Subgroup accountability at issue in ESEA renewal
Blog by Alyson Klein/Education Week
The National Council of La Raza, which advocates for English-language learners, is worried about the potential impact of language in a widely circulated draft of a Senate plan to reauthorize the nation's main education law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The language calls for states to ensure that schools are making continuous improvement, but they would not have to set student performance targets toward a specific goal, as they do now under the current version of ESEA—the No Child Left Behind Act. The changes also would allow states to decide which interventions to use in all but the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools and schools with persistent achievement gaps (as defined by the state). "We haven't seen the bill, but in general, we would be concerned about having no progress targets," said Raul Gonzalez, the director of legislative affairs for La Raza. (more...)