Education is an important building block for any society to thrive and dominate. Education reform has long remained a vital component of governmental agendas since the beginning of the 17th century. Because the United States has a capitalist economic system, the progression of innovation, competitiveness, and industrialization are heavily embedded into the economy. With education being such a crucial and complex entity to tackle, it remains a high priority to governments all over the world. For many years government officials have attempted to restructure and improve the education systems around the United States. They have focused on bridging the educational gap between the rich and poor, minorities and their white counterparts, and children with special needs and disabilities. In a nutshell, these are all the problems that the Every Student Succeeds Act aims to confront.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is the K-12 federal education law. It reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and replaces the No Child Left Behind act. The ESSA was signed into law on December 10, 2015. The law was designed to increase opportunities for local input and flexible decision-making. Like the No Child Left Behind Act, ESSA is a reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which instituted the increase in the federal government’s role in public education. ESSA preserves the general structure and funding methods of the ESEA, while giving states significantly greater local authority and flexibility over standards, goals, measures of students' success and outcomes, and supports for school districts. ESSA tasks each state with developing its plan for support and accountability. ESSA passed the U.S. House of Representatives on December 2, 2015, by a vote of 359 to 64 and passed the U.S. Senate on December 9, 2015, by a vote of 85 to 12 (Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)). This legislation was not some new-found idea, policymakers attempted to reform an already present, failing education system.
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The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which was reauthorized in December 2015, denoted its 50th commemoration, and the new form predicts significant future moves in responsibility and appraisal. The ESEA was made during Lyndon B. Johnson's organization in 1965. The first ESEA enactment was a social liberties law made as a reaction to neediness and disparity in instruction the nation over – destitution that President Johnson saw direct while educating in Texas. ESEA offered government awards to locale serving low-pay students and awards for books, instruction focuses, and grants for low-salary undergrads. President Johnson accepted that the full instructive open door ought to be our first national objective.
In spite of the fact that the general crucial ESEA has continued as before throughout the years, it had advanced after some time to incorporate the requirements of increasingly particular in danger gatherings, including English-language students (the Bilingual Act; Title VII), female students (the Women's Educational Equity Act; Title IX), and Native American students (the Improvement of Educational Opportunities for Indian Students Act; Title X).
A ton has been expounded with the new law, yet it may be useful to consider it in the setting. Keeping that in mind, here's a short course of events of a portion of the significant achievements and changes identified with ESEA. Not the slightest bit is this expected to cover the entirety of the subtleties of its history.
In 1965, ESEA was instituted by Congress and marked into law. In 1968, Congress extended ESEA to incorporate new projects (and titles) that serve in-danger kids (transients and disregarded youngsters). The Bilingual Education Act was likewise passed.
Through, 1969 and 1970, analyses demonstrated the abuse of Title 1 guide (counting the compelling Martin-McClure report) making Congress alter and fix the language in ESEA a few times (between 1965-1980). The objective of the revisions was to build confinements to such an extent that more Title 1 cash would be utilized to help instructively burdened students from low-salary families. During the mid-1980 government backing of instruction, programs were forcefully decreased. Altogether less instructively distraught students were served under ESEA in the 1980s than in the 1970s.
In 1988, 'Accountability and student testing become a major part of the law in 1988' (Wardlow, 2016). The new form expected areas to utilize evaluations to quantify and report their viability every year. Schools that neglected to gain satisfactory ground were committed to creating plans for development.
In 1994, the recharging of the ESEA called for states to create measures and norms-adjusted evaluations for all students. States and locale were committed to distinguishing schools that were not making satisfactory yearly progress under Improving America's Schools Act (IASA) and singled them out for development. The IASA was put into effect with 'the expectation that all children will meet challenging state standards, flexibility with accountability, targeting funds, family and community partnerships, and support system roles and infrastructure' (Billig, 2009).
In 2002, ESEA became NCLB (No Child Left Behind Act). NCLB moved a significant part of the basic leadership and asset designation away from states and in this way expanded the national government's job in instruction. NCLB additionally fundamentally extended testing prerequisites. States were required to evaluate students every year in perusing and math in grades 3-8 and once in secondary school. Satisfactory yearly progress was required/expected for all students, including students of constrained English capability, racial/ethnic minority students, and students with impairments. NCLB necessitated that all students become capable in math and perusing/language expressions by 2014.
In 2009, ESEA was at that point two years past due for reauthorization. Despite the fact that ESEA was slowed down in Congress, new projects were made, and funds were designated towards instruction in 2009 as a feature of the national monetary improvement plan (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). Around $100 billion was designated towards instruction help by means of the ARRA. The ARRA was 'aimed at stimulating and stabilizing the American economy during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, reflecting significant new dimensions of federal action in the area of educational reform' (Superfine, 2011). Notwithstanding sparing employments in the teacher workforce, the ARRA was intended to start the execution of explicit change methodologies in states and schools and establish a framework for the Obama organization's ensuing instructive change endeavors, including the looming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. While the objectives of the instructive change arrangements of the ARRA are excellent, the ARRA exceeds the breaking points of viable government activity. The instructive change arrangements of the ARRA face numerous potential entanglements given the chronicled attributes of government instructive change from the statehouse to the school rooms, the logical proof hidden in the changes supported by the ARRA, and the current political atmosphere. Albeit a considerable lot of these traps are presently unavoidable, change endeavors that expand on the ARRA yet center around dealing with the educator workforce, balance issues of nearby and government experts in a more nuanced way, and draw all the more emphatically on instructive research offer many guarantees for progressively compelling government activity in schooling. New aggressive award programs were built up for the structure of appraisals adjusted to the Common Core State Standards and for imaginative endeavors to improve state information frameworks, guidelines, and educator assessment frameworks.
Many states failed to meet the NCLB standards, and the Obama administration granted waivers to many states for schools that showed success but failed under the NCLB standards. However, these waivers usually required schools to adopt higher academic standards in testing. The NCLB was generally praised for forcing schools and states to become more accountable for ensuring the education of poor and minority children. However, the increase in standardized testing that occurred during the presidencies of Bush and Obama combined with resistance from many parents, called for a lesser role from the federal government in education (Rich and Lewin, 2015). There needed to be a higher focus on the underperforming populations of students, such as minorities, children with learning disabilities/ special education, students in poverty, and English language learning students.
The education agenda was set from the top-down process. This piece of legislation was able to get on the agenda was because in 2015 there was new leadership in three of the four major Congressional leadership positions. Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray sat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Representative Bobby Scott served as the House Education Committee ranking Democrat, and Representative John Kline remained the Chair. This new arrangement in leadership positions permitted the start of new negotiations and agenda-setting. They decided to pursue a major rewrite of the No Child Left Behind act. They were the ones who deemed this revision necessary. Alexander and Murray collaborated to write a bipartisan bill that could pass the Republican-controlled Congress and earn the signature of President Barack Obama (Saultz, 2016).
There are many revisions to the No Child Left behind Act that make up the Every Student Succeed Act. The first is that the ESSA requires that all students in America be taught to high academic standards that will prepare them to succeed in college and careers. Secondly, states have more flexibility to define their standards, assessments, and accountability systems rather than having a federally mandated program. Thirdly, it ensures the communication of information to educators, families, students, and communities through annual statewide assessments that measure students' progress toward those high standards. Next, the ESSA requires that all schools provide evidence that their English Language Learning students are increasing their English proficiency. It includes an increase in funding for support and provisions pertaining to School Climate and Discipline, Educational Technology, Family Engagement, Charter Schools, and Accelerated and Blending Learning. The ESSA sustains and expands investments for increasing access to high-quality preschool. It maintains an expectation that there will be accountability and action to effect positive change in our lowest-performing schools, where groups of students are not making progress, and where graduation rates are low over extended periods of time (Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Since the ESSA shifts the decision-making power to the states and local school districts, it up to each individual state to implement a plan that fits the needs of the students. For this portion, I will look at how the state of Illinois is implementing the ESSA act. The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) submitted the ESSA State Plan for Illinois to the U.S. Department of Education (ED) on April 1, 2017. The following changes were outlined: Title I: Improving Basic Programs Operated by State and Local Educational Agencies, Illinois has adopted a program called IL-EMPOWER in which school improvement services are delivered. Title I focused on the Education of Migratory Children. Title I focus on prevention and intervention programs for children and youth who are neglected, delinquent, or at-risk. Title II aims to support effective instruction in classrooms. Title III concentrates on language instruction for English learners and immigrant students. Title IV examines student support and academic enrichment grants. Title establishes 21st-century community learning centers (21st CCLC). Title V focuses on the rural and low-income school programs. Title VII explores Vento homeless assistance act (McKinney-Vento act), education for homeless children, and youth program (Illinois State Template Board of Education State for the Consolidated State Plan Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, 2017).
In order to construct the outline of this plan, the ISBE conducted a tour around the state providing information about the proposed plan and taking suggestions from the public and stakeholders. Although these changes have been outlined tension stilled managed to arise amongst stakeholders just ending the second year of the ESSA enactment in 2019. The 2019-2020 Chicago Public School year began with a great start until the ESSA's main stakeholders, teachers, and students went on a strike. Members of the Chicago Teacher Union say that they have lost two weeks of pay, CPS is threatening to take away teacher insurance, misuse of funding for minority children, low paying teacher salaries, and overcrowded classrooms (Friedberg 2019). All issues of which the ESSA is supposed to address. The strike lasted for 11 days putting over 300,000 students out of school (Smith, Davey, 2019).
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