Tuesday, October 11, 2011

ESEA is moving

We don't have much on it yet, but it appears that the renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is moving on the Senate side.The Senate bill is comprehensive (unlike the House bills which have taken it piecemeal); it also takes away states having to report to the federal government. As for testing:
The draft would require states to use exams that measure individual student achievement and academic growth, and would leave it up to the states to decide whether the exams would be given once a year or several times a year. Tests are mandated at least once between grades 3 and 5, 6 and 9, and 10 and 12.
States' accountability systems would take into account student scores and high school graduation rates for the preparation of publicly-accessible report cards for each school. Instead of NCLB's specific targets, this version of ESEA would only expect "the continuous improvement of all public schools in the state." If states choose to rate schools by the degree to which student test scores have increased instead of the raw number of students who pass the exams, they would have to report their methodology to the federal government.
Not clear how this will fare in the Senate (there's been a lot of talk about it ahead of time), not to mention the very big gap between this and the way the House is tackling it.

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