Experts Examine U.S. Dept. of Ed’s Efforts to Enforce ESSA
October 5, 2017
In the second part in a series, Charles Barone and Dana Laurens write for Education Reform Now that, while in the first part, they “focused on ED’s [U.S. Education Department] failure to enforce ESSA guardrails that quite sensibly require state accountability system indicators be comparable and statewide,” a “second set of equally sensible and necessary ESSA requirements—that ED has also chosen to ignore—stipulates that all state accountability systems incorporate student proficiency on annual state assessments in math and English Language Arts (ELA).” But as one can see from their “summary of ESSA ‘bright line,’ statutory provisions, proficiency is a required accountability system indicator, both for all students and for groups of historically disadvantaged students, as are goals for closing proficiency gaps between the latter groups of students and their more advantaged peers.”