InsideSources

In a move that angered Democrats, Congress passed legislation today that will repeal Obama-era education department school accountability regulations.

Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Pa., who represents northern and western parts of Philadelphia, called the move “an unfair attack on public education” in an interview with InsideSources.

The freshman Representative of Pennsylvania’s 2nd district ousted disgraced former Democratic Congressman Chaka Fattah in a primary challenge last year. Rep. Evans, who previously voted against the House’s version of the accountability measure, is a former schoolteacher, community activist, and state legislator.

One day after advancing a repeal of Obama-era teacher preparation rules to the White House, the Senate did the same with regulations aimed at holding states and local schools accountable. The vote on repealing the accountability measures was tight; the Senate passed the measure 50-49.

“I think that fundamentally what the Obama administration was attempting to do was to face up to the fact that we needed to make sure that kids are being educated—and I think that they are trying to go in the wrong direction,” said Evans of the Republicans who backed the repeal effort.

According to the Congressman, eliminating the accountability rules “puts our most vulnerable students at greater risk.”

Under the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a landmark piece of bipartisan legislation that rebuked the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind policies, educational decision-making was largely returned to the states. When it was passed, the Wall Street Journal called ESSA “the largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter-century.”

That was before the Obama administration issued regulations that would determine how the law would be implemented. Citing federal overreach in the rules, Republicans used the Congressional Review Act on Thursday to recommend a wholesale repeal of accountability regulations. Using the Congressional Review Act would also bar the Department of Education from issuing rules that are “substantially the same” in the future.

Democrats, led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Senate’s education committee, argued that using the review mechanism to repeal the regulations would leave federal oversight of American schools toothless. Democrats also expressed concerns that mixed signals on accountability could throw state efforts to comply with ESSA into disarray.

In a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., spoke out against the accountability rules finalized under former Education Secretary John King, saying the order “takes away responsibility from classroom teachers and local school boards. It does this in direct violation of the law that 85 senators voted for just 15 months ago.”

Sen. Alexander has argued against a “National School Board” and has indicated to state educators that they should expect their ESSA accountability proposals would be accepted by the federal Department of Education. According to a letter sent last month from new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, the education department will continue to expect submissions of state plans on the original April 3rd and September 18th deadlines.

Rep. Evans disagreed that the passage of the accountability rules repeal aligned with the bipartisan spirit of the original ESSA legislation. No Democratic lawmakers in the House or Senate voted in favor of repeal. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a moderate, crossed party lines to vote with Democrats over concerns that marginalized students could be put at risk.

Other right-leaning groups also came out against the proposal to scrap the rules. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined a letter with civil rights activists to oppose repeal of the regulations. Similarly, the Fordham Institute’s, Michael Petrilli, a prominent backer of the standards movement that brought about the Common Core, expressed concerns with the Obama-era accountability regulations, but ultimately argued that repeal under the Congressional Review Act would be unwise.

“Senate Republicans have a sledgehammer; Betsy DeVos has a chisel. They should let her use it,” wrote Petrilli.

Weakening the federal education department’s influence over how state education agencies and local school districts operate is a major source of concern for civil rights advocates like Rep. Evans, who is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

While Evans agreed in principle that educational decisions are best made at the local level, he said that the Great Society-era federal educational law that ESSA amended is fundamentally a civil rights protection.

“We shouldn’t take that lightly,” said Rep. Evans.

Groups that lobbied in favor of the repeal efforts, such as the School Superintendents Association, or AASA, have bristled at the insinuation that local educational leaders don’t have the interests of all of their students at heart.

“I’ve never had a superintendent tell me they are opposed to equity,” Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director for policy and advocacy for the AASA, had previously said to InsideSources.

President Trump has indicated that he will finalize the repeal of his predecessor’s accountability and teacher preparation regulations, over Democratic objections. Other reports suggest that the Department of Education is already preparing to issue new non-binding guidance to assist states as they craft their ESSA accountability proposals under a new, more permissive, regulatory regime.

Follow Leo on Twitter

Subscribe for the Latest From InsideSources Every Morning

Amid backlash from some local superintendents and mixed signals from Washington, a senior official in the Ohio Department of Education indicated that his team would stay the course in the finalization of the state’s draft ESSA plan.

Chris Woolard is the senior executive director for accountability in the state’s education department. In a telephone interview with InsideSources, Woolard said that he has been deeply involved throughout Ohio’s multi-phased community outreach process and the subsequent drafting of the state’s plan for how it will comply with federal accountability reporting requirements.

Since Ohio released its draft proposal, Woolard’s work has been complicated by two news stories—one local and one national.

On a national level, Congressional Republicans, emboldened by new leadership at the federal education department, have moved to use the Congressional Review Act to repeal a set of accountability regulations finalized under the previous administration. Those regulations explained what kind of reporting was expected from states under the new K-12 law of the land, the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Some Democrats, most of whom have opposed the repeal of the regulations, argued that repeal efforts would inject chaos into state efforts to craft ESSA accountability plans. The education department had previously announced that state ESSA plans would be accepted for review on April 3rd or September 18th of this year.

Despite the possibility for a repeal of the accountability regulations, which Woolard said Ohio’s state officials are following “with great interest,” the state is already months into the formulation of its ESSA plan, and the officials “can only go by the information we have.”

Woolard pointed to a “Dear Colleague” letter issued by the new U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, that said that developments in Washington “should not adversely affect or delay the progress that States have already made in developing their State plans and transitioning to the ESSA.” In other words, the federal education department plans to stick to the April 3rd or September 18th deadlines for submitting ESSA plans.

On a local level, the release of the state’s draft ESSA plan met some blowback from Ohio school superintendents. A group of district leaders voiced concerns with local media outlets that its opposition to over-testing was not reflected in the state’s draft ESSA plan.

Woolard said he hears the superintendents’ concerns on over-testing, but the state accountability plan “isn’t a vehicle” for addressing those concerns. In other words, if Ohio’s educators want to reduce testing, that goal cannot be unilaterally accomplished through the state education department’s ESSA plan.

In addition to federally required tests, some assessments are mandated by Ohio state law or are instituted by the districts themselves, he said. Reducing total test time would require some combination of changes to state legislation and a more comprehensive reform effort from the local level.

One area where the Ohio’s education department did have considerable leeway in deciding how to craft its draft ESSA plan was the nonacademic “school quality” indicator it would pick to compare schools. Like a number of other states, Ohio announced its intention to measure, report, and slash rates of chronic absenteeism in its school districts.

Woolard said the increasing attention on data pointing to a correlation between chronic absences and student achievement factored heavily in the state’s decision to choose the measure as its nonacademic accountability indicator.

In addition, attendance numbers are “data we already collect,” he said. So incorporating chronic absenteeism numbers into the state’s reporting system would minimize additional regulatory burdens on local districts, said Woolard.

The Ohio accountability director also framed the chronic absenteeism study as “an improvement measure.” There are big gaps in the chronic absenteeism numbers across districts in the state, some of the most economically disadvantaged districts report over 30 percent of their students as chronically absent. Rather than punish districts that are furthest from the state’s goal of slashing chronic absenteeism rates to below five percent, Woolard said the proposed accountability framework is designed to reward school districts that show continuous improvement in the measure.

As part of ensuring that districts aren’t artificially tweaking their attendance numbers, Woolard said the state would also track student discipline incidents in schools. For example, he said the state does not want to see a spike in expulsions among districts trying to wash their hands of their most troublesome students.

Other states have decided to institute statewide “school climate surveys” to satisfy ESSA’s nonacademic indicator requirement. Woolard said there is interest in Ohio for such a survey system, but if the agency decides to adopt a school climate survey, it would be incorporated into the state’s accountability regime at a later date.

The opportunity to comment on Ohio’s draft ESSA plan remains open to the public until Monday of next week. Ohio is still targeting the April 3rd deadline for submission of its ESSA plan.

Follow Leo on Twitter

Subscribe for the Latest From InsideSources Every Morning