When Equity Is Optional

This live virtual event is hosted by the Alliance for Excellent Education.

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) gave states much more flexibility in designing their school accountability systems. Unfortunately, new analyses from the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed) show that flexibility and equity often conflict. Under ESSA, the state in which students live matters a great deal.  

Our When Equity Is Optional series of analyses finds that states have used ESSA’s flexibility to take wildly varied approaches to school ratings and school improvement.  The result is that students in low-performing schools in different states have very different odds of receiving the support they need to improve. Using data from the first year of ESSA implementation, we find that while some states ensure that the lowest-rated schools and high schools with low graduation rates are consistently identified for support, others made choices that result in these schools—and their students—being overlooked. The variation is especially troubling given that, across all states, students of color are much more likely to attend low-rated schools.