Today, as President Obama signs the Every Student Succeeds Act bill into law, the White House is releasing an analysis of progress made in elementary and secondary education since the President took office and how ESSA will cement that progress. The full report is available HERE.
Every Student Succeeds Act: A Progress Report on Elementary and Secondary Education
A core element of strengthening the middle class is building stronger schools. Over the past seven years, President Obama has invested more in our schools, provided flexibility from one-size-fits-all mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, and supported school reforms across the country. Today, as President Obama signs the Every Student Succeeds Act, he is releasing a report that summarizes the progress the country’s schools have made since 2008, including:
- Adopting higher academic standards in nearly every state, putting our schools on par with their international competitors and our children on track to graduate from high school ready for college and career.
- Reaching the highest high school graduation rate on record at 81 percent, with the highest gains among students of color.
- Investing billions of dollars in high-quality early education to help our youngest learners succeed.
- Reaching more than halfway to the President’s goal of training 100,000 excellent STEM teachers, ahead of schedule.
- Expanding access to high-speed Internet to 20 million more students.
The legislation that President Obama will sign today, which Congress passed with strong bipartisan support, will help our schools build on this progress. Specifically, it will:
- Ensure states set high standards so that children graduate high school ready for college and career.
- Maintain accountability by guaranteeing that when students fall behind, states target resources towards what works to help them and their schools improve, with a particular focus on the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools, high schools with high dropout rates, and schools where subgroups of students are struggling.
- Empower state and local decision-makers to develop their own strong systems for school improvement based upon evidence, rather than imposing cookie-cutter federal solutions like No Child Left Behind (NCLB) did.
- Preserve annual assessments and reduce the often onerous burden of unnecessary and ineffective testing on students and teachers, making sure that standardized tests don’t crowd out teaching and learning, without sacrificing clear, annual information parents and educators need to make sure our children are learning.
- Provide more children access to high-quality preschool, giving them the chance to get a strong start to their education.
- Establish new resources to test promising practices and replicate proven strategies that will drive opportunity and better outcomes for America’s students.
The Challenge
President Obama believes that every student deserves a world-class education. We have some of the best schools and best universities in the world – but too often our students are not prepared to compete in the global economy. Since the beginning of this Administration, the President has emphasized that we need a great teacher in every classroom and a great principal in every school. Further, this Administration has stressed that we must ensure that we are doing a better job helping all our students master critical thinking, adaptability, collaboration, problem solving and creativity – skills that go beyond the basics for which schools were designed in the past.
America’s educators, students, and families have made historic progress in raising student outcomes across the nation in recent years, including reaching the highest high school graduation rate and lowest dropout rates in our history, and narrowing achievement and graduation rate gaps. States and school districts that have led the way with deep commitment to positive change – including Tennessee, Kentucky, the District of Columbia, and Denver – are seeing meaningful gains in student achievement.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that President Obama signs today builds upon the significant success of the President’s education policies and represents an important step forward to improve our education system. It replaces the No Child Left Behind Act, which was too often a burden rather than a help to achieving these goals. As President Obama has said, “The goals of No Child Left Behind were the right goals: Making a promise to educate every child with an excellent teacher — that’s the right thing to do, that’s the right goal. Higher standards are right. Accountability is right… But what hasn’t worked is denying teachers, schools, and states what they need to meet these goals. That’s why we need to fix No Child Left Behind.”
Feature photo courtesy of The White House.
