Dive Brief:
- For states, districts, and schools, the Every Student Succeeds Act's transfer of decision-making power from the federal government to the local level will require “a huge time and conceptual burden,” Michael Kirst, president of the California state board of education, tells Education Week.
- How that power will be shared is not yet clear, with questions abounding on topics like how states will serve the underperforming schools and underserved students that the law's previous iteration, No Child Left Behind, was supposed to help.
- Still, under the new law, states and districts are tasked with transforming the lowest-performing schools, but on their own terms and with interventions of their own design.
Dive Insight:
Ultimately, it all comes down to how states and districts will work together under the new law without federal mandates. With ESSA not taking effect until the fall, it may be too soon to tell — though Education Week is asking valid questions and pointing out areas that are still mandated to require attention.
For example, Education Week reports that schools and districts will have to "flag schools where historically overlooked groups of students, such as English-language learners, members of racial minorities, and students in special education, aren’t performing as well as their peers."