Education Week - January 7, 2016 - Quality Counts - 5

QUALITY COUNTS 2016 | www.edweek.org/go/qc16

PRESIDENT & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Virginia B. Edwards
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Gregory Chronister

based education redesign. Even in the face of
concerns about federal overreach, it spurred a
cascade of legislation: Goals 2000, a Clintonera initiative that sought to provide states
with resources to develop content standards,
and the 1994 reauthorization of ESEA, the
Improving America's Schools Act, which introduced a federal requirement for statewide
tests and standards for the first time.
Meanwhile, states including Kentucky and
Maryland were moving toward crafting their
own accountability systems, including consequences and extra supports for schools that
failed to make progress.
The NCLB law, which passed by big, bipartisan margins, was intended to build on
that work and put some federal parameters
in place to ensure that states tested students
every year. And it expected states to take specific action in places where poor and minority
students-or the whole school-were struggling to meet achievement targets.
That law also required states to work toward a common goal for student achievement: bringing all students to the "proficient"
level on state assessments in reading and
math by the 2013-14 school year.

WIGGLE ROOM
But the law stayed in place for years without a facelift. As the deadline for bringing
all students to proficiency neared, and it became clear that few states would come close
to getting all children over that bar, the
Obama administration stepped in. It offered
states waivers from many of the mandates
of the NCLB law.
The waivers, which were in place in 42
states and the District of Columbia in fall
2015, gave states more say over some pieces
of accountability: setting student-achievement goals, pinpointing which schools
needed the most help, and intervening in
schools that had problems but weren't seriously underperforming.
But the waivers tightened the strings on
two other key accountability pieces by calling for new teacher evaluations that took
student outcomes on state tests into consideration, and standards that would get students ready for college and the workplace.

States could either opt to use the Common
Core State Standards-which are currently
in place in more than 40 states and the District of Columbia-or draw up their own,
as long as their institutions of higher education certified that the expectations were
rigorous enough to get students ready for
college and the workplace.

MANAGING EDITOR Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Charles Borst

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SETTING THE STAGE
The Obama administration billed that as
new state flexibility. But not everyone saw it
that way. In fact, all the perceived prescriptions in the NCLB law and, later, the waivers, helped trigger a big backlash-against
standardized testing, against the common
core, and ultimately, against the federal role
in accountability, said Jeff Henig, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, who focuses on education and politics.
It united some progressives with the antifederal-establishment crowd, he explained,
and ultimately put pressure on state leaders
and Congress to head in a new direction.
That political dynamic, coupled with frustration on the part of some states with the
NCLB waivers, helped shape the latest reauthorization of the federal education law
signed by President Barack Obama last
month.
Under the Every Student Succeeds Act,
states will be required to hold schools accountable for much more than just test
scores. They will have to consider at least
one factor that gets at school quality, such
as teacher engagement, student engagement, or access to and success in advanced
coursework.
What's more, the law will allow a handful of states to try out new forms of assessments, beginning in individual districts,
with the goal of going statewide. It also calls
for states to focus their turnaround efforts
PAGE 6 >

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President George W. Bush's signature of the bipartisan
No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 affirmed and
extended the priorities laid down in the decades-old,
standards-based movement to redesign education.

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Education Week - January 7, 2016 - Quality Counts

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