蜜桃影视

This update on the Every Student Succeeds Act and the education plans now being implemented by states and school districts is produced in partnership with ESSA Essentials, an ongoing series from the Collaborative for Student Success. It鈥檚 an offshoot of their聽聽newsletter, which you can聽! (See our recent ESSA updates聽from previous weeks right here.)

The Fordham Institute鈥檚 Michael Petrilli has been 鈥渢rying to make sense of the sizable gains made by America鈥檚 lowest-performing students and kids of color that coincided with the peak of the modern education reform movement.鈥� He his series on this topic in this聽Sept. 9 Education Next聽piece by 鈥渙ffering some personal reflections on what we鈥檝e learned,鈥� recapping 鈥渢he facts鈥� and acknowledging 鈥渢he vast amount of ground yet to cover.鈥�

He cautions that we 鈥渉ave spent the past decade overhauling standards, tests, and accountability systems, and finally committing real resources to capacity-building, especially in the form of curriculum implementation.鈥� These disparate pieces have only really begun to come together in the past couple of years 鈥渨ith the release of the first school ratings under the Every Student Succeeds Act.鈥� So, with 鈥淎ccountability 2.0鈥� in place and a 鈥渂ooming economy once more,鈥� he writes, let鈥檚 鈥渟ee if we can drive real improvements in achievement once again, and not just at the low end of the distribution this time.鈥�

Districts struggle to find evidence-backed ESSA strategies聽

In this to a recent article (which we covered last week),聽EdWeek Market Brief鈥檚 Michelle R. Davis notes that 鈥渟chool districts are searching for education vendors whose products have evidence to highlight their effectiveness, but it鈥檚 often a struggle for them to find a match.鈥� That鈥檚 one of the major conclusions of from the Center on Education Policy, which 鈥渇ocuses on how federal rules regulating district spending on interventions for low-performing schools are playing out when it comes to evidence requirements, and examines a number of challenges for education companies and educators.鈥�

ESSA and its impact on the state assessment landscape

With state-based standardized testing rapidly changing in the wake of the No Child Left Behind era, a from FutureEd 鈥� The New Testing Landscape:聽How State Assessments Are Changing Under the Federal Every Student Succeeds Act 鈥� explores emerging trends, including the expanded use of college entrance exams for high school accountability systems and the fragmented market for elementary and middle school testing.

Leveraging ESSA to support health and wellness

Last month, the Healthy Schools Campaign issued a new聽聽that takes a look at how states are supporting social-emotional learning and student well-being in the context of ESSA. The report 鈥渉ighlights the importance of equitable access to quality education and the conditions that support student learning, and provides new opportunities for schools to support student success by improving student health and wellbeing.鈥� Additionally, it 鈥減rovides an update on how states have approached health and wellness in education policy and practice in response to the requirements and opportunities in ESSA.鈥� It 鈥渄escribes key sections of the law with the highest potential to impact student health, outlines current state efforts, highlights best practices and provides recommendations for advancing this work at the state and local level.鈥�

The report calls out states and districts whose work on SEL and student health are worth emulating: Connecticut, for prioritizing 鈥渕eeting students鈥� nonacademic needs 鈥� including mental health, nutrition and physical activity 鈥� so they are healthy and ready to learn鈥�; Chicago Public Schools, for developing a Healthy CPS Indicator that students and families can use 鈥渢o identify whether their school is implementing key policies and initiatives that focus on chronic disease, instruction, wellness and health services鈥�; New York state, for putting significant emphasis on SEL and overall student well-being in its ESSA plan, including voluntary benchmarks that students should be hitting at various stages of K-12; Colorado, for creating tools on its state education department website that consider factors such as healthy youth, school climate and family feedback surveys on school improvement; Florida, for starting a Healthy Schools Summer Academy specifically geared for health and physical education teachers but open to all; and North Carolina, for offering teachers online professional development that includes raising 鈥渁wareness of how to address behavioral health issues inside and outside the classroom.鈥�

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