Outlines of the Details of Essa

ESSA

The Every Student Succeeds Act was passed in December 2015th to replace the No Child Left Behind Act. That act had failed on multiple levels, due to conceptual and structural flaws. In particular, it came under fire for focusing teacher attention solely on tests, because the standardized tests were the means by which schools were evaluated. Schools that were disadvantaged would have a near impossible task to improve, because they would see their resources cut and best students allowed to transfer out. Basically, NCLB ran schools like a business, including the idea that a failing school could just sort of disappear. Reality was not served by NCLB, and it was panned by parents, educators, and both major political parties.

Over the course of its existence, the elements of NCLB were undermined or removed, until the ESSA was brought in to replace it altogether. At the heart of President Obama's approach to education is that there should be a role for flexibility. While NCLB touted flexibility, in practice it offered none of it. The ESSA basically replaced the federal NCLB program with a series of state-run programs, in order to provide greater flexibility at more local levels (White House.gov, 2015).

The ESSA still maintain certain elements of No Child Left Behind. In particular, one element is that schools will still be held accountable for hitting performance standards. This is one of the major contentious features of NCLB, because it oriented teachers to "teach to the test." The ESSA has the same mandates, although it allows the states to set these exact success measures, based on a loose concept of career and college readiness. The problem is that the use of mandatory testing, even if the tests different from one state to the next, is that teachers are still motivated to teach only testable material in order to improve the scores of schools, as performance evaluations are still tied to test outcomes (Wong, 2015).

Some of the measures are different, however, and not based on the test. For example, the funding is aimed at struggling schools to help them implement best practices and catch up to the other schools, whereas under NCLB the struggling schools would see fewer resources, making it much more difficult to improve. In essence, one bad year could set off a downward spiral for a school. In addition, there are fewer tests. ESSA retained the testing, but has also tried to downplay the tests as much as possible.

The ESSA only offers a loose definition of the standards a state wishes to hold schools accountable too. This might differ in theory from how NCBL worked, but ultimately each state will have some measure of literacy, numeracy and critical thinking in its exams. Some states will simply fall behind, though. This is a fault in ESSA. Where NCLB was a federal law intended to established federal standards so that all Americans were treated alike, ESSA devolves a substantial amount of power over the education system to the states, which means that states with lower resource levels or that simply do not value education will set lower standards. Such states will graduate students who are less capable. It is possible that over time a gulf will emerge between states that are implementing stringent standards and providing resources to implement those standards and the states that are doing the bare minimum. It is worth nothing that in practice, almost all states have increase their standards in recent years. Only 2 states have not, so the worst fears with respect to opening up state gaps in education have not come to pass.

There is a greater focus on preschool under ESSA as well. The NCLB Act focused on K-12, but ESSA also recognizes that education begins before the first day of class. As such, it has bolstered preschool funding to increase access and give more American children this critical leg up. The funding of preschool is a new development, and arguably one of the most positive ones, when one considers the value of education at that young age.

Another thing that ESSA has changed is with respect to teachers. NCLB argued for higher standards for teachers, but left some states unable to find enough qualified teachers. ESSA provides funding to improve teacher qualifications, which represents a positive solution to the problem of not having enough qualified teachers. Getting better teachers naturally should lead to better outcomes for students, but states need to work with the people who are already in the profession, by strengthening their skills, rather than pushing them out, which was one of the outcomes of No Child Left Behind.

One of the new ideas is the Race to the Top concept. In this, "strong incentives" are offered to states willing to enact systemic reforms that will improve teaching and learning." There has been $4 billion in funding provided for this. This was aimed at encouraging innovation by rewarding the innovators, for example applying data to improving school performance and improving school efficiency (White House.gov, 2015).