House Education and the Workforce Committee Holds Full Committee Hearing on the Accountability Rules of ESSA
June 23, 2016
The House Education and the Workforce Committee held a full committee hearing focused on the accountability rules of ESSA. Testimony from Secretary of Education John King “rebutted accusations from members of the House education committee that separate proposals to regulate spending under ESSA from the U.S. Department of Education would improperly force districts to radically upend how they distribute resources and teachers.” King later clarified that the department was not dictating how districts would spend federal money. In addition to Secretary King, four others weighed in:
- Stephen Pruitt, Kentucky’s education commissioner, noted that the ESSA’s requirement for schools to receive a single score creates “an unhealthy sense of competition rather than collaboration” between schools.
- David Schuler, superintendent of Arlington Heights Schools in Illinois, pointed out that “ESSA does not require each school to be rated by a single indicator” and that “states should be allowed to create balanced accountability systems.”
- Daria Hall, vice president of The Education Trust, “pushed back against the idea that single school scores and more complex data on each school are incompatible.”
- Cassie Harrelson, a math teacher in Aurora, Colorado, “said she was unhappy that the school quality and student success indicator was getting short shrift from the regulations as far as decisions about school turnarounds.”