February 2, 2017 Carolyn Phenicie carolyn@the74million.org cphenicie
Talking Points GOP move against Obama #ESSA accountability, teacher prep rules via rare Congressional Review Act
Congressional Republicans have started the process to permanently block two Obama administration education regulations.
The proposals would undo accountability regulations finalized last fall governing how school performance is judged under the Every Student Succeeds Act — rules already put on hold by President Trump — and how teacher training programs are rated for their effectiveness.
GOP lawmakers would use the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to stop implementation of rules proposed by executive agencies, to shed the K-12 accountability objectives of Obama and former education secretary John King.
The review act offers an expedited legislative path. While used only once successfully since its origin in the mid-’90s, it sets a timeline for consideration in what can be a slow-moving Senate and requires only a simple majority, rather than the usual 60 votes needed to cut off a filibuster. And once blocked by the Congressional Review Act, executive branch agencies are prevented from issuing any similar regulation until expressed allowed by another law.
The Every Student Succeeds Act was approved with broad bipartisan support in December 2015 and was the first reauthorization of the law governing K-12 education since No Child Left Behind was adopted in 2001.
The Obama administration “worked in a very partisan manner” to implement the reforms in ESSA, Rep. Todd Rokita, sponsor of the resolution to overturn them, said in a statement.
“We are committed to holding both the former and current administrations accountable to students, parents and local leaders, and this resolution is one way we can do just that,” he said.
The Trump administration already paused the ESSA rule through a broad edict halting the implementation of nearly all pending Obama-era regulations. The most controversial ESSA regulation under Obama, the so-called supplement-not-supplant rule, involved how states and high-poverty school districts would have to account for their spending, showing they were using federal money to bolster services to needy students, not to replace local dollars. The Obama administration withdrew that rule, which was unpopular and had never been finalized, just before the former president left office.
The accountability regulations had been finalized and had the backing of a wider coalition of education advocacy groups.
Blocking the Education Department from crafting any sort of accountability regulations could wreak havoc on implementation, Democrats and advocates said.
“States and districts need clarity and consistency provided by regulation to move forward with faithful implementation that meets the needs of all students,” Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said in a written statement.
The Education Department Wednesday “removed all ESSA technical assistance for states from being publicly available, and approval of the resolution will only leave states and districts further confused about how to comply with the law’s safeguards,” he added.
Anne Hyslop, a senior associate at Chiefs for Change, a group of reform-minded state education and school district leaders, and a former staffer in the Obama Education Department, tweeted that blocking the regulations that set out how states should submit their ESSA accountability plans to the U.S. secretary of education would lead to “chaos and delay.”
- IMAGE Anne Hyslop @afhyslop If #ESSA regs go away, so do criteria to submit consolidated plans b/c ESEA leaves that step to the Secretary. Likely result? Chaos & delay. 2:39 AM - 3 Feb 2017 -
Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said state leaders, who have already started meeting with stakeholders and writing their implementation plans, are less concerned with the politics of overturning the regulations than the basic question of what they should do next.
“This is a train that is headed down the tracks. The most important piece is that there’s clarity for next steps,” everything from timelines to the actual application process, he said.
The regulation set deadlines of April 3 or September 8 for states to submit plans for Education Department approval, with implementation to start in the 2018–19 school year. If Congress passes the disapproval resolution, that timeline would disappear, too.
It’s vital that states get clarity from the Education Department once Congress acts, Minnich said: “Whatever the politics around the regulations are, states have to actually do a job, and they have to respond to this law.”
Minnich met with Education Secretary–nominee Betsy DeVos Tuesday and said that she was a “good listener” who was receptive to concerns that states should be leading ESSA implementation but needed support from the federal Education Department.
Another group, the National Governors Association, praised the Republicans’ move to overturn the regulations, arguing in a statement that it would put ESSA implementation back in state leaders’ hands “uninhibited by regulatory barriers on accountability.”
“For minimal disruption and a continued smooth transition to ESSA, governors will work with the U.S. Department of Education to ensure that clarity on accountability is swiftly provided to states through guidance and technical assistance. Governors will also forge a strong relationship with the new education secretary to guarantee that K-12 civil rights safeguards continue to be upheld,” the group said.
Trump’s surprise election had already shuffled the ESSA implementation calculus .. https://www.the74million.org/article/states-keep-their-focus-on-essa-implementation-amid-upheaval-in-dc-and-beyond .. months ago. Education reform advocates have since said that the law set a baseline accountability standard but did not prevent state and local leaders who want to take a tougher stance on improving schools for low-income children, students of color, English-language learners and others who historically haven’t been served well from doing so.
The teacher preparation regulations, unlike the accountability regulations, were more broadly vilified.
The Obama administration proposed to rate teacher training programs based, in part, on how well students taught by the program’s graduates performed on tests. Programs that didn’t perform well could lose eligibility for federal TEACH grants, which support would-be teachers who commit to specializing in high-need subjects or working in low-income neighborhoods.
Since ESSA’s passage, an overdue rewrite of the Higher Education Act has been the next major education item on Congress’s to-do list.
The Obama administration’s proposal “ignore[s] the principles guiding recent bipartisan education reforms and would actually make it more difficult for state and local leaders to help ensure teachers are ready to succeed,” sponsor Rep. Brett Guthrie said in a statement.
Lingering ESSA rules are not the only ones Congress has on its mind. The House by the end of this week will have considered five resolutions blocking various Obama administration regulations. The Senate passed one of them Thursday afternoon, preventing a rule that banned dumping coal mining waste in waterways.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed by President Obama on December 10, 2015, and represents good news for our nation’s schools. This bipartisan measure reauthorizes the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the nation’s national education law and longstanding commitment to equal opportunity for all students.
The new law builds on key areas of progress in recent years, made possible by the efforts of educators, communities, parents, and students across the country.
For example, today, high school graduation rates are at all-time highs. Dropout rates are at historic lows. And more students are going to college than ever before. These achievements provide a firm foundation for further work to expand educational opportunity and improve student outcomes under ESSA.
The previous version of the law, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, was enacted in 2002. NCLB represented a significant step forward for our nation’s children in many respects, particularly as it shined a light on where students were making progress and where they needed additional support, regardless of race, income, zip code, disability, home language, or background. The law was scheduled for revision in 2007, and, over time, NCLB’s prescriptive requirements became increasingly unworkable for schools and educators. Recognizing this fact, in 2010, the Obama administration joined a call from educators and families to create a better law that focused on the clear goal of fully preparing all students for success in college and careers.
Congress has now responded to that call.
The Every Student Succeeds Act reflects many of the priorities of this administration. .. more .. https://www.ed.gov/essa?src=rn
Trump law: Bipartisan or not. Good or not. Broad brush. Reverse any and all Obama moves we possibly can.
Tillerson used email alias at Exxon to talk climate: New York attorney general Mar 14, 2017 U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp, used an alias email address while at the oil company to send and receive information related to climate change and other matters, according to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The attorney general's office said in a letter on Monday that it found Tillerson had used an alias email address under the pseudonym "Wayne Tracker" from at least 2008 through 2015. Wayne is Tillerson's middle name. The letter was sent to a New York state judge overseeing Schneiderman's investigation into whether Exxon misled shareholders and the public about climate change. [...] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tillerson-climatechange-idUSKBN16L06J [with embedded video]
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Defense Secretary Mattis withdraws Patterson as choice for undersecretary for policy Anne Patterson testifies during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Oct. 28, 2015. March 14, 2017 Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has withdrawn retired senior diplomat Anne W. Patterson as his choice for undersecretary for policy after the White House indicated unwillingness to fight what it said would be a battle for Senate confirmation. U.S. officials said that two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), were strongly opposed to Patterson’s nomination because she served as U.S. ambassador to Egypt from 2011 to 2013, a time when the Obama administration supported an elected government with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood that was ultimately overthrown by the Egyptian military. The withdrawal leaves Mattis with a still-empty bench of Trump-appointed senior officials, a situation that stretches across the administration as Cabinet secretaries have not chosen, or the White House has not approved, nominees. Although Obama administration holdovers remain in a few jobs, after eight weeks in office, President Trump has not nominated a single high official under Cabinet rank in the Defense or State departments. [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/defense-secretary-mattis-withdraws-patterson-as-choice-for-undersecretary-for-policy/2017/03/14/dd5ec8bc-08b6-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html [with comments]
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