Policy Description

Every student succeeds act is a policy enacted in 2015. Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a new federal education law, gives teachers, administrative staff, education stakeholders, parents and families, and everyone else working on behalf of the children’s future a powerful opportunity to ensure success and equity in public schools—and to seize the promise of a truly high-quality, well-rounded education for each and every student. It is aimed at delivering a high-quality college- and career-ready curriculum to all students, regardless of their context or circumstances. 

ESSA combines the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which has a one-size-fits-all solution, with a modern federal-state partnership that gives states and districts more independence (Gordon, 2017). Moreover, unlike NCLB, which encouraged states to lower standards, ESSA establishes a critical goal for schools across the country: ensuring that all students graduate prepared to succeed in college and careers. In addition to giving states more flexibility, the proposed regulations take a more holistic approach to determining what constitutes a good education. This implies that it narrows down the definition of school success based on math and English language arts test scores and graduation rates replacing a broader view that considers factors such as student growth, college, and career readiness, school climate, and students’ progress toward English language proficiency (Gordon, 2017).

The regulations further maintain ESSA’s vital civil rights provisions and increase justice for previously underserved children by including both students and subgroups in school funding and improvement decisions. This would also ensure that real intervention is taken in areas where entire schools or clusters of children are dropping behind and where parents and community stakeholders are given accurate and consistent updates on important indicators of education quality and equity. Furthermore, the rules aim to promote greater accountability for parents, students, and community stakeholders as it comes to resource inclusion initiatives like childcare access, comprehensive coursework access, and school punishment by ensuring that this detail is made available on states’ as well as local report cards.

Whereas NCLB mandated top-down initiatives for failing schools, the Department’s new rules provide schools and communities the ability to enact evidence-based, locally-designed strategies to help and strengthen failing schools. The regulations further reaffirm ESSA’s deep commitment to accountability, defining a consistent position for parents, family, students, school administrators, and a wide variety of other partners in the creation and execution of state and local programs, as well as the school reform process. Data on content standards and pupil development will be gathered by teacher-based team (TBT) meetings and assessments, such as MAP, to guarantee that it is applied (DeWitt, 2017). The educational and administrative personnel must keep track of the students’ progress to assure that they were achieving state content requirements and progressing in their subject areas. Finally, personnel reviews will demonstrate how the teachers’ customized teaching with the children is progressing and how the distinction is assisting each child’s development.

The Every Student Succeeds Act created reforms that exposed performance disparities within historically underachieving students and districts, prompting a nationwide debate about school reform (Brown et al., 2019). This commitment to transparency has been critical in ensuring that all children get a good education. Parents, educators, and government leaders around the nation recognize the importance of recent and effective legislation in improving opportunities for all children, encouraging and supporting colleges, teachers, and principals, and, most significantly, strengthening our educational infrastructure for student achievement and development.

Key Elements of Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

            ESSA offers states the autonomy and funding flexibility they need to help educators and develop their skills. States are required to set up programs for professional development and advancement.  They have to work on constant improvement and monitoring. Additionally, they have to provide technical assistance for school improvement, and leadership development, among other things. States must focus on the feedback they want to receive from teachers and provide the support they need to continue improving their teaching practices in order to create a coherent, aligned educational program (Williams & Welsh, 2017). States must participate in continuous, intense, collaborative, job-embedded, data-driven, and classroom-focused career development to create an efficient learning system. Teachers and educators need these resources in order to enhance their everyday classroom activities and have the greatest possible results for their students. Professional learning that is discrete would have little to no effect on school development.

When professional development is combined with learning systems that encourage teachers to participate in learning teams by lending support for performance improvement, state boards of education have the authority and duty, in partnership with state and local education agencies, to promote a vision for teaching and learning in their respective states. State education officials, as educators, can set goals about the level of teaching they want students to obtain and the kind of learning they want teachers and students to have. The Mutual Vision and Expectations Act builds a learning environment that values content growth as key to long-term performance. Consequently, state boards should include an article describing the importance of contemporary learning culture and the advantages of utilizing this form of learning. It is possible to achieve a common aim and ideals, as many countries and a few US schools have shown.

The utilization of data is critical in a successful learning environment, and it can be a valuable method for displaying quality progress. The gathering and review of critical evidence show the disconnect between education leaders’ visions and standards and the actual teaching and learning method in use. Evidence obtained from studies utilizing evidence focused on state and local priorities provides policy leaders and planners with appropriate plans and services to support them narrowly, if not completely fill, the holes. State boards of education, federal and municipal education departments can participate in data collection and assessment on a regular basis to determine and evaluate how well their selected policies and policies are helping to realize their goals.

The state board of education is in charge of ensuring the state and local services are properly distributed. Following conventional resource allocation policies has proven to be a difficult obstacle to resource realignment. The state board of education also advised state education officials and local education agencies to include reasoning and facts to justify their budget distribution decisions in order to overcome this difficult obstacle. The state board of education may find it daunting to gather data on allocated resources; however, to guarantee that this data is obtained, they should submit a letter to the district describing how the data can be collected and plans on conducting evaluations for any significant expenditures. People, services, time, and equipment can both be heavily invested by the state and local education systems.

Because of inadequate execution, many new initiatives and techniques have produced little to no impact. The role of good success improvement is emphasized heavily in change philosophy (Plucker & Makel, 2021). The state board would need to create its own success improvement strategy as a result of these shortcomings. The counties’ Department of Education established a special implementation team to strengthen the agency’s project management, data collection, and data-driven decision-making capabilities. Although the unit staff participates as cross-functional teams, they track progress on each state’s strategic agendas. The statewide teacher advisory council provides reports about the state’s success and needs to the state secretary of education. Via the district educational professional, the Department provides ongoing updates to city officials about their success. Continuous policy and regulatory reviews are often needed for long-term adoption and change management.

Political Stakeholders and Relevant Motivation

            There are varied stakeholders propelled by different motivations. The government, through the ministry of education, is one of the stakeholders. The government is keen on fulfilling its mandate of serving the citizens. This is achieved through the provision of services to the people. Education is one of the best ways the government can ensure the prosperity of the country. Therefore, the policy provides a viable mechanism through which learning can be ensured. Others include politicians, including the president and legislators. Others are government bureaucrats and technocrats from diverse fields like health, education, banking, municipal government, and public sector workers who execute services are all examples of human players of the public sector.

Policy Critique

In December 2015, Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, was signed into law (Adler-Greene, 2019). This bill was a bipartisan attempt to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which has been in place for five decades. This bill sets national educational guidelines for American children, reflecting the government’s long-standing dedication to ensuring students’ fair opportunitys from all backgrounds. Every Student Succeeds Act’s aim is to ensure that students graduate from high school, excel in their schooling, and are better identified as gifted and talented. It further builds on No Child Left Behind’s performance disparities to ensure that school organizations strive to serve K-12 students on an individual basis. It has sought to formalize the lifting of limits placed on states since 2012 by No Child Left Behind. In return for comprehensive ideas that would maximize equity and enhance instruction efficiency, the administration permitted greater flexibility in instructional plans.

There are myriads of benefits and drawbacks of the Every Student Succeeds Act since its adoption. The Every Student Succeeds Act’s Advantages encompasses its continued promotion of diversity among K-12 public school students. Prior to the 1960s, students with contacts, money, or both received the best education. The aim was to have universal access to the systems that will enable the next generation to learn to read and write after the US government rendered every kid a priority. The Every Student Succeeds Act aims to maintain the important safeguards in effect for students from low-income backgrounds (Black, 2017). There are many services in place to help students with special needs that could fail in a typical classroom setting.

The ESSA mandates that all students be educated to the highest quality expectations possible. Person preparation for pupils indicated that they would obtain an education focused on their measured ability due to the adoption of the Every Student Succeeds Act. If your kid was enrolled in special education programs, their graduation qualifications might be very different from those of a talented student. It was For the first time in the United States; this act required that all schools in the nation be educated to the same rigorous quality expectations. The process aims at better training students in preparation for future careers or college years.

            It offers a means for schools and parents to communicate more effectively. The Every Student Succeeds Act mandated that students’ valuable knowledge in the classroom be shared with families, neighborhoods, and instructors so that they are all aware of where a student’s success is at every given time. The K-12 student is also kept up to date on their success. While this has increased communication with students, staff, and parents, the true advantage is the regular statewide tests that compare each child’s achievement to the high expectations set for their potential performance. It also keeps the established order in a number of ways where recent efforts have failed, despite the fact that the ESSA improves the definition of transparency in education in America. The law, which is larger than prior bills covering these issues, does not significantly differ from previous attempts to change results. Testing is used to establish accountability results under this legislation and maybe an imperfect means to determine a student’s achievement or failure. The other significant adjustment is that the federal government’s enforcement burden is transferred to the states.

Further, no attempt is taken to resolve the fundamental causes of inequity. Since it emphasizes transparency in the K-12 framework while focusing on standardized results and classroom climate, the root causes of discrimination aren’t addressed. When a student’s economic disadvantages are explicitly linked to his or her success, public schools’ challenges will only be addressed if there are opportunities to raise the quality of life in and neighborhood. While the ESSA is stronger when it takes aim at the test-and-punish tactics that many schools utilized under No Child Left Behind, a few worthwhile interventions would not be enough to alleviate the detrimental consequences of poverty in many neighborhoods. The requirement for satisfactory annual improvement was eliminated. The Every Student Succeeds Act’s supporters applaud the idea that it gives public schools greater leeway when it comes to assessment standards. It also removes one of the most important aspects of transparency and ensuring conformity with No Child Left Behind’s requirements. There is no longer a requirement under the ESSA to report student progress on test score gains.

There are some interesting developments on the way that might serve to enhance the learning climate. One of the most powerful aspects of the plan is the preschool development grants for low-income families. There’s also a foundation dedicated to arts education. Who keeps the overseers responsible if states are required to keep their schools accountable? The ESSA provides further opportunities to conceal inequality (Mittleman & Jennings, 2018).). Poor households and neighborhoods are resilient, but this isn’t enough to make them improve their outcomes. In North Carolina, any school that earned an F received more than half of its students from low-income families. Low-income pupils, identified as those whose families make less than 185 percent of the poverty level, made up the majority of students in public schools in the United States in 2013. Ninety-five percent of pupils will be assessed, and the lowest-performing schools will be targeted for action. Classrooms will then choose students that they think would do well on the requisite exams, masking the under-performing students’ grades. Many that are required to take the test then act as if they are being assigned additional assignments, which causes rebellious K-12 students to intentionally fail the examination.

It does not prevent some communities from closing their schools. The Every Student Succeeds Act’s assessment requirements begin to move away from the 1960s’ anti-poverty orientation. Poverty, according to the Johnson administration, was the most significant impediment to educational opportunity. Accountability in cities like Newark, NJ, does not imply following the initial intent of the law’s Title I solution. It entails further research, more school closures, and the possibility of long-term distress for the children as a result of the adults’ failure to take responsibility for the results.

Previous Attempts to Study, Alter, Or Replace the Policy

            The policy was formulated as a replacement for the No Child Left Behind Act. This policy was rigid hence the need for its replacement and overhaul. However, the Every Student Succeeds Act was the culmination of various amendments spanning back decades. The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was enacted as part of President Lyndon B (Casalaspi, 2917). Johnson’s War on Poverty program. The law’s initial aim, which still stands today, was to increase economic opportunity for low-income children by supplying federal grants to school systems that serve them. These school districts often get less federal and municipal support than those that serve more wealthy students. What is the reason for this? State property taxes are usually the largest source of revenue for colleges, and property prices in wealthier communities are much smaller. Since 1965, the ESEA has been reauthorized eight times; the most recent was in December 2015, when lawmakers renamed No Child Left Behind to the Every Student Succeeds Act. The software changed for each reauthorization. Regardless of the improvements, the organization’s primary mission stays the same: to improve educational access and results for children from low-income communities.

Policy Improvement or Replacement Plan

Based on the various weaknesses highlighted within the policy, it is prudent that measures are taken to ensure improvements. On the other hand, if the policy is defective. Hence, it will require an overhaul. Development is characterized by various elaborate steps. It commences with Identifying Issues and Creating an Agenda. Things are transformed into priority items for policymaking bodies in the first phase of the policy process. Those topics that do make it into the policy agenda must first be defined as significant. A problem can be described as a situation in which truth fails to fulfill a constituency’s expectations. For instance, school closures in some communities. Policy development is the second stage of the legislative phase of policy formulation, which includes proposing alternatives to agenda items. Adoption of Policies, which is the third step of the legislative mechanism, then ensues. At this point, political agencies enact laws for eventual enforcement permissibility.

In order for initiatives to be implemented, the Adoption Procedure be accepted by relevant government agencies. The same influences that determine which topics make it through the early stages of agenda development will influence adoption. For example, strategies that reflect the evolving situations that disasters often present may also be introduced rapidly. Meanwhile, influential pressure organizations will leverage their political clout to manipulate policy decisions. Policy implementation may also be aided by the public. Where news and analysis are fair and balanced, they will serve as a platform for debating different policy options. When the media is biased in favor of a reform plan, it increases the chances of it being adopted. An adverse media bias, on the other side, might jeopardize a policy initiative. Governors and mayors have the power to enact laws that affect reform on a state or municipal basis. On the other hand, the president is solely responsible for deciding what strategies are implemented on a national basis. Since Congress must approve the president’s decisions, Congress has some power over policy implementation.

 Following the adoption of legislation by appropriate government agencies, the policy process moves on to the next step, policy enforcement. Implementation of Policy is the fourth step of the legislative cycle. In policy enforcement, implemented measures are placed into action.

Describe How This Policy Improvement or Replacement Plan Will Enhance Instruction. 

The district’s commitment to career learning incorporates many elements that it believes contribute to its growth. This involves allocating resources for teachers to participate in a constant input loop that involves meditation, introducing processes of learning for various groups of teachers, utilizing peer partnerships as a professional development strategy, offering the opportunity for instruction, and offering shared time for preparation. It is paramount to acknowledge that the state has a duty to think about how it manages time, priorities, and budgets for schools in order to support educators’ professional growth. Schools, for example, must be able to be flexible about how they spend their money and how they schedule days away from the classroom for teachers to participate in career learning opportunities. The district agrees that school leaders and teachers must buy into these changes in order for them to be effective. The district is also introducing the planning in learning resources at a slower rate than expected, based on what it heard from the first series of schools so that it can guarantee it first gets buy-in from school leadership.

These are some of the ways the plan will enhance instruction. Educators will improve their understanding of requirements by using particular curricula as vehicles for professional advancement. Any professional growth must be built on an opportunity for rehearsal, reflection, and input. Teachers’ and school leadership’s buy-in to the career learning process is vital to its progress. A ‘job-embedded career learning’ method will be used to train educators about how to incorporate high-quality curricula. This key professional development approach is to use investigation loops to gather student success results at the inception of the process, return to student-centered targets, and determine the effects. The training concentrate on a single aspect of a program such that teachers are aware of both the subject and the intent.

Engagement and Implementation Steps

Policies are put into action in various ways. The term regulation enforcement relates to the process of putting the desired solutions into action. Three main factors determine if a program has been correctly implemented. Legislation must be conveyed from its author. In this case, Congress to the appropriate regulatory body within the bureaucracy with authority to implement it. The various states are then expected to pass their own versions on the bills for a more customized solutions approach. As a result, enforcement officers will be given instructions about how to enforce the new instruction and curriculum methods. This can be successfully achieved through

Second, if a program wants to be followed correctly, it must be articulated plainly and simply. If there is so much doubt at this time, the judiciary will become involved, forcing lawmakers to explain their goals and methods for policy enforcement. The enforcement of those measures can be overruled by the courts. Finally, development resources must work alongside current systems and organizations without creating significant uncertainty, rivalry, or confrontation. In addition to the above factors, regulatory enforcement may be made more difficult when regulations are handed on to agencies without any guidance. Compromise and symbolic political uses are often used in policy creation. As a result, policy administration departments must deal with a lot of control and ambiguity when it comes to enforcement. Furthermore, bureaucratic negligence, ineptness, and scandals can impede policy implementation.

References

Adler-Greene, L. (2019). Every Student Succeeds Act: Are schools making sure every student      succeeds. Touro L. Rev., 35, 11.

Black, D. W. (2017). Abandoning the federal role in education: The every student succeeds           act. California Law Review, 105(5), 1309-1374.

Brown, M. H., Lenares-Solomon, D., & Deaner, R. G. (2019). Every student succeeds act: A call    to action for school counselors. Journal of Counselor Leadership and Advocacy, 6(1), 86-     96.

Casalaspi, D. (2017). The making of a” legislative miracle”: The elementary and secondary      education act of 1965. History of Education Quarterly, 57(2), 247.

DeWitt, D. (2017). Teacher-Based Teams Talk of Change in Instructional Practices.

Gordon, N. (2017). How State ESSA Accountability Plans Can Shine a Statistically Sound Light     on More Students. Evidence Speaks Reports, Vol 2,# 17. Center on Children and             Families at Brookings.

Mittleman, J., & Jennings, J. L. (2018). Accountability, achievement, and inequality in American    Public Schools: A review of the literature. Handbook of the Sociology of Education in the     21st Century, 475-492.

Plucker, J. A., & Makel, M. C. (2021). Replication is important for educational psychology:         Recent developments and key issues. Educational Psychologist, 1-11.

Williams, S. M., & Welsh, R. O. (2017). ESSA and school improvement: Principal1 preparation             and professional development in a new era of education policy. Journal of School             Leadership, 27(5), 701-724.