Louisiana’s John White Talks Challenges and Opportunities Under ESSA
December 31, 2018
In this FutureEd interview, Louisiana Chief John White discusses the state’s participation in the U.S. Dept. of Education’s innovative assessment pilot. “Our hope is that the new assessments will create an incentive for teachers to focus on the meaning of texts, to focus on building background knowledge rather than specific skills like summarizing or finding the main idea of a text, which really do not have a strong basis in evidence of assisting students in learning to read,” White explained. White also elaborates on the challenges of ESSA’s call for innovation and how his state is handling the transition to increased state and local control.