Every Student Succeeds Act: Key Changes from NCLB

Introduction: Why NCLB Failed

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was passed in December 2015 to replace the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB had failed on multiple levels due to conceptual and structural flaws. In particular, it came under fire for focusing teacher attention solely on standardized tests, because those tests were the primary means by which schools were evaluated. Schools that were already disadvantaged faced a near-impossible task to improve: they would see their resources cut and their best students allowed to transfer out. Essentially, NCLB ran schools like a business, including the notion that a failing school could simply disappear. Reality was not well served by NCLB, and the law was criticized by parents, educators, and both major political parties.

Over the course of its existence, the core elements of NCLB were gradually undermined or removed, until the ESSA was brought in to replace it altogether. At the heart of President Obama's approach to education was the principle that flexibility should play a central role. While NCLB touted flexibility, in practice it offered very little. The ESSA essentially 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).

Core Continuities Between NCLB and ESSA

The ESSA still maintains certain elements of No Child Left Behind. In particular, schools are still held accountable for meeting performance standards. This was one of the most contentious features of NCLB, because it oriented teachers toward "teaching to the test." The ESSA carries the same mandates, although it allows states to set their own specific success measures based on a broad concept of career and college readiness.

The problem is that mandatory testing — even when tests differ from one state to the next — still motivates teachers to focus only on testable material in order to improve school scores, since performance evaluations remain tied to test outcomes (Wong, 2015). In this respect, ESSA has not fully resolved one of the central criticisms of NCLB.

Key Reforms Introduced by ESSA

Some of the changes introduced by ESSA are meaningful departures from NCLB, and not all of them are test-based. For example, funding is now directed toward struggling schools to help them implement best practices and catch up with higher-performing schools. Under NCLB, struggling schools would instead lose resources, making improvement far more difficult. In effect, one bad year could set off a downward spiral for a school. In addition, ESSA reduced the overall number of required tests. While it retained mandatory testing, the law has attempted to reduce the centrality and weight of those assessments as much as possible.

Conclusion: A Philosophical Shift in Education Policy

All told, there are several key elements of change in ESSA. The most important ones are philosophical — ESSA focuses on how to make education better, rather than instituting a competition where the disadvantaged are left even more disadvantaged in the end. Instead, ESSA focuses on building a stronger overall education system, even though it does leave some of the faults of NCLB intact. The shift from a punitive, market-driven model toward one centered on equity and capacity-building represents the law's most meaningful contribution to American education policy.

References

Ed.gov (2015). Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved April 24, 2016 from http://www.ed.gov/essa?src=rn

White House.gov (2015). Every Student Succeeds Act: A progress report on elementary and secondary education. Executive Office of the President. Retrieved April 24, 2016 from

Wong, A. (2015). The bloated rhetoric of No Child Left Behind's demise. The Atlantic. Retrieved April 24, 2016 from http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/12/the-bloated-rhetoric-of-no-child-left-behinds-demise/419688/