Education Week - January 6, 2016 - 12

INSIDE ESSA

The New Federal K-12 Law

IMPLEMENTATION

Regulatory Machinery
Beginning to Crank Up
Evan Vucci/AP

By Alyson Klein

President Barack Obama shakes hands with U.S.
Sen Lamar Alexander, R. Tenn, a co-sponsor of the
Every Student Succeeds Act. Also at the bill-signing
ceremony, from left, are Antonio Martin, a student
at Kenmore Middle School, in Arlington, Va.; Rep.
Bobby Scott, D-Va.; Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.;
and Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind.

ESSA Marks Shift
In Power Balance
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

dents, just as they do with test scores now.
The requirement for such breakdowns
may influence the kinds of factors states
end up picking, said Daria Hall, the interim vice president for government relations and communications at the Education Trust, which advocates for poor and
minority students. For example, the legislation lists teacher engagement as a possible factor, but Hall is not sure how that
would play out.
"How do you disaggregate teacher engagement by groups of kids?" she said.
"I'm not here to say right now that there
is no possible way to make that a valid
and reliable student-based indicator. But
there are real questions about how to
make that work."
But Donna Harris-Aiken, the director of
education policy and practice at the National Education Association, said that all
sorts of indicators, including bullying and
school climate factors, are incorporated in
the data collection of the Education Department's office for civil rights.
"What we've learned over the past few
years is that it doesn't make sense to look
at one or the other," she said, referring to
results and inputs. "The outcome piece isn't
coming off the table. [As for] the effort that
districts and schools are making to" work in
support of students, "they'll now get credit
for those efforts."
To be sure, there's still plenty to puzzle over inside the Beltway. It's unclear
whether the language circumscribing the
education secretary's authority will make
it more difficult politically-or even le-

gally-for the department to take a hard
line in regulating the law.
Michael Kirst, who worked on implementation of the first version of the ESEA
during President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration and is now the president of
the California state board of education,
wouldn't mind if the federal department
erred on the side of leeway for states.
"I'm at the bottom looking up now and
wanting to preserve flexibility," he said.

Loosening the Reins
The Golden State is one of just a handful that didn't participate in the Obama
administration's NCLB waiver program.
(It couldn't get on board with then-U.S.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's
teacher-evaluation vision.)
Kirst is happy to be shrugging off the
NCLB law for good, and especially to be
gaining access to federal money that the
state has had to set aside for the law's
mandatory interventions-school choice
and tutoring-which he saw as largely
ineffective.
But ESSA may not be a breeze to
implement. Kirst is already scratching his head over one new requirement,
borrowed from the Obama administration's waiver initiative, that states
turn around their bottom 5 percent
of schools. In California, that could
mean about 500 low performers-a tall
order for the state education agency, in
Kirst's view.
For state officials, embracing ESSA represents "a huge time and conceptual burden," Kirst said. "But it feels to be a step
in the right direction, so at least you're
swimming with the tide." n
Assistant Editor Andrew Ujifusa contributed to
this article.

We've got a law that will govern the federal role
in K-12 education for 10 or 20 years."
U.S. SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER, R-TENN.

Chairman, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee

12 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 6, 2016 | www.edweek.org

ongress managed to finish the hard
work of writing and passing the
Every Student Succeeds Act, but the
U.S. Department of Education's task
of regulating to carry out the new
law is just beginning.
The Obama administration has just a year
left in office. But in that time, it can help set
the course for implementation of the newest
edition of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The law will go fully into effect in
the 2017-18 school year, well after the acting
U.S. secretary of education, John King, and his
team have departed.
ESSA's regulatory process may be particularly tricky. The law seeks to strike a delicate
balance between handing power over to the
states and reining in the Education Department, on the one hand, while also ensuring
there some "guardrails" are in place to help
struggling schools and traditionally overlooked groups of students.
And plenty of weedy-but important-provisions in ESSA may be explored or clarified
through the regulatory process, such as just
at what point states must flag schools where
traditionally underperforming subgroups of
students are struggling.
It's unclear at this point how far the department can or will go in filling in the blanks for
states. The law includes new curbs on the edu-

cation secretary's authority, and it could take
some time before it becomes clear how those
provisions are going to play out politically-and
maybe even legally.
King, who took over his new duties late last
month, said that the department still has
plenty of leverage, and that equity will be a
key focus going forward.
"This new law preserves the federal levers
to withhold funds from states or put them
on high-risk [status]. And our Justice Department will be leaning in to make sure
folks honor their obligation to promote
equity," King said in a short speech addressed to the NAACP and the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce.

Restrictions on Authority
But Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the
chairman of his chamber's education committee and a lead architect of ESSA, said "there
are specific prohibitions" on the department's
authority.
What's more, he said, Congress will be
watching to ensure that regulation and implementation are proceeding as intended. He and
his Democratic counterpart, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, are planning for "at least
three major" oversight hearings on implementation over the next year.
The Education Department is wasting no
time in getting started on the regulatory

Greater Funding Flexibility
Under New Education Law
By Andrew Ujifusa

unding issues weren't often at the
forefront of the controversies surrounding the Every Student Succeeds Act as Congress forged its
way to a rare bipartisan agreement
last month. But the newly reauthorized version of the main federal K-12 law does make
significant changes in how schools can use
dollars set aside for economically disadvantaged students.
Those and other changes give states and
districts more flexibility in general-and
particularly in how they use Title I aid.
Around four dozen districts will also get
the chance to create a new funding formula,
using federal dollars, that's intended to target more money directly to students from
low-income backgrounds and other students,
like English-language learners, who may
have disadvantages.
At the same time, several highly contested
changes that were discussed during congressional negotiations-such as making Title I
money "portable" to public schools of parents'
choice, or revisions making the Title I formula
more favorable to states in the South and
West-did not make it into the final bill.

And because it is an authorization and not
an appropriations measure, ESSA does not by
itself increase or decrease federal funding levels for various programs. In addition, changes
to the administration of noncompetitive formula-grant programs like Title I won't occur
until the 2017-18 school year.
The fiscal 2016 federal budget signed by
President Barack Obama last month does include a $1.2 billion increase for the U.S. Department of Education, bringing its funding
up to about $68 billion a year. The increase
includes an additional $500 million for Title I,
the department's largest single K-12 grant
program. That raises the funding for Title I-
targeted to students from low-income backgrounds-to $14.9 billion a year.

Changes in Rules
The new law contains two potentially big
changes to the way Title I money works that
together could greatly increase state discretion over the federal funds for low-income students. The changes could also dramatically expand the freedom schools have over how that
money is used.
Under ESSA, states will receive the power
to grant waivers from the requirement that

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Education Week - January 6, 2016

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