Alyson Klein and Andrew Ujifusa report for Education Week that “U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who has been Capitol Hill’s leading Republican on education issues for years” announced that he’s retiring in 2020. Sen. Alexander was a chief architect of the bi-partisan Every Student Succeeds Act...
At Education Next, Laura Slover and Lesley Muldoon discuss the multiple priorities they have identified for states and districts as they “evolve their testing regimes” under ESSA. These include rigor, transparency, and timely results. They call for education leaders “to hold firm on these advances...
According to Shelly Conlon of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, the state’s annual school report cards won’t be released until November because of a “number of new items” added under ESSA. This includes “information on how many students go on to college, discipline numbers and...
Kevin Mahnken reports for The 74 on the findings of a new study from Education Next Editor and Harvard professor Paul Peterson and Harvard postdoctoral fellow Daniel Hamlin, which finds that “proficiency standards on state tests have grown more stringent over the past few years,...
ESSA grants states “control to determine academic standards, and Republican Ohio House of Representatives member Theresa Gavarone wants lawmakers to have the final say in what the Ohio Department of Education comes up with.” Gavarone says, “We’ve been elected by our constituents and as representatives...
The California State Board of Education adopted the state’s ESSA compliance plan “with, as expected, few changes to the draft published last month.” After a year-and-a-half of work, “most board members said they were satisfied that the document meshes with and advances the state’s larger...
Dr. Elizabeth Primas, program manager for the NNPA/ESSA Public Awareness Campaign, writes about the importance of standards under ESSA, which gives states leeway to “continue using the Common Core State Standards and/or create and adopt their own rigorous standards.” And along with the “freedom to...
Chiefs for Change released a report examining how ESSA “presents new opportunities for curriculum reform,” which can be a “powerful and underused driver of school improvement.” The report profiles work in Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington, D.C. to “create the conditions for aligned...
Education Trust’s Senior P-12 Data and Policy Analyst Allison Rose Socol authored an opinion piece on state efforts for low-preforming students in their ESSA plans. Socol raised concerns that, among the 17 plans submitted to the Dept. of Education, “many are setting expectations far too...
In The Hill, former Congressman and chair of the House Education Committee, John Kline, discussed how ESSA shifts “education authority and accountability out of Washington and back to the states, where it belongs.” He also cites Sec. DeVos’ recent comments that ESSA “essentially does away...
