With No Child Left Behind one step closer to being a thing of the past, the governance of schools in other states is poised to look a lot more like California’s.
On Wednesday afternoon, the House overwhelmingly passed the proposed Every Student Succeeds Act by 359 to 64. The Senate is expected to vote on the measure before year’s end, and the White House has signaled President Obama's willingness to sign it.
The bill would continue to require annual standardized testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and the results of different student groups will continue to be publicly reported. But for the most part, it will be up to states to determine what to do with those results.
The measure requires states to intervene in the bottom 5% of their schools, and in high schools with graduation rates below 67%, and where specific groups of students consistently underperform. For the most part, it will be up to states to determine how to identify those bottom-performing groups and how to intervene to make them better, as long as the interventions are “evidence-based." To make these designations, in addition to test scores, states must consider other factors — such as school engagement and climate — but will have more leeway over how to count each one in their overall rankings.
California is already in the process of changing its school accountability system. As students prepared to take tests aligned with the Common Core this year, the state Board of Education voted to extend the suspension of California’s Academic Performance Index, a measure based on test scores. Instead, the board began devising a new system that includes factors such as attendance, how quickly students who don’t speak English are learning the language, college readiness, dropout rates and suspensions. By March, the state is slated to present a proposal to the Legislature about the new assessment system.
“California really has claimed the space that this bill now opens up,” said David Plank, a Stanford University professor and executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education. “With the Local Control Funding Formula, with the changes that have been made and are in progress on accountability policy in California, and with the implementation of Common Core, we’re really where the federal government now says states can go.”
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