The landmark Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law in December, moved federal support for education past the troublesome era of its predecessor No Child Left Behind (NCLB), whose adequate yearly progress (AYP) and waiver regime had long since become a formidable frustration for state school systems.
ESSA shifts accountability for school performance back to the states and was designed to provide state education officials with greater flexibility in addressing underperforming schools. However, the bipartisan spirit with which ESSA was passed has become sorely tested as the U.S. Department of Education moved through negotiated rulemaking on implementing the new law to proposing new regulations.
Given this and other concerns, the International Literacy Association (ILA) will offer an ESSA-focused program session at 4:00 p.m. on July 9, 2016, during the ILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits in Boston. This session is specifically designed for Title I officials, school district administrators, and literacy leaders looking for guidance on how to approach ESSA implementation.
Of all the issues that have arisen since the passage of ESSA, none has proven more contentious than how to implement ESSA’s requirement that Title I funds be used to supplement not supplant state and local funding, which needs to be equal to or greater (per pupil) than the average spent in non-Title I schools in the district.
Critics of the Department of Education’s proposed regulation are concerned that it will require districts to use a verification method that shows how much they spend per student, a calculation that could extend to teacher salaries. Civil rights advocates and others have suggested the use of an expenditures test and argue forcefully that the Department of Education’s regulations must uphold the civil rights legacy of the law. But supplement not supplant is hardly the only implementation challenge presented by ESSA.
The Department of Education’s draft rule on accountability requires states to have their accountability systems in place by the 2017–18 school year and to identify schools for comprehensive and additional targeted support in that year, except for schools with consistently underperforming student subgroups, which must be identified starting in 2018–19. The time frame for submitting these new accountability plans is considered by many to be quite ambitious.
The program will open with a keynote address by Terra Wallin, Program and Management Analyst for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education in the U.S. Department of Education. The keynote will be followed by an in-depth panel discussion moderated by Alyson Klein, a contributor for Education Week. The panelists include:
- Carrie Heath Phillips, Program Director, College- and Career-Ready Standards, Council of Chief State School Officers
- Jacque Chevalier, Senior Education Policy Advisor, Minority Staff, House Education and Workforce Committee
- Nancy Veatch, 2015–2016 Teaching Ambassador Fellow, U.S. Department of Education
- Ellen Fern, Advocates for Literacy
The session will highlight important aspects of the law and set the context for areas ripe for local and state priority setting and decision making. Attendees will gain valuable insights from these key stakeholders and learn about practical strategies for state-level engagement on ESSA.
TheILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits will be July 9–11 in Boston, MA, with more than 6,000 attendees eager to cultivate new teaching practices. With over 300 sessions, including several new additions to the schedule, and the popular Preconference Institutes on July 8, the weekend is sure to be a memorable one. Learn more about what’s coming up at this summer’s conference at ilaconference.org.
Dan Mangan is the Director of Public Affairs at the International Literacy Association.