Trump Admin, State Officials “Won’t Help” California Education
July 20, 2018
The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board writes that, even though the U.S. Department of Education rejected the first two drafts of California’s ESSA plan because they were “viewed as so vague that they made it more difficult—not less—to hold schools accountable,” Secretary DeVos “pronounced herself satisfied” after some “tinkering” by state officials, approving a state ESSA plan “that continues to rely on a California School Dashboard program that measures school progress in 10 categories—some of which have nothing to do with academics.” That is “bad enough,” the board writes, but “state officials’ embrace of vagueness has also led them to discourage school districts from pursuing promising reforms that are based on academic metrics.”