Secretary DeVos answered questions about ESSA plans and implementation during a June 5 appearance before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Sen. Lamar Alexander asked her whether any of the state plans she approved violated ESSA and “DeVos told him that all plans followed...
This week, Secretary DeVos returned to Capitol Hill Tuesday to appear before the House Education and Workforce Committee and discuss her agency’s priorities. CNN’s Juana Summers reports that DeVos “was pressed by Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott — the committee’s top Democrat — over whether she had approved...
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced on May 16 that Alaska and Iowa gained approval for their state ESSA plans. “I am pleased to approve these plans which comply with the requirements of the law,” said Secretary DeVos. “I encourage states to use their...
Education Week’s Alyson Klein reports that civil rights groups, led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, wrote a letter to leaders on the House and Senate education committees, “asking them to tell DeVos to stop approving ‘unlawful’ plans.” The letter states, “We...
Carolyn Phenicie reports that the Republican-controlled Congress, after a year of a “hands-off” approach, is “taking a small step back into the fight over implementing” ESSA. Included in “a report filed with the $1.3 trillion government funding bill passed last week is a reminder to states—through the federal Education...
According to EdScoop’s Patience Wait, another financial winner in the recently passed budget bill is ESSA’s Education Innovation and Research grant program, which “will receive $120 million this year, up from $100 million last year, but lower than the $180 million it once received annually...
Education Week’s Alyson Klein reports that the massive spending bill signed into law on March 23 will provide more than a billion dollars to ESSA’s Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants (a.k.a. Title IV of the law). This is an increase from $400 million in fiscal...
According to Emily Wilkins at Bloomberg Government, concern regarding federal oversight of state ESSA accountability plans “is casting a shadow over Senate negotiations on reauthorizing a higher education law.” Behind the scenes, these “concerns have seeped into the work updating the Higher Education Act (Pub....
Andrew Ujifusa reports in Education Week that in an effort to create safer schools in the aftermath of last month’s school shooting in Florida, a number of Democratic senators “want Congress to give more money to an Every Student Succeeds Act program in order to fund more counselors, trauma-informed...
In a recent letter to Secretary DeVos, members of the Congressional Tri-Caucus – made up of the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus – wrote that the Secretary and her department are approving ESSA plans that “don’t comply with...
