The bill, perhaps the centerpiece of Bush’s “compassionate conservative” agenda, had sprinted through the U.S. House and Senate before hitting the summer quagmire that so often ensnares federal legislation. Administration officials hoped that a presidential swing through Florida might reawaken Washington and speed its way to passage.

It was only minutes before the activities began when Bush learned that a plane had collided with one of the World Trade Center towers. Like many, Brogan initially assumed the reports referred to a light aircraft that had wandered off-course.

But as the room filled with the singsong cadence of kids reading aloud — the activity, centered on a called The Pet Goat, had been selected to draw attention to NCLB’s literacy provisions — the atmosphere changed noticeably. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card approached Bush to whisper the news of the second crash. And over a seven-minute interval that would be picked apart for years, the president’s focus seemed to drift between the children in front of him and the horrors unfolding in Manhattan. Brogan called the moment “extraordinary.”

“He didn’t change his expression, but the color in his face visibly changed, especially for people who were only a few feet from him. It was crystal-clear that whatever he just heard was very disturbing.”

As the activity wound down, the president excused himself to join a call with national security leaders. After stopping to deliver brief remarks from the school’s media center, including a moment of silence for the still-uncounted victims, Bush’s entourage headed immediately to Air Force One. The advocacy tour was over. A wartime presidency had begun.

The ties linking 9/11 with NCLB were the result of a historical accident. During the 20 years that passed since that day, the U.S. government undertook generational commitments to both rid the world of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism and provide an excellent education to every American child. Begun amid a swell of bipartisan approval, both missions fell far short of their goals as the afterglow of national unity first ebbed, then extinguished altogether. And while much of the vision of NCLB is preserved in federal law, controversial requirements around school accountability have been significantly loosened; some of the law’s original architects even attribute its demise, in substantial part, to a combination of hyperpartisanship and neglect that arose as the Bush administration turned its focus to the ever-expanding War on Terror.

“This is really what 9/11 meant: People moved on to other things,” said Sandy Kress, an education advisor to President Bush who helped lead the White House’s efforts to lobby for NCLB. “Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, plus the return of normal politics, that was huge. The president certainly moved on, and so did the rest of the world.”

Moving at ‘breakneck speed — for Washington’

Kress came to Washington after the 2000 election to transform the sweeping education proposals of then-Gov. Bush’s campaign into legislation. He spent years before that as a power player in Texas politics, serving as president of the Dallas school board before receiving appointments to a series of commissions empaneled throughout the 1990s to improve the state’s schools.

At that time, Washington’s role in K-12 schools offered barely a hint of what it would later become. The principal statute governing federal interventions in education, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, had been reauthorized in 1994 as the Improving America’s Schools Act, a fairly radical revision that required states to make “adequate yearly progress” toward proficiency for all their students. But reforms were still driven overwhelmingly by a set of ambitious governors: like Roy Roemer of Colorado, Jim Hunt of North Carolina and Bush of Texas.

By the time ESEA was due for another reauthorization, leaders in both parties were settling on a single model of reform. States would set high standards, deliver the instruction necessary to help students meet them, and institute regular assessments to keep an eye on their progress.

“I think people at the federal level realized they couldn’t get away any longer with simply saying, ‘America’s children aren’t learning enough, but just keep doing what you’re doing,’” said Brogan, who was elected as Florida’s commissioner of schools in 1994 and would go on to lead the state university systems of both Florida and Pennsylvania before serving as assistant secretary of education under president Donald Trump. “We had to come up with some new ideas…and at least spell out with clarity what kinds of things children were expected to master with each of the passing grade levels.”

That bipartisan convergence was reflected in placed on education reform by the campaigns of both Bush and Democrat Al Gore during the 2000 presidential election, argued Tom Loveless, former director of the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy. Bush, whose own package of reforms in Texas had won the admiration of even some Democrats in Congress — including California Rep. George Miller, an avowed liberal serving on the House Education and Workforce Committee — was only too happy to break with prevailing orthodoxy in order to build his brand as a different kind of Republican. That included moving away from the party’s oft-stated commitment to abolish the federal Department of Education.

“Bush simply jettisoned that,” Loveless said. “He dropped it completely — it was in the ’96 platform, but it was not in the 2000 platform because the Bush people wouldn’t allow it in.”

“That whole sweet thing that was put together in the ‘80s and came together in various states and then saw this incredible peak in Washington in 2001 — all of that largely fell apart because of 9/11, and the failure of everyone on all sides to hold it together in the wake of 9/11.”
—Sandy Kress, education advisor to former President George W. Bush.

Bush began setting a course for a major new education law almost as soon as the Supreme Court handed him the presidency, meeting at the White House in January with Miller, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and future Republican House Speaker John Boehner. , as the proposal soon became known, passed through both chambers even though it was loaded with tough language on equity and accountability. Under the new law, states would be required to test all students between grades 3-8, separate the data by class and ethnicity, and publish detailed school report cards based on the results. Billions of dollars in new federal funding would be allocated to support improvement efforts.

Margaret Spellings — a senior Bush advisor whom he would later appoint as U.S. secretary of education — said she didn’t fully appreciate at the time how quickly the initiative came together.

“I was a relative newcomer [to national politics], and little did I know that this was all happening at breakneck speed for Washington,” she said. “Particularly when we fast-forward 20 years, it really is amazing that this mammoth piece of policy, the major elements of which stand to this day, got done that fast.”

But the process stalled in conference, a lengthy process intended to iron out the differences between House and Senate versions. As the summer dragged on, dozens of conferees worked through a torturous debate over how to define adequate yearly progress, then left Washington for August recess. The economy was in recession, and the president’s approval ratings were ticking downward. Eager to return permanently to Texas, Kress began to worry how long his sojourn in the capital would last.

“By the end of the summer, things were not so rosy,” he recalled. “We were thinking about trying to rev it up and get going again, and that’s how that Florida trip was planned.”

Reinvigorating bipartisanship

At around 8:15 a.m. on September 11, Kress was in the president’s suite at Sarasota’s Colony Beach and Tennis resort, presenting him with talking points and a visual aid — a chart showing America’s education expenditures growing over time, plotted against stagnant national test scores — for what he hoped would be a news-making speech at Booker Elementary.

On campus, Kress skipped the classroom visit to brief reporters before the president took the stage. Instead, he watched with them as a television at the school’s media center broadcast live footage of United Airlines Flight 175 slamming into the World Trade Center’s South Tower. As the Secret Service moved hurriedly to coordinate the group’s departure, the stagecraft morphed from political salesmanship to an emergency speech.

“Now we’re getting instructions: ‘You are to come with me and stand right here, and the president’s going to give some remarks. First thing, take down the chart’ — I did that — ‘and then stand right here. And when the president says his last words, he will go, and you’ll be right on him, and you’re to get in the car.’ It was all solemn and lockstep.”

From the Sarasota airport, Air Force One sped to Louisiana’s Barksdale Air Force Base (“The plane took off faster than I’d ever lifted off on a plane, and got higher than I’d ever been on a plane,” Kress noted.) There it shed most of its passengers while Bush, still considered a potential target, delivered before departing to another location with his key political and security staffers. With virtually every airplane in the country grounded, Kress and his companions only arrived back in Washington that evening, in time to see the smoking wreckage of the Pentagon attack.

Along with his fears for the country, and intermittently his own safety, he couldn’t help worrying about the fate of the historic law he’d spent most of the year negotiating. Would the massive loss of life, to say nothing of the inevitable military action that would follow, leave room for a huge, expensive law overhauling K-12 schools?

As it turned out, he would later reflect, the collective outrage provoked by the attacks proved vastly more effective at pushing NCLB to the finish line than any messaging event could have. Congress would soon be occupied with authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan and drafting the USA Patriot Act, but both Democrats and Republicans also sought the chance to pass a major piece of domestic legislation and show that the nation’s business was still underway.

“9/11 probably reinvigorates bipartisanship for a bit,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a political scientist at Bowdoin College on the politics of NCLB. “And there was an idea that we have to show, as a country, that we can make progress on things other than terrorism and war: ‘This is something we’ve already gotten most of the way through, and we should do it.’”

Before the year was out, overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate voted to accept the version of the bill that emerged from the conference committee. On January 8, 2002, Bush signed it, flanked by its congressional stewards, at an Ohio school located in Boehner’s district. The group then proceeded to Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts for a celebration at the famed exam school Boston Latin. Only time constraints prevented them from flying to Miller’s California stomping grounds, Kress said.

In retrospect, No Child Left Behind was likely too far down the tracks to be derailed by events. But, as Spellings argued, the rush of purpose and unity following 9/11 put “a rocket booster” under it; moreover, national attention was significantly diverted from the last months of negotiations, which may have made final concessions go down smoother.

“They were trying to hold that coalition together without offending the far left or far right,” Loveless said — a towering task, given that teachers disliked the new testing requirements and conservatives resented losing out on a longed-for federal voucher program. “Bush really wanted a bipartisan bill, and I think the focus on foreign policy allowed them to do whatever they needed to do in conference and get the bill out.”

A short honeymoon

American flags were still flying from windows, and the renewed sense of national assurance only beginning to waver, when skepticism of NCLB began festering in school districts and state capitals.

Conflict arose almost immediately over new money. Under the law, total federal funding for K-12 schools between 2000 and 2003. But for schools now awakening to the threat of sanctions (including governance changes like the mass replacement of staff or restructuring as a charter school) if their students didn’t make consistent, measurable strides toward college readiness, it seemed unfair that escalating expectations on their staffs weren’t accompanied by continuing commitments of resources.

Their doubts spread soon enough to the public at large. In Brookings, Loveless noted that surveys from the law’s early years demonstrated little widespread understanding of its impact, including penalties for consistently underperforming schools. But as participants learned more of NCLB’s key provisions, they consistently came to like it less, he found.

“I think one thing NCLB was able to paper over was the fact that it did have punitive measures involved,” Loveless argued. “When people were polled on the question, in 2001 or 2002, ‘What do you do with a failing school?,’ respondents overwhelmingly supported giving more resources to that school — not closing it or transferring teachers or anything like that.”

Combined with its “utopianism” — the law put forward the aspiration that every student in the country would reach proficiency in math and reading by 2014, a starry-eyed notion that later became a punchline — NCLB’s main weakness lay in its fundamental challenge to Americans’ sunny perceptions of schools, Loveless said.

“It’s been a mainstay in polling: People are just happy with their local schools. And parents are even happier with the schools they send their own children to. So once it became evident that those schools were also endangered by sanctions and maybe weren’t quite what they were cracked up to be, [the law] lost some popularity.”

Eventually the dissatisfaction spread to Washington, where even NCLB’s supporters were increasingly bogged down in the fervid debate over whether Bush’s “Global War on Terror” should extend to Iraq. Along with industry groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, a diverse alliance of civil rights organizations including EdTrust, La Raza, and the Urban League had pushed hard to make testing and accountability a reality in every American school; but by 2004, NAACP chairman its mandates of fostering a “drill-and-kill curriculum.”

Consistent blows were landed by none other than Kennedy, a figure as vital to NCLB’s passage as any except the president. On the second anniversary of the happy ceremony held at Boston Latin, Kennedy’s office issued giving Bush a “D-minus” for rolling out his signature education reform. In an unmistakable dig at Bush’s famous photo op of the previous year, the release called it “way too soon for the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner on No Child Left Behind.”

For the temporary boost it delivered to American pride and purpose, Kress said, September 11 ultimately sabotaged the “nice, short-term story” of NCLB’s enactment.

“Passing a bill should be a very positive event in a movement, but if you think passing a bill is the culmination of a movement, then you don’t understand politics,” he said. “That whole sweet thing that was put together in the ‘80s and came together in various states and then saw this incredible peak in Washington in 2001 — all of that largely fell apart because of 9/11, and the failure of everyone on all sides to hold it together in the wake of 9/11.”

Though NCLB’s authors intended for the law to be reauthorized by 2007, it remained in effect for another eight years as controversy built up over its demands on states and school districts. have credited the landmark legislation with lifting student achievement and closing achievement gaps , but it has also been blamed for through an over-reliance on testing.

Those concerns contributed to the push to replace NCLB with the Every Student Succeeds Act, which offered states more latitude to design their own systems for measuring school performance. In the years since its 2015 passage, committed reformers have complained that the new law is far too slack, allowing states to potentially ignore failing schools and that reveal which students are falling behind.

Spellings credited NCLB’s supporters in Congress, industry, and the civil rights world with ensuring that many of its key principles remained in place. But she also warned that a political retreat from testing and accountability was underway, “flying under the banner of COVID and mental health and all other manner of bullshit.”

“The secret sauce — and this is what’s under threat in the states — is annual assessments, disaggregated data, and transparency,” she said. “It’s at risk.”

Rudalevige’s research as a political scientist ultimately led him to study the growing powers of the “imperial presidency.” He agreed that it became increasingly challenging for politicians to mend or improve NCLB — still less reauthorize it — once debates over the War on Terror came to “distract attention and dissolve whatever bipartisanship was still left.“.

“Could you do it if you had full presidential attention? Maybe, but Bush didn’t have that, and he didn’t have the institutional resources to make it work without that. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could put on auto-pilot.”

Lead Image: President George W. Bush was reading with a group of Florida second-graders when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, delivered the news that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. (Paul Richards and George W. Bush Presidential Library/Getty Images) Photo illustration by Meghan Gallagher/����Ӱ��

She does, however, discuss one requirement that officials must meet in exchange for the record amount of funding: Districts must engage in “meaningful consultation” with their communities as they develop school spending plans bolstered by millions of dollars.

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This process, Roza argues, could have significant implications for school budgeting as districts are motivated to make decisions alongside their communities, rather than under the pressure of federal requirements.

Beyond relief funding, here are three other key school updates this week from states, district officials and education advocates:

1 Tennessee Resumes Push to Roll Out Virtual Standardized Testing

After significant pre-pandemic challenges, Tennessee officials are restarting efforts to move the administration of state standardized assessments online, .

Education spokesperson Brian Blackley said the gradual transition makes sense to start now, as districts purchased millions of dollars of technology improvements to deliver remote learning and the pandemic increased the importance of actionable, comprehensive student progress data. Officials say that online testing systems will slowly be adopted for lower grades as the state works out any challenges or necessary improvements.

2 How Did Remote Learning, and a Shift to Reading on Screens, Affect Comprehension?

The pandemic changed students’ reading habits, , though not always in clearly defined ways.

The various research studies found that, during the pandemic, students read more on average, though more reading is taking place online or on screens than ever before. While some are cautioning that students tend to retain less when reading on screen than in print, others point to the role of parent and teacher engagement and supports that often accompany print reading and should be continued when students move to a screen.

Adriana Bus, professor of language and literacy at Leiden University in Amsterdam, said her research supports digital devices as long as engagement is prioritized and built in. “Our study also shows that books with digital enhancements can benefit and result in better comprehension than paper books if the enhancements support comprehension,” writes Bus.

3 The Importance of Testing in Revealing Widening Post-Pandemic Learning Gaps

Newly released national testing data from assessment provider NWEA further .

The report follows the release of sobering test scores in and . “It’s not that the pattern is necessarily out of what I would have expected, it’s just — oh my gosh, we’re going to have to really work hard to provide resources to these students to help them catch up,” said Megan Kuhfeld, a researcher with NWEA.

https://twitter.com/PwaysToCollege/status/1421209008619331596?s=20

The data come as two researchers released a warning of softening public support for assessment systems during the pandemic. The brief is raising concerns among advocates, public officials, and some educators, who worry that decreases in support for testing could hinder efforts to address learning loss head on, target waves of resources to schools and students with the most need, and identify practices or models that worked during the disruption of COVID-19.

Education advocates in Indiana are warning that it’s going to take years of work for students in the state to rebound after Indiana’s spring 2021 assessment results showed concerning signs. “These results confirm what we expected, and what we now know — student learning was significantly impacted by COVID-19,” said Katie Jenner, the state’s secretary of education.

Jenner said that looking ahead, “this new baseline and other student-level data provide direction on where we must focus individualized student learning over the coming years. This is not a time to admire the problem — this is a time to focus on solutions.”

Overall, results from the Indiana Learning Evaluation and Readiness Network (ILEARN) assessment . Significant gaps persisted among Indiana’s racially and ethnically diverse, low-income, special education and English language learner students. Ninety-seven percent of students participated in testing.

With Indiana’s news following a similarly disappointing scores release in Texas, and are “likely just the tip of the iceberg in a long string of bleak test score results to come.” He praised the two states for their commitment to state testing to better understand where students stand academically.

Four other key school updates this week from states, districts and education advocates:

1 Why Career and Technical Education Could Attract More Students in a Post-Pandemic World

The Ashville Citizen-Times is covering . After years of declining interest in career and technical education programs, officials say COVID-19 placed a premium and focus on technical skills and trades, from plumbing and electrical to healthcare and nursing positions.

“CTE will play an important role in economic recovery and development of the post-pandemic workforce,” says Taylor Baldwin, director of CTE programs for Buncombe County Schools. “This includes not only providing the education, training, and reskilling opportunities that youth and adults will need for high-wage, high-skill, and in-demand occupations and industries, but also helping learners develop the technical, employability, and academic skills that are important for increasingly technology-focused workplaces,” Baldwin concluded. .

2 How Are States Spending Their COVID Education Relief Funds?

A new analysis of 39 state plans to allocate federal COVID-19 relief funding by the nonpartisan think tank FutureEd found a number of trends as state education agencies seek to prop up efforts to address lost learning, provide extended learning school days, summer school, or after-school programs, and bolster services made more critical by the pandemic.

FutureEd, in collaboration with ����Ӱ��, describes notable state priorities in the areas of tutoring, data systems, innovations, and school climate. The offerings range from public-private partnerships to provide students internships and career experiences to statewide student film festivals and diversified teacher recruitment programs.

The FutureEd team notes that only a fraction of federal relief will ultimately be directed by state agencies, but explains that state officials’ “priorities for spending their share of the relief aid suggest that mental health initiatives, tutoring and comprehensive data systems for tracking student needs are likely to become increasingly prominent in public education.” Read the full report.

3 Deeper Learning Might Mean Getting Your Hands a Little Dirty

Jim Cowen of the Collaborative for Student Success interviews Juliana Urtubey, the 2021 National Teacher of the Year, about the benefits of gardening in schools .

Urtubey says she got interested in school gardens because of her desire to boost nutrition and to encourage her students to understand the origins of real food. But Urtubey explains how gardening opened the door to other benefits such as increased student achievement and family engagement. For “schools considering new approaches in the fall, educators ought to take a good, long look because of the newfound interest in gardens spurred by the pandemic and because of the far-reaching educational benefits,” Cowen writes. .

4 Canceling Standardized Testing Does a Disservice to Disadvantaged Students

Author Helen Raleigh for tweeting in opposition to standardized testing. Raleigh gives a nod to critics of testing but says “many progressives’ criticisms of standardized testing are either exaggerated or simply misleading.” She also notes that there is “much evidence that children from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds can excel in standardized testing despite material means.”

Such tests can “provide students with a level playing field on which to compete,” she writes.

Buoyed by a massive influx of federal education funding, schools and districts are rolling out a greater number of programs and initiatives to drive learning recovery for students than at any other point during the pandemic.

But according to survey data from Understanding America, many parents aren’t ecstatic about most learning pandemic-era learning options, including high-dosage tutoring, extended summer school, and community-organized pods. On the topic of virtual learning — which some describe as a “” in education — parents and schools are split, with some celebrating the use of technology in learning and others eager to end their virtual year.

At our town’s school board meeting last week, parents complained about the lack of plans for learning loss and mental health. Related: Survey Finds Parents Aren’t So Thrilled About Most K-12 COVID Recovery Solutions on the Table

— laura mckenna (@laura11D)

Four other key education updates this week from states, districts and the federal government:

Indiana: 3 Things to Watch With State’s 2021 Test Scores

“This is probably the most important time in the past few decades where we really need to pay attention to student data,” said Tommy Reddicks, CEO of the Paramount charter school network. And , many are identifying critical gaps in student knowledge and progress, as well as pinpointing where and how remote instruction platforms either succeeded or failed. As state by one school leader, “These serve as the brutal truths of where our students are in terms of academic performance.”

Chiefs for Change Chair: Schools Must Provide Assessments to See Where Students Stand After Pandemic

Pedro Martinez, superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District and the chair of Chiefs for Change, so that leaders at all levels of education can have data on the pandemic’s impact on student learning and how best to address student progress after a disrupted year. Citing new data that predicts many students will have lost as much as five to nine months of academic progress, Martinez writes, “We cannot allow this to happen. It’s more important than ever for families, educators and leaders to understand what children have and have not learned, so we can figure out the best ways to help kids catch up and then move ahead.” Martinez continues with ground-level examples of how San Antonio schools have explicitly used testing data to match master teachers with students who have the greatest need and to guide educator development and training.

“It’s more important than ever for families, educators and leaders to understand what children have and have not learned, so we can figure out the best ways to help kids catch up and then move ahead.” on the value of test data this year:

— Christine M. T. Pitts, PhD (@cmtpitts)

Reality Check: What’s an ‘Evidence-Based’ Learning Program Anyway?

When it comes to ensuring that federal school dollars are spent on evidence-based programs and instructional systems, “those with the purse strings” shouldn’t “stop at the first positive study,” .

The authors call on state and district officials to actively support educators by providing guidance on what they deem suitable investments for federal funds. “It’s unrealistic and inefficient to expect educators and administrators in every school and district to thoroughly investigate each new practice they consider” due to inordinate amount of time and research required to identify and establish an evidence base, they say.

“Does it really make sense to declare a program ‘evidence-based’ if one study shows positive outcomes for students while a bunch of others don’t?” In , TC’s examines the practicality of big data projects for schools & teachers.

— Teachers College, CU (@TeachersCollege)

Delaware: How a New Language Arts Program Helped One District Turn Things Around

A new curriculum case study is shining a light on impressive success across Delaware schools in adopting high quality instructional materials and driving increased student achievement. The Knowledge Matters campaign, which aims to ensure that knowledge is the centerpiece of classroom instruction, teamed up with Seaford Director of Instruction Kelly Carvajal Hageman to dig deeper into the district’s use of a new curriculum called Bookworms. Bookworms is an English language arts program that school leaders rolled out alongside extensive teacher training and coordination that has shown remarkable progress for students.

Across the nation, schools are emerging from the pandemic focused on helping students reengage and excel while also receiving an unprecedented influx of federal dollars – leading many to rethink curriculum and the ways that high-quality, innovative materials can benefit students, teachers, and even families. Indeed, USC associate professor Morgan Polikoff argues in a that concerted investment and adoption of high-quality curriculum is now required to drive improvements that started with the movement to adopt higher, more rigorous standards.

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’s an offshoot of their newsletter, which you can ! (See our recent ESSA updates from previous weeks right here.)

A 53-page report released by the Education Department this month during the pandemic. The report focuses on English learners, students with disabilities, students of color, LGBTQ-identifying students, and female students. It reveals that many faced additional obstacles to academic and health access and opportunities over the last year and a half.

Calling the disparities a “cause for great concern,” the report includes guidance for school systems in preventing budget cuts that disproportionately impact student subgroups and builds on additional proposals by the Biden administration at equitably closing funding gaps between districts and identifying and addressing .

Four other key federal education updates this week:

1 Ed Department Details Limits, Flexibilities of Federal Relief Funds

Updated federal guidance passed since March 2020, a total amount that exceeds $200 billion. The guidance clarifies expected timelines and how states are expected to distribute funds to schools, while also specifying how the investments could be used to support specific student subgroups, including students with disabilities, preschoolers and high school seniors.

Though federal officials urge schools and states to guide the funding toward recovering lost instructional time, ensuring digital access, and making critical infrastructure investments, an shows that schools will have broad flexibility in how they spend the money. According to the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, most available district plans lack a focus on learning recovery and many are leading with one-time investments like reward payments for teachers, staffing, and filling expected budget gaps.

2 Let’s Celebrate Schools Reopening—Then Get To Work Making Them Stronger

“As in-person learning resumes, it’s worth taking stock of the potential impact that extended school closures have had on students,” . “There is real risk that for many of these students the impact of COVID-19 won’t be a temporary setback in their education, but a significant moment that will be immensely difficult to overcome,” he adds.

To proactively meet the needs of these students on a systemic level, Cowen urges states and school leaders to consider four broad values and actions throughout pandemic recovery: transparency, collecting actionable data from student assessments and other sources, uplifting research-backed tactics, and embracing high quality instructional materials.

Cowen additionally calls out great examples of states leading in these areas, including a model public engagement strategy employed by Alaskan education officials, firm commitments to collecting assessment data in Arkansas and Indiana, a comprehensive recovery and literacy plan in Tennessee, and the adoption of higher quality learning materials in Nebraska and Delaware. He encourages other states and districts to follow these examples. “It’s time to re-imagine, innovate, and plan so that all students leave high school prepared for college and career,” Cowen concludes.

3 Teacher’s View: How the Science of Reading Helped Me Make the Most of Limited Time With My Students

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, literacy was swiftly emerging as a top education priority for much of the nation, as data showed only one-third of U.S. students reading proficient at grade level — largely due to fractured and disparate approaches to reading instruction and schools’ slow adoption of the “science of reading.” Jessica Pasik, a reading specialist and professor of literacy in New York, says the stress of COVID-19 has only exacerbated these challenges.

In a new essay, Pasik details how tenants of the science of reading actually helped her engage students and take advantage of limited instructional time during a year of virtual learning. Some educators in Texas’ San Antonio ISD are similarly sharing that such an approach helped them structure learning much more effectively during the pandemic and to drive improvements in student progress. They are urging fellow teachers to shift from the “balanced literacy” approach that has been declining in favor in recent years. “People, I believe,” one teacher stated, ”will move into what’s best for our students.”

4 Present Danger: Solving the Deepening Student Absenteeism Crisis

A new report from the team at FutureEd warns of a growing crisis of student absenteeism, . The report states that absenteeism may have been greater during the pandemic than previously thought. “Not only are more students missing school, they’re missing many more days than in the past,” the report warns.

Additionally, the report flags that absenteeism is rising fastest for the youngest learners, while trends for disadvantaged students were exacerbated by the pandemic in all districts reviewed. The report is echoed by coverage from Governing magazine, which similarly depicts significant increases in chronic absenteeism and states that by district and state leaders to identify missing students and reconnect them to school systems.

“The data moment has arrived,” says Data Quality Campaign President and CEO Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger. Citing the prioritization of data collection and use throughout a number of Executive Orders and strategies employed by President Joe Biden, Bell-Ellwanger says, “it’s a brand new day, and it’s time to pivot from tinkering around the margins on data to thinking big about how to begin to use new information and tools to solve the nation’s most complex and vexing problems” — including education. She continues by highlighting ways states can or already have begun revamping their data systems using existing laws and funding streams, like those detailed in the Every Student Succeeds Act, Perkins V career and technical programs, and the spate of COVID relief bills pumping money into schools.

Bell-Ellwanger’s case for data builds on a , who took the conversation on data to parents and school leaders to highlight the forms of data that they want and need to improve outcomes for children. Across the board, parents and school leaders stated their desire for more robust Opportunity to Learn data, which according to CAP includes “student access to high-quality curriculum, instruction, and programs; supportive school and classroom environments; highly effective educators; student supports; class sizes; and access to technology.” The authors conclude by saying that, “When families are engaged in their child’s learning and have access to actionable, meaningful data, they can support learning at home and make the best educational decisions for their children.”

Beyond school data, here are five of the week’s top developments for how states and policymakers are implementing (and innovating under) the Every Student Succeeds Act amid the ongoing pandemic:

1 Schools Across the Nation Boost Outreach Efforts to High Schoolers At Risk of Not Graduating

Soaring numbers of high school students are failing classes or are considered “chronically absent” this school year, leading to a after a year disrupted by the pandemic.

A National Dropout Prevention Center report predicted a doubling or tripling of the number of students who were at risk of falling behind academically and not graduating, though graduation data for the 2020-21 school year is not yet available. In some places, districts are easing graduation testing or credit requirements in attempts to bring a diploma within reach of students who have fallen behind, though experts caution against weakening standards and expectations for students and the impact that could have on future life earnings and success in career or college.

2 California to Adopt ‘Student Growth Model’ in Assessment, Accountability Systems

Members of the California State Board seemed finally ready to push the state’s data and accountability system to , an action that has been urged in the state by experts, advocates, and even federal education officials since 2015. Due to the cancellation of tests at the onset of the pandemic – and – the new student growth model is not expected to provide new data points until December of 2024, at the earliest.

3 Michigan Approves Alternative Route for Teaching Licensure to Boost Teacher Diversity

Michigan education officials have , citing the fact that less than 2% of educators in the state are Black men, though in many districts, the percentage of Black students may be as high as 90%. “I do believe that it is significant that students have a representation in their classroom and people that they may visually be able to identify with,” said Marcus Davenport, Superintendent of Beecher Community Schools. Approved for five years, the alternative route to licensure program is expected to place its first teaching candidates into classrooms by next year.

4 Colorado Governor Proposes Major Expansion of Early Childhood Programs, Funding

A bill being considered in Colorado would . Using funds from a new nicotine tax recently approved by voters, the expansion of pre-K in the state would aim to tackle flagging literacy rates, help address early achievement gaps between student groups, and create foundations for improved mental health and community resources for students at earlier ages. Expansion of pre-K programming in the Centennial State represents a major campaign promise for Gov. Jared Polis, who announced the proposed legislation alongside a number of prominent early childhood advocates.

5 Idaho Latest State to Partner with Free Math Tutoring Nonprofit from Khan Academy Founder

Idaho joined the list of states looking to and backed by former education secretary Arne Duncan. The free tutoring platform, Schoolhouse.world, has also entered into partnerships with Nevada, Rhode Island, Colorado, New Hampshire, Mississippi, and North Dakota. Currently focusing on high school math and SAT preparation, the platform hosts small group tutoring sessions for free through Zoom and plans to expand to more subject areas soon.

The Education Department has to states on the collection of critical civil rights and education data. The guidance provides recommendations on how local and state officials can gather information on matters like attendance, school discipline, and school safety even as schools continue to recover from pandemic disruption and closures.

Deb Temkin, a vice president at the research group Child Trends, said that collecting such data is more important after the pandemic and that the information can “help inform studies of schools with large shares of students of color and changes in the teaching profession, among other things.”

Beyond civil rights data, here are five of the week’s top developments for how states and policymakers are implementing (and innovating under) the Every Student Succeeds Act amid the ongoing pandemic:

1 Colorado’s Accountability Pause Gets Go-Ahead from Biden Administration

Colorado education officials were by the Biden administration. Instead, the state was told to be prepared to meet federal accountability requirements by 2022.

Because of the shift, Colorado officials will not have to identify low-performing schools this school year to intervene and won’t be held to the expectation that 95% of students take a statewide summative test. The state will still be required to report out information related to student absenteeism and internet and technology access.

2 Virginia Superintendent Says 2021 Tests Are Focused on Student Recovery — Not Accountability

Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane says that the state’s focus for spring testing this school year is to in order to address pandemic disruption as schools reopen. Lane made the comments in a shared by the state Department of Education, while reiterating that test scores this year would not be used for typical accountability measures like school and teacher evaluations.

3 Federal Government Drawing a Fine Line on Testing This Spring

Education Week’s Andrew Ujifusa says “a disconnect has emerged between the federal government requiring states to offer their tests, and districts’ power to exempt students from taking them,” citing the .

In California, Ujifusa reports, some districts are poised to use local testing data in place of data from statewide, summative tests — a move the Education Department has, in other state plans, rejected. And in Oregon and Washington, some districts on the expectation to administer tests, granting families and students wide discretion to opt-out of taking spring exams.

4 Dallas Schools’ New Discipline Policy Would Eliminate Many Student Suspension to Address Racial Disparities

If successful, a plan by Dallas public schools to rewrite its student discipline and suspension policies could be among the most progressive pushes for addressing racial disparities in schools. The plan would eliminate suspensions for “low-level infractions” and would see students paired with in-person and virtual resources aimed at supporting behavioral and mental health needs.

“Suspension was never the right structure, but it is certainly not the right structure coming out of a global pandemic,” former Dallas ISD school board trustee Miguel Solis told ����Ӱ��’s Bekah McNeel. Dallas schools’ plan echoes national conversations around ways to fight racial disparities exacerbated during the pandemic – and .

5 New Bill Would Grant Civics Day to Delaware Students, Encourage Community Engagement

A bipartisan group of Delaware lawmakers is sponsoring a bill that would give students in the state , ranging from protests, to legislative sessions, to speaking on behalf of causes they support. The bill, if passed, would represent a first of its kind in the nation. State Rep. Eric Morrison, who authored the bill, said that if students can be given time to go hunting, “they should be able to take a day to learn more about their democracy.”

Beyond assessments and standards, here are five of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) the Every Student Succeeds Act and adjusting to the ongoing pandemic:

1 Florida’s Education Commissioner Waives High-Stakes Consequences of Spring Tests

As spring testing kicked off across the sunshine state this week, Florida education officials confirmed that typical “high-stakes” consequences of the exams, like grade promotions and school accountability measures, .

Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said the move would alleviate the pressures of testing on students and families, and would ensure some data on student learning during the pandemic is collected to inform school recovery and instruction. The Tampa Bay Times, in an editorial piece applauding both the removal of high-stakes consequences and the administration of tests this spring, said the state’s schools should now use the data to “focus on addressing achievement gaps from a chaotic year.”

2 Federal Government Approves District of Columbia Request to Cancel Spring Tests

D.C. is now the only state to have its , even as handfuls of other states saw their requests to cancel spring tests this school year denied.

Deputy Education Secretary Ian Rosenblum cited D.C. having among the highest rates of virtual learning during the pandemic as the primary reason the waiver request was approved. States like , , and – whose requests to cancel tests were denied – are now considering taking advantage of a number of flexibilities offered by federal officials, including the use of shortened tests, flexible testing windows, and, in some cases, the use of sampling to test smaller groups of students.

3 How Idaho’s Failure to Prioritize Access to Mental Health Services Hurt Students During COVID

Reporter Sami Edge dove into the in new coverage for IdahoEdNews. Edge says that though nearly 1 in 5 students suffer from mental health challenges — a number that likely skyrocketed during the pandemic — and that Idaho education officials and schools have not prioritized building a system that supports all students and their needs.

Edge points to mental health and social-emotional learning frameworks adopted in states like North Dakota and Nevada as examples of how states are grappling with an increased mental health focus in school. She continues that many of Idaho’s public schools say they currently lack the necessary time, resources, and support from the state to drastically improve access to care for students.

4 Inside States’ Sprint to Adapt Accountability Systems to the Pandemic

The Education Commission of the States , exploring how rapidly state accountability systems had to adapt to the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic and the abrupt halt of data collection systems typically used to inform things like school report cards, evaluations, and improvement plans. The piece highlights national guidance offered to states on how to maximize limited data this school year, but notes that state paths are likely to be varied and numerous – and that changes made during the pandemic will likely continue to impact accountability systems for years after schools fully reopen.

5 Arts Council Urges Oklahomans to Re-Prioritize Arts Education After Pandemic

Darlene Parman, chair of the Oklahoma Arts Council, is urging students, teachers, and families to call for fully funded arts education from state lawmakers. She asserts that in a time of great disruption and uncertainty.

Parman additionally cites the increased focus on arts education since the passage of ESSA, which included the arts as a factor in a well-rounded education and includes grant programs to further encourage innovative arts programs in schools. Notably, Stillwater Public Schools, just north of Oklahoma City, was recently given national recognition by the NAMM Foundation as one of the .

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The EdNote education policy blog has . The series comes more than five years after passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which required states to design data-driven accountability plans meant to help improve school quality and student outcomes.��

The first in the series explores the history and immediate implementation of the federal education law while highlighting the ways in which some states have continued to fine-tune and tweak their systems to reflect unique needs.

Also of note this week, Pennsylvania has , making it the final state to meet the federal requirement put in place by ESSA.��

As with all other states’ data, per-pupil expenditure information is .

In addition to ESSA’s anniversary and completing the school-level spending map, here are six of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) the Every Student Succeeds Act:

1 Michigan’s Accountability Waivers Approved — Though Chances Slim for More Wiggle Room on Testing

The Biden Education Department has . The move was in line with flexibilities offered by the department in national guidance released in February.��

Federal officials are still weighing an additional request from Michigan that the state be allowed to use the data from local, benchmark tests in place of the state’s annual standardized assessment — a move opposed by many civil rights and education organizations on the grounds that the data from local assessments is, by design, not comparable and fails to shed light on structural issues across school systems. , Dan Papineau, director of tax policy and regulatory affairs for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, said “Without Michigan-specific data, attainable only by M-STEP assessment results, we will not be able to compare across all districts, schools and students in the state to give parents a clear picture of whether their child is on track, what degree of learning remediation is necessary and where resources are most needed to be directed.

2 Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf Details $5 Billion in Federal Aid for Schools With Eyes on Reopening

Gov. Tom Wolf announced this week that Pennsylvania , distributed by the federal government’s Title-I funding formula. As with funding granted to other states, 90% will be expected to make it directly into the hands of schools, with more targeted to low-income and disadvantaged schools.��

Schools will have wide discretion in using the funding. Many of the schools are likely to target supports and resources at minimizing the harshest consequences of the pandemic, including learning loss, a rise in mental health needs, and infrastructure improvements.

3 Tennessee’s Education Commissioner Discusses Need for Data to Inform COVID-19 Recovery Efforts

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn . Schwinn explained why data collection, in her department’s view, is so important to guide efforts to accelerate learning amid the pandemic.��

“When we are able to measure student growth and learning through statewide assessments, we are able to best focus our efforts and student supports,” she said.

4 Georgia Education Officials Open Survey on Proposed Math Standards Changes

Georgia education officials have .��

After a year-long delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the State Board of Education plans to vote on the proposed standards by late spring. The changes to the standards, says Superintendent Richard Woods, were meant to follow through on the administration’s promise to repeal Common Core-based standards, though many were involved in the creation of the former standards and applaud their use of multiple representations in mathematics instruction.

5Designing Better Formulas For Funding Schools — How a State Funding ‘Decision Tree’ Can Help Policymakers

The Edunomics Lab has published a . The decision tree includes considerations for establishing or adjusting funding allocations, navigating accountability measures, effectively using data and tools, and more. It also offers additional resources and research on designing state funding systems.

6 Brookings Fellow Says Most Improvement Lies in How Testing Data is Used

Andre Perry of the Brookings Institution lays out a compelling argument in the national debate on testing in a new piece, suggesting that the . Perry additionally underscores the need for data to inform pandemic recovery, as well as dismantle inequitable systems.��

“Gathering information is essential if we really care about closing gaps in educational opportunity and achievement. Information shines light on structural problems,” Perry wrote. Perry’s commentary comes as the Biden administration continues to while also approving wide testing flexibility requested by states like Colorado and Michigan.

That sounded good to education experts who had long advocated for the creation of that allow for periodic classroom tests and end-of-year state exams to be aligned to measure student outcomes and also provide data that could inform classroom strategies and improve instruction.

On paper, the IADA enabled states to start considering truly different approaches to assessment and accountability that were better connected to teaching, learning and schoolwide improvement plans. But in practice, it limited states’ options and imposed a significant burden on their fiscal and staffing resources. The result? Only a handful of states have pursued the kinds of innovations that the IADA called for, leaving the law’s potential largely unmet.

Today, as a new presidential administration gets underway and seeks to make its mark on education policy, the IADA is set to be examined by Congress and the U.S. Department of Education for reauthorization. Now is the time to take stock of where the law went wrong and reimagine it for the future.

First, because no federal funding was provided under the IADA, the cost of piloting innovative assessment systems was simply too high for many states facing chronic budgetary and staffing shortfalls — not to mention widespread pushback against new exams for already overtested students. States were required to maintain their existing assessment and accountability systems in parallel with any new systems they rolled out, requiring double testing of students and significant additional administrative burden for staff. In short, even if the desire to innovate was there, the funding that was needed to do so was often lacking.

Second, states have generally understood the IADA’s requirements around “comparability” of assessment systems to mean that the results of any new tests should be largely identical to, or able to replace, the results of existing assessments. In other words, the IADA seems to favor variations on systems states are already using. This is a disincentive from piloting systems that might focus on new goals, such as making tests more efficient, measuring critical thinking or better measuring the complete range of learning targets for a grade.

Finally, the compressed timeline laid out by the IADA allowed only five years to move from piloting a new assessment system in a handful of districts to statewide implementation. This is a daunting mandate, considering the huge amount of time and effort involved in setting a vision, building a new statewide assessment aligned to that vision and getting districts ready to appropriately implement it so the rollout is a success. Even if states had the desire and will to try something new, the IADA timeline strongly favored preexisting efforts.

Still, there’s much to be learned from states that have already found ways to develop innovative systems for assessment and accountability. Louisiana, Nebraska and Kentucky, for example, have approached the challenge in different ways but with common themes: putting teaching and learning first, dedicating the time and energy to focus on what needs to change and starting from a robust theory of action that is grounded in the research about learning sciences.

To give states a true pathway to innovation and flexibility, the federal government will need to reimagine the IADA and provide the necessary supports to make it work. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Education should:

• Fund the IADA. Creating new systems of curriculum, instruction, assessment and accountability is expensive and time-consuming. Some states have been able to find philanthropic dollars to get them started, but this is hardly a long-term solution — especially when states need to continue supporting their old systems as they roll out the new ones. With proper funding, states will have the support they need to move forward.
• Give it time. The word “innovation” may connote speed, but it takes years to get all the components of a system up and running. To help states succeed, the IADA should relax its requirements that states begin showing results right away, and should recognize the planning years as an integral part of the process. Pressuring states to move quickly only discourages them from innovating, unless they are already well along that path.
• Expand the standard of comparability. When states reasonably interpret the IADA’s requirements around comparability to essentially mean “the same score or measurement as your existing assessment,” systems that take a fundamentally different approach to teaching and learning are disincentivized. If this self-defeating problem is properly addressed in the next iteration of the IADA, states will have an easier path to pursuing true innovation.
• Keep the guardrails protecting equity, but challenge what “same” means. The IADA contains provisions to ensure that concerns about equity are addressed. The IADA should keep these guardrails, but with the understanding that the comparability of assessment systems need not mean “the same,” as discussed above. States can innovate in meaningful ways without losing the important equity goals in the law. Assessments that look different should have data that looks different than that resulting from traditional multiple-choice end-of-year tests. States can partner with technical experts and research organizations to evaluate the quality of their new tests against the goals of their innovation, rather than simply against traditional measures based on what it means to have a quality multiple-choice test.

As the federal government looks toward changing and improving the IADA, states have their own role to play in paving the way for a more effective and sustainable version. Specifically, they should start with the end in mind: How do they want to see students’ learning reflected in their communities? States should discuss assessment and accountability not as isolated concepts, but as part of a broader conversation about how to define quality curriculum, teaching and learning, and how to set their vision around these definitions.

If successful, states will avoid the unproductive path of prioritizing models that simply collect data for collection sake while hoping that leads to systemic change. Instead, they will effect change by prioritizing support for students and student outcomes.

Although the IADA has not yet fulfilled its promise, its core premise — that innovation is the key to moving the needle on academic achievement — remains true and is more relevant than ever. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were due for some hard conversations about assessment and accountability systems. The urgency of the current situation has accelerated the need for innovation and flexibility as schools, districts and states grapple with the impacts of the pandemic on their communities — while recognizing how acutely they need high-quality data that provides real recommendations for how to meet students’ needs today and into the future.

Abby Javurek is vice president, solution vision and impact, government affairs & partnerships at , a not-for-profit provider of assessment solutions.

From an overnight reliance on remote learning and a national focus on learning loss to an urgent accounting of school building infrastructure and access to mental health services, the in a piece marking one year since the onset of the pandemic.

Schools, districts, and lawmakers, says the Post team, will likely continue grappling with consequences stemming from pandemic disruption for some time to come, as sharp declines in enrollment or shifts to charter or private schools, sustained use of virtual learning systems, and ongoing conversations about the role of assessments and data in guiding education strategies continue to be front-and-center conversations in most states.

The relationship between state education agencies and the federal government, in particular, will require clarification as school officials decide just how much reopening will represent a return to normalcy versus a reimagining of how education should be delivered and improved upon in a post-pandemic nation.

As we balance reflections on the past year with an eye toward the road ahead in reopening schools and recovering learning, here are five of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) the Every Student Succeeds Act:

New Jersey Lawmakers Mull Extending Special Education Eligibility for Older Students

Under a proposal being considered by New Jersey lawmakers, beyond what is required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. By maintaining eligibility for students through the age of 22, as would be done by the bill, schools could address many of the unique needs and concerns of students who receive special education services, especially considering that many families say their students’ progress has stalled during a year of virtual instruction.

Though most officials say extended services are likely needed, some are questioning if schools would be able to identify and anticipate additional costs associated with the move, which some school leaders say could add hundreds of thousands of dollars to annual budgets.

Auditor: District of Columbia Failed to Collect School, Student Performance Data

According to the Office of the D.C. Auditor, , including data on student achievement, absenteeism, and enrollment and transfers, despite receiving $30 million in local and federal funding for reporting purposes.

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Kathleen Patterson, the D.C. auditor, stated, “Our ability to bring about racial equity through education policy and practice is thereby crippled,” while District education officials took issue with the claims, saying significant progress has been made in collecting, analyzing, and reporting school data in the last five years.

Montana Releases Annual School Report Cards (With Caveats)

Montana has released federally required , while flagging that some key data points that typically rely on student test scores would be missing as assessments were cancelled at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the missing data, state officials said some new information was able to be provided, including school expenditures for nutrition and transportation programs and updated statistics from the Office of Civil Rights.

Virginia Educators and School Officials Brace for Consequences of Enrollment Drops

Continuing a trend seen across much of the nation, , particularly for students entering kindergarten.

As many parents chose to delay the start of their child’s kindergarten year to avoid an all-remote setting, schools are bracing for a drop off in students that could have significant implications for school budgets, class sizes, and staffing. Educators say the matter is complicated even further by the fact that most students will need extensive academic interventions when they return to school buildings, and uncertainty around enrollment will only make delivering needed supports more difficult.

New York’s Board of Regents Prepares Contingency if Plans to Cancel Tests Get Rejected

After announcing plans to continue pursuing a waiver of federally required statewide assessments despite Education Department guidance saying such requests would not be approved, the . In the event the Department rejects plans to cancel NY exams, the number of tests administered this school year would be sharply reduced to the four required by ESSA — ELA, Algebra I, and tests in Living and Earth Sciences.

In light of the to refrain from issuing a second year of waivers of federally required statewide student assessments this school year, states are rapidly advancing their conversations to focus on how best to collect, present, and use resulting data on student learning.

Andrew Ho, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, to not only gather data on learning to target instruction and resources, but to also identify students who became disconnected from school systems during the pandemic.

Ho’s proposed plan would enable states to identify students for whom the state had comparable learning data while conducting an “equity check” for students the “state has lost track of.” Though some states are expressing disagreement with the department’s guidance, most are beginning or continuing conversations on how to safely administer assessments and use the data in the most effective ways possible in light of significant disruptions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Beyond issues of student learning and assessments, here are four of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) the Every Student Succeeds Act:

New York Officials Propose Decoupling Graduation Requirements from Regents Exams

Following the announcement that the Education Department would expect states to proceed with annual student assessments, New York education officials proposed .

Though students would still sit for tests to boost efforts to understand the pandemic’s impact on learning and to target instruction and supports, students would simply need to complete the related course instead of being required to pass the exams. The move reflects those beginning to occur in other states, where officials continue to grant schools flexibility from typical accountability requirements that are usually informed by student assessment data.

Experts Caution States Considering Holding District Budgets Harmless

A cautions states as an increasing number consider holding district education budgets harmless for shifts in student enrollment, which typically determine state funding allocations.

While authors Hannah Jarmolowski and Marguerite Roza say such actions can be a helpful band-aid approach to help curb the impacts of budget losses, “states will want to carefully consider the goals and consequences and duration of any hold harmless approach in their own particular context — and pencil out with their own data whether the net effect is likely to help students in the long run.”

The brief includes a number of questions for states to explore as they consider hold harmless provisions, as well as an update on the status of such provisions across the nation.

How States Fund Mental Health Programming and Supports in Schools

A explores the most common funding sources that states use to provide mental health services and supports in schools.

In addition to dedicated federal funding provided through the Every Student Succeeds Act, which nearly every state draws on, the brief explores several grant programs and various state-level funding routes being used to support mental health programming for students.

California Releases School-By-School Spending Data

The Edunomics Lab is also reporting that , leaving Pennsylvania as the final state yet to meet the ESSA reporting requirement.

For easy access to each state’s per-pupil spending data, visits the .

New York and Michigan added their names to the list of states again , citing continued disruption imposed by the pandemic.

While the states join a few others in asking for the tests to be called off, officials in other states are voicing their hope to move forward with tests that they say can deliver data to help them through the worst of their pandemic-related challenges.

In and , for example, state officials moved to ease accountability measures typically dependent on test scores, but stated that administering the tests would be useful “to determine how much impact the pandemic has had on learning in schools.”

Beyond issues of testing, student data and accountability systems, here are five of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

1 Baltimore Schools to Offer Students Personalized Literacy Support Through New Online Program

Reading Plus, an online program that provides “personalized intervention and instruction for students” in reading and literacy, — a district that serves nearly 80,000 students.

The program has achieved the highest level of evidence required by the Every Student Student Succeeds Act, having completed a “well-designed and well-implemented experimental study.” The program claims to be able to help students increase reading proficiency by as much as 2.5 grades in a single academic year.

2 Florida Officials Extend English Proficiency Testing Window, Make Test Optional

In an effort to keep the flow of academic data flowing while accommodating the concerns parents have in sending their children to test in-person, .

The state’s public school chancellor, Jacob Oliva, urged parents to have students sit for the exams, citing the impact that the lack of data could have on schools’ abilities to meet the needs of more than 265,000 English Learners in the state. To grant additional flexibility, schools will have an additional two months to administer the exam this year.

3 Uber-Like Program Brought Into Spokane, Washington Public Schools to Meet Transportation Needs

HopSkipDrive, a Los Angeles-based transportation service originally started by a group of working mothers, .

“This is part of an ongoing effort of being innovative and efficient, and being good stewards,” Superintendent Adam Swinyard said. The transportation service will particularly benefit students with special education needs, as those associated costs will be covered under ESSA.

4 Conservative Education Leaders Lay Out Vision for Assessments Through COVID-19

The pandemic poses a number of obvious and well-discussed challenges to testing but, , it also presents “even bigger opportunities.”

In a new essay, Petrilli and Hess lay out five broad principles they believe , including ensuring that testing data become as actionable and agile as possible and to invest the time to fine-tune tests’ role in state and federal accountability systems.

5 New York Advocates Say Pandemic Presents Opportunity to Reprioritize Arts Education

Penny Swift, director of the NYC nonprofit Education Through Music, says that the — and says that the pandemic presents an opportunity to “reprioritize funding for arts education as soon as possible.”

Swift cites research establishing the academic and wellness benefits that quality arts opportunities can have for students, as well as how inequitable access to arts education can provide one depiction of how racial injustice manifests in the nation’s largest school district.

How could a recession affect long-term education funding? Two reports seek to provide further context for elected officials and policymakers about the dire stakes at hand as school districts brace for budget cuts.

The first report provides an analysis of state and local education funding following the Great Recession in 2008, while the second shows how varied the distribution of education dollars across states can be. ELC Executive Director David Sciarra says the reports provide timely insight for state and local leaders as they face difficult budget decisions and seek to deliver billions in federal COVID-19 relief funding as effectively as possible.

Beyond issues of education funding, here are four of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) the Every Student Succeeds Act:

1 As Enrollment Falls at Washington’s Public Schools, Charters See Surge of New Students

A CRPE shows a 3% decline in statewide enrollment at public schools in Washington amid the pandemic, through charter schools saw a sharp 35% increase. The report explores enrollment trends for schools in the state, which were the first in the nation to close in the spring, as well as specific data on trends in enrollment for students who receive specialized services, like special education or English learner supporters.

2 As Biden Taps Cardona For Education Department, How His Perspective as Former English Learner Could Drive Federal Priorities

If confirmed, President Joe Biden’s pick for education secretary, Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona, would bring a perspective previously unseen in the role – that of a student whose first language was Spanish and who learned English primarily at school. As a former English learner, , Cardona will be tasked with ensuring that states have the resources – and the urging – needed to meet their promises, as defined by individual state plans required by the Every Student Succeeds Act, to identify and support the nation’s increasing number of English learners. Some of the actions Cardona’s department could take on behalf of English learners, Carey says, could include improving teacher preparation and training, developing new digital tools for students, and potentially helping to scale innovations that occur in successful districts and schools.

3 Wyoming Joins Other States in Pausing Accountability Requirements Amid COVID, Closures

Wyoming education officials officially amid the continued disruption of the pandemic. Wyoming joins a number of states making similar announcements while also indicating a desire or intent to administer statewide annual assessments, which typically inform state accountability structures, to gauge student learning and address student and school needs.

4 Idaho’s Graduation Rate Inches Upward Amid Pandemic; Gains Aren’t Felt by All Students

Despite a global pandemic that forced schools closed in the final months of the academic year, , marking the first time the rate surpassed 82%. Though officials celebrated the gains, educators and advocates in the state noted that graduation rates for English learners, Black students, and military-connected students all fell – and the statewide rate still falls below the target set in Idaho’s ESSA improvement plan.

A found troubling signs in its analysis of 10 state accountability plans required by the Every Student Succeeds Act — findings that suggest the flexibility built into the law may be undermining efforts to identify the lowest performing schools and students for increased support.

As reported by ����Ӱ��’s Kevin Mahnken, the law’s Congressional authors intended to give states freedom in deciding how to target resources and interventions for schools, and the flexibility was “supposed to be mixed with firm guardrails” meant to protect disadvantaged schools and students. States like Florida were able to identify significant portions of its schools for some form of intervention, but many of the lowest performing schools in states like Michigan and Connecticut were entirely overlooked.

The report’s author, Anne Hyslop, said that under-identification of schools in state ESSA plans has major implications for students, citing Mississippi, where Black students are 17 times more likely to attend an F-rated school than white students.

Here are some of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

1 Tennessee Looks to Pair Federal Education Dollars and COVID Relief Funds for Statewide Literacy Initiative

Tennessee will use flexibility granted by ESSA to use federal education funds, as well as a portion of the state’s COVID-19 recovery funds, to for Tennessee students.

Noting that only around a third of third-graders in the state were reading at grade level prior to the pandemic and that school closures over th past year likely exacerbated the trend, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said, “I think that we have the opportunity to leverage one-time federal funding and federal grant funding to invest in our kids and, certainly, in our state.” The initiative, titled Reading360, will provide a wide array of supports and services to teachers, students, and families, as well as over 13,000 microgrants for student literacy tutoring.

2 Illinois Districts Navigate Loss of Spring Assessment Data on School Report Cards

District leaders in Illinois say that typically used to plan resource investments and improve instructional systems due to the cancellation of student assessments at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring.

Jeff Dufour, a principal in the Joppa-Maple Grove School District, said that following the absence of current data, schools are digging deeper into what they had learned from last year’s data. “With us not having those assessments last spring, we came into this school year looking at the same things we were looking at the year before,” said Dufour.

Dufour said he’s hopeful Illinois education officials will move forward with administration of standardized assessments this school year. “I think the data will be valuable because you’re looking at a year void of not having exams and not making truly data-driven decisions,” he said. The discussions in Illinois echo those in , where education leaders are taking disparate views on the feasibility of school report cards and student assessment more broadly.

3 Georgia State Grants Aim to Improve Rural Student Access to STEM/STEAM Programs

Georgia education officials that nearly $250,000 is being awarded to seven rural school districts to increase access to STEM and STEAM education programs.

“Through this grant program and others,” State Superintendent Richard Woods said, “we’re working to ensure schools in rural Georgia have the resources to offer a well-rounded education to their students.” The Georgia Department of Education was able to use a portion of its federally allocated funding to offer the grant, as outlined by ESSA.

4 Rep. Scott, Sen. Murray Talk About ‘Moral Responsibility’ to Track and Measure Student Learning During the Pandemic

In an interview with Education Week’s Andrew Ujifusa, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., chairman of the House education committee, amid the pandemic: “If we don’t know how far behind these students are, we won’t know how much work we have to do to catch up,” Scott said. Scott also invoked ESSA, the federal law that requires states to administer assessments and use results to target improvements for low performing schools.

The congressman echoed , D-Wash., who in her own interview with Ujifusa a few weeks prior, said that measuring student learning represented a “moral responsibility.” When asked whether accountability measures should be waived during the COVID-19 pandemic, Scott said the matter could be discussed, but that schools should not be casual in their responsibility to assess student learning and identify where “work needs to be done.”

A from the Center for Public Research and Leadership at Columbia University found that state school improvement networks frequently struggle to “scale up” successful policies or programs from the school to district or state levels.

As outlined by the Every Student Succeeds Act, networks of schools established by state accountability plans have the ability to define their own metrics of evaluation and success, which has resulted in researchers and policymakers being unable to compare results across districts. While the authors of the study commend school improvement networks for localizing problem solving processes, they recommend that school leaders further emphasize equity in their plans, prioritize collaboration with other districts, and develop and communicate clear protocols for evaluating the success of school interventions. Separate found that when schools from different improvement networks failed to coordinate their sampling and reporting practices, interventions were more likely to overlook the lowest performing students, further underlining the need for improved collaboration between districts.

Here are some of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

California Mental Health Commission Recommends Schools Become ‘Wellness Centers’

A new set of recommendations from the California Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission through new partnerships with local and regional nonprofit providers.

The commission sites a decade-long trend of increasing anxiety, depression, and suicide among youth, as well as a sharp increase in mental healths needs related to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and school closures. The recommendations follow similar suggestions by the State Board of Education and several state lawmakers, who, throughout the year, have been seeking to address California’s striking school counselor shortage.

Amid Pandemic, D.C. Posts Big Gains in Graduation Rate

New graduation data announced by Mayor Muriel Bowser this month showed , despite the abrupt closing of schools in the spring at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

The district saw graduation rates increase among nearly all student groups, including for Hispanic and Latinx students, Black students, and students with disabilities or who are English learners. The announcement marks only the second year in a decade that the district has achieved a graduation rate above 70%.

Special Education Advocates Hopeful for Renewed Federal Investment

As the first presidential candidate in decades to include full funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) as a campaign goal, President-elect Joe Biden has promised to make an effort to across the nation.

Advocates, who say that 14% students nationwide receive some degree of special education services, point to disruption of the pandemic, along with evidence that remote learning has been perhaps most challenging for students with disabilities, as reasons why the federal government ought to fulfill its legal obligation to fund up to 40% of special education costs at the school and district levels. In California, for example, the federal government currently only contributes roughly 8.4% of special education costs, with local district and state funding comprising the remainder.

Hawaii Education Officials Find Bright Spot in Otherwise Lean School Report Card

Hawaii is the latest state to release a amid a lack of assessment data in every state due to the cancellation of spring summative exams earlier this year.

Without the data from state tests, report cards have been unable to include specific data on academic proficiency, achievement gaps, academic growth and third- and eighth-grade literacy data. Hawaii Superintendent Dr. Christina Kishimoto acknowledged the gaps in information, yet still drew attention to bright spots found in increasing rates of inclusion of students with disabilities receiving special education services in a general education environment. “Inclusion provides equity of access to a quality education for our students with special needs, and results in improved attendance, achievement and post-secondary outcomes for school communities,” Dr. Kishimoto said.

Five years after it was signed into law, the Every Student Succeeds Act is being challenged by the unanticipated disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, reports .

At greatest risk, he says, are the assessment and accountability systems required of individual states; systems that now from cancelled 2019-20 summative assessments and an uncertain future amid a transition in the White House.

On the other hand, Ujifusa points to what may be a reason for some pride by the law’s congressional authors — so far in the pandemic, ESSA has proved flexible and decentralized enough to encourage locally driven solutions to challenges, particularly in terms of curriculum and instruction. Because of the pandemic, many states and districts will likely now consistently consider additional education factors that were not originally central to ESSA, like home internet access and whether parents are able to work from home.

Here are some of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

New Parent Dashboard Provides New York Parents with Access to School, District Details

New York education officials are on a new that provides access to detailed information on schools and districts.

The dashboard was built to comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and includes data on student enrollment and ethnicity, average class size, school climate, assessment results prior to the 2020 school year, financial transparency data, graduation rates, and school and district contact information.

South Carolina’s Report Card, Like Other States, Lean on Information in 2020

South Carolina’s , like other states, is leaner on information than in typical years due to the cancellation of standardized testing in the spring, but state officials say “key information about graduation rates, bullying and student safety, teacher and administrator salaries and retention, and other financial and classroom details” is still available.

Report cards can be accessed by visiting the .

Kentucky Thinktank Blasts State Education Department’s Release of Poor Quality School Spending Data

In a , the Bluegrass Institute harshly criticizes the quality of school spending data recently released by Kentucky education officials as a 2018-19 requirement of the Every Student Succeeds Act. The report states that Kentucky’s data is too general to be useful, as the amounts individual schools are allocated and spend are only broken down into two categories each, making it impossible for parents, educators, or community members to identify how much a school dedicates to teacher salaries or what portion of a school’s budget comes from local funding sources, for example.

Worse, the Bluegrass Institute also claims some data is simply incorrect, saying “the apparent lack of interest in fixing erroneous figures is disturbing.” The report recommends that Kentucky establish “an external civilian/researcher oversight committee to advise the board and the Kentucky Department of Education on how to make the school-level financial reports more useful and accurate.”

Nine West Virginia School Districts Flagged By State For Support

The West Virginia Department of Education has marked as needing assistance in the areas of finance, special education, and Pre-K readiness after an accountability report was completed ahead of a recent Board of Education meeting.

State education officials noted that the nine programs will be receiving direct support from offices within the department and that the accountability report was “not punitive” but meant to help districts improve. Officials additionally noted that due to the cancellation of spring assessments amid the pandemic, data was not available to provide a complete picture of school performance.

The Career and Legacy of Senator Lamar Alexander

In this , the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Chester E Finn, Jr. captures the life and service of three-term, retiring Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Detailing his time as the Chairman of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, or HELP, Committee, Finn states that no one has had more “far reaching influence on American K-12 education” than Sen. Alexander, who was a chief architect of the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and the reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act in 2018.

Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of America’s leading companies, recently for members of the business community, who the council says “can be part of the solution [to the opportunity gap] by investing further in programs that create equal access for people of color to high-quality education and training, both within educational institutions and at workplaces.”

The recommendations include urging members to call for robust funding for public schools, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery, quality systems of assessment to measure student progress and school performance, disaggregated and easily accessible education data from states and districts as required by the Every Student Succeeds Act, and business partnerships with nonprofit or community-serving organizations.

Here are some of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

1 West Virginia and Other States Were Already Improving Mental Health Systems Before Covid. 4 Ways Schools Can Continue Improving Supports Even Amid a Pandemic

Amid a steep rise in mental health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic, many educators, parents, and advocates are calling on states to find new ways to address students’ needs and build long-term, responsive health resources in schools. takes a look at four ways states and schools were already improving mental health systems prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, including by amending their state ESSA plans to include mental health considerations in attendance policies and data tracking, amending state legislation to require specific ratios of health providers to students, and providing basic levels of training to teachers and school staff.

2 How Districts Can Begin Preparing for Looming Budget Cuts

Long term financial considerations are quickly becoming a top concern for district and school leaders as federal stimulus discussions falter and local budget projections increasingly show massive shortfalls in communities across the nation. In reviewing lessons learned from the 2008 Great Recession and the resulting impact on education budgets, Stephanie Spangler and Rebecca Gifford Goldberg of Bellwether Education Partners that they recommend be used by districts and schools to brace for budget limitations now to identify the most effective and least harmful ways to adapt.

The levers focus on reducing ongoing spending and making adjustments to long term investments, but also provide intentional ways for leaders to identify and maintain commitments to long term goals. The authors conclude, “With care, districts can make plans that keep students’ short-term needs and long-term outcomes front and center.”

3 Inequities in Career and Technical Education Programs Revealed by New Analysis

An in middle and high schools by the Hechinger Report and Associated Press found deep inequities in the populations of students steered into various programs. Across 40 states, Black and Latino students were significantly less likely to enroll in CTE programs in the areas of science, technology, and engineering, while being disproportionately more likely to enroll in hospitality and human services programs.

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The analysis details estimated incomes for careers in the various fields, noting that students of color largely were enrolled in programs with lower anticipated lifetime earnings.

While school leaders increasingly report progress being made in diversifying CTE programs – a goal made slightly easier by new, equity-focused reporting requirements included in the 2018 reauthorization of the Carl D Perkins Career and Technical Education Act – researchers stress that diversity in career fields, particularly in teaching and counseling, must be improved to combat implicit bias, stereotyping, and to provide role models for students of color from similar backgrounds and communities.

4 Missing or Inconsistent Arts Education Revealing Importance to Overall Student Achievement

Nothing in education has been untouched by the coronavirus pandemic, says a  calling attention to the effects of limited or completely cancelled arts classes on student achievement, morale, and wellness. Jamie Kasper, director of the Arts Education Partnership, cited over 300 studies demonstrating that “Children raised in arts-rich environments, regardless of socioeconomic status, amount to human development squared. Arts accelerated all development: language, cognitive, reading.”

Delivering quality arts experiences to students virtually or in a socially-distanced way amid the pandemic has been difficult to say the least, says Richard Scaletta, superintendent of the General McLane School District in northwestern Pennsylvania. Under ESSA, the arts are considered a key part of a “well-rounded” education, and multiple levers are built into the law to incentivize the inclusion of arts education at the local level.

A new study from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA describes how middle and high school students in 28 U.S. school districts lost more than a year of learning due to suspension, reports Linda Jacobson. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states and districts are supposed to include student policing data in state report cards and data reported to the federal government. Daniel Losen, Director of the Civil Rights Project, says no state has complied and that large districts are failing to report even the numbers of school-related arrests of students.

Here are some of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

1 Wyoming: After-School Programs to Supplement School Day

A would allow community education programs, like those commonly offered by the Boys and Girls Club, to operate during school hours to both supplement learning opportunities but also provide increased childcare options amid school closures.

The waiver would specifically address requirements under ESSA that after-school programs receiving federal grant funding not operate during typical school hours.

2 Department of Education Reminds Schools of Requirements for Students with Disabilities

Responding to growing confusion around the provision of special education services after a chaotic back-to-school season, the federal Department of Education to offer guidance to states and districts still determining their plans for special education.

This follows the Department’s declination to grant waivers of state assessments and data reporting requirements, as established by both ESSA and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.

3 Indiana Report Cards, Already Affected By Test Transition, Now Rocked By COVID Closures

Indiana’s state school report cards will, like those of most other states navigating the cancellation of spring testing due to Covid-19, . However, Indiana now faces two years of incomplete or missing data, as state officials had been granted protection from a decrease in school scores following their transition from the state’s ISTEP exam to the new ILEARN assessment last year.

A new accountability framework built around the new exam is expected to be discussed and voted on later this year, though it remains unclear how shifts in accountability systems amid the COVID-19 pandemic could inform any new plan.

4 Kentucky DOE Releases Limited School Report Cards

The Kentucky Department of Education recently, though noting that due to the cancellation of spring assessments amid Covid-19 school closures, this year’s report cards feature little of the accountability and performance data typically required. State officials noted that “Star ratings, federal classification and significant achievement gaps will not be calculated.”

5 Parent Details How Accountability Measures Have Helped Students With Disabilities

Writer and mom to a student who happens to have Down’s Syndrome, Vicki Vila discusses how have helped and motivated schools to ensure a proper learning environment for students who receive special education services at a greater rate than ever before.

Vila applauds high expectations and standards for students, as well as quality data collection methods and assessment systems, saying “Schools should not fear what data might show; they should welcome it as a chance to make improvements.”

After months of uncertainty, education leaders, teachers, researchers and advocates received an as to whether state annual assessments would resume this school year following an abrupt cancellation this past spring due to the coronavirus. In a letter to all state superintendents — not just the small who had already begun seeking a second assessment waiver — Secretary Betsy DeVos said that annual, summative assessments are “at the very core” of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and are “among the most reliable tools available to help us understand how are performing in school.”

For those reasons, DeVos writes, states “should not anticipate such waivers being granted again.”

State education leaders were quick to respond to the decision, though reactions ranged from to . Under ESSA, states must administer an annual, summative assessment to capture student achievement in English/Language Arts, Mathematics and Science for use in accountability plans and to meet transparency reporting requirements.

Widespread cancellation of testing this spring was the first time that a nationwide assessment waiver has been issued since the passage of the landmark education law.

Here are some of the week’s top developments for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

Virginia looks to make changes to state ESSA plan around education of migratory children

The Virginia Department of Education is on three proposed changes to its ESSA state plan, all of which were introduced prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The changes would clarify requirements for students who take advanced math courses prior to the eighth grade, details a policy around the education of migratory children and “would expand the list of state-level activities supported by Title IV, Part A funding,” which largely supports technology and internet programs.

Concerns over New Jersey’s plan to cut funds for in-school mental health services and fold them into state program

The for an in-school mental health program resulted in some confusion and concern for the communities of the 90 New Jersey schools where the program operates. In response, a spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families said that mental health services exist and are being expanded through dedicated funding detailed in the Every Student Succeeds Act, which firmly supports states building robust out-of-school services.

More than $10 million to be distributed across 45 ‘out-of-school’ programs in Indiana through Title IV 

More than to 45 “out-of-school” programs in Indiana, according to the state department of education. The fund, which is continued through Title IV of ESSA, focuses on providing support to “local programs providing a safe and enriching learning environment to bolster regular school-day learning and programming.”

D.C. state superintendent of education to step down next month

D.C. State Superintendent Hanseul Kang that she is preparing to depart the office in coming months, prompting reflections on her time as D.C.’s chief education official.

Notably, supporters and critics alike point to Kang’s focus on reshaping teacher recruitment and retention policies, her goals to develop accurate and informative student assessment and data systems, and her execution of the District’s accountability plan under ESSA, which established the current school ratings system and school quality report cards.

A partnership between the Education Commission of the States and the National Endowment of the Arts has resulted in a designed to help school systems, education leaders, advocates and researchers capitalize on publicly reported state education data to improve access to quality arts education.

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the arts are considered a component of a “well-rounded” education. The federal law also defines the various types of data that states are required to make public.

In the midst of national conversations about systemic racism and the prolonged effects of a global pandemic, the toolkit aims to help policymakers and communities navigate “data [that] can also expose structural inequities that deny students of color and students from low-income households’ access to the fortifying power of the arts in their schools.”

Here are the week’s other top headlines for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

The federal government gives Native American students an inadequate education — and gets away with it

According to coverage by AZ Central and ProPublica’s Alden Woods, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) outlined in the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Specifically, Woods says, the BIE is the “only education system in the country that hasn’t implemented a plan to hold schools accountable for student performance.”

The claims against the BIE system also include failure to adopt standards for student learning and to provide an annual “report card” detailing student performance data gleaned from standardized assessments, which are also required by ESSA.

Indiana state board takes action to improve literacy 

The State Board of Education (IREAD-3) for fourth-grade students for the upcoming fall 2020 term.

The goal of the IREAD-3 is to help local education officials make data-driven decisions surrounding the literacy of their students. Additionally, the board approved that the “ISTEP+ 10 be administered to 2020-2021 juniors” during the spring assessment window, as outlined by the state’s accountability plan required by ESSA.

Government seeks data about pandemic’s effects on school funding and accountability

In a recent notice, the U.S. Department of Education .

Specifically, the department is interested in reviewing state data pertaining to federally granted waivers of ESSA requirements, most notably waivers of standardized testing mandates, as well as data on how states and districts used federal funds to help in “pandemic recovery.”

Education Week reporter Andrew Ujifusa said, “If the proposed data collection becomes a reality, we could eventually learn a lot more about how states and schools handled key policy questions during the pandemic.”

During a recent appearance at the Education Writers Association national seminar, Department of Education Assistant Secretary Jim Blew told reporters that the DOE’s “instinct” is to not grant state waivers of federal testing requirements, as established by the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. The comment comes after a announced that they were intending to apply for another testing waiver for the 2020-21 school year.

As , Blew noted that “it would be premature to grant waivers at this time … There are so many benefits to testing, and it allows for some transparency about how schools are performing and the issues we need to address, that our instinct would be to decline those waivers.” Referencing a from the Council of Chief State School Officers detailing effective and informative use of data from both end-of-year summative and diagnostic assessments, Blew stated that from the “accountability side, we need to know where students are so we can address their needs.”

Here are the week’s other top headlines for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

New GAO report sounds alarm about deteriorating school infrastructure; two-thirds of schools lag on accessibility 

A describes nearly two-thirds of American school buildings as lacking adequate access for students and staff with disabilities. Additionally, the report found that many districts have delayed projects that are critical for facilities to function, including roofing and heating.

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The findings echo increased conversations about the state of America’s education infrastructure, which have reached new levels of prominence amid school shootings in recent years and, of course, amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Proposal: Congress should use the ‘direct student services’ provision to provide extra federal aid to struggling students instead of schools

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Michael Petrilli, in examining the developing conversation around additional K-12 stimulus funding for schools, that any federal investment should be distributed in a way that directly provides services to kids “most at risk of falling even further behind.”

To do this, Petrilli outlines a few ways that Congress could guide funding to states, including using ESSA’s “direct student services” provision, and urges education advocates to shift the frame of accountability conversations to “identifying and providing extra help to struggling students” rather than struggling schools.

New data reveal how much districts are spending on every school in America

A “key tucked in the Every Student Succeeds Act” has resulted in a massive “trove” of school-level spending data, Daarel Burnette for Education Week.

So far, 42 states and the District of Columbia have complied with the ESSA requirement to make public per-pupil expenditure data, which allows stakeholders across the education field to delve into the implications of spending on school improvement, effectiveness and academic success. The reporting requirement, only enforced this year, “gained widespread support from fiscally conservative Republicans and civil-rights-minded Democrats.”

With the rapid response required amid the COVID-19 pandemic, education leaders are being forced to make important decisions to meet the immediate and academic needs of students at a moment’s notice. As local officials continue to consider each district’s plan for reopening schools, researchers and advocates are calling on superintendents to implement better attendance tracking systems for the upcoming school year.

While they that “it wasn’t realistic to expect districts to develop and implement perfect attendance systems immediately after the pandemic hit,” such data will be critical going forward in understanding widespread trends in access amid remote and hybrid learning scenarios.

Attendance data give school and district leaders an accurate depiction of which students have been left behind, as the coronavirus pandemic will likely exacerbate existing educational inequities.

Additionally, more accurate attendance data will inform resource allocation, targeted supports and funding, though the federal Department of Education waived the use of attendance in determining funding distributions for the short term, as is typically required by the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Here are the week’s other top headlines for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

Kansas to create annual report card for students in foster care

Data related to students in foster care are expected to become much more transparent in the Sunflower State. Early this month, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly that established “an annual education report card for students in foster care.”

The report card will track outcomes of youth in foster care and include indicators such as graduation rate, school suspension rates, standardized assessment scores and “de-identified disaggregated race and ethnicity data,” among additional items. ESSA requires that states disaggregate student data for students in foster care.

How to hold schools accountable … when districts are making the decisions

Chad Aldeman of Bellwether Education Partners and Anne Hyslop of the Alliance for Excellent Education question the focus of accountability measures during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. If districts were, in most places, the entities setting up food distributions, purchasing Chromebooks and making decisions about wireless internet access and online teaching protocols, why should accountability for student achievement fall squarely on the shoulders of individual schools?

The two authors take a look at how accountability is structured under ESSA, describe how one of the largest districts in the nation is an example of increased district centralization, and urge readers to ask whether districts should bear more scrutiny than prior to the arrival of COVID-19.

How to better use education data to navigate through the crisis

Two new reports from the Data Quality Campaign discuss the need for educational data as officials continue to make many complex decisions amid the COVID-19 pandemic and in recovery.

The focuses directly on the importance of transparency and provides clear ways that education officials can use state education report cards, required under ESSA, to share data with the public. The shares “short- and long-term action steps that state and district leaders should take to ensure that research supports recovery.”

Trump administration may want schools back open, but ESSA reserves that authority for local leaders

Earlier this month, the Trump administration demanded that schools reopen full time in the fall despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance to maintain social distancing. However, the federal government has authority in the reopening of schools, as decision-making, in large part, remains under state and local control as outlined by ESSA.

California, as an example, has released guidance for reopening schools in the fall but insists that plans “be realized at the local level” and that communities come to decisions that will best serve their students.

As initially reported in late June, Georgia has become the first state to announce its intent to seek a for the 2020-21 academic year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This comes after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos approved a one-year waiver that suspended “federally mandated testing for the 2019-20 year after schools around the country closed and learning was delivered remotely for several months.”

The public feedback period came to a close last Friday. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states are required to test students in grades 3-8 once a year and once in high school to meet accountability measures.

Here are the week’s other top headlines for how states are implementing (and innovating under) ESSA:

Virginia announces new program to help retain newer teachers

To mitigate teacher shortages, the Virginia Department of Education and the James Madison University College of Education have a new partnership called the Virginia New Teacher Support Program, aimed at retaining novice teachers in the state.

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Under this program, first- and second-year teachers will be matched “with an instructional coach who will provide coaching on professional knowledge, instructional planning, instructional delivery, student assessment, and professionalism.”

This program, which is being funded by a $200,000 grant from Title II ESSA Funds, is eligible to approximately 500 teachers in the 2020-21 school year and seeks to provide newer teachers with the support they need to remain in the classroom and “increase their effectiveness.”

Alabama state DOE announces goals for improvement

The Alabama State Department of Education has released a outlining measurable goals to improve student achievement, including: “Academic Growth and Achievement; college, career, and workforce preparedness; safe and supportive learning environments; highly effective educators; and customer-friendly services.” The new strategic plan, which was 15 months in the making, is meant to work in conjunction with the “state’s plan for improving Alabama’s education system under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in May 2018.”

How will schools measure English learners’ ‘COVID slide’ learning loss?

A new from the Migration Policy Institute “explores the policy and practical questions for states considering implementing native-language assessments,” which may more effectively measure student knowledge and allow educators to identify gaps in English-language instruction. The brief comes at a time when many educators and advocates are expressing concern that the “COVID slide” may be “especially troublesome” for the more than 5 million students learning English in K-12 schools.

More often, English language learners face multiple challenges in accessing educational opportunities, including “limited access to the internet and the language support services they often receive in school.” ESSA urges states to “make every effort” to develop their state assessments in students’ first languages, but the law “stops short of requiring” native-language assessments.

Five existing policies officials may lean on to face looming budget cuts

Celina Morgan-Standard, founder and CEO of the Technology for Education Consortium, and David DeSchryver, director of research at Whiteboard Advisors, to discuss some ways in which school leaders and policymakers might begin facing the very expensive reality of reopening schools following COVID-19.

Leaning on estimates from the superintendents’ associations, the Learning Policy Institute and the American Federation of Teachers that place the cost of reopening at more than $116.5 billion for all public schools, Morgan-Standard and DeSchryver explore EdTech initiatives, ways to help parents and families engage in learning, tools that allow for price transparency for educational products, and increasing expenditure transparency (one of the few ESSA requirements not recently waived by the federal Department of Education).

A is urging Congress to “waive a provision in federal law that requires school districts to maintain consistent funding levels for special education from year to year.”

The “maintenance of effort” provision, which is part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, is being singled out as presenting “particular challenges amid the COVID-19 pandemic.” Now, , as schools rush to reorganize budgets and resources, many fear penalties for violating the provision, which does not have exceptions for pandemics. The letter asks Congress to “include a waiver from the requirement in its next coronavirus relief package.” And in the letter, education groups noted that the IDEA provision “is more ‘stringent’ than the requirements in the Every Student Succeeds Act” and called on Congress to provide more flexibility for school districts.

“Unfortunately, the maintenance of effort requirements in IDEA do not have a pandemic exception,” the authors say in the letter, which was signed by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, the Association of School Business Officials International, Council of Administrators of Special Education, the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the National School Boards Association. “Specifically, the IDEA local maintenance of effort requirements do not allow districts to adjust their special education funding that they had previously, and in good faith, dedicated to special education efforts.”

Here are the week’s other top headlines for how states are implementing (and innovating under) the Every Student Succeeds Act:

Advocating for arts education as a priority in reopening schools

A group of more than 50 arts and education organizations recently , “Arts Education Is Essential,” that underscores the role the arts have played — both during the ongoing health crisis as well as its importance in general for all students, “including those who are in traditionally underrepresented groups.”

The joint statement asks policymakers and the general public to consider the critical role of arts education, reminding readers that it is “part of a well-rounded education as defined by ESSA and supported in state laws throughout the country.”

Nationwide, 46 states require an arts credit in order to graduate from high school, while 43 require arts instruction in elementary and secondary schools.

Pennsylvania schools get access to $523 million in emergency funding through CARES Act

Up to $523 million in emergency education funding is for Pennsylvania’s public schools, charter schools and education agencies through the CARES Act. “At least 90% of the money, or $471 million, is to be awarded to traditional public schools and charter schools. Each entity is to receive an amount proportional to federal Title I-A funds received in 2019 under the Every Student Succeeds Act.”

The remaining 10 percent will be allocated to the state Education Department to address issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, such as remote learning. Funds can be used for a wide range of projects and services, including “food service, professional training, technology purchases, sanitizing and cleaning supplies, summer and after-school programs, and mental health supports,” and all funds must be used by September 2022.

DeVos taking heat for coronavirus relief guidance

An impassioned criticizes Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for directing “public schools to share with private and religious schools more of the funding available to them through the CARES Act.”

Under the secretary’s recently released guidance, education professors Abe Feuerstein and Sue Ellen Henry argue that these federal funds should be allocated according to the enrollment “of all students — public and non-public — without regard to poverty, low achievement, or residence in a participating Title I [federal aid for low-income students] public school attendance area.” According to the authors of the op-ed, this directive “flies in the face of ESSA and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.”