AASA Overview of the Every Student Succeeds Act
Late last month, AASA’s
Policy & Advocacy team shared a summary of
the framework and preliminary call to action related to the proposal to
reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In the two weeks
that have since passed, Congress has released the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) a bipartisan, bicameral proposal to reauthorize
ESEA that reconciles the differences between the House and Senate proposals
voted on earlier this summer.
We are pleased to report that
the summary of the framework was overwhelmingly accurate in its depiction of
what would be in the actual bill. This memo is an overview of the legislation
and is designed to both inform you and support any outreach you may do to your
Congressional delegation as both the House and Senate are expected to consider
ESSA before adjourning in the middle of the month. Do not be fooled by the
similarity in format to the previous memo. While there is a lot of the same
information, there is enough new information (including further detail and
clarification) to warrant a complete read of the memo.
TOPLINE:
ESSA is a significant improvement over current law. It takes the pendulum of
federal overreach and prescription—rampant in current law—and returns autonomy
and flexibility to the state/local level/ With this flexibility comes great
responsibility, as state and local education agencies will have a much more
explicit say in the structure—and ultimate success—of their accountability
workbooks. ESSA is the epitome of compromise, reconciling differences between the
very partisan (Republican) House bill and the bi-partisan Senate bill. In
reconciling those differences, a very basic way to look at this framework is as
‘somewhere in between a very conservative House bill and the moderate Senate
compromise’. As AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech said in his press
release about the framework, “We applaud
Congressional leaders for moving such a bipartisan framework. One of the
biggest benchmarks of bipartisan legislation may be when everyone is a little
unhappy, because nobody got everything they wanted. By that metric alone, this
framework lays a solid foundation for a successful conference process.”
AASA has endorsed ESSA, which you can read about in our endorsing statement. Domenech
addressed the critical balance in ESSA, “The
federal government has a very critical role to play in federal education
policy, and that is to support and strengthen—not dictate and prescribe to—our
nation’s public schools. ESSA is the embodiment of this very policy, preserving
very important federal policy cornerstones like equity, accountability,
standards and assessments, but doing so in a way that empowers state and local
education leaders to more effectively operate the systems for which they are
responsible.” EdWeek did a great write up on
how various groups are responding to ESSA, and cited AASA Past President David
Pennington (Ponca City Schools, OK).
Timeline and Next Steps: The House of Representatives could vote as early as
this Wednesday, and the Senate could vote as early as next week. This sets up
the possibility of President Obama signing the bill into law before the end of
2015. “Next steps” are outlined in the
AASA call to action, available here.
You can read the full ESSA analaysis and overview here.