Interview on the new "Every Student Succeeds Act"

    I was able to take some time an interview a teacher on some of the policy changes that took place with the No Child Left Behind Act. I was familiar with the NCLB policy, but was not aware that a new one had taken its place. It turns out that NCLB was basically absorbed and replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act that was signed in by President Obama. With this program, and with NCLB, students starting in grade 3 are still required to be tested in math and language arts. Within the testing, administrations and teachers are still analyzing data in subgroups to determine the overall student progress, but how it is reported has changed. Both programs also called for highly qualified teachers. Some of the way teachers are measured and the requirements have changed slightly, but teachers are still held to the same high expectations throughout the duration of their career.

    The major thing that has changed is AYP, or Adequate Yearly Progress.  This program made it so schools had to state wither they made AYP or not. The problem with this model is it didn't show the actual progress being made, only that they reached a specific guideline. The biggest issue with this is that demographics and other factors play a huge role. This evaluation didn't show that students may have come in 2 yrs below grade level and increased over a full grade level in a short period of time, it compares them to students who were already at grade level and may have made only minimal progress in their achievements. But because one school met the guideline of being at grade level and one didn't the school that made the most progress but didn't achieve the end goal was considered behind and not achieving. This is why the change is so important, because it changes the way schools are evaluated. They are no longer pass or fail, but judged on their individual progress and achievement.

   This new ESS act also changed the hands of power. No longer does the Federal government mandate direction and levels of achievement for the schools, it is now up to the individual states to determine what success is defined as. Utah had developed and has in place its own testing system and has and continues to change the way scores are reported and how that determines whether or not a school is at risk. AYP is now a definite thing of the past, and many school are breathing a bit easier. The old program set unrealistic expectation, and the new law is allowing for individual progress to be determined and reported rather than a universal guideline. The new state-regulated testing not only reports proficiency scores, but student and teacher growth scores as well which are the true defining factor. It has changed from "are your scores proficient enough" to "are your students growing enough and what can you do as a teacher to help each student grow int their won way." Student growth individualizes the teaching practices and makes that individualization much more beneficial and effective. I love the new changes, and I think they have made and will continue to make a huge difference in teacher's abilities to create successful learning environments for their students.