| 摘要 | Editor’s note: The next president is in for a rough welcome to the Oval Office given the list of immediate crises and slow-burning policy challenges, both foreign and domestic. What should Washington do? Why should the average American care? We’ve set out to clearly define US strategic interests and provide actionable policy solutions to help the new administration build a 2017 agenda that strengthens American leadership abroad while bolstering prosperity at home.
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On December 10, 2015, President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the long-overdue reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). After NCLB passed in 2001, the center of gravity in education policy shifted from the states to Washington. The federal government began to have a hand in everything from annual testing to academic standards, which fostered broad discontent across party lines. Thus, as education became more of a national issue, it also became a more polarized one.
ESSA, heralded as “the largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter century,”1 reflects and responds to these political trends. In the new volume The Every Student Succeeds Act: What It Means for Schools, Systems, and States,2 AEI Education assembled a group of expert scholars and observers to provide a coherent, readable, and in-depth account of where ESSA came from, what it says, what will or will not change, and what it all means for schools. This guide distills selected chapters of that volume into a series of short briefs to help policymakers navigate the new law and its implications for American education.
The goal of these briefs is to introduce ESSA’s broad contours, not to provide comprehensive explanations of the law’s intricacies and ramifications. For the latter, readers will be better served by consulting the full volume. A few key takeaways:
In 2001, NCLB significantly expanded the federal government’s involvement in education by requiring increased testing and data collection, mandating student proficiency goals, and prescribing specific interventions for schools that failed to meet those goals. Beginning in 2009, the Obama administration used federal grants and waiver relief from NCLB sanctions to push states to adopt its favored educational priorities. This led to friction and discontent on both the political left and right, which created a window of opportunity for ESSA.
ESSA maintained NCLB’s broad contours but gave states more flexibility to set their own policy agendas. For example, it removed NCLB’s across-the-board school accountability system, allowing states to adopt their own methods of identifying and remedying low-performing schools. ESSA also gave state leaders significantly more autonomy to set policy on other questions such as teacher evaluation.
It will take years to fully understand ESSA’s impact, but much will hinge on two factors. The first is whether federal policymakers keep their promise to be hands-off or use ambiguities in the law to assert more authority over states. Ultimately, ESSA’s ceiling depends on whether state and local leaders maintain the status quo or take advantage of the law’s flexibility to design solutions that best suit their schools and communities.
Notes
Read the full briefs here:
“The Every Student Succeeds Act: A 101 Guide”
“From ESEA to ESSA: The Growth of the Federal Role and the Shift to Accountability”
“What ESSA Says: Continuities and Departures”
“The Case for ESSA: A Proper Balance”
“The Case Against ESSA: A Very Limited Law”
“ESSA and State Capacity: Can the States Take Accountability Seriously?” |
