The ones who remain in place, would say that the president s mind is focused on the policy issues at hand of which parents just want in infrastructure and a tax code overhaul on the other. Obviously, theres plenty going on to subject more on the president s mind. More going on inside the white house to hold the ceremonial the president had this last week. Louise radnofsky live on this sunday morning. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me. Her work is available at wjs. Com. Appreciate you being with us. Now state and local officials testify at a house hearing on tefr Student Succeeds act. They changed the way the federal department of education oversees state boards of education and local School Districts. This is twoandahalf hours. The committee of Education Workforce will come to order. Good morning, and welcome to todays full committee hearing. I want to thank you or panel of witnesses and our Committee Members for joining todays discussion on the implementation of the every Student Succeeds act s. O. As it can be considered a milestone for k12 policy because it was a monumental shift in the role of states and School Districts would have in the future of education. They fought to achieve two specific goals for k12 education. Autonomy and accountability. States and School Districts were given new independence when created a k12 Education Program that works best for their own up students ending a washington knows best approach to education. Additionally, s. O. Specifically prevented the federal government from influencing states adoption of particular standards. It also repealed federal mandates for teacher performance and protected the states right to opt out of federal Education Programs. Part of this is goal for state district and autonomy was to force washington to remain an arms lengths for states and School Districts when it comes to school education. And rest assured this committee will be watching to ensure that washington keeps its distance. While states and School Districts are given more autonomy. And the law maintains provisions in ensuring parents have transparent information about School Performance and states in districts can hold schools accountable for delivering a highquality education to all students. S. O. Also included unprecedents restrictions on the department of educations authority to take back the state and local flexibility guaranteed by the law. S. O. Has stripped away powers of the department of education, such as the ability of the secretary of education to legislate through executive fiat or the ability of the departments bureaucrats to substitute their judgment for states. History made it clear that a topdown approach to k12 education and not serve students, parents, teachers or the states will. Nsa addressed these shortcomings. Given the monumental shift in education policy, representat e representative, its important to know that the law is progressing. We know the law wont take effect into the coming school year and need time to assess the impact on schools and students. However, i look forward to hearing from todays witnesses about the progress states, School Districts and the department of education are making. This committee is keeping a close eye on the implementation process. Last year we held four hearings on the implementation on s. A. This was a change for the k12 education and i do believe the bipartisan law delivers the proper balance of awe tony and accountability to taxpayers while ensuring a limited federal role. This law has the ability to empower state and local leaders to change k12 education for the better and that is why it is of utmost importance to this committee. I look forward to hearing from witnesses and members during todays hearing. With that i yield to Ranking Member scott for his opening remarks. Thank you, madam chair, for convening this mornings hearing on implementation of every Student Succeeds act. I look forward to hearing their testimony. It is regrettable that we are not hearing from the u. S. Department of education, particularly considering media reports of the majoritys intention to critique the implement takes of essa during todays proceedings. I know i, for one, would greatly benefit with the open dialogue on the essa implementation and for other matters. Chairwoman fox, you remember up sent a letter that secretary de vos and other agency hits to discuss the administrations priorities. That request has not been fulfilled so i would like to take the opportunity to ask secretary de vos or the representative from the department who can discuss the Administration Priorities to appear to engage in an open dialogue with this committee. Essa has been the law of the land for 20 months. While it may seem like a long time, the life cycle to the secondary education act that passed over 50 years ago, its really just the beginning. States are only now undergoing the peer review underapproval act against a chaotic regulatory environment. As i said in february and march, but it bears repeating, when congress used the cra to block the regulation between the core requirements, that was unfortunate and countered to the bipartisan agreement in essa. This body didnt go forward with the scra and thats what we have to work with. The lack of regulation, however, means increased subjectivity to determine compliance with the laws requirements that makes oversight actions of this Committee Even important. This increase subjectivity without the clarifying regulations is impairing the departments early feedback on state plans submitted in may during the may submission window. As some planned components were praised by peer reviewers in one states plan, one of the same components were questioning the insufficiency in other. All the while, other violences of essas equity requirements were overlooked by the department completely. Madam chair, im disappointed the media description of the reaction of some of our colleagues and the majority who characterized the education departments state feedback plans as overreach. Theres a difference between overreach and administering the program. We need to remember that essa was not a blank check to states and districts. And while the law acquired much flex flexibility, that flexibility must be include in the law, including the assessments to the achievement gaps and accountability to close the achievement gaps. Congress designed to protect the interest of the underserved students. And the law contained important requirements, requirements republicans and democrats all agreed to when we voted for essa and the requirements must be meaningful. Essa has never been a freeforall. Its the responsibility of the department as articulated by congress to carefully scrutinize the quality of state plans and only approve those that meet the laws requirements. Even without regulations, the law is the law. And the law requires the secretary to review the plans, ask hard questions and, if necessary, disapprove the plans in the interest of the students. And while, as i just mentioned, some of the content and overall inconsistency of the departments feedback may be problematic, none of us should take issue with the department attempting to do its job. Feedback must be more, not less, consistent and more, not less, vigorous. Ultimately, the feedback and submission of plans must result in approval, only on the plans that meet the spirit in the latter of the law. Many state plans leave much to be desired due to am biguity or noncompliance. Its my hope that the department will work with the states with Technical Assistance to improve the overall quality of the state plans, ensure implementation that honors the civil rights focus of the esea. Now, such implementation is only possible with the sport and partnership with the federal government, its not only the role of the department to support and monitor state efforts to come comply with the law, but it is also the law of congress to Fund Programs authorized by essa. Despite promises to implement the law as congress intended, secretary de vos and President Trump proposed the elimination of the essa programs, 21st century learning to support other programs and cut to other programs including the effective cut of nearly 600 million in title 1. Then while the House Majority fiscal year 18 appropriations bill isnt as draconian as the president s request, it fails to eliminate the problem by cutting after School Programs and maintaining an effective cut to title 1 that will be felt at the local level. Elimination of title 2a would result in thousands of layoffs and inhibit local and state efforts to improve teacher, prior professional and School Leader supports. Defunding this program most supportly does not align with the bipartisan intent of the authorizing statute. Lastly, trump cares proposed cuts to medicaid. And for that good would devastate services orp students with disabilities and undermine state and local efforts to educate all students to high standards as required by essa. And the situation would be even worse if the most verecent appe without the plan is enacted. How effective can implementation be without funding . I know too often that the state and local education offices face capacity standards and hope to hear from todays witnesses about the negative impact of underfunding essa programs on implementation. In closing, i remain concerned about many of the actions of secretary de vos and this administration concerning our nations students. For example, the recent rhetoric from the office of civil rights and the offices directive to ignore systemic data when they investigate alleged civil rights violations, lack of Agency Capacity to carry out key components of the department, including the absence of deputy secretaries. The rollback of protections for student borrowers, the rescinding and protections for transgender students, the sledgehammerlike approach to deregulation without transparency of decisionmaking of the department and the decision to cancel the Grant Program to award 12 million to localties to provide Technical Assistance to desegregate the schools. These point to a troubling pattern that undermines the federal governments Important Role to protect and promote civil rights of all students. This pattern must not continue with essa implementation. I say that not out of Wishful Thinking or partisan spend but because of what is within the law enacted and that needs to be enforced. Essa is clear, it is the responsibility of the department to review and give feedback on essas plans, make determinations of approvals or disapprovals based in compliance with the statute and partner, including enforcement activities with states and School Districts to support the laws implementation moving forward. Its the responsibility of states and districts to innovate within the guardrails of essas equity requirements that there may have been a change in administration but the law is the law and the federal role is clear. I hope this committee commits to a robust of implementation moving forward to ensure it is responsibly fulfilled. Thank you, madam chair. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Scott. Pursuant to Committee Rules 7c, all members will be permitted to include written statements to include in the hearing record without objection. The hearing record will remain open for 14 days to allow such statements and other extraneous material referenced during the hearing to be submitted for the official hearing record. And now turn to introductions of our distinguished witnesses, miss Jaqueline Nowicki is a director of the k12 u. S. Government accountability office. Dr. Gail pleknik worked for the Unified School District ins. Mr. Phillip lovell is Vice President in Government Relations at the alliance for excellence education. Dr. Carrie wright is the director of of superintendent to mississippi. I now ask the witnesses to raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony youre about to give, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . Let the record reflect the witnesses answer in the affirmty. Before i recognize each of you to provide your testimony, let me briefly explain our lighting system. We allow five minutes for each witness to provide testimony. When you begin, the light in front of you will turn green. And when one minute is left, the light turns yellow. At the fiveminute mark, the light returns red and you should wrap up your testimony. Members each have five minutes to ask questions. Now we recognize miss nowicki for five minutes. Good morning, chairwoman fox, Ranking Member scott and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss gaos new report on early observations on state accountability systems under essa. As you know, essa requires states to have accountability systems to meet requirements, but grants flexibility design in the systems. We focused our work in our areas of state accountability systems. One, determinening longterm goals. Two, developing Performance Indicators. Three, differentiating schools. And four, identifying and assisting low performers. We did so because stake holder groups identified these as key components of accountability systems under essa and areas in which states are making changes. My remarks today will focus on two key areas, first, ill discuss stake holder views on essas flexibilities to redesign accountable systems. Second, ill discuss next steps for the department of education in implementing essa. In regards to my first point, all Nine National stakeholder groups with whom we spoke saw essas accountability provisions flexible. For example, some of them pressed the availability to Performance Indicators. Most also said that essa strikes a good balance between flexibility and requirements. For example, one stakeholder said that essa the leads the needle well before offering flexibility to Design Systems that meet state needs and requiring states to protect vulnerable populations. The extent to which states are changing their current systems varies. Some states are pleased with the systems they developed under the nclb waivers and are continuing down that path. But for states that see their current systems as lacking in some way or when stakeholder consultation highlighted the need for significant change, we were told that essa provides room for states to consider innovative revisions. Our report provides many examples of how two states, ohio and california, are tailoring their accountability systems of each of the four areas i mentioned. I would like to highlight one example here. To agueddress essas requiremen to differentiate the schools, they have six indicators to assess School Performance. Some of these would measure current performance while others measure growth. And schools would receive a letter grade on each indicator as well as an overall letter grade. Ohio officials felt that this approach would provide detailed information on various elements of their performance system as well as provide an easily understandable high level overview of performance. In california the plan is to use a colorcoded dashboard to differentiate School Performance on each of six indicators. Each indicator will measure current performance as well as growth overtime. Unlike ohio, california does not plan toing aggragate the indicas into an official score. The state officials chose not to aggragate because they feel this can mask individual problem areas and also told us that measures current performance and growth for each indicator provides a more complete picture of performance. With regard to my second point, given current timelines, the department of education remains focused on providing assistance to states in developing their plans and on the review unapproval process for plans. Moving forward, a key next step in essa implementation is for the department to develop a state monitoring protocols, although draft protocols were not available at the time of our review, education officials said that they planned to pilot protocols with eight or nine states in early 2018. The departments goal is to review all states within a three to fouryear cycle. Education officials also told us that they are considering whether there is a need for Additional Guidance for states. During our review, most National Stakeholder groups told us that states could use guidance on the number of issues, such as how to identify and evaluate appropriatebased interventions. In closing, i hope our early observations shine some light on how states are thinking about their accountability systems in the context of essas flex abouts. Essa implementation is still in the early days and much work lies ahead for both states and the department of education before the promise of essa can be fully realized. We look forward to working with you to support your efforts to oversee implementation of this important law. This completes my prepared remarks. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, ms. Nowicki. Dr. Pletnik, you are recognized. Would you turn on your mic microphone, please. Thank you. Chairman fox, Ranking Member scott, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to join you today. I am the superintendent of the Schoo