Dive Brief:

• At the close of the public comment period for the Obama administration’s regulations relating to distribution of federal Title I dollars, California leaders made their voices heard, submitting a letter that accused the administration of going beyond the Every Student Succeeds Act in its rule-making.
• EdSource reports State Board of Education President Michael Kirst and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said the U.S. Department of Education’s proposal amounts to micromanagement of district finances and interference into local decision-making power.
• Kirst and Torlakson said they were committed to educational equity and pledged to enforce ESSA’s supplement-not-supplant provision, but they said the proposed regulations would require states to reshape their finance systems to comply.

Dive Insight:

Beyond the supplement-not-supplant provision, in another section of ESSA — and in the actual statute — is a provision that will require most states to reshape their finance systems anyway. In the report card section, ESSA says states will have to report on annual report cards how much schools spend per-pupil. Under the former report card regulations, states only needed to report this average at the district level, which is in line with how most districts account for their spending. Now, they will need to account for all of their expenditures, including teacher salaries, at the school level. This will make very clear where the spending disparities are between schools in single districts, and the requirement will mean complying with the supplement-not-supplant provision can easily follow.

The fight over the supplement-not-supplant provision has been one of the fiercest in the battle over ESSA regulations, uniting a strange coalition of Republican representatives, teachers unions and others. Legal analyses on both sides of the fight have said the Obama administration either has or does not have a legal basis for the requirement. The administration is expected to finalize its rules by January, before Donald Trump and his staff take over the executive branch. Depending on how they decide, however, the fight could continue in the courts.