New education law could mean big changes

Las Cruces Bulletin

President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law Dec. 10. The new law means “no more one size fits all,” said Las Cruces Public Schools (LCPS) Chief Academic Officer Andrea Fletcher. “It changes the focus to give states more power. It lets us really target what we need in our state. It’s really a good thing.”

“Overall, it’s a very good move,” said LCPS Superintendent Stan Rounds. “This is definitely a move in the right direction.”

ESSA is the seventh reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and the first re-authorization since 2002, when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became law.

Since teacher evaluations will no longer be tied to student test scores by federal mandate under ESSA, it could mean a change in the way New Mexico evaluates its classroom teachers.

“It appears to me that it takes state issues rather than a local issue first,” said Rounds, “so I can see the current governor and the current secretary (of the New Mexico Public Education Department [NMPED]) continuing down the road they’re on. I think it will mean a softening and probably a re-definition,” he said.

ESSA, which doesn’t take effect until the 201718 school year, will “empower state and local decision- makers to develop their own strong systems for school improvement based upon evidence, rather than imposing cookie-cutter federal solutions like NCLB did,” according to a Dec. 10 White House report.

New Mexico has been operating under a waiver from NCLB since 2012, when NMPED’s A-F school grading system was approved by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). ESSA could mean the end of that rating system and less student testing.

ESSA means “states will develop and submit plans to increase the achievement of low-income students to the DOE” in order to receive federal funding, according to the National School Boards Association (NSBA). In New Mexico, that means NMPED and other state education departments “will take the lead in developing the state plan,” but will be “required to work with timely and meaningful consultation with the governor and other state policymakers,” along with local school districts, according to NSBA.

NMPED will be required to work with “all stakeholders,” Fletcher said, including teachers, principals, parents and other school staff, to craft a state plan that is “aligned to college and career readiness” needs in New Mexico.

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said he included a provision in ESSA “to require state accountability plans to have a comment period to ensure that state assessments and accountability plans are developed with parent, educator and stakeholder input. In addition, states must provide assurances that those comments were taken into account in the development of the state plan,” he said in a Dec. 9 news release.

The U.S. Senate passed ESSA by a vote of 81 to 17, with two senators not voting. Both Heinrich and New Mexico’s other U.S. senator, Tom Udall, also a Democrat, voted for the bill.

Among remaining presidential candidates who serve in the Senate, Bernie Sanders, I-VT, who is running for president as a Democrat, voted for ESSA; Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky, Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas voted against it.

ESSA passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 359 to 64, with 10 members not voting. All three of New Mexico’s U.S. representatives, Democrats Michelle Lujan Grisham and Ben Ray Lujan, and Republican Steve Pearce, voted yes.

The new plan will continue to emphasize accountability, Fletcher said.

“Academic achievement is important, but it’s not everything,” she said. State accountability goals “can include another non-academic indicator for up to 49 percent of the accountability plan,” including things like student engagement, after- school programs and school culture, Fletcher said in a Dec. 8 update on ESSA to the LCPS Board of Education.

Heinrich said he pressed for a provision in ESSA that “allows states to include other measures of student and school performances in their accountability systems to provide a more accurate determination of school performance. States will also be required to include graduation rates, student growth, and English proficiency for English learners in their accountability systems,” his news release said.

English-language learners (ELLS), who make up more than 10 percent of the LCPS population, will be given greater priority under ESSA, Fletcher said. And, the highly qualified teacher requirements mandated by NCLB have been eliminated under the new law, which will give LCPS and other school districts greater flexibility in staffing schools, she said.

Fletcher said ESSA continues annual student testing in reading, mathematics and science in grades three through 12.

ESSA does away with the sanctions mandated by NCLB for poor school performance, Fletcher said. Instead, “states must develop intervention plans for (the) bottom five percent of schools and those with graduation rates less than 67 percent,” she said in her school board presentation. LCPS’ current four-year graduate rate is more than 76 percent.

Fletcher said ESSA retains the NCLB provision requiring 95 percent participation in testing. But, sanctions for school districts that don’t comply will be decided by individual states rather than the U.S. Department of Education, she said.

The new law also authorizes $250 million for early childhood education, which Fletcher said “is really good news” for high-poverty states like New Mexico.

About two-thirds of LCPS students receive free or reduced-price lunches, which is one of the federal government’s leading measures of poverty.

A new preschool development grant program that is part of ESSA “will be jointly administered by the (federal) departments of Health and Human Services and Education to help states align and coordinate early learning programs,” according to the NSBA.

ESSA also creates a pilot program for 50 local education agencies (usually school districts, like LCPS) to blend the federal, state and local funding they receive to “design their own allocation formula in a manner that allows them to better target dollars to the neediest schools,” according to the national School Superintendents Association.

Rounds said he will “try very diligently” to make LCPS the New Mexico school district selected for the pilot program. “We have brought in certain innovations that blend opportunities for kids. It works best if you blend your money,” he said.

“This reauthorization has been years in the making and suffered through several false starts, but it picked up steam in 2015 as opposition to the rigid and punitive ‘test and punish’ regimen imposed by NCLB intensified and several education groups, including the NEA, lobbied Congress to get the job done,” the National Education Association said in a Dec. 9 online article.

Both Rounds and Fletcher emphasized that a lot of work by states and school districts will have to take place before ESSA takes effect. “What do the regulations do? That will now be determined over the next year,” Rounds said.

You can read the ESSA at www.congress.gov/ bill/114th-congress/senate- bill/1177/text.