Initial Responses to the Every Student Succeeds Act

The federal government of the United States passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) on December 10, 2015. This Act, which is the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, is a wide-ranging law that essentially struck down some of the controversial mandates originally set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB—the ESEA reauthorization in 2001). It also included other provisions, including shifting the power of designing and implementing tests to state governments. The American Journal of Education staff asked members of its Senior and Advisory Boards to explain briefly their opinions on the new law. Their responses are below:

“Viewed optimistically, the new ESSA could allow more attention to the kinds of learning that really matter in today’s knowledge-based society. It allows states to expand the measures by which they track school and student performance, including students’ opportunities to engage in college and career-ready coursework and internships beyond the school walls; students’ access to educational resources and supportive school environments; and their learning of science, history/social studies, citizenship, and the arts, as well as social-emotional skills. It also allows states to choose their own forms of support and intervention for schools, which will mean the end of test-and-punish policies in at least some states. ESSA will also allow some states to develop and implement innovative assessment pilots that could reduce unnecessary testing while expanding performance-based methods that can better inform teaching and contribute to student learning. However, ESSA does not address the wide range of structural inequalities that contribute to learning and achievement gaps. This includes dramatically inequitable school funding across states, districts, and schools and the intensified segregation of students on the basis of race and socio-economic status  which have, together, created a growing number of under-resourced apartheid schools serving exclusively poor and minority students. Squarely facing these ongoing issues with much more powerful expectations for quality and equity than ESSA currently offers will be much more important than annual testing or measurement in achieving the goals of our nation’s most important education law.”

Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University

“The intention has been to help provide a common benchmark so that a citizen who finishes schooling in Montana will have as much academic credibility as a person who finishes school in Florida.

“Other countries have the assurance of this equality. Leaving it up to the states to design and interpret their own assessments means that comparable academic credibility will not be reached. We are a big and complex country, but that does not excuse us from discriminating against some citizens because of the accident of their birthplace. Someday we will have to face the fact that our system of educational inequality is among the worst in the world and is based on property taxes. If we are to overcome our inequalities and achieve the original objective of NCLB we will have to find another way to equalize educational finance.”

Stephen Heyneman, Professor (Emeritus), International Education Policy, Vanderbilt University

“ESSA reminds me of an old quip about Communism—that it’s the longest route between capitalism and capitalism. In essence, after some 15 years’ effort by the federal government to gain greater influence over states’ approaches to school improvement and educational equity, control has been returned to the states. ESSA continues the federal requirements for testing that existed under NCLB, but that had already built on most states’ pre-NCLB standards-based reforms (SBR). Given the track record of SBR at the state and federal level, ESSA testing and accountability stipulations are unlikely to generate marked improvements in equity or achievement.”

Mindy L. Kornhaber, Associate Professor, Education Policy Studies, Pennsylvania State University

“While many local and state leaders may be relieved to no longer be governed by the unworkable No Child Left Behind, replacing one harmful law with another that is only marginally better essentially diminishes the federal vision of a more equal and excellent American education.

“At a moment in our history when we confront significant economic inequalities, distressing racial tensions, increasing segregation and crucial questions about immigration, the passage of tepid legislation that addresses none of these issues is not a cause for celebration.”

Taken from an Op-Ed piece by Douglas Reed, Associate Professor of Government, Georgetown University; David Gamson, Associate Professor, Education Policy Studies, Pennsylvania State University; and Kathryn McDermott, Professor of Education and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“As the pendulum swings back to local and state control, it is important to recognize that ESSA continues to misdiagnose the problem of the root causes of school failure. In implementing this policy, state and local leaders will need to better understand how instructional change and organizational learning happen by targeting the development of teachers and administrators so that they are able to collaborate in new and authentic ways to develop instructional approaches based upon the emerging body of research on how children—particularly from diverse backgrounds and with diverse needs—learn. Perhaps more importantly, policymakers need to begin to tackle the underlying regional inequities that exist; stop blaming educators and schools for larger societal inequities; and find ways to align educational policy with other policy areas, including housing, health, and economic development. Given ESSA does not attend to these underlying issues, state and federal policy makers and educational leaders must find ways to incentivize the development of policies and programs that break down the concentration of poverty and allow students more equitable access to high quality educational opportunities through a combination of place-based investments in our urban communities and through mobility programs that allow students to move across district boundaries. Now is the time to rethink our approach to ‘failure’ and ‘improvement’ by looking at these underlying contextual issues and the ways that they impact the opportunities and outcomes of youth so that every student can truly succeed.”

Kara S. Finnigan, Associate Professor of Education Policy, University of Rochester

On how the law impacts English Language Learners: “In many ways, ESSA is a step in the right direction for English learners. First and foremost, the new law replaces the term ‘Limited English Proficient students’ with ‘English learners,’ indicating a shift away from deficit-oriented perspectives of emerging bilingual students. The law also moves language proficiency metrics from Title III to Title I and requires states to align their language proficiency and content standards, a move that is reflective of content-embedded approaches to language development. Where ESSA falls short, however, is in explicitly supporting state’s development of bilingual and dual language programs as well as in attending to capacity-building efforts specific to English learners. It thus remains to be seen how states that have little capacity and few infrastructures in place to support English learners and their teachers will be able to develop assessment and accountability plans that build on the linguistic and cultural assets these students bring.”

Megan Hopkins, Assistant Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago

“To be honest, I’m rather disappointed with the new ESSA federal law. To me, it seems like a big ‘gimme’ to Teach for American and The Broad Foundation when it comes to teacher and leadership preparation.”

Catherine Lugg, Professor of Education, Rutgers University

“Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. With that well-known premise in mind, I interpret how ESSA might impact teachers, and by extension, their students. A Quality of Worklife Survey conducted jointly by the American Federation of Teachers and the Badass Teachers Association in 2015 compiles the responses of 30,000 educators. Seventy-nine percent of the survey’s respondents disagreed with the statement ‘I am treated with respect by elected officials.’ It is no surprise that teachers might greet the new law with suspicion. Alongside teachers, I am curious how continuing annual testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school reduces ‘the burden of testing on students and teachers, making sure that tests don’t crowd out teaching and learning’ and how the continued significance of student test scores (despite the law’s important shift to include multiple measures of success for students) will alter a test-prep culture that narrows the curriculum. I am not sure how such as culture shift will be possible when the law promotes performance-based compensation for teachers and school leaders that ‘differentiates levels of compensation based in part on measurable increases in student academic achievement.’ (SEC. 2211, 4A, emphasis mine). How will the assessments be used to inform teaching practice to support student learning? Teachers in my state have yet to receive results from the Smarter Balanced assessment that was administered over 8 months ago, even though the Maine Department of Education promoted the exam as providing ‘meaningful and timely information‘ to teachers and administrators.”

Doris A. Santoro, Associate Professor of Education, Bowdoin College

“Ask yourself: why does an education bill like ESSA overwhelmingly pass in a Congress that doesn’t agree on anything? Perhaps your initial response is that this bill is really good education policy, and deserves the broad support of our Congress. Maybe the new bill is an improvement, but it’s also just as likely that something else is at work here: Federal education policy, and NCLB specifically, has often enjoyed broad support by Congress. (See, for example, the ’01 NCLB voting rolls.)

“The reasons for this are no doubt complex, but with Congress, usually electoral incentives are the best explanation for why Congress does pretty much anything. In other words, members of Congress almost always vote in ways that serve their electoral interests first and any substantive reasons for their vote are secondary or coincidental. American voters have historically not paid much attention to education policy—perhaps this is because they continue to be mostly satisfied by the schools their children attend even as they grow dissatisfied by American education more generally. The result of this paradox is that education policy made by Congress is a ‘Heads We Win, Tails You Lose’ proposition. If schools improve, Congress gets to take some credit. If schools don’t improve Congress can rely on voting Americans to blame someone else. And since most education policy doesn’t impact the children of Congresspersons (they are much more likely to attend private schools or public schools who haven’t been sanctioned under Federal education policy than the children of the average voting American) it’s a place where Congress can show America that they know how to work together without being held accountable for anything. I’m optimistic that American teachers, communities, and young people will make the best of the new law—I’m skeptical that Congress will be ever be held accountable for its ongoing weaknesses.”

John Roberts, Assistant Professor, Education Policy Studies, Pennsylvania State University

These responses were compiled by Bryan Mann and Kayla Johnson, Managing Editors of the American Journal of Education and PhD candidates in the Education Policy Studies Department at Pennsylvania State University.