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This Week鈥檚 ESSA News: Louisiana Gets 1st Federal OK for Innovative Assessments Pilot, Professional Development Comes Up Short, and More

This update on the Every Student Succeeds Act and the education plans now being refined by state legislatures is produced in partnership with ESSA Essentials, a new 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.)

Louisiana has become the first state to win approval from the U.S. Department of Education to participate in ESSA鈥檚 Innovative Assessment pilot, which 鈥,鈥 according to Alyson Klein at .

While New Hampshire, she writes, 鈥済ot the ball rolling for this back in 2015鈥 under the No Child Left Behind Act 鈥 receiving approval to 鈥渢ry out performance-based exams in a handful of districts鈥 鈥 Louisiana聽鈥渋s.鈥

According to the Louisiana Department of Education, these exams 鈥渨ill include passages from books students have actually been exposed to in class, rather than brand-new material,鈥 and students 鈥渨ill be asked to complete a series of brief reading and writing exams throughout the school year, to help their teachers get 鈥榬eal-time鈥 updates on progress,鈥 . The pilot program will initially run in five districts.

New Hampshire and Puerto Rico have for testing flexibility as part of ESSA鈥檚 Innovative Assessment provisions but have yet to receive federal approval.

See below for more ESSA news.

1 Most professional development not up to federal standards

Amelia Harper writes in that a new report from the Frontline Research & Learning Institute called “”聽has 鈥渃ompared data from more than 200 school districts against the Every Student Succeeds Act’s definition of professional learning, created with input from Learning Forward, and discovered that 80 percent or more doesn’t meet the criteria for effective professional development.鈥 Under ESSA, professional development must be 鈥渟ustained, intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data-driven, and classroom-focused.鈥 But 鈥淏ridging the Gap鈥 finds that a mere 鈥13 percent of professional learning met the standard for sustained,聽only 9 percent met the definition of collaborative, 63 percent was job-embedded,聽only 8 percent was truly data-driven,聽85 percent was classroom-focused, and the average length of time spent on 鈥榠ntensive鈥 professional development was only 4.25 hours.鈥

2 Anti-test movement running out of steam under ESSA

鈥淛ust a few short years ago, there were real questions about whether Congress would ditch annual, standardized assessments as part of a makeover of聽,鈥 writes Alyson Klein in . 鈥淎t the same time, parents were increasingly choosing to opt their children out of standardized tests.鈥 But ESSA largely left testing untouched. And since its passage, 鈥渁t least some of the steam has gone out of the opt-out movement,鈥 even in places like New Jersey and New York, which are considered 鈥渉otbeds of anti-testing fervor.鈥 In fact, 鈥渟ome of the biggest skeptics of annual, standardized testing have taken a break from what was a big push to reduce the number of federally required tests,鈥 and 鈥渢hey don鈥檛 expect there will be another opportunity to roll back federal testing mandates鈥 for quite some time.

3 ESSA and the Youth Mental Health Services Act

Rep. Phil Roe of Tennessee writes in the that in an effort to combat suicide among children and teens, he has introduced bipartisan legislation with Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon called the Youth Mental Services Act, which 鈥渢akes an existing grant program authorized under the Every Student Succeeds Act and allows school districts to use these funds to implement community-based mental health services for students.鈥 The bill would also let states use funding to improve already existing mental health services and 鈥渋dentify and disseminate best practices for mental health first aid; assist in the establishment or implementation of emergency planning, which may include emergency response teams to address emergencies in schools; establish or identify agreements with local health agencies to improve coordination of services; and expand telehealth services.鈥

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