Our school was honored last Monday to host Rep. Annie Kuster (D-NH) as part of her Holiday Cards for Heroes program. Yearly, Annie asks for local elementary school children in her district to make holiday cards for Veterans and she then presents the cards to local Vets at the V.A. Hospital in Manchester, NH and the NH Veterans Home in Tilton, NH.
Before she spoke to the students, we chatted briefly about the new ESSA. Annie, who voted for the bill, was surprised how smoothly the legislation flew through the House and Senate. In fact, I think the speed by which ESSA passed surprised many of us in the education field.
As I take a few days off during the holidays, I am catching up on some reading, specifically around ESSA. As such, here a brief list of links on the subject to familiarize ourselves as leaders in the new legislation:
- The US Department of Education gets their chance to provide the initial spin on ESSA, complete with a three column chart that compares NCLB, The President’s proposals and the eventual “bipartisan” bill.
- Education Week does a nice job summarizing ESSA in this piece, complete with very solid links to other references.
- The official ASCD response to ESSA was delivered by brand new CEO and Executive Director (and former USDOE official) Deb Delisle. As you might imagine, it’s positive but with some reservations.
- The USDOE released this letter two days ago to the Chief State School Officers with initial regs as we see from NCLB to ESSA.
- The White House released this ten page document summarizing ESEA and progress in education during the Obama years.
- The AFSA, NAESP, and NASSP, released this joint statement on ESSA, with specific references in the law to the role of the Principal.
- The role of ESSA vis a vis technology and STEM is explored in this article.
- The conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute gives a different point of view on ESSA.
All of these links and more are at my Diigo page and will be updated over time.
Happy Holidays!
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