Why we support the Every Student Succeeds Act
Susan Bowles, a kindergarten teacher in Gainesville, Fla., was fed up with all of the testing she was required to give her 5-year-old students.
As an act of civil disobedience, for which she was willing to take the consequences, she refused to administer one of the several tests for kindergartners — the Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading — which her kids had to take on a computer three times a year. In a letter to parents that went viral, she wrote, “I am not opposed to assessments and am for accountability in schools. But enough is enough. I keep asking, when will the insanity stop? When will someone speak up?”
She noted that she understood her defiance could mean she would get fired. Actually, a few months later, Susan was named Alachua County, Fla., teacher of the year.
Susan spoke for thousands of educators, parents, students and others who have had it with the testing obsession that has taken over public education — a strategy that began with No Child Left Behind, expanded with Race to the Top, and has limited classroom instruction, narrowed the curriculum and been used to unfairly evaluate teachers.
Speaking of consequences — and we have seen many, like teacher demoralization, a growing teacher shortage, and student and parent anxiety — it’s no wonder the most recent Phi Delta Kappa-Gallup poll shows that the public is fed up with the overuse and misuse of testing.
In New York state alone, 20 percent of students opted out of high-stakes standardized tests. And it’s not like the test-and-punish policies of the last 15 years have helped with performance. In the last decade, National Assessment of Educational Progress scores have flattened and even gotten worse at times. Yet in the first 20 years after ESEA became law in 1965 — long before the testing craze — NAEP scores showed the achievement gap decreased.
Congress heard and took seriously the “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore” cries from communities across the country. Two weeks ago, Republican and Democratic conference committee members, by a near unanimous 39–1 vote, approved a final rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This overwhelming support shows that the emphasis on testing over all else was wrong and must be changed. Congress, which rarely does anything in a nonpolarized, bipartisan way, has a chance to make this change.
This overwhelming support shows that the emphasis on testing over all else was wrong and must be changed.
The ESEA conference bill (called the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA) now moves to the House and Senate floors for up-or-down votes, no amendments allowed.
There’s a lot to like.
The biggest change is that high-stakes testing will no longer be the be-all and end-all of our kids’ education.
The secretary of education also can no longer have a say in teacher evaluation systems, which have been excessively test-focused.
States — not the federal government — would develop accountability systems that would have to include indicators of reading and math proficiency; high school graduation rates; English language proficiency; student growth or another reliable, valid indicator for elementary and middle schools; and at least one indicator of school quality or success, such as measures of safety, and student or educator engagement. It’s important, also, that the secretary of education would be prohibited from prescribing how much weight to place on each indicator or goal.
And in an about-face from current federal policy that prescribed interventions for turning around low-performing schools, such as school closings, the bill gives states much more flexibility to determine the best approach. And since half the children who go to public schools are poor, it’s significant that the bill maintains federal funding for public schools that educate large populations of disadvantaged students, who need the most resources, and that it expands early childhood education.
Under the new framework, the states will be taking the lead in much of this work, which means the challenge turns to 50 state capitals and Washington, D.C., where state leaders and lawmakers will be dealing with the same issues of accountability, resources, interventions and teacher evaluations systems. We will do everything in our power to ensure that fixes will improve teaching and learning and reflect the best interests of students, teachers, parents and communities — especially poor neighborhoods.
We know this rewrite of the ESEA law will not solve all the problems in public education, but it’s a huge step forward. It has the potential to create a new paradigm in public education, relegating the era of test-and-punish strategies to the trash heap. It even could begin to solve a serious teacher recruitment and retention problem, especially in hard-to-staff schools.
We know this rewrite of the ESEA law will not solve all the problems in public education, but it’s a huge step forward.
We all have heard from teachers who have told us stories of being forced to teach to a test, or teach to the mean, or of being reluctant to teach in schools with a great many challenges because they know their evaluations are based predominantly on test scores. Tests were never intended for the purposes of evaluating teachers.
Maybe most importantly, the new law could bring back the joy of teaching and learning. Teachers would have flexibility to try new ways to teach, to meet the needs of their students, and to help their students think critically and analytically instead of focusing on what might be on a high-stakes test.
The time is now to make sure Susan Bowles and all her colleagues can succeed, parents can have confidence in public education, and students will be well-prepared for a great future.
No piece of legislation is perfect. But let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Congress must pass the ESEA reauthorization bill to reset public education so that we can do right by our students and their educators.
