STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY
S. 1177 – Every Child Achieves Act of 2015
(Sen. Alexander, R-TN)
S.
1177, the Every Child Achieves Act, is an important step forward in the
process of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965 (ESEA), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB).
The Administration appreciates the bipartisan effort that
produced this legislation and wants to work with the Senate and House on
a bipartisan basis to ensure that important changes are made to protect
the most vulnerable students. The Administration looks forward to
continuing to work with the Congress on a bipartisan basis to make these
critical changes to S. 1177 before the bill is presented to the
President for signature.
The Administration supports the commitment in S. 1177 to holding
all students to challenging academic standards, maintaining critical
provisions that ensure teachers and parents know how students are
performing every year, providing states and school districts with the
flexibility needed for schools to improve outcomes for students,
and providing additional transparency around resource and opportunity
gaps. The Administration appreciates that S. 1177 would allow for
critical investments in innovation and what works and excludes harmful
provisions that would divert resources away from students, schools, and
districts with the greatest economic needs. The Administration applauds
the bipartisan commitment in S. 1177 to expand opportunities for
America’s children to attend high-quality preschool.
In
order to continue ESEA’s legacy of equity and opportunity for every
child in America, the Administration strongly urges revisions during
Senate consideration of S. 1177 that would strengthen school
accountability to close troubling achievement and opportunity gaps,
including by requiring interventions and supports in the
lowest-performing five percent of schools, in other schools where
subgroups of students are not achieving, and in high schools where too
many students do not graduate. Parents, families, and communities
deserve to know that when children fall behind, their schools will take
action to improve. Changes also are needed to S. 1177 to ensure that
the Department of Education has the authority to implement the ESEA so that it works as intended to protect at-risk students and to provide accountability for taxpayer funds.
The
Administration also urges changes during Senate consideration of
S. 1177 that would cap the amount of time spent annually on standardized
testing and that would require parental notification when testing is
consuming too much classroom learning time. S. 1177 should also be
improved to better support America’s teachers and principals and to
deliver the resources and resource equity needed to strengthen our
Nation’s schools, including by requiring states to develop plans to
address resource inequities and closing the longstanding “comparability” loophole to provide needed resources to vulnerable students in Title I schools.
The
Administration remains committed to working with the Congress on a
bipartisan approach to replace NCLB with a law that expands opportunity
for all of America’s children.
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