The following post is by Doug Hesse, president of 起点传媒. It is reprinted with permission .
Thursday, February 25, is NCTE鈥檚 Advocacy Day. The聽Executive Committee and other volunteers聽gather in Washington, DC, to meet members of Congress and Department of Education officials. 聽We provide聽information about and request specific actions.
Of course, the idea of a single 鈥渁dvocacy day鈥� is a little聽foolish. The legislative calendar is long and fluid. And imagining the federal government as the only or even most important site of legislative action affecting education is foolish, too, especially these days.
As you know, in November Congress replaced the Elementary and Secondary Education Act known as 鈥淣o Child Left Behind鈥� with the new 鈥淓very Student Succeeds Act,鈥� which President Obama signed into law.聽One of the effects of the new law was to curtail national programs for evaluating schools through processes and testing programs that many educators found extremely problematic. But the new law did not as much end assessments as shift responsibilities and procedures for them onto the states, along with many other requirements and concomitant resources. 聽States gained flexibility.
Now, this is a good thing for states (and their students, families, and teachers) who devise appropriate assessments for literacy learning, who allocate school support funds in equitable ways, who support professional development that is expert teacher-led, and so on. But in other states, where political rather than professional guidelines determine how education dollars are spent, the results could well be no better than No Child Left Behind. In fact, they could be worse. I鈥檓 reminded, after all, that NCLB had bi-partisan support, with none other than Ted Kennedy as one of its senate sponsors. Many civil rights groups supported NCLB鈥攁nd continued to support it all along鈥攂ecause they feared that, absent federal controls and oversight, education would continue to be inequitable in many states and locales.
The new Every Student Succeeds Act, therefore, has resulted in a more complex advocacy environment for education. Rather than mostly a single point of contact, the Federal Government and its funds, there are now fifty points of contact, each state determining within guidelines how to spend allocations to develop processes they鈥檝e been given latitude to develop. Of course, in all sorts of important ways, states and districts have always been the most important site of educational policy, curricula, and professional support. ESSA only amplifies this.
And, of course, any legislation requires rules and regulations for its implementation. Even a fairly detailed law can鈥檛 specify everything. Various legislators and bureaucrats are continuing to write those regs (I鈥檝e learned to speak Washingtonian, see?). Part of the goal of NCTE鈥檚 Advocacy Day is to influence that process. So, given what鈥檚 at stake, I鈥檓 not much feeling foolish at all.