The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), known formally as The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), was signed into law in December 2015. DQC’s report, Opportunities to Make Data Work for Students in the Every Student Succeeds Act, outlines opportunities within the law to use data to examine what is working for students—and what is not—to meet states’ education goals.
The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides an opportunity to transform how data are used in education. The 2002 ESEA requirement to disaggregate data and provide them to the public has made it possible to have greater transparency and more accurate measures of academic performance than ever. Congress now has the opportunity to build on this success and leverage data as a tool to shine a light on what is working; inform continuous improvement; and empower stakeholders, including parents and educators, and with information they can use to help students succeed.
DQC has drafted recommendations for federal leadership to create the conditions for data to be used to improve systems and, most importantly, increase student achievement.
