Education Week - January 27, 2016 - 23

Acting U.S. Secretary
of Education John B.
King, Jr. has been on
the road outlining
his priorities now that
he's at the helm of the
U.S. Department of
Education.

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ington, to the U.S. Conference of
Mayors, and to the National Action
Network, a civil rights organization
founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton,
as well as at a teacher town hall in
Philadelphia-King made clear that
he sees equity as imperative as states
craft their accountability systems in
the new ESSA era.
"ESSA presents a moment of both
opportunity and moral responsibility," King said in his Martin Luther
King Jr. Day speech to the civil rights
advocates. The "new and larger role
for states should be seen as a clarion
call in the civil rights community."
ESSA, the latest iteration of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, continues to require states
to look after their lowest-performing
schools and schools where historically overlooked groups of students,
such as English-language learners,
aren't performing well.
Overall, the revised law gives
local leaders more flexibility to realize their K-12 vision-but there are
also potential weak spots that could
stall efforts to close the achievement
gap if communities aren't careful,
King told the mayors in a separate
speech on Jan. 20.
The secretary said he's heartened
that ESSA requires states to look
beyond test scores and incorporate
other measures of student achieve-

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ment. That means states can consider
access to advanced coursework for
low-income students, access to arts
and music education, and chronic absenteeism when rating their schools.
But the law also allows states to
come up with their own set of indicators-opening the door, some civil
rights advocates fear, to metrics that
could make nearly every school look
good, or obscure gaps between lowincome and minority students and
their more-advantaged peers.
"There's an opportunity for states
to adopt accountability systems
that are equity-advancing," King
said in the speech to the mayors.
"But there's also risk those new
indicators will be used to distract
from core [questions] of whether or
not schools are delivering on their
responsibility to educate students."

Leeway on Interventions
The new law also gives states and
districts the leeway to develop their
own interventions for struggling
schools and students.
"We need to make sure that states
are aggressive and leaning forward
in trying to support the schools that
are struggling the most," he told the
mayors. "We can't allow the intervention requirements to become just a
bureaucratic compliance strategy."
He gave examples of remedies that
he thinks could make a difference,

Andrew Harnik/AP

King Puts Sharp Focus
On Equity Concerns

including early-education and wraparound services.
What's more, King said at the
teacher town hall Jan. 21 that ESSA
gives states and districts a "fresh
start" and a "much-needed do-over"
on the issue of teacher evaluation
through student outcomes. States
should work with teachers to revamp
review systems that aren't working-
and state tests don't necessarily have
to be part of the picture.
"Teachers were not always adequately engaged by policymakers
in the development of new systems,"
King said. "And when they disagreed
with evaluation systems, it appeared
to pit them against those who they
cherished most-their students. That
was no one's desire."
Earlier in the week, King hit on an
issue that many wished his predecessor, Arne Duncan, had touched
on more often: the need to better
integrate schools.
"I think this question of socioeconomic integration is bound up with
the question of resources in schools,"
King told the mayors.

Integration, he said, can help ensure that all students have access
to the same kinds of programs and
resources.
"When you go many places in this
country, it's hard to find an affluent
suburban school that isn't offering art
and music and technology," he continued. "But then two miles away, sometimes two blocks away, ... you have a
school that doesn't have any of that.
We need to see that as a community
we all have a stake in every child."

Pell Proposals
Also in talking to the mayors,
King touched on college access, another area he's said will be a priority
during his single year in office.
Students will have an extra incentive to succeed academically if they
can "walk into high school knowing
that if they do well, if they earn good
grades, they can have the opportunity
to go to higher education," he said.
On that front, the Department of
Education last week released a pair
of proposals related to Pell Grants,

which help low-income students
cover the cost of college. The proposals are designed to ensure that the
program helps more students obtain
college degrees more quickly.
But it's unclear whether the proposals-which would cost about
$2 billion in fiscal 2017-will win
approval from a thrifty Congress.
One proposal, dubbed Pell for Accelerated Completion, would extend
students' eligibility for Pell Grants
to a third semester, allowing more
of them to take courses year-round
and not stop their academic work
during the summer.
The other On-Track Pell Bonus
plan would lift the cap on the maximum grant award by $300 for students who take at least 15 credits per
semester. That would help students
stay on track to get associate degrees
in two years, assuming 60 credits for
such degrees, and to get bachelor's
degrees in four years, assuming those
degrees require 120 credits.
Assistant Editor Andrew Ujifusa
contributed to this article.

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The Future of Professional Learning
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MODERATOR
JOANNE WEISS, former chief of staff
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Education Week - January 27, 2016

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