The committee on Education Workforce will come to order. Good morning and welcome to todays full committee hearing. I thank our panel of witnesses and our Committee Members for joining todays discussion on the implementation of the every Student Succeeds act, essa. Essa can be considereded a milestone for k12 policy because it was a monumental shift in the role and states and School Districts would have in the future of education and it sought to achieve two specific goals for k12 education and autonomy and accountability. States and School Districts were given new independence when creating a k12 Education Program that works best for their own students, ending a washington knows best approach to education. Additionally, essa prohibitively influenced the states adoption of particular standards and repealed federal mandates for teacher performance and protected a states right to opt out of federal Education Programs. Part of this is goal for state and School District autonomy was to force washington to remain at arms length from states and School Districts when it comes to education, and rest assured that this committee will be watching to ensure that washington keeps its districts. While states were given more autonomy, the law maintains provisions to make sure they they have School Performance and states and districts and hold schools accountable for delivering a highquality education for all students. Essa also included pun precedented restrictions on the department of educations authority to take back the state and local flexibility guaranteed by the law. Essa 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 clear that a topdown approach to k12 education did not serve students, parents, teachers or the states well, and essa directly addressed the short comings. Its important to hear how implementation is progressing. We know the law wont fully take effect until the coming school year and well need time to assess its impacts on schools and students. However, i look forward to hearing from todays witnesses about the progress state, School Districts and the department of education are making. This committee has been keeping a close eye on this implementation process. Last year we held four hearings on implementation of essa. Today well continue our discussion on esss implementation. Essa was truly a change for k12 education, and i do believe this bipartisan law delivers the proper balance of autonomy and accountability to parents and taxpayers while ensuring a limited federal role. This law has the ability 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 our 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 meeting on the every Student Succeeds act. I would like to thank our witnesses for appearing today and their testimony. It is regrettable, however, that we are not hearing from the u. S. Department of education, particularly considering media report of the majoritys intention to critique its implementation of essa during todays proceedings and i know for one, i would greatly benefit from an open dialogue on the essa implementation and for other matters. Chairwoman fox, youll remember i sent you a letter urging secretary devos and other agency heads to appear before the committee to discuss the administrations priorities and the quick has not been fulfilled. I would like to take the opportunity again to ask if secretary devos or any other representative from the department who can discuss the Administration Priorities who appear to engage in an open dialogue with this committee. As has been the law of the land for nearly 20 months and while that may seem like a long time and the life cycle of the law is in the secondary education act which was over 50 years ago, its really just the beginning. States are only now undergoing the peer review and planned approval process and amid the regrettable, chaotic regulatory environment. I said this in february and march, but it bears repeating when congress used the cra to block the regulation of the title one requirements and that was unfortunate and counter to the bipartisan agreement in essa, but this body did go forward with the cra and thats the reality that we have to work with. That lack of regulation, however, means increased subjectivity in compliance with the requirement which makes the actions of this committee which is important. Increased subjectivity without the clarifying regulations is with the state plans submitted in play during the may submission window. Some planned components were praised by peer reviewers and while the same components were questions as insufficient with another, and the violations of ss equity requirements and madam chair, im disappointed that the media description from the reality from some of the comments were characterized with the education departments state feedback plans as overreach. There is a difference between overreach and simply administering the program. We need to remember that essa was not a blank check with the states and districts and it doesnt allow much flexibility and that flexibility must occur within the law, including guardrails concerning the assessments to ascertain persistent achievement gaps and accountability to close those achievement gaps. Congress designed the guardrails to protect the interests of the underserved students and the law contained important requirements. The requirements republicans and democrats all agreed to when they voted and those requirements must be meaningful. Essa is not and never has been a free for all. It is the responsibility of the department as articulated by congress to carefully scrutinize the quality and only approve those that meet the requirements. The law is the law and the law requires them to review the law, ask hard questions and if necessary, disapprove the plans in the interest of the students. While i just mentioned some of the content and overall inconsistency of the departments feedback may be probl problemattic none of us must take issue that it should be not more or less consistent and not more or less vigorous. It must result in approval if only the plans meet the letter of the law, as we are here today, many plans leave much to be desired due to ambiguity or incomple incompleteness in response that violates the laws equity requirements. It is my hope that the department will work with states including supervision of adequate guidance and Technical Assistance to improve the overall quality of the plans and ensure implementation that honors the long civil rights focused on the essa. Such implementation is only possible with the support and partnership of the federal governments and not only the role of the department to support and monitor state efforts to comply with the law and its also the role of congress to Fund Programs authorized by essa. Despite promises to implement the law, secretary devos and President Trump proposed elimination of bedrock esea programs and the 21st century, to support programs and cut to other programs including an effective cut of nearly 600 million in title one. For the House Majority fiscal year 18, labor age appropriations bill isnt as draconian as the president s request, it fails to honor the bipartisan agreement by eliminating title 2a, cutting afterSchool Programs and maintaining an effective cut to title one that will be felt at the local level. Elimination of title 2a would inhibit, teacher, professional and School Leader supports. A defunding this program most certainly does not align with the bipartisan intent of the authorizing statute. Lastly, trump cares proposed cut to medicaid if enacted would devastate services with students with disabilities and undermine state and local efforts to high standards as required by essa. The situation would be even worse if the most recent repeal without a replace plan is enacted. How effective can an implementation be without funding . I know all too often that state and local education agencies face capacity challenges and i would hope to hear from todays witnesses about the negative impact about underfunding programs on faithful implementation. In losing, i remain concerned about many of the actions of secretary deross and this administration concerning our nations students, for example, the recent rhetoric from the office of civil rights and the office of directive to ignore systemic data when they investigate alleged civil rights foundations. The lack of Agency Capacity to carry out key components of the department. Including the access of deputy secretaries and the rollback of protections for student borrowers, the rescinding of protections for transgender students. The sledgehammer like approach for deregulation without transition making of the department to offer 12 million to localities to provide Technical Assistance to help them desegregate their schools. All of these akds point to a troubling pattern that undermines the role and promotes the civil rights of all students. This pattern must not continue with implementation. I say that not out of Wishful Thinking or partisan spending because its within the law that we enacted and that needs to be enforced. Essa is clear. It is the responsibility of the department to review and provide feedback on essa plans and make the determinations of approvals and disapprovals based on compliance with the statute and partner including through enforcement activities with states and School Districts to support the loss implementation moving forward. It is the responsibility of states and districts to innovate within the guardrails of the 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 oversight of implementation moving forward to ensure that it is responsibly fulfilled. Thank you, madam chair, and i yield back. Thank you, mr. Scott. Pursuant to Committee Rules 7c, all members are to submit written statements. 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. I now turn to introductions of our distinguished witnesses, miss jacqueline is for k12 education for the department of u. S. Government accountability office. Dr. Gail pletnick is for the unified School District in surprise, arizona. Mr. Philip lovell is Vice President of policy development and Government Relations at the alliance for excellent education. Dr. K. Wright is the superintendent of education for mississippi. I now ask our witnesses to raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing, but the truth . Let the record reflect the witnesses answered in the affirmative. 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. When one minute is left the light will turn yellow. At the fiveminute mark the light will turn red and you should wrap up your testimony. Members will each have five minutes to ask questions. I now recognize miss nowicky 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, it requires states to have accountability systems to meet certain requirements and grants states flexibility and design in these systems. We focused our work on four areas of state accountability systems, one, determining longterm goals and two, developing perp formance indicators and three, differentiating schools and four, identifying and assisting low performers. We did so because stake holder groups identified these as key components of the accountability systems and areas in which states are making changes. My remarks today will focus two key areas. First, ill discuss stake holder views on essas flexibility for the accountability system. Second, ill discuss next step for the department of education and implementing essa. In regard to my first point all nine stake holder groups with whom we spoke saw the previsions as somewhat flexible. Most praised the ability to design their Performance Indicators. Most indicated that essa strikes a good balance between flexibility and requirements. For example, one stake holder said that essa threads the needle well to Design Systems that meet state needs and requiring states to protect vulnerable populations. The extent to which states are changing their systems vary. Some states are pleased with what they developed and are continuing down that path, but for states to see it lacking . Some way or when they highlighted the need for significant change, we were told that essa provides for innovative revision. 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. Id like to highlight one example here. To address essas requirements to differentiate will skoos ohio plans to tweak the current indicators to assess school and student performance. Some of these indicators would measure current performance while others would 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 and easily understandable, highlevel overview of performance. In california, the plan is to use the colorcoded dashboard to differentiate school and student sub Group Performance on each of six indicators. Each indicator will measure current performance as well as growth over time. Unlike ohio, california, does not plan to aggregate the indicator into an overall plan to aggregate the indicators into an official score. The state officials chose not to aggregate 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 and approval 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 appropriate evidencebased 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 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 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 School District in arizona and serve as president of aasa, the School Superintendent association. I am here today because i believe it is critical to continue to Work Together to make sure the underserved populations in our schools truly benefit from the educational promise that every Student Succeeds act was designed to deliver. I thank you and the committee for convening this as a hearing. The house of representative and the senate are to be applauded for the hard work to craft e. S. S. A. Moving from the no child left behind to control this in the states and local communities, although e. S. S. A. Is not perfect, the power of the law is the flexibility it is allowing the focus on the individual student. I have the opportunity to talk with superintendents from across the state of arizona and across the nation about the progress made in e. S. S. A. Implement a Common Thread in the conversations is that e. S. S. A. Created an opportunity for stakeholders to become more involved in goalsetting and establishing planning requirements in e. S. S. A. E. S. S. A. Provides efforts to engage stakeholders when developing a consolidated state plan. In arizona, committees and advisory groups were established to provide input at various stages of the planned de