Dive Brief:
- While the Every Student Succeeds Act has returned a good deal of power and responsibility over education to states, the U.S. Department of Education’s rule-making indicates there could still be a conflict when it comes to school accountability.
- EdSource reports the California Board of Education is designing a new school accountability system that includes nonacademic measures like school climate and student readiness for college or career, but draft regulations at the federal level would limit their impact on a whether a school is considered failing.
- What’s more, proposed federal regulations require states to offer a summative score or rank to all schools, while California would prefer to show how each school does on every metric, getting away from a simplistic, averaged grade.
Dive Insight:
The Department of Education announced its proposed rules at the end of May, offering the public 60 days to comment on the regulations. The comment period ended Monday, which means the department will have to decide which of its rules will be modified based on feedback. Many districts in New York state, in particular, are concerned about regulations that would relegate schools that don’t get at least 95% participation on state tests to the lowest-performing category of the state’s ranking system.
Conservatives who control the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate considered it a victory that ESSA limited the power of the federal government in education. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), head of the Senate’s education committee, has already said he would introduce a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to overturn any regulations that do not implement the law as Congress approved it.