Freed from regulations by Trump administration, state education board unveils the ‘California Way’

“Where No Child used a stringent system to reward and punish schools for their performance on test scores, ESSA, as it’s known, gives states much more leeway in deciding how to hold schools and districts accountable for their students’ progress. With the Trump administration in office — and an Education secretary who insists that states and school districts do much of the decision-making — states will get even more freedom than they had expected. Trump in March signed a bill that trashed Obama’s ESSA rules. Both Rucker and fellow board member Feliza Ortiz-Licon suggested that if the state failed to make firm commitments to progress anyway, some students would continue to be shortchanged. The performance gap between students of different races, said Ortiz-Licon, is a California problem, not a question of complying with federal policy. ‘These are California students that are not performing in California schools, and it happens to be the same students over and over again,’ she said.”