For 15 years, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) increasingly cast a pall over American public schools. Its punitive, rigid and misconceived accountability system left millions of disadvantaged students behind.
Thankfully in December, Congress replaced NCLB. “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA) breaks NCLB’s link between tests and sanctions. ESSA returns broad authority to States and localities/school districts, retaining limited federal accountability.
Now that States/localities will be freed from NCLB, the critical question is: how can they use their new flexibility to meet the difficult challenge of significantly improving our many thousands of low-achieving Title I-funded schools?
Source : HuffingtonPost.Com