ESEA Reauthorization Update

In March, the Obama Administration released its blueprint for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The blueprint offers broad concepts regarding changes to the current version of the law, commonly known as the No Child Left Behind Act.

While details of the plan have yet to be fully released or vented in Congress, the key elements of the administration’s Blueprint for Reform are summarized below.

What Stays:
 A Strong Focus on Standards – The new proposal continues to focus on the “common core standards initiative” to establish more uniform academic standards in reading and math to prepare students for college or a career.
 Annual Testing – The new proposal keeps the requirement for annual testing in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school.
 Reporting Requirements – The new proposal keeps the requirement for disaggregating and reporting on student data for populations such as racial minorities, English-language learners, and students in special education.

What Changes:
 The Title I program would receive a new name and be called “College and Career Ready Students”.
 The proposal eliminates the NCLB’s 2014 deadline for bringing all students to academic proficiency and replaces it with a goal of ensuring that all students are ready for college or a career by 2020.
 It replaces the focus on teacher quality with teacher and principal effectiveness. States and districts would be required to publish, at least every two years, a performance level report card on teacher and principal effectiveness.
 Under the new plan, all or nearly all of the new federal money will go to innovation and be competitive money.
 The new proposal eliminates many of the NCLB sanctions, including the provision of offering Supplemental Educational Services (SES), when schools have not made AYP for three consecutive years.
 The ESEA reauthorization plan replaces AYP with a more comprehensive review of student performance that looks at student growth and school progress.
 The new proposal places a focus on the nation’s lowest 5% of schools by requiring them to take drastic steps to improve.

Both the House and the Senate are scheduled to release draft reauthorization bills in June2010.

Guiding Principles:
1. Promote College and Career Readiness for All Students.
2. Maintain Focus on Equity and Core Investments.
3. Ensure Meaningful Accountability.
4. Encourage Innovation in State Policy.
5. Ensure Coherence and Reduce Burden in and across Federal Law.
6. Build Capacity to Support Comprehensive State Policy Reforms.
7. Increase and Improve Investments in Research and Dissemination of
Knowledge.

The Administration's ESEA Blueprint presents core themes regarding the Administration's proposal in numerous areas of education reform:

• College-and career-readiness: New focus of Title I
• Flexibility: Move toward "tight on ends, loose on means.”
• Incentives: Focus on carrots, not just sticks
• Competition: Formula funding remains, but new increases for competitive grants
• Consolidation: Broader, fewer funding streams
• Equity: Scope unclear, but new focus on resource equity
• Capacity: Recognition of need to support state systems

In the weeks since the Obama administration released its blueprint for revising ESEA on March 13, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and the House Education and Labor Committee have held multiple hearings on ESEA reauthorization.

During the last week of April, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) said that he intends to mark up legislation in May that would reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Harkin has set a goal of having the legislation reach the Senate floor in late June or July, but acknowledged that finding a replacement for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced that he will retire this summer, could cause the timeline to slip. In addition, others have suggested that immigration reform could cause reauthorization to take a back-burner. And, with the mid-term elections slated for November, many observers believe reauthorization this year is not likely.