Education Next – Brian A. Jacob
“The current administration has vowed to leave education matters up to the states, continuing a movement started with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which dramatically limited the federal government’s role in school accountability. While greater local control certainly has some benefits, it risks exacerbating the massive disparities in educational performance across states that already exists. In 2015, there was almost a 30 percentile point difference in 4th grade math proficiency rates between the top and bottom states, only some of which can be explained by state-level social and economic factors. The massive disparity in progress is perhaps even more disturbing. Between 2003 and 2015, student proficiency rates grew by over 40 percent in some states, while remaining flat or even declining in other states.”(more)