The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), titled “Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), has passed the US House of Representatives and the Senate is scheduled to vote on it soon. The White House has already indicated it strongly supports the bill.
Here are some relevant links:
New York Times
Ed Week
ESSA makes several significant changes from its predecessor, No Child Left Behind, and the waivers that the Obama administration Department of Education has issued to states in the last few years (including for Colorado). Most folks seem to agree that this bill shifts decision making back to states and districts. Many aspects of this bill will require further scrutiny over the next few months. Some provisions which relate to school/district accountability and educator evaluation are worth mentioning now.
First, before getting too excited over the headlines about the feds “getting out of the business of educator evaluation,” as advocated by Obama administration NCLB waivers, keep in mind that…
1) 1. Colorado’s Educator Effectiveness Act (SB10-191) preceded the NCLB waiver process. The Colorado legislature established a requirement that teacher evaluation include student performance in state law — not as a response to the federal waiver requirements. Rather they did so to strengthen Colorado’s failed Race to the Top proposal. However, our legislature didn’t back down from those provisions even when Colorado didn’t get round one Race to the Top funding (Colorado was later funded in round two at a much lower level). The state legislature would need to change state statute for the ESSA changes in educator evaluation requirements to have an impact on Colorado districts. Federal statute wasn’t the driver for our system. That’s not the case for a number of other states.
2) 2. The NCLB “Highly Qualified Teacher” provision has had little impact in Colorado for several years; almost all districts have been meeting the 100% highly qualified or close to it for years. Colorado has established some different tools for districts to look at the equitable distribution of teachers (based on their years of experience and student performance) with associated requirements related to providing information about how they would address issues that arise in the district Unified Improvement Plan. It will be tough to determine if federal statutory revisions will have an impact on Colorado districts unless/until the state takes action.
Colorado has mostly been ahead of the federal government with respect to use of student assessment results for school/district accountability and educator evaluation. Colorado hasn’t been among the states that former federal provisions have affected because Colorado statute is actually more rigorous.
The 2016 state legislative session could provide an opportunity for the Colorado legislature to lessen requirements related to using student performance data for educator evaluation. Then again, many folks believed 2015 was going to be a big legislative session for changes in state assessment, but it took the legislature until the final days of the session to pass a compromise bill that failed to address some of the most critical issues related to teacher evaluation. It seems more likely that changes will occur during the 2017 state legislative session, once some of the dust has settled on the federal legislation, rulemaking has happened, etc.
One ESSA provision related to school and district accountability will have an impact on Colorado’s system – the requirement that states include measures other than student performance in their accountability systems. This could include student engagement, climate/culture, etc. Colorado’s school and district performance-based accountability system already complies with most other ESSA provisions – especially with the work that CDE staff have done as they’ve been updating the school and district performance framework reports currently scheduled to be released for information only in the spring of 2016.