With No Child Left Behind one step closer to being a thing of the past, the governance of schools in other states is poised to look a lot more like California's.
On Wednesday afternoon, the House overwhelmingly passed the proposed Every Student Succeeds Act by 359 to 64. The
The bill would continue to require annual standardized testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and the results of different student groups will continue to be publicly reported. But for the most part, it will be up to states to determine what to do with those results.
California is already in the process of changing its school accountability system. As students prepared to take tests aligned with the
“California really has claimed the space that this bill now opens up,” said David Plank, a
In other words, “it catches up to where California may have already gone,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun professor of education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a member of the state’s Advisory Task Force on Accountability and Continuous Improvement. “A lot of states are looking to California.”
The Every Student Succeeds Act would replace No Child Left Behind, the much-maligned 2001 George W. Bush bill that dramatically expanded the federal government's footprint in schools by requiring regular standardized testing and tying consequences — such as restrictions on certain school funds — to results from those tests. No Child Left Behind also included a goal of 100% proficiency by 2014, which turned out to be unrealistic.
Instead of those consequences, the proposed new law would hand responsibility back to states. “It formalizes and legalizes flexibilities that we’ve already claimed,” Plank said. “It puts the rest of the country in line with what California has already been doing.”
Under the proposed law, it would largely be up to the California Department of Education, Board of Education President Mike Kirst, state Superintendent of Public Instruction
Torlakson praised the bill after its passage. "This legislation ushers in a new era in education," he said in a statement. "I'm pleased that it follows the lead of California in so many important areas, including enhancing local control and providing more flexibility to the states to set up accountability systems that look at multiple measures of success rather than placing so much emphasis on one test."
Since No Child Left Behind passed, a lot has changed. There is a broad consensus that looking at raw proficiency scores is a bad way of characterizing all the complicated things that happen inside a school. The Obama administration has acknowledged that states test their students too much. That concession follows a tumultuous period in which the federal government incentivized the use of test scores in teachers' evaluations. And states have introduced the Common Core, an issue that made controversy over testing all the more relevant to parents.
No Child Left Behind was supposed to be rewritten in 2007, but Congress stalled. As a result, in 2011, the Obama administration invited states to apply for waivers from the law in exchange for agreeing to specific education reforms, such as revamped teacher evaluations.
Duncan issued a statement of support as soon as the bill passed. "Nearly a year ago, I gave a speech setting the frame for what I believe is essential in the nation's preeminent education law," he said. "The bill that the House passed today reflects more of that vision than nearly any observer expected."
You can reach Joy Resmovits on Twitter @Joy_Resmovits.
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