BOULDER, CO (November 19, 2024)—EdTrust recently published a report using what it calls an “equity analysis” to critique states’ accountability plans, recommending several steps states might take to improve their systems. But a new review explains how that report rehashes old arguments for the original No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
In his review of Reassessing ESSA Implementation: An Equity Analysis of School Accountability Systems, Derek Gottlieb of the University of Northern Colorado details the shortcomings of the report’s vision for how high-quality accountability structures would look and perform.
The report, Prof. Gottlieb explains, calls for publicizing information that we have seen—through NCLB and related laws and policies—to be incomplete or gamed. The report also points to the potential for targeting resources that have proven to be chronically inadequate. Such tactics never achieved systemic equity or excellence when packaged as NCLB, yet this report, which relies heavily on indicators and tools that EdTrust has developed or compiled itself, does not see the historical record of failure as a reason to abandon the approach.
To get on board with the report’s analysis and recommendations, one would have to valorize its vacuous (and largely undefined) notion of “equity”, gloss over the many failures and perverse outcomes of federal educational oversight across the decades, and ultimately place an implausible amount of faith in the power of rules alone—unsupported by additional resources—to transform the educational destinies of the nation’s most vulnerable children.
In critiquing state ESSA plans, Professor Gottlieb concludes, the report offers nothing more original than the very same strategy that gave rise to ESSA in the first place.
Find the review, by Derek Gottlieb, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/essa
Find Reassessing ESSA Implementation: An Equity Analysis of School Accountability Systems, written by Nicholas Munyan-Penney, Abigail Jones, and Shayna Levitan and published by EdTrust, at:
https://edtrust.org/rti/reassessing-essa-implementation-an-equity-analysis/