The Every Student Succeeds Act: Replacing No Child Left Behind

 
Empowering our state educators and local communities
With Representative Hanna's support, the House of Representatives recently passed the Every Student Succeeds Act.  This historic legislation, which reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that expired in 2007, makes key reforms to federal education policy that will maximize flexibility for states and local school districts and reduce the government’s role in state education policy.  

Reducing burdensome federal overreach
 
Since the expiration of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2007, the lack of a new ESEA reauthorization by Congress has meant that federal agencies have used their regulatory power to inappropriately shape education policy.  This has led to burdensome rules for states, inconsistent guidelines for school administrators, and unclear expectations for teachers and students. Upstate New York's educators and administrators have time and again shared their frustrations with Rep. Hanna about how these overreaching and unclear federal guidelines have strained their ability to teach in the classroom and interact with students.  
 
 Every Student Succeeds Act: A new way forward
The Every Student Succeeds Act addresses these pitfalls and provides certainty to state educators by restraining the ability of the Department of Education to engage in ad hoc and often unrestrained regulation.  It empowers teachers and administrators to run their classrooms and manage their schools in ways that make sense for them.  Most importantly, this historic vote represents a significant and positive shift in the overall tone and tenor of our country’s education policy that will once again allow educators at the state and local levels to be the drivers of innovation and opportunity for our children.  Below are several highlights of the bill along with links to additional information you may find useful: 

  • Academic Yearly Progress (AYP): The Every Student Succeeds Act eliminates the federal Academic Yearly Progress (AYP) standards for schools and allows states to adopt their own accountability systems that must include long-term education goals and regular measurements of academic progress.
  • Highly Qualified Teacher Provision: The Every Student Succeeds Act eliminates the “Highly Qualified Teacher” provision from current law, which has allowed the Department of Education to unilaterally determine teacher qualification and training standards. Under this legislation, states would develop their own individual teacher evaluation programs that must be tied to established metrics.
  • Maintaining Rigorous Standards: Rep. Hanna believes strongly in standards – if the United States is to compete globally in an increasingly competitive marketplace, our students must be educated to the highest level.  However, as the recent failed experiment with Common Core has demonstrated, standards must not lead to the development of rigid curriculums that stifle teacher innovation.  This legislation continues the requirement that states regularly test their students but allows them to independently develop rigorous assessments, standards, and accountability metrics. To ensure that state standards are comprehensive, the bill requires that they be challenging, clearly documented, and aligned with college admissions standards.  
  • Rolling Back Common Core: The Every Student Succeeds Act prohibits the federal government from mandating a one-size-fits-all set of standards, such as Common Core, and allows states to opt out of Common Core with no financial penalty.  Additionally, the bill also prohibits the federal government from incentivizing, requiring, or conditioning the receipt of federal funds on the adoption of any particular set of assessments.
  • Support for Preschool Programming: Rep. Hanna is especially pleased that this legislation includes for the first time a provision directly related to early childhood education, which is an issue he strongly supports in Congress.  The bill authorizes a Preschool Development Program to provide competitive grants to states in order to assess the availability and quality of existing preschool programs.   The evidence is clear that investing in our children from birth to age five reaps social and economic dividends long into the future and the inclusion of this provision in the final bill marks a strong step forward for early childhood education policy. 

Additional Resources

To read Rep. Hanna's full vote explanation following his vote for the Every Student Succeeds Act, click here.

To read full text of the legislation as passed by the House of Representatives, please click here.