Trott, Bishop and the majority of Congress were WRONG on ESSA

In the days leading up to the vote on the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Congressman Mike Bishop posted the following on his Facebook page,

House and Senate members have put together a bipartisan bill to REPLACE “No Child Left Behind” with reforms that will rein in the Secretary of Education and give control & flexibility back to states, parents and teachers (where it belongs). Learn more about the new “Every Student Succeeds Act” at the link below. House Committee on Education and the Workforce ‪#‎ESSA‬ ‪#‎ESEA‬ ‪#‎MI08‬

Stop Common Core in Michigan board member, Deb Debacker, commented on Rep. Bishop’s post and asked, “President Obama and the Democrats like this bill too. Doesn’t that make you wonder?”

Bishop ignored DeBacker.  So did many others in Congress.  When I asked Rep. Bishop if he read the bill he avoided the question completely and sent me a link to a website to learn more.

The ESSA bill was 1,061 pages long and released on Monday November 30.  The House vote took place a few days later.  I doubt many lawmakers took the time to read it.  When I contacted Congressman Dave Trott’s office his aide told me she tried to read the bill and it was “mind numbing.”   Indeed it was but that didn’t stop Congressman Trott from taking to Facebook proudly proclaiming his support for “replacing No Child Left Behind with key reforms that give power back to local communities and school districts. Teachers should teach kids, not federal bureaucrats!”

Now after Republicans voted with the Democrats for the “bi-partisan” ESSA and Obama has signed it, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan admits the truth on Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).   It turns out DeBacker was right and Bishop, Trott, and the majority of Republicans were wrong.

In an interview this week with the Washington Post Duncan admits it doesn’t restrict the federal role in education that much.  Here’s an excerpt,

Q. You believe in the power of the federal government to do good and make sure that disadvantaged kids get access to the education they deserve. So there’s this irony — you did what you thought was right for kids, and the backlash against that has produced this law that really constricts the federal role.

Duncan:  It doesn’t, that much. The truth is very different than what some folks in the media have reported.

If you look at the substance of the bill — the focus on early childhood education, which never happened in the history of this law before. It’s now the law of the land to have high standards. A push on the civil rights side that is desperately important to focus on the bottom five percent of schools, focus on dropout factories, focus on achievement gaps. None of these things were in the law before. These are all huge steps in the right direction. Maintaining annual testing but also incentives not to overtest. For me, just the thread of tight on goals but loose on means.

So you feel like the department will still have the teeth it needs to protect the interests of all kids.

Absolutely. Our department absolutely has the ability to regulate, to implement the law. Every bill’s a compromise, and we are happy to compromise on surface-y soundbites and maintain our values on the substance.