• An overemphasis on mathematics and reading led to neglecting the students’ holistic needs. Programs aimed at addressing students’ social and emotional needs were underfunded to fund more supplementary services for mathematics and reading improvement. Mathematics and reading are very important measures of student success, but redistributing funds earmarked for social and emotional needs created the unintended consequence of eliminating or underfunding important student support systems like after-school programs.
ESSA is not very different, in substance, than NCLB. ESSA still requires states to test students annually in mathematics and reading and to target schools that are low performing and mandate a plan of improvement (The Alliance, 2016). The only real substantive difference is that the oversight of school progress, primarily based on standardized test scores, shifts from the federal government to the states (Klein, 2016). States’ rights advocates and those who are skeptical about federal intervention in educational policy applaud ESSA as a significant improvement over NCLB (Martin & Sargrad, 2015). But, not everyone is convinced that simply changing the system of oversight from the federal to the state level is a good idea and will benefit the neediest students. Leslie Proll, former director of policy for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, notes:
The whole purpose behind the original bill (NCLB) was to ensure that there were consistent standards and federal oversight to make sure that states and localities were doing the right thing by poor children, by children who needed that assistance the most, and reducing that and granting so much discretion to states is just worrisome. (as cited in Davis, 2015)
I agree with Proll’s assessment; ESSA will not be any more beneficial to our most vulnerable populations than NCLB. Bringing educational equity to fruition will require more than changing school oversight from the federal to the state level.
In 2008, Janet Napolitano, governor of Arizona at the time and the chairperson of the National Governors Association, initiated a task force of U.S. secretaries of education to investigate creating national educational standards (Conley, 2014). The U.S. Constitution does not specifically grant the federal government jurisdiction over educational policy, so the omission makes education policy a right of the states. Governor Napolitano was concerned that under NCLB, schools would be rated and federal funding would be tied to standardized test scores. Her greatest concern was the fact that all fifty states had different curriculum standards and fifty different standardized tests. On June 2, 2010, the task force introduced a set of academic standards in mathematics and English language arts that would be later known as the Common Core State Standards, which forty-two states and the District of Columbia would adopt. These states also agreed to assess the standards on one of two standardized tests—from (1) the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) or (2) the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)—in small state clusters, in order to learn from one another and share good practice and policy across states (Conley, 2014). States that agreed to participate were promised a share of $350 million earmarked under a federal incentive program called Race to the Top (RTTT).
The intention of the National Governors Association was to ensure curricular equity across state lines and analyze student performance data that were rooted in the same content and rigor. Rick Hess, the director of educational policy at the American Enterprise Institute, recognized that Napolitano’s fight would be much more political than educational: “The problem with that is if you had hard tests or hard standards you made your schools look bad. So there was a real, kind of perverse incentive baked into NCLB” (as cited in Bidwell, 2014). Dane Linn, the vice president of the Business Roundtable, echoed some of the same concerns that Hess shared:
What’s more important? To tell the truth to parents about where their kids are really performing? Or to continue to make them believe they’re doing really well, only until they get into the workforce or they go to college and they’re finding out they need to be put in a remedial English class? (as cited in Bidwell, 2014)
By 2013, many states that adopted the CCSS in 2010 started to ditch them or modify their commitment. States like Indiana, South Carolina, and Oklahoma passed legislation that either withdrew their participation altogether or weakened their financial support and commitment. The decline of the enthusiasm for the CCSS movement can be traced to four important realities (Jochim & McGuinn, 2016).
1. Far-right politics framed the CCSS and the financial incentives as a federal attempt to take over locally controlled schools.
2. Far-left politics framed the CCSS and the assessments associated with them as an attempt to use performance data to evaluate teacher performance and undermine the power of unions.
3. The standards were developed privately, and there was no open public debate. The public did not have a personal stake in their adoption and implementation.
4. The development and implementation of the two assessments were sloppy, with many logistical and technical glitches which annoyed educational professionals, and they lost their enthusiasm over time. By 2016, thirty-eight states had left one or both of the testing consortia.
The Dawn of a New Day
I first heard of NCLB on an ordinary Friday morning in March of 2002 while serving as a middle school principal in an urban school district with more than 98 percent minority enrollment. I was on my way to the district administrative office for our biweekly administrator’s meeting, called the pay-day meeting. It was 8:05 a.m., and I was five minutes late, as usual. I was expecting an agenda filled with mundane administrative logistics and announcements. I anticipated the superintendent leading the meeting, as he usually did, with concerns about our budget or some security issue from a sporting event. There was no way I could have anticipated the topic of this meeting.
As I entered the room, the superintendent introduced an official from the Michigan Department of Education who came to share some information from the federal government. As she explained the goals and components of a new law, NCLB, there was an eerie silence in the room coupled with a universal feeling of shock and anxiety.
This law’s goals were not incongruent with what we, as administrators, wanted for each one of our students, but we never suspected that we would actually be held legally accountable for producing schools that made these wishes a reality. The state official went on to explain that schools that did not meet these requirements would be labeled as failing and would face a series of sanctions.
Everyone at the meeting was shocked. Our effectiveness or proficiency would be judged primarily by student outcomes on standardized tests and our ability to move our entire school organization to accept this new reality. We had been introduced to the new reality of American education. After examining our reality, it seemed we had to be miracle workers to bring this new reality to fruition.
Why was there so much shock and anxiety among this group of administrators? Primarily, we were anxious because we were painfully aware of the culture and history of our schools. We were aware of what we assumed government officials were not. We were aware of all the issues surrounding teacher quality, staff expectations, student apathy, and inadequate parental support, among other things that we had worked so hard to keep away from the public eye. We had been trained to create an illusion of prosperity that we never expected to actually achieve. We knew that there were many classrooms where the curriculum was not followed. We knew that gaps in student performance were expected in a traditional urban public school system. We were being asked to do something that no one had ever been asked to do: create a functional system in which every student could learn and would learn, despite the many obstacles and the myriad of tasks necessary just to be functional. It was absolutely overwhelming, and we did not know where to start. In fact, we banked on the assumption that if we ignored this new law long enough, it would eventually just go away.
Clearly, it has not gone away, and years later, the same anxiety exists. We are just as confused today as we were on that memorable Friday morning in 2002. ESSA, which is essentially the state version of NCLB, has done little to soothe that initial anxiety. Student performance has improved very little, and the dysfunction in our education system