School law rewrite may lead to more local control

Some Louisiana educators hope the recent rewrite of the federal No Child Left Behind law will ease the burdens of over-testing and make teacher evaluations less dependent on test scores.

President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act on Thursday. The law shifts some decision-making power back to the states.

State Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, welcomed the federal changes.

“Generally, I’m a Jeffersonian in that philosophy the more control you give to the states and to the locals the better off you are,” Jones said. “I don’t find very many solutions to local problems that come out of Washington, D.C. …

“Big governments can’t manage a school board. It’s just bizarre.”

ESSA will give local school boards more flexibility, said Scott Richard, executive director of the Louisiana School Boards Association. Richard also chairs Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards’ Onward Louisiana Transition Committee for K-12 Education.

“It is our understanding as we work through the new federal legislation that we will have more local control and more local flexibility, which is always a goal of local government,” Richard said.

ESSA takes a new approach to accountability, teacher evaluations and improvement for poorly performing schools.

Statewide reading and math standardized tests for grades 3-8 are still federally required in English and math. However, the new law encourages states to limit the time students spend on testing.

“And we’re hoping at the state level that we have more flexibility to move away from so much focus being on standardized testing to determine student achievement,” Richard said.

“We’re hopeful that at the state level we start to begin the process of looking at multiple measures or multiple indicators of student achievement and not one test score in the spring of each year.”

For teachers, ESSA eliminates the federal mandate tying teacher evaluations to student performance on statewide tests. But states and districts will still be able to consider scores as a factor in teacher performance reviews.

There is a feeling among education professionals desiring students to succeed but linking a student’s test score to a teacher evaluation should not be a major part of an evaluation system.

Another member of the K-12 transition committee, Louisiana Association of Educators President Debbie Meaux, said Louisiana believes in accountability. But she said the link between accountability and test scores has been overdone.

“In Louisiana, 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation is based on students’ test scores,” Meaux said.

“I don’t think that the percentage should be that elevated. In Louisiana, I’m hoping we can bring that percentage down to 15 percent. We suggested anywhere from 15-25 percent.”

Richard also questioned the 50 percent linkage between evaluations and test scores.

“As the law is unpacked and we begin to understand exactly the ramifications of the new federal legislation, it’s our hope that there’s not so much emphasis placed on that one test score being tied to a teacher’s performance and their pay,” Richard said.

“There needs to be a better balance. We hope at the state level that we start to have those serious conversations with policy-makers that there be more flexibility in how we evaluate employees and hopefully to use multiple measures that are not just tied to the test score.”

Louisiana is reviewing standards. The review committee began its process around August.

“It is our understanding every state should have higher standards, more rigorous standards and that’s the process we’re currently going through in Louisiana already with the current standards review process,” Richard said. “How that looks at the end of the day is yet to be determined.”

“They’re taking the Common Core standards and reviewing each of the standards,” Meaux said. “There is some disagreement as to whether or not this will produce a final product that Louisiana, all stakeholders, will say is the final product.

“There is some discussion, some disagreement that maybe the committee itself is really not doing a full review. They’re really only doing certain tweaks here and there and then renaming the standards as Louisiana standards.”

“Personally, our organization has a stance that we believe in high standards. But we believe that these, our standards, should be created and/or vetted by Louisiana teachers.”

The review will be presented to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in February 2016. If approved, the standards will be sent on to the Legislature for a vote.

“If it makes it through Legislature to the governor’s desk, the governor either has to say yes or no,” Meaux said. “If he says no, then the process starts again.

“And we’ll remain with Common Core standards as they exist. And the process has to be done again.”

“We’re going to have, with the new governor, high standards, but they’re going to be standards developed with Louisiana values in mind,” Jones said.