On December 15, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law, replacing its predecessor, No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This signaled a reasonable change in the way the federal government would interact with states with respect to many educational realities, such as testing, academic standards, struggling students, school achievement targets, parent involvement, opt outs and very notably, state vs. federal Authority. The rigidity of NLCB, regarded by many critics as a significant overreach of federal authority, neglectful of substantive approaches at supporting learning was significantly stretched with ESSA, which focused more on improving literacy instruction, supporting struggling students, requiring evidence-based reading interventions, and encouraging more innovative approaches to instructional practices. Among educators, ESSA is much better received than NCLB because it invites the input and expertise of teachers, provides far more logical goals for student achievement, and transforms assessments from what was widely held to be punitive to tools that might better assist educators to improve instruction. In the realm of student literacy, this means that teachers, intimate with the needs of their students in learning had restored to them, greater power to effect change with their charges, and greater support was given to this classroom success at the local level.
Consider merely the idea of AYP (Annual Yearly Progress), the measurement standard of NCLB. States had to mete out a set of criteria, to be approved by the federal government, regarding targets such as high school graduation rates, attendance rates, and most noticeably, standardized test scores. Once these targets were agreed upon, schools had to make AYP. In the first and second years, if a school failed, as most did, because these targets were unrealistic, there were no punitive measures taken. Schools were instructed to embrace programs provided by educational profiteers such as MgCraw-Hill and Pearson, proffered as panaceas for improved math and reading scores on tests like New Mexico’s SBA (Standards-Based Assessment). These programs amounted to little more than parceled pieces of reading on limited topics with workbooks, and they made of the teacher something of an automaton, compelling compliance over craft as they were ordered to read a set of instructions to children, have the children follow said instructions and not deviate from what was mandated. Schools did this in the hope that they would satisfy the unrealistic needs of their districts, working to appease their states, working to obey the federal government. These programs were no remedy at all, and often schools failed in the third year of NCLB, the consequence of which was that the purchase of these supplemental programs became mandatory, much to the delight of those entities for whom this meant increased revenue.
A school that failed to meet AYP after the third year was required to offer parents a choice to send their kids to other schools, to provide supplemental programs and additional tutoring. They were compelled to amend improvement plans with state-approved corrective actions, which included revamping entire curricula and terminating the positions of low performing staff members. At the fifth year of failure, which many schools, particularly in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage, suffered, districts were forced to implement restructuring. This could have meant reopening the school as a charter school, replacement all or most of a school’s staff, and even turning over the school operations to a private company selected by the state. None of this did anything to improve the literacy of children, and when ESSA came along, it seemed to educators, beleaguered by the flaws of NCLB, like rain after a long drought.
What did the change from NCLB mean for the teaching of literacy? Well, put simply, it gave the professionals in the classrooms, not the policy makers, most of whom couldn’t handle a week of teaching if their lives depended upon it, the chance to ply their trade and their training. Without AYP hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles, teachers could abandon the programs that insisted upon isolated vocabulary lessons, isolated spelling lessons, isolated pronunciation lessons, etc., and they could read to and with their children holistically again, for meaning and for purpose, across content areas, utilizing lessons designed with the students’ needs in mind, rather than those prepared rather coldly by strangers in another state. Without AYP, teachers have been able to assess their students in much more varying ways, again, based upon realistic values that can only come from knowing the young human minds in their midst. Students with IEPs, including those who are gifted may have their needs better met as well, because of increased flexibility with individual student outcomes and alternative means by which they may demonstrate learning. Educators are still coming out of the fog of conditioning that NCLB frightened them into, inspiring nothing more than blind adherence to programmatic structures and teaching to the test Now slowly, after the yoke of AYP fell off, and the fallacy that they could somehow differentiate instruction and still be measured by a cookie cutter standardization of human beings has begun to breathe its dying gasps as an educational reality, innovation in teaching and learning, especially in the area of literacy, is returning.
RESOURCES
Heitin, L. (2016, January 5). ESSA Reins In, Reshapes Federal Role in Literacy. Retrieved February 2, 2017, from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/06/essa-reins-in-reshapes-federal-role-in.html
(2015). ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT: Comparison of the No Child Left Behind Act to the Every Student Succeeds Act. Retrieved February 2, 2017, from http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/siteASCD/policy/ESEA_NCLB_ComparisonChart_2015.pdf
TAESE (Technical Assistance for Excellence in Special Education). (2017). ESSA: Every Student Success Act. Retrieved January 31, 2017.