December 9, 2015: Statement on the Senate passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) from the American Federation of School Administrators (AFSA), the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP):

Principals will celebrate the elimination of No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) system of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), School Improvement Grants (SIG), and other letters that marked the highly punitive, overly-test-reliant era of NCLB. But more important, they recognize a great opportunity ESSA offers to create more holistic accountability systems that include successes a test score simply cannot capture.

We are also pleased that the role of the principal received a prominent place in the bill’s provisions. Specifically:

• Inclusion of the School Principal Recruitment and Training Act, championed by Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA) and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN).
• Inclusion of language crafted by Sen. Franken allowing states to reserve up to 3 percent of their Title II funds for principal professional development.
• The clarification of school leader to mean a principal within the school building, an amendment introduced by Rep. Davis and Rep. Bob Dold (R-IL).

Under ESSA, states will reserve up to 7% of their Title I funds for school improvement activities that are not rigidly prescribed at the federal level, but that begin with a needs analysis and capacity assessment. While the legislation will support elementary schools meet the challenges with struggling students and help states expand early learning to all three- and four-year olds, we would have liked to see more dedicated resources for low-performing middle and high schools. We are, however, pleased that ESSA requires state plans to include information about how the state will work with districts to provide effective transitions of students to middle grades and high school to decrease the risk of students dropping out.

The bill is not perfect—no bill is—but it moves U.S. public education in the right direction. We applaud Congress for this tremendous bipartisan achievement, and look forward to the president’s signing of the bill, as well as working with the U.S. Department of Education and the states to implement ESSA’s provisions.

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Source: NAESP Press Release, http://www.naesp.org.