the woodshed. Greene writes that Senator Alexander noted “that a December Politico story quoted Duncan saying that USED lawyers are smarter than the lawmakers. But “we in Congress are smart enough to anticipate your lawyers’ attempts to rewrite the law.””
Sandra Stotsky was deeply involved in the transformation of public education in Massachusetts from 1999-2003. As senior associate commissioner of education, she oversaw the development and implementation of curriculum frameworks and testing of entry-level teachers. Massachusetts rose to the top of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As she explains here, the Bay State did not have annual testing.
She writes:
“K-12 schools have coped with an abundance of mandated testing since the early 1990s. Worse yet, under federal guidelines, the consequences of poor student performance have in the name of accountability come to fall more on teachers than students. The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) expanded the educational-level testing mandated in the 1994 authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), mandating annual testing for reading and mathematics in grades 3-8, once in high school, and at several grade levels in science.
“The 2015 re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), called ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act), continued NCLB’s annual testing mandate. It did so in large part because of strong support from education researchers (e.g., Whitehurst, West, Chingos, Dynarski, among others, in Education Next). Yet, none provided evidence that annual testing via ESEA had significantly increased the achievement of low-income students in K-12 in both subjects. They couldn’t because there is none. Nevertheless, even though the national needle had not moved in reading at any National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)-tested grade in 50 years, ESSA punished the states with a continuation of annual testing and test-based accountability.
“A big question is why education researchers don’t look at what Massachusetts did and did not do to increase low-income student achievement. Remember, its average scores in both reading and mathematics, for grade 4 and grade 8, on NAEP tests in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015 were the highest or among the highest of all 50 states. On the one international test of curriculum-based achievement (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study—TIMSS), the state, entered as a separate country, tied with Singapore for first place in grade 8 science and was among the top six countries in mathematics in grades 4 and 8 in both 2007 and 2013. Surely, there should have been a long look at what the Bay State did, beyond its testing schedule.
“This is the testing that was done: From 1998 to 2000, testing took place in four major subjects (math, science, reading, and history) annually in grades 4, 8, and 10, or at one grade per educational level as mandated by the state’s 1993 Education Reform Act. After 2000, testing in math and reading took place annually but only at every other grade level (grade span testing) and at one grade per educational level annually in science and history until 2006, when NCLB’s annual requirements kicked in for math and reading because the tests were now ready for previously untested grades. The state’s high math and reading scores beginning in 2005 cannot be accounted for by annual testing. Nor can the state’s stunning performance in grade 8 science in 2007 or 2013.
“As the person in charge of the total revision or development of all the state’s K-12 standards, teacher and administrator licensing regulations, most teacher licensure tests, as well as criteria for professional development from 1999-2003, I have some basis for suggesting what I think likely contributed to students’ enduring academic gains in the past decade even if education researchers do not seem to want to learn what the Bay State did.
“Under my direction, the state department of education revised major documents to increase the content knowledge requirements in standards for all students, and to strengthen academically the licensure requirements for the state’s teacher and administrator corps. The results of high quality research were clear; teachers’ knowledge of the subject they teach is the only trait associated with enhanced gains in student achievement. The documents we developed during the years I was a public bureaucrat, including definitions of terms used, embedded policies approved by the field (via frequent public comment), the Commissioner of Education David Driscoll, and the Board of Education under James Peyser, chair.
“Annual testing at every grade level in math, reading, and science was not one of them. Nor was it apparently necessary for higher and enduring academic achievement in these subjects, even though ESSA froze it in for reading and math. Nor can the case be made today that annual testing improves low-income student achievement. It’s possible it may even retard achievement. We don’t know because the idea has not been explored by education researchers. Why civil rights organizations or the Gates Foundation support a policy that exists in no other country needs explanation.”
Parents Across America has called on states to take advantage of the Every Student Succeeds Act and abolish VAM.
PAA has been critical of high-stakes testing.
PAA also produced a one-page fact sheet to demonstrate the failure of value-added-measurement.
This is the ninth and final installment in a series of exchanges about the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). I wrote the questions, and David P. Cleary, chief of staff to Senator Lamar Alexander, wrote the answers.
I may have overlooked important issues. David has agreed to write a follow-up post if there are any additional questions that need explaining. I thank David Cleary, other members of the staff, and especially Senator Alexander for taking the time to explain the ramifications of the new law.
How does ESSA affect Common Core? Some says ESSA “locks in” CCSS. True or false.
Short answer: No. This one is absolutely the biggest whopper we’ve heard.
Some advocates have tried to pretend that there were no mandates to adopt Common Core, but in the same breath point with glee to how many states adopted Common Core in order to secure a waiver from the broken NCLB or a grant under Race to the Top.
States are completely, totally, 100 percent free to set their standards on their own and relegate the Common Core State Standards to history, if they choose.
Long Answer:
States do have to have academic standards in order to receive federal education funds. That’s been a federal requirement for a very long time.
Here’s what the new law requires:
States have to have “challenging State academic standards.” This requirement has been in effect since at least the 1994 Improving America’s Schools Act. But “challenging” means what the states want it to mean. The Secretary and peer reviewers are strictly prohibited from reviewing the content of state standards, as the State does not have to submit the standards for review or approval, prohibited in section 1111(b)(1)(A) under the new law.
It’s the equivalent of checking a box.
The Secretary cannot require a state to add to or delete from its standards, or interfere with state standards, as dictated by section 1111(e)(1)(B)(ii) in the new law. In section 8527(d), there is an explicit prohibition on any federal approval or certification of standards.
Under ESSA, state standards have to be aligned so that the end point of the state standards in k-12 is aligned with the entrance requirements for the public system of higher education and career and technical state standards. This seemed like a logical requirement: students and parents expect that when the student leaves high school, the student is then prepared to go on to higher education or career and technical education.
Common Core advocates saying that this “locks in” Common Core are the equivalent of the rooster taking credit for the rising of the sun. It’s pure poppycock.
There are all sorts of ways a state could set their standards under ESSA. Some will keep Common Core (whether admitting to it or trying to rebrand it), some will keep parts of Common Core and make changes in areas, some will completely abandon Common Core and adopt their own system or work together with a smaller group of states to develop something that works for them. It is purely a state decision.
What Congress eliminated were the mandates in the waivers, the incentives in the Race to the Top (and we didn’t authorize the Department to do something like Race to the Top again), and any other method of coercing or incentivizing the adoption of Common Core standards or any particular set of standards deemed “acceptable” by Washington bureaucrats. The law is clear – no officer or employee of the federal government can mandate, direct, or control a state’s standards, or condition or incentivize the receipt of any grant, contract, or cooperative agreement on the adopt of Common Core State Standards, as described in section 8526A of the new law. States can enter voluntary partnerships to develop and implement standards, but the new law states in section 1111(j) that that Secretary cannot attempt to influence, incentivize, or coerce participation in partnerships or the adoption of the Common Core.
Now it is up to states to decide what to do, without any interference from Washington. For those concerned about Common Core, the responsibility falls to them to keep an eye on what their state decides to do.
From Chairman Alexander’s perspective this is exactly what he set out to do: restore responsibility to state and local leaders what to do about educational decisions. If a state decides to move away from Common Core, they don’t have to call Washington and ask permission—they can just do it.
This is the eighth in a series of exchanges about the new federal law, the Every Student Succeeds Act. I asked the questions, and David P. Cleary, chief if staff to Senator Lamar Alexander, answered them.
What is the role of the federal Department of Education and the Secretary in the new ESSA?
Short answer:
The role of the department under the new ESSA will be significantly scaled back from the role it has had under NCLB and the waivers. The Department still has a role in ensuring compliance with the law and monitoring state implementation of state plans, but the level of authority the Department has given itself over the past 14 years is significantly scaled back. But, it is important to remember that we are in a period of transition in moving to the new law, meaning the Department will have some authority from the old law and waivers that it can exercise until new state plans are in place.
Long Answer:
ESSA makes major changes in four areas: federal conditions on state accountability systems, peer review and secretarial approval of state plans, issuing regulations, and review of waivers.
First, ESSA significantly scaled back the federal footprint in the law by eliminating the original goal of all students being ‘proficient’ by 2013-2014, the Adequate Yearly Progress requirements, and the cascading sanctions that would go into effect of a school failed to meet state goals.
Second, the new law made significant changes to the peer review process and secretarial approval of state plans. Over the past 14 years, there has been too much secrecy about the approval process of state plans, and too much interference by the Department in reviewing and approving state plans. It is the role of the Department to determine whether the state plan meets the letter of the law—not whether the plans are ambitious or aggressive or exciting enough, or if the Secretary likes the state plan.
To take a couple examples: a state must show that it has an accountability system that will measure student achievement in all schools using the same measures and includes test scores, high school graduation rates, English language proficiency, and another indicator of school quality or student success. Academic indicators have to be a majority of the factors deciding school performance—but, other than that, how much those measures weigh, or count, in judging schools is not subject to negotiation with the peer reviewers or the Secretary. For example, if the peer reviewers really think that the state should weigh state tests at 43 percent instead of the state’s plan to weigh them at 38 percent, the peer reviewers can make that observation to the state, but neither they nor the Secretary can reject a plan because they don’t like the specific weights the state picks, so long as the state complies with the rest of the law’s requirements.
States can use whatever type of accountability system they want to identify and differentiate schools. Some will create a system involving A through F ranked schools, while other states will categorize schools as Excelling, Succeeding, Watch List, and 5 Percent schools. Others may go with Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Tin. The peer reviewers and Secretary cannot make a state change its system, or enforce a certain type of system.
Most importantly, ESSA made the entire federal review system a lot more transparent. Peer review comments and communications between states and the Department need to be made public, including on the Department’s website. Peer reviewer teams must be comprised of varied individuals that include practitioners and researchers, and states are given an opportunity for a hearing and a chance to revise a plan if the Secretary rejects a state plan for not meeting the law’s requirements. Imagine the showdown between a governor or chief state school officer defending their state plan to the Secretary and his staff. We think that the increased transparency will help states regain the upper hand. The Department’s power over the past 14 years has been both the requirements (and vagueness) of NCLB and the secrecy of peer review process. We’ve changed both in this new law.
Third, as explained elsewhere, ESSA has significantly changed the ability of the Secretary to issue regulations. The new law prohibits the Secretary from dictating or defining terms in a way this is inconsistent with or outside the scope of law, as intended by Congress. The new law also prevents the Secretary from mandating new activities by regulation, and even requires the Secretary to submit certain regulations, including those regarding standards or assessments, to Congress and the public before they become final to give Congress the opportunity to comment and review those regulations.
The best example of what would be prohibited is a requirement that states adopt a teacher evaluation system. Congress explicitly did not include a requirement for states to develop a teacher evaluation system in the law, so the Secretary cannot issue regulations imposing one on the states to get approval of state plans or waivers.
Fourth, ESSA ensures that if a state wants a waiver from the new version of the law, the Secretary cannot add new conditions as part of that review. Again, the teacher evaluation requirement is the best example of something we’ve prohibited. The Secretary is also prohibited from requiring the adoption of certain school turnaround or improvement efforts for any state seeking a waiver. For new waivers, the states can ask for a waiver and the Secretary is required to approve or deny the waiver on the merits of the waiver, not create new requirements that the state has to follow to get the waiver.
Last, it’s important to remember the transition period to the new law. It will take time for states to come up with new accountability systems and state plans. The effective date for accountability systems doesn’t kick in until the 2017-2018 school year to give states time to come up with new plans and transition out of old ones. We created the timeline as such to help prevent disruption for states.
This is the seventh in a series of exchanges about the new federal law, the Every Student Succeeds Act. I asked the questions, and David P. Cleary, chief of staff to Senator Lamar Alexander, answered them.
Does the law impose any requirements on charter schools regarding funding, selection of students, financial transparency, or accountability?
Short Answer:
Sen. Alexander has been a long-time advocate of charter schools. In his last act as Secretary of Education in 1993, he wrote a letter to all of the nation’s superintendents encouraging them to look at the idea of creating charter schools like those started in Minnesota.
The Every Student Succeeds Act makes several updates to the federal public charter school program to modernize the program and ensure public charter schools are held to the same standards as other public schools. The charter school program provides federal grants to support the creation of new charter schools, and the new law is updated to also allow such grants to support the replication and expansion of high-quality charter schools. The bill also includes important changes to eliminate barriers to enrollment for some students, increase charter school financial transparency, and include charter schools in the state accountability system in the same way that traditional schools are included.
Long Answer:
Funding: The law continues support for the competitive grant program for grants to states and other state entities for the purposes of opening new, or replicating or expanding high-quality charter schools, and to provide technical assistance to improve the quality of authorized public chartering agencies (including developing capacity for and conducting fiscal oversight and auditing of charter schools). The new law also continues support for the facilities grants programs to enhance the availability of loans or bond financing for charter schools since so many charter schools are denied access to the capital budget of state or local school construction and financing. We also focus efforts at the federal level to make competitive grants to replicate and expand high-quality charter schools to try to build on their success.
Funding in the latest appropriations bill for all of these activities was $333 million.
Selection of students: The new law requires grantees to “work with charter schools on recruitment and enrollment practices to promote inclusion of all students, including by eliminating any barriers to enrollment for educationally disadvantaged students.” This language is found in section 4303(f)(1)(A)(viii)(I) of the new education law. Section 4303(f)(2)(C) requires the state’s public chartering agencies to adequately monitor charter schools in recruiting, enrolling, retaining, and meeting the needs of all students.
Financial transparency: The law made several changes to improve financial transparency of charter schools, both to ensure that public funds are being spent well, and to learn more about the disparities in funding for public charter schools compared to other public schools.
State grantees are encouraged to adopt strong authorizer practices, including increased financial transparency for charter schools. The law includes changes to increase financial transparency, oversight, and monitoring, including through financial audits. State grantees also need to focus on promoting quality charter authorizing, including through more efforts to audit charter finances and hold charter schools accountable for academic, financial, and operational efforts.
Accountability: In the new law, charter schools are treated the same as traditional public schools in the state’s accountability system. All public schools in the state are included in the accountability system that the state develops. The law explicitly requires that the law’s accountability provisions are overseen for charter schools in accordance with state charter school law.
This is the sixth in a series of exchanges about the new Every Student Succeeds Act. I asked the questions, and David P. Cleary, chief of staff to Senator Lamar Alexander, responded with answers.
How will teacher education be affected by ESSA? Does the law enable non-traditional institutions to award degrees to teachers, i.e., “graduate” schools that have no faculty with advanced degrees, like Match and Relay? Does it encourage alternative routes like Teach for America? What happened to the idea that all students should have “highly qualified teachers”?
Highly Qualified Teachers.
The new law removes the requirement that all teachers of core academic subjects be “highly qualified” as defined under No Child Left Behind. Instead, states will be responsible for ensuring that teachers meet applicable state teacher licensure and certification requirements. The requirements to be a teacher in a state will be up to that state, with no additional federal requirements.
Teacher Education
The new federal law doesn’t make changes to state laws on teacher certification or requirements for institutions of higher education. Those are decisions left up to the states.
A state can reserve up to 5 percent of the money that comes to the state under the Title II formula program for state activities related to teachers and principals.
The law does allow states to use some of the funding they receive under Title II to be used to improve teacher preparation or education within the state, but with no federal requirements or restrictions on what a state decides to do.
States are allowed use these funds in many ways. For example, they could use funds to develop teacher residency programs, where teachers simultaneously take coursework in an institution of higher education and teach alongside another teacher for at least a year. States could also use these dollars to reform teacher, principal, or other school leader certification, recertification, licensing, or tenure systems or preparation program standards and approval processes.
Additionally, a state could choose some of the funds they reserved at the state level to establish or expand teacher, principal, or other school leader preparation academies, like Relay or Match, if allowable under state law. It is a state choice, and those decisions will be made at the state level.
The bill also allows states to use federal funds to establish, improve, or expand alternative routes to certification, so programs like Teach for America can continue if they are currently allowed in a state.
But the key here is that all of these decisions are left to the state to figure out. While the new law includes lots of examples of things the state or district could do, none of them are required at the state or local level.
In Section 2101(c)(4)(B) of the new law we have a list of 20 types of things that states can do with their reservation of funds, and then a catch-all in clause (xxi) that reads:
“(xxi) Supporting other activities identified by the State that are, to the extent the State determines such evidence is reasonably available, evidence-based and that meet the purpose of this title.”
This means that the state can do pretty much whatever it wants to do with the federal funds from this program.
There is similar language in Section 2103(b)(3)(P) of the new law that allows local school districts to do whatever they want to do with their federal funds from this program.
This is the fifth installment in a series of exchanges about the Every Student Succeeds Act. I asked the questions, and David P. Cleary, chief of staff to Senator Lamar Alexander, answered them.
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My question:
How does the law affect the testing of students with disabilities? I have heard that there is a limit of 1% of students who may be given alternative assessments due to their disabilities, but far more than 1% of students have IEPs. What does the law say?
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The response:
The law allows students with the most significant cognitive disabilities to take alternate assessments aligned with alternate academic achievement standards.
The new law includes a cap on the total number of students that can take an alternate assessment aligned with alternate achievement standards. The cap is set at one percent of all students in the state, which equates to roughly 10 percent of students with disabilities. This is the same as the regulation under NCLB that has been in effect since January 8, 2004.
It’s important to remember that the overwhelming majority of students with Individualized Education Plans (IEP) take regular assessments, and do not take an alternate assessment aligned to alternate academic achievement standards.
The new law reaffirms and makes clear that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act law requires that the IEP team determine when a child with a significant cognitive disability should take an alternate assessment aligned with alternate achievement standards.
The new law also prohibits the federal government or the state from imposing a cap on a school district regarding the percentage of students who may be administered an alternate assessment. Therefore, a school district or school could administer an alternate assessment to more than 1 percent of students.
Joanne Yatvin, retired teacher, principal, and superintendent, wrote the following about the likely consequences of the new Every Student Succeeds Act. Much policy has shifted to the states, but the assumptions that undergird policy remain unchanged. Only citizens acting together can change the fundamental assumptions, by taking action in their respective states.
Yatvin writes:
The major changes in the Every Student Succeeds (ESSA) law are the shift from Federal control to state control and the removal of the rewards and punishments for schools that were used by the the Department of Education to ensure compliance. Yearly student tests will continue, but they will be chosen or designed by the states. In addition, the effectiveness of schools will be judged on more evidence than just test scores. Finally, actions to improve the performance of students in high poverty schools will be the central focus of states for the next several years. Although these changes promise better days for our public schools in the future, I still see much to be concerned about.
First and foremost, the beliefs that have dominated American education over the past twenty-some years still hold sway among decision makers and the public at large. Those beliefs were first voiced in a 1983 report by a commission created by President Ronald Reagan, titled, “A Nation at Risk.” Its central theme was that the United States’ educational system was failing to meet the national need for a competitive workforce. On the opening page the report declared, “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” And it continued with a frightening possibility: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
Like its predecessor, ESSA will operate on the same beliefs about our system of public education, and for that reason states will be inclined to identify the same goals and use similar strategies to reach them. We are not done with judging our students, teachers, and schools mainly by test scores, or believing that comparisons with other countries’ scores on international tests are meaningful. Nor, are we done with top-down decision making on what, when, and how our students should learn, in disregard of teachers’ knowledge and experience. Many state legislatures–and their constituents–will continue to believe that charter schools, on the whole, are better than public schools and move to increase them. And some of those states will continue to offer vouchers to a few students to attend private or religious schools in the belief that they are throwing life preservers to drowning children.
Can these aberrations be stopped? The only way I see is for parents, teachers, and informed citizens to strengthen their efforts to support our public schools. We need to put pressure on state legislatures to use their funds and power to make intelligent decisions for our schools. If we are silent, thinking that all is well now that NCLB is dead, the future will be no better than the past.
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