Accountability

Adam Kirk Edgerton explores the relationship between state education departments and the districts they oversee under the Every Student Succeeds Act. “Since 2015, a team of faculty and graduate student researchers at the Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL) has collected a broad range of data on ESSA’s implementation across the country, as well as data specific to California, Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts,” he writes.

Both rhetorically and substantively, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) served as a rebuke to the now-unpopular policies pursued by both the Bush and Obama administrations (American National Election Survey, 2018; Edgerton, 2019). Not only did it reduce the discretion of the secretary of education but also it allowed states greater flexibility in meeting the demands of standards-based accountability.