ESSA Negotiators Reach Agreement on Testing, No Deal on Funding

This week in Washington, D.C., a panel of negotiators working to develop rules to govern certain provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) met for the final time. The negotiators, including teachers, administrators, parents and other education stakeholders, were tasked with regulating on issues affecting student assessments and the “supplement, not supplant” funding requirement—a provision intended to ensure that federal dollars are not used to replace state and local funding—in the new ESSA law. While they were able to come to an agreement on the testing and assessment issues, the more controversial supplement, not supplant proposal put forward by the U.S. Department of Education was rejected by the negotiators, and no agreement was ultimately reached. It will now be left to the department to regulate the issue through its normal rulemaking process. For more on ESSA implementation, the group Whiteboard Advisors has put together a 2016-2017 implementation timeline, available here. You can also check back to the CTE Policy Watch Blog for all the latest ESSA updates.