Dive Brief:
- New York State is re-imagining accountability to de-emphasize student outcomes and more emphasize the idea that student success requires input from multiple levels of school involvement, as well as access to equitable resources, qualified teachers and advanced coursework.
- Under the state's new Every Student Succeeds Act plan, the district will move away from utilizing letter grades in determining a school’s success and will instead move to a dashboard approach, Chalkbeat reports.
- Officials hope the plan will put more emphasis on measuring student’s progress, rather than whether they met a certain standard to better serve high-needs students.
Dive Insight:
New York State’s emphasis on equity and ensuring schools have the necessary resources is a welcome move, and it also speaks to some of the opportunities and challenges that will come with enforcing the ESSA, which will generally move more regulatory power back to the states as opposed to NCLB’s more centralized approach. For states with leaders that might value equity as stringently, it remains to be seen what safeguards schools and districts have to ensure the equity gap does not continue to broaden.
Equity is built into ESSA guidelines, with school districts mandated to ensure that they are receiving their equitable funding from states, but the process is also meant to ensure federal funds are not picking up the state’s tab. Federal funding is meant to “supplement, not supplant,” according to the ESSA, but with the rollout of the law still in its infancy and a new administration wary of centralized educational authority, it remains to be seen how robust the oversight will be.
