President Obama signed ESSA into law Thursday morning. Below is a statement from State Superintendent of Public Education Randy Dorn on this bipartisan effort to do what’s right for kids.
From Randy Dorn
When President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law this morning, he put states back into the driver’s seat when it comes to education. ESSA replaces No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) enacted in 2002. And it was long overdue. I applaud Senators Patty Murray and Lamar Alexander for their bipartisan efforts to do what’s best for students.
The intent behind NCLB was a good one: to raise standards, hold schools accountable, and eliminate the achievement gap. Most states have come a long way since 2002 as a result of NCLB. But the ultimate goal of NCLB, to get every student performing at grade-level by 2014, was impossible to achieve, in practice.
Under ESSA, states can set their own goals and decide how to intervene in schools that need more support. State plans still must be approved by the Department of Education, but they have been promised more transparency in the process.
That this law was able to make it through the Congress and Senate, and be signed by the President, is a testament to strong leadership and the desire to put the interest of our nation’s students above politics. I hope our state legislators can use this as an example when they come back to Olympia in January to tackle the ongoing lack of full funding for basic education. We need leaders to do what’s right for our state’s kids.
Dorn neglects to mention that the annual testing mandate is still present in ESSA, that charter schools got millions - if not billions - of dollars more to squander, that teacher education has been handed off to unregulated for-profit outfits that will claim to be "graduate schools" yet offer nothing close to graduate-level coursework such as that found at a traditional college or university, and that kids with special needs are now investment fodder for Goldman-Sachs.
ReplyDeleteThat's right, we've got to keep charter schools out of the money-squandering business. That's our job in public education.
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