The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law on December 0, 205. It replaced the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This law was a facelift for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The ESSA was signed into effect by President Obama to remedy the nations low high school graduation rates. The ESSA act focuses on promoting equity in the classroom, meaning that students who are disadvantaged are given not just the same opportunities as other students, but also aid to help them advance. The ESSA act also takes a hands on, community wide approach to the education system. It includes preschools for all districts, as well as interventions in the community such as promise neighborhoods. The ESSA act picks up where the NCLB act left off. The NCLB revealed that lots of the students doing poorly were from underserved communities. However, while it revealed this, not a lot was done to change it. The ESSA takes the next step in reaching out to the community. The ESSA provides a lot more autonomy to schools. They are allowed to chose their curriculum, their teacher requirements, and how they allocate funding. However, they are still required to do formal, statewide testing that reports to the National Assessment of Education Progress statistics.
However, allowing
schools to have this autonomy makes some nervous. The Phi Delta Kappan report on ESSA expresses lots of concerns about maintaining equity. They question, One has to wonder, now that ESSA has relaxed NCLBs many federal requirements, will states take advantage of their newfound flexibility to design educational systems that better meet the needs of all children? Or, absent any real pressure from the federal government, will they make little effort to address disparities among subgroups of students? The schools newfound freedom could potentially provide great aid to in-need districts, however, do they have the resources to do so? However, a different article in Phi Delta Kappan points out that ESSA has not relinquished all control. Instead, ESSA provides a rigid flexibility (Phi Delta Kappan), allowing schools to have flexibility while the government still has a firm hand in the system. In an article written for the Phi Delta Kappan, Andrew Saultz points out that while ESSA has prompted change, it hasnt fixed the underlying issues. ESSA was written to fix the problems of NCLB, but it did not fundamentally alter the relationship between local schools and centralized offices. ESSAs goal was to fix NCLB, but it didnt fix the schools. That is the where the majority of the fault is.