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Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act in December 2015. ESSA is the main body of federal legislation governing public education.
the following grade spans: 3-5, 6-9 and 10-12. Texas meets these requirements. Note: USDE waived testing requirements in 2019-20 because of COVID-19 disruptions.
Title I: Standards/Assessment/ Accountability/Educator Quality
ESSA allows school districts to use locally selected, nationally recognized high school academic assessments in lieu of the state high school assessments, if approved by the state. However, the tests must be aligned with the state academic content standards, address the depth and breadth of such standards, and be equivalent in content coverage, difficulty, and quality to the state-designed assessments. They must also provide comparable, valid, and reliable data on academic achievement, as compared to the state-designed assessments, for all students and for each subgroup of students among all local school districts within the state. The Texas State ESSA Plan does not currently contain provisions addressing this.
Standards
ESSA requires each state to establish challenging state academic standards in mathematics, reading/language arts, science and any other subject determined by the state, that are aligned with entrance requirements for credit-bearing coursework in the system of public higher education in the state and relevant career and technical education standards. ESSA allows states to adopt alternate academic achievement standards for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities if they are aligned with the challenging state academic standards noted above and reflect professional judgment as to the highest possible standards achievable by such students.
Assessment
States receiving Title I funds are required to assess reading/ language arts and mathematics every year in grades 3-8, as well as one year in the 9-12 grade span (Texas currently requires students to pass Algebra I and English I and II end-of-course exams to graduate). States also are required to administer a science assessment annually in at least one grade in each of
ESSA requires participation in the grades 4 and 8 reading and math sections of the National Assessment of Educational Progress provided that the federal government pays for it.
Student participation requirements
ESSA requires states to annually measure the achievement of not less than 95% of the students in the state on the required state assessments and to explain how they will factor the 95% participation requirement — both for students overall and for each student group — into their accountability system. Continued 2020-21 TCTA Survival Guide
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