Every Student Succeeds Act

Students with disabilities[edit]

The Every Student Succeeds Act also sets new mandates on expectations and requirements for students with disabilities. Most students with disabilities will be required to take the same assessments and will be held to the same standards as other students. ESSA allows for only one percent of students, accounting for ten percent of students with disabilities, to be excused from the usual standardized testing.^[18] This one percent is reserved for students with severe cognitive disabilities, who will be required to take an alternate assessment instead.^[19] This is a smaller percentage of students than under past mandates, mainly because there is not enough staff available to administer the assessments to the students one-on-one.^[18] The Department of Education does not define disabled, rather, each state decides its own definition in order to determine which students will be allowed to take the alternate assessment. This could prove to be more challenging, though, when it comes to comparing students to one another because not all states will define disabled the same way.^[19] The ESSA has also recognized that bullying and harassment in schools disproportionately affects students with disabilities. Because of this, the ESSA requires states to develop and implement plans on how they will combat and attempt to reduce bullying incidents on their campuses.^[18]

According to the October 24, 2015 U.S. Department of Education Fact Sheet: Testing Action Plan, state testing programs implemented under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top were "draining creative approaches from our classrooms", "consuming too much instructional time" and "creating undue stress for educators and students."^[24]


Federal mandates and incentives were cited as partly responsible for students spending too much time taking standardized tests.^[24] ESSA provided states with flexibility to correct the balance and unwind "practices that have burdened classroom time or not served students or educators well."^[24]


The Every Student Succeeds Act statute, regulations and guidance give states broad discretion to design and implement assessment systems.^[25] Neither the statute nor the regulations apply any specific limits on test design,^[25] however United States Department of Education guidance documents say it is essential to ensure that tests "take up the minimum necessary time."^[24]


Section 1111(b)(2)(B)(viii)(1) of ESSA presents states with the opportunity to meet all Federal academic assessment requirements with a single comprehensive test.^[26] As of 2018-19 some states like Maryland continue to fulfill ESSA assessment requirements by administering four or more content-specific state standardized tests with testing windows that stretch from December through June.^[27]


The Every Student Succeeds Act prohibits any officer or employee of the Federal Government from using grants, contracts or other cooperative agreements to mandate, direct or control a state's academic standards and assessments.^[28] It also explicitly prohibited any requirement, direction or mandate to adopt the Common Core State Standards^[29] and gave states explicit permission to withdraw from the Common Core State Standards or otherwise revise their standards.^[30] On January 31, 2019, Florida's Governor signed an executive order "eliminating Common Core and the vestiges of Common Core" from Florida's public schools.^[31]


A possibly out-of-date or incomplete enumeration of state testing initiatives designed to satisfy the requirements of the ESSA can be found at List of state achievement tests in the United States.