By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
President Obama ended more than a dozen years of No Child Left Behind — which critics called overbearing and over centralized. With the stroke of a pen the president put America on a new education policy path with the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA.
“It’s probably not going to change very much,” David Sciarra said.
At least, not in New Jersey, according to Sciarra from the Education Law Center. He does expect to see fewer federal requirements.
“Local educators I think will have a better say in how much testing there is, and how much time is spent on it and also what purposes the tests are used for,” he said. “They were mandating the use of these tests to evaluate teachers, which many educators feel was inappropriate. They weren’t really designed for that. So in some areas I think it’s going to be good news for parents and their schools and teachers.”
The state Department of Education says teacher evaluation standards are already set by New Jersey law, but districts will still have to test kids at least once a year in third through eighth grades, and once in high school. Under ESSA, states will still have to submit some measure of student performance — especially for minority and vulnerable populations.
But in New Jersey Sciarra says that’s built into our framework. “We have court rulings and law that requires that, regardless of what the federal government did and now does. That’s not going to change at all,” he said.
“Accountability will depend less on testing, and states will have the opportunity to use a variety of other indicators to decide whether or not schools are high-performing,” Rutgers Graduate School of Education Professor William Firestone said
Firestone says that the new law grants states the power to take over schools that score in the bottom five percent of achievement tests and high schools that graduate less than 67 percent. But the feds won’t dictate remedies, says NJ Spotlight‘s John Mooney.
“I think there is a concern that we’re going to start seeing different levels of education, again. It’s not like it’s all uniform now, and I think you’re going to see some districts that aren’t necessarily held to higher standards maybe suffer for it and the kids who go to school there, as well,” he said.
New Jersey’s Education Commissioner says, ESSA “…is expected to provide states more discretion with addressing struggling schools. There is a continued commitment to high academic standards and to annual testing, but with more flexibility…”
Gov. Christie directed his Administration to re-examine Common Core standards and has no plans to drop PARCC testing.
“It leaves so much more authority to the states. Whether that’s good or bad, depends a lot on what this governor and what the next governor does,” Firestone said.
New Jersey’s teachers’ union says it supports ESSA, but some educators expressed disappointment that the new law doesn’t boost federal funding levels. New Jersey hasn’t fully funded its state school formula for several years.