On Tuesday, February 28th, President Donald Trump gave his first speech to Congress. The lengthy speech included a brief mention of education. He called education “the Civil Rights issue of our time” and asked Congress to pass a bill to fund school choice.

On Tuesday, February 28^th, the U.S. Senate introduced Joint Resolution 25,
which if approved, would result in the ESSA regulations for accountability and state plans being rescinded. Earlier, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a “Resolution of Disapproval” for these regulations.

TransACT has received a number of questions recently about whether parent notices under ESSA will still be required for the 2017-2018 school year. This is because of confusion over the pause on the development of accountability systems. Despite the pause on accountability system development, ESSA will fully replace NCLB on July 1, 2017. This means that parent notices required by ESSA go into effect for the 2017-2018 school year.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed “Resolutions of Disapproval” for two sets of education related regulations. This is the first step in rescinding these regulations using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The two sets of regulations that were ‘disapproved’ are the Accountability regulations under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the Teacher Preparation regulations, which address issues of teacher preparation programs at institutes of higher education. 

Shortly after his inauguration, President Trump put a hold on a number of regulations that hadn’t gone into full effect as yet, including the ESSA accountability regulations. The hold will last for 60 days and give the Trump administration until March 21, 2017 to rescind, change or allow the regulations to go into effect.

Just prior to the transition to the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Education (USED) issued two guidance documents to help States as they develop their accountability systems under Title I. The Trump administration put a pause on the accountability regulations, but if those regulations are not changed or rescinded, and if these new guidance documents are not overturned, they provide some significant information for States and Districts.

In November last year, the U.S. Department of Education (USED) issued final regulations for Accountability and State Plans. Those regulations clarified that ESSA State Plan submission dates were being extended, and therefore, the dates for identifying schools for Comprehensive and Targeted Support and Improvement (the new labels for “school improvement”) were also being extended. Identification of schools for improvement under ESSA now won’t happen until the 2018-2019 school year.

Recently I wrote about the potential for the US Congress to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to rescind regulations recently released by the U.S. Department of Education (USED). I mentioned the regulations on ESSA Accountability provisions as one that could be targeted under the CRA.

In May 2016 the U.S. Department of Education (USED) posted for comment proposed regulations for Accountability and State Plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Those proposed regulations generated over 20,000 comments. Since USED is required to respond to comments, it took them a significant amount of time to finalize these regulations.

On December 28, 2016 the U.S. Department of Education (USED) released three new sets of guidance “to assist the public in understanding how the Department interprets and enforces federal civil rights laws protecting the rights of students with disabilities” (see here). This may be the last effort of an ongoing focus by the current administration to highlight aspects of the Civil Rights of students with disabilities.