Dive Brief:
- A group of 10 senators — five Republicans, four Democrats and an independent — sent a letter to President Barack Obama expressing concern over proposed regulations for the "supplement not supplant" provision of the Every Student Succeeds Act, as well as state accountability systems.
- The Washington Post reports the coalition of senators is arguing the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed regulations violate the intent of the education law, and they urge Obama to make sure the final rules stay in line with the statutory text.
- While Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Republican chair of the Senate’s education committee, was a top signatory on the letter, his Democratic partner in the creation of the bipartisan law, Patty Murray, maintains the regulations are in line with the spirit and intent of ESSA.
Dive Insight:
The Obama administration is rushing to finalize ESSA rulemaking before the new president takes over in January. Alexander has been laying the groundwork for a challenge to the department’s regulations since this past summer, when it released its proposals. On the supplement not supplant provision, critics say counting teacher salaries toward state and local spending totals for the first time will disrupt districts and force last-minute teacher transfers. The other sticking point is about how states will have to identify their lowest-performing schools.
Another big change that has been getting very little attention is the fact that districts will now have to account for all expenditures at the school, rather than district, level, including teacher salaries. Right now, it is almost universal that districts calculate per pupil spending averages districtwide, which obscures funding disparities across schools. Once ESSA takes effect, state report cards will have to include school-level per-pupil spending data.