News : V-S welcomes news that 'No Child Left Behind' law will end next year

Last week, the Vinton-Shellsburg School Board received news that its members – along with countless school board members, administrators and teachers had been hoping to hear for years: The “No Child Left Behind” law will end at the end of this current school year.

The Iowa Association of School Boards sent out this notice on Friday:

“On Wednesday, Dec 9, the United States Senate passed S. 1177, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) on a bipartisan vote of 85-12. The bill was sent and signed into law by President Obama on Thursday, Dec. 10.This bill provides sweeping updates to the No Child Left Behind law and provides states and local districts more decision making power. ESSA reaffirms the importance of local governance, protects federal investment for Title I for disadvantaged students, and prevents the diversion of public tax dollars for private use.”

The current law – which has gained criticism every year – will remain in effect this school year.

“It’s a big deal to have the NCLB law replaced,” said V-S Superintendent Mary Jo Hainstock. “Of course, we are still living under NCLB for this year but things will change for next year.”

Hainstock said that there are a few good things that NCLB has done – things that will continue under the new law.

“It changed the discussion from ‘aggregate achievement’ to ‘disaggregated achievement.’ For example, when I was a curriculum director before NCLB, I would look at how a class achieved as 3rd graders to 4th grade, etc. After NCLB, we had to look at how individual students did from year to year. Under the first way, it was possible for a handful of students to ‘pull up’ the scores for their whole grade…and we could miss the group of kids who were struggling. Under the new mandate, we had to review how each individual student or groups of students (disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, IEP status, qualifying for free or reduced price meals, English Language Learners, etc.) and schools found we had groups of students who were not making the progress they needed to be proficient and high achieving. That was a good part.”

The bad part, says Hainstock, was “the punitive measures they put in place once a school or district identified those gaps instead of helping to figure out how to reduce the gaps.”

For tonight’s school board meeting, Hainstock has prepared the following summary:

Every Child Achieves Act – Both houses of Congress approved and the President signed legislation that replaces the No Child Left Behind law. Under the Correspondence Items, you will find a summary from AASA. Some things that are major changes – Annual Yearly Progress and Annual Measureable Objectives are out (i.e. no longer expected to have 100% proficiency); mandates on teacher evaluations; prescribed turnaround models; labels such as School in Need of Assistance or District in Need of Assistance. There will be some changes in Title I funding including how SINA money is distributed; it also means that we will not be required to offer Shellsburg Care or other out-of-school interventions. The law will not go into effect until next year so we will still need to implement our SINA plans for this year.