Hoosiers can hope that a new federal education law will allow Indiana to solve some of its school problems.
The new Every Student Succeeds Act became law last week. It replaces the unpopular No Child Left Behind law that had been in effect since 2002.
Experts say the most noticeable change may be a reduction in the amount of testing for students. That should come as a relief to Hoosier educators and parents, who are fed up with our state’s ISTEP test and saying so loudly this year.
One news report says that under the new law, “a single annual assessment can be broken down into a series of smaller tests. There’s also an emphasis on finding different kinds of tests that more accurately measure what students are learning.” That’s exactly what most Indiana school officials have wanted — desperately.
The new law removes a controversial requirement for states to use student test scores in evaluating teachers.
The federal government will stop encouraging states to use Common Core nationwide standards for education. Indiana already had abandoned Common Core State Standards, although some people blame that decision for this year’s ISTEP fiasco.
The Every Student Succeeds Act aims for many of the same worthy as No Child Left Behind. The 2002 law required schools to prove that all types of students were succeeding, including minorities and disadvantaged children, instead of looking only at overall averages.
The new law still requires schools to test students every year in grades 3-8 and and again in high school. Schools must report scores for minority groups.
States must take action if a school falls into the bottom 5 percent of scores, graduates less than 67 percent of students, or finds certain groups are falling behind. But the new law does not tell states what to do in those cases.
In recent years, 42 states, including Indiana, had received waivers from No Child Left Behind. That gave them some of the same freedom to operate that comes with the new law. But now they won’t have to beg and jump through hoops to gain that freedom.
One of Indiana’s promises to get a waiver created our controversial system of giving A-through-F letter grades to schools, based chiefly on test scores. We now can decide the fate of school grades by ourselves.
The new federal education law also encourages states to expand free preschool. It offers $250 million in annual funding for early-childhood education.
That sets up a potential controversy in Indiana. Last year, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence passed up a chance to apply for federal preschool funding, choosing to avoid any outside control of preschools.
Instead, Pence set up our own pilot program of state-funded preschool for low-income children in a few counties — mostly in major cities. A recent report said far more families applied than the pilot programs could accept.
Supporters of free preschool complain that Indiana ranks 43rd in the nation for children ages 3 and 4 enrolled in preschool. But the new education law does nothing to change Pence’s objection to federal control of preschools.
Overall, the Every Student Succeeds Act looks like good news for Indiana schools. We still may struggle with differences of opinion about the best way to measure the progress of students, but they will be Hoosier family discussions without Uncle Sam butting in.