An imminent federal education regulation, which would strip Title I funding for public schools with excessive opt-out rates of standardized testing, is set to go into effect at the end of the month.
Despite disapproval from lawmakers, parents and educators across the country, the U.S. Department of Education’s controversial amendment to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, ESSA, which was passed by Congress in December 2015, is set go into effect on Jan. 30. ESSA, which reauthorized the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act, expands the federal government’s role in funding public education.
“The outcome of this type of legislation will be to punish large segments of students who are in need of federal dollars to support their education,” said Dr. Louis Wool, the superintendent of the Harrison Central School District. “We do not have the ability nor the right to mandate that people engage in a process that they find to be not in the best interests of their children.”
The new amendment to ESSA could label Westchester public schools as “in need of improvement” for any school where 5 percent of students or more opt out of state Common Core testing. As a result, school districts above that threshold would lose its federal Title I funding, which is distributed to schools and school districts with a high percentage of students from low-income families.
The contended Common Core State Standards Initiative, which highlights what students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade from kindergarten through 12th grade, is currently authorized and optional in New York state until 2022; the law was adopted in 2010. But in 2022, Common Core will be fully implemented without the option to opt out of standardized testing.
The federal ESSA was drafted by U.S. Secretary of Education John King, the former New York state Education Department commissioner, and was signed into law on the same day as the repeal of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, on Dec. 10, 2015. ESSA retains all the stipulations of the No Child Left Behind Act, but shifts the law’s federal accountability provisions to states.
The No Child Left Behind Act previously required all public schools receiving Title I funding to administer statewide standardized testing with the stipulation that students make “adequate yearly progress.”
For example, each year’s fourth-graders must score better than the previous year’s fourth-graders, or the federal government would step in and set mandatory improvement plans.
Local school administrators and lawmakers have contested the methods of the state’s Common Core testing, insisting that it negatively impacts students’ ability to learn as it sets unrealistic educational criteria for success due to the high rate of failure on standardized tests.
According to Dr. Brian Monahan, the interim superintendent of the Rye City School District, although each community in Westchester is different, standardized testing clearly impacts all school districts. “We’re concerned about the testing methods and evaluations that accompany those standards,” he said.
Monahan added the lack of Title I funding is not necessarily an issue because Rye receives very little of it. However, he said that what concerns parents more about Common Core is the reality that few questions and tests are released afterwards.
According to Monahan, the state does not release standardized tests and questions for public viewing.
“Parents want to see what went right and what went wrong,” Monahan said. “We’re seeing that change slowly, but we’re still going to advocate for a more responsible approach to testing.”
According to state Sen. George Latimer, a Rye Democrat that has long been a vocal critic of the practice of standardized testing, while it’s impossible to calculate just how many ways the new regulations will impact communities, there’s hope that, under new President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Education will change the controversial practice for testing before it harbors any lasting impacts. “The impact of this is unpredictable, and we should always avoid the unpredictable,” Latimer said.
Latimer also told the Review that he hopes the state Legislature will consider his recent proposal to allow parents and school districts to opt children with an individualized education program, a learning document that was developed for public school children that need special education, out of Common Core standards and certain testing. “You have to give those children more flexibility,” he said.
As of press time, Latimer’s bill, which was submitted on Jan. 11, is awaiting approval of the state Senate Education Committee.
