In July 2017 I wrote a blog about the U.S. Department of Education (USED) requesting comments on regulatory reform. The reason for the USED action is Trump’s executive order requiring each federal agency to establish a Regulatory Reform Task Force to evaluate existing regulations and make recommendations regarding their repeal, replacement, or modification.

In July 2017 I wrote a blog about the U.S. Department of Education (USED) requesting comments on regulatory reform. The reason for the USED action is Trump’s executive order requiring each federal agency to establish a Regulatory Reform Task Force to evaluate existing regulations and make recommendations regarding their repeal, replacement, or modification.

If a State wants funding that comes through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESEA/ESSA), then it must submit an "ESSA State Plan" that describes how it will use that funding to benefit students in that State. The two deadlines to submit ESSA State Plans were April 3, 2017 and September 18, 2017, but not all states have submitted their plans.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA is an Obama-era executive action that provides protections to undocumented immigrants that were brought into the U.S. when they were under age 16. The rationale behind DACA is that children cannot be held responsible for the actions of the adults that brought them into the U.S. and without some protections they could face dire circumstances.

Shortly before the Trump administration took office, the U.S. Department of Education (USED) issued a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) (January 13, 2017) to State Education Agencies (SEAs) regarding the timeline for and provision of interventions in schools identified for improvement. The DCL covered Title I school improvement interventions for the 2017-2018 school year (SY) for both Focus and Priority schools under ESEA Flexibility and schools identified for Improvement, Corrective Action, or Restructuring under NCLB. In addition, it provided a timeline for when schools should be identified for ESSA school improvement as either Comprehensive Support and Improvement schools or Targeted Support and Improvement schools.

During the first week of April, members of Congress sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly asking them to uphold the educational provisions of Plyler v. Doe regarding the provision of access to a public education regardless of the child’s or parent’s immigration status.

Earlier I reported that the U.S. Department of Education (USED) hosted a webinar for State Education Agencies (SEAs) related to issues of submission of Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) State Plans and Peer Review of those plans once submitted. That post included the information that only three of the nine ESSA programs included in consolidated state submissions will receive peer review. Those that will receive peer review are:

Shortly after his inauguration, President Trump put a hold on a number of regulations that hadn’t gone into full effect as yet, including the ESSA accountability regulations. The hold will last for 60 days and give the Trump administration until March 21, 2017 to rescind, change or allow the regulations to go into effect.

In November last year, the U.S. Department of Education (USED) issued final regulations for Accountability and State Plans. Those regulations clarified that ESSA State Plan submission dates were being extended, and therefore, the dates for identifying schools for Comprehensive and Targeted Support and Improvement (the new labels for “school improvement”) were also being extended. Identification of schools for improvement under ESSA now won’t happen until the 2018-2019 school year.