Letter to President-Elect Biden on ESSA 5-Year Anniversary
December 10, 2020
The Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
President-elect of The United States of America
1401 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20230
Dear President-elect Biden:
The undersigned civil rights and education advocacy organizations write on the fifth anniversary of the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to urge your recommitment to the implementation of the racial justice and civil rights guardrails of this law to ensure that all K-12 students have access to a quality public education.
In 2015, during the debate on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), we supported civil rights principles, which highlighted the federal government’s critical role in promoting the right to a quality education for all children regardless of race, ethnicity, native language, disability, or zipcode. These principles are even more relevant now as we witness the ways in which the lack of oversight of state implementation – alongside the federal government’s failure to adequately respond to the COVID-19 pandemic – have widened opportunity and achievement gaps for historically underserved students.
We offer the following recommendations to address the growing educational inequities for students of color, Native students, students from low-income families, English learners, students with disabilities, and other vulnerable children:
- Ensure every state provides all students with a fair and equitable opportunity to meet college and career ready standards, and measures student progress toward meeting those standards with annual, aligned statewide assessments. As organizations committed to education equity and racial justice, we are concerned that educational inequities – stark even before the pandemic – are worsening, and that opportunity gaps are getting wider. Annual statewide assessments results provide the most reliable, valid, and objective source of information that tell parents, families and communities how well the education system is serving their children. These results also play a critical role in shining a light on vast disparities in educational opportunity, helping to secure resources and support for students who are often underserved in our schools. Having these data is especially important now as states work to address the learning loss caused by the pandemic which research shows is disproportionately impacting students of color, English learners, Native students, and students with disabilities.
Given the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)’s postponement of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the ESSA waivers issued in every state last Spring, states and school districts need statewide assessment data to understand the impact of the pandemic and target resources. As describe by NCES, the constraints that led to NAEP’s postponement, including the need for in-person testing, device sharing, and third-party proctors, are not limiting factors in providing for Spring statewide assessments. We urge the Biden administration to resume all federally required, annual, statewide assessments in the 2020-21 school year and help states navigate potential challenges with test administration.
The Biden administration should also take the following steps to promote college- and career-readiness: (1) provide support to states to create systems of universal access to high-quality preschool for students from historically disadvantaged communities, dual language learners, and students with disabilities; (2) require states to set ambitious goals for educator racial and ethnic diversity and to provide meaningful action plans to achieve them; (3) issue guidance to address racial, economic, and other disparities in student access to and persistence in advanced coursework and STEM learning; (4) increase investments in whole child supports, including social, emotional, mental, and physical health and development; (5) strengthen and reissue guidance on school discipline to address the disproportionate use of exclusionary and punitive disciplinary practices, particularly against Black and Native students, girls of color and LGBTQ students, and students with disabilities; and (6) prohibit the use of federal funding for school-based law enforcement (including school resource officers) in public schools and invest in school counselors and evidence-based approaches to an inclusive and positive school environment.
- Advance resource equity by ensuring federal dollars are targeted to historically underserved students and schools. ESEA was specifically intended to provide extra support to high-poverty schools to close opportunity gaps and improve student outcomes. Decades later, research shows that students of color and low-income students still disproportionately attend schools in under-resourced districts compared to their White and wealthier counterparts. The Department of Education must hold states accountable for enforcing ESSA’s resource equity guardrails, particularly the requirement that states measure and publicly report per pupil school-level spending and funding data, and support districts in addressing any resource inequities.
The Biden administration should take the following steps to help avert deeper funding disparities between wealthier and under-resourced districts caused by the current economic recession: (1) help states target resources and supports to schools where data show that student learning has been most affected by school closures caused by the pandemic; (2) allocate additional specific funds via Title I, Title II, Title III, Title IV, and Title VI of ESSA, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); (3) call upon Congress to appropriate $12 billion to address the connectivity needs of the nation’s students through the e-rate program, as proposed in the revised HEROES Act; (4) issue regulations and guidance strengthening fiscal requirements in federal K-12 education programs; (5) protect high-need schools and districts from disproportionate funding cuts; and (6) request increased funding from Congress for school improvement activities required under section 1003(a) of ESEA to address the unmet and growing needs of low-performing schools.
- Ensure state accountability systems set clear goals for college and career readiness that hold all students to the same standards, provide information to families and community members, and spur action when needed, as required in ESSA (ESEA section 1111(b)). Accountability systems can identify where schools and districts are not properly serving individual groups of students and can signal where to drive additional resources and supports. Yet, research shows that many states do not have the same high goals for all student subgroups, do not include the performance of all student groups in their school ratings, and leave many low-performing schools unidentified for support.
We ask the Biden administration to issue guidance to help states improve their accountability plans so that they: (1) account for the performance of individual student groups – including all major racial and ethnic subgroups, English learners, students with disabilities, and low-income students; (2) direct support and intervention to struggling schools, and (3) distribute resources equitably to districts. We also ask that you issue guidance to ensure states support and monitor the implementation of evidence-based approaches to improve instruction, accelerate learning, and foster a positive school climate (e.g., decreases in bullying and harassment, use of exclusionary discipline practices, use of police in schools, and student referrals to law enforcement) for students enrolled in any school where the school as a whole, or any subgroup of students, has not met the annual achievement and graduation goals.
- Ensure that all states, school districts and schools encourage and promote meaningful engagement and input of all parents, guardians and communities. ESSA requires that states include a range of stakeholders, such as civil rights groups, parents, and community-based organizations, and consult with tribes in planning and implementing the law. Stakeholder diversity, accessibility, and meaningful engagement are critical to ensuring education policies are informed by the communities most impacted and must be integrated as part of every school systems’ general operating procedures.
The Biden administration should take the following steps to promote the continuous engagement of diverse stakeholders in every major state- and district-level decision: (1) provide guidance to states and districts on family engagement strategies, including the need to communicate and provide information, data, and feedback in multiple languages and ways that are accessible to all parents and dispersed on a variety of platforms (e.g. social media, email, written); (2) direct all Department of Education program offices to develop and implement a community-informed policymaking strategy with consultation from the White House Initiatives to direct grant-making, rule-making, and official guidance; (3) support the Statewide Family Engagement Centers Program, which helps states and districts facilitate meaningful engagement with communities; (4) support Parent Training and Information Centers, which provide information and services to children with disabilities and their families; and 5) establish a technical assistance center to support local education agencies (LEAs) and state education agencies (SEAs) working toward community schools.
- Ensure that states and districts provide families, communities, and decisionmakers with clear and transparent data. The need for high-quality data systems and public reporting has become especially pressing over the last year as students have faced unprecedented challenges during the pandemic. Families, communities, tribes, and decision makers need multiple measures of data to identify opportunity gaps and paint a fuller picture of student learning. With 26 states missing data for at least one required student group on their annual report cards, oversight is needed to ensure data is disaggregated by all racial/ethnic categories, gender, English learner status, disability status, low-income status, migrant status, and foster status.
The Biden administration should take the following steps to ensure high-quality data collection and reporting: (1) issue guidance for reporting annual information on a broad array of measures as required by ESSA (ESEA section 1111(h)), including student achievement, growth, course-completion, graduation rates, school climate indicators (including exclusionary discipline practices, use of police in schools, and student referrals to law enforcement), opportunity to learn measures, the teaching workforce, and per-pupil expenditures (2) promote the release of timely, accessible, and transparent state and local report cards that identify equity gaps; (3) expand the information included in the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) to ensure equal educational opportunity; and (4) encourage states to report out data by each major racial, ethnic, and immigrant / newcomer groups beyond the minimal reporting required in ESSA, including by ethnic subgroups within the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, disaggregating Native students as a group, and disaggregating by disability status (IEP vs 504).
- Ensure states implement and enforce the law. Over the last four years, despite early warning signs, the majority of states ignored equity in their ESSA implementation plans, including requirements to reduce bullying, harassment, suspension, expulsion, and the use of aversive practices such as seclusion and restraint. This raises concerns about how states are accounting for and protecting historically marginalized students who are disproportionately impacted. We urge the Department of Education to provide the oversight needed to ensure equitable state implementation of ESSA and meaningful action when states fail to meet their obligation to provide equal educational opportunity for all students.
Our communities need your administration’s leadership in fighting against the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and the systemic inequities that have created a second-class system of education for students of color, Native students, English learners, students with disabilities, and students from low-income families. On this fifth anniversary of ESSA, we call upon the Biden Administration to take on this challenge and enforce federal education law with renewed energy, as a sign of its commitment to dismantling the systemic injustices that have denied and hindered opportunities for success to generations of students for far too long.
Sincerely,
National Urban League
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC)
UnidosUS
National Indian Education Association (NIEA)
National Action Network (NAN)
Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA)
National Center for Learning Disabilities
National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools
The Education Trust
Education Reform Now
Alliance for Excellent Education