EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS ACT
Accountability, State Plans, and Data Reporting: Summary of Final Regulations
Today the U.S. Department of Education (Department) issued final regulations to implement provisions
of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) regarding school accountability, data reporting, and state
plans. The regulations incorporate the valuable feedback that the Department received through the public
comment process, while maintaining the focus on providing states with new flexibility to ensure that
every child gets a high-quality and well-rounded education, and enhancing equity and preserving critical
civil rights protections for all students.
The bipartisan law and these regulations give states and districts the opportunity to move beyond No
Child Left Behind’s reliance on a limited range of metrics and punitive “pass/fail” labels for schools, and
use their planning and accountability processes to reimagine and redefine what a high-quality education
should mean for their students. To that end, the final regulations clarify ESSA’s statutory language by
ensuring that accountability systems use multiple measures of school success, including academic
outcomes, student progress, and school quality, thereby reinforcing that all students deserve a high-quality
and well-rounded education that will prepare them for success. The final regulations also build on ESSA’s
flexibility around school improvement and intervention by providing further support for locally designed
solutions to improve struggling schools, and a clear role for parents, families, educators, and stakeholders
to meaningfully share in the implementation process. Lastly, the final regulations uphold the strong civil
rights legacy of the law by including all students and historically underserved subgroups in accountability
decisions, ensuring meaningful action where whole schools or groups of students are falling behind, and
providing clear and transparent information on critical measures of school progress and equity.
The implementation of the ESSA builds upon a period of important progress towards providing a world-
class education for every student in America. Led by the hard work of students, families, and educators,
the nation has hit important milestones. Graduation rates have reached an all-time high of 83 percent;
dropout rates are at historic lows, fueled by dramatic reductions in the dropout rates for African-American
and Hispanic students; and states and cities across the country are implementing college- and career-ready
expectations for all students, expanding access to high-quality preschool and free community college. At
the same time, disturbing achievement gaps for historically underserved students persist – and in far too
many schools, those students continue to have less access to the resources and support they need to thrive
in the classroom and beyond.
ESSA and these regulations present an opportunity to continue making progress towards educational
equity and excellence for all. For the first time, the reauthorization of the nation’s defining elementary
and secondary education law explicitly supports a preschool to college- and career-readiness vision for
America’s students. It also supports states, districts, and educators in reclaiming the promise of a quality,
well-rounded education for every student while honoring the law’s civil rights legacy – and these final
regulations help realize that potential.
MAJOR PROVISIONS
Accountability
The final regulations give states flexibility to create their own educational visions and incorporate new
measures of school quality or student success into their accountability systems while maintaining the core
expectation that states, districts, and schools work to improve academic outcomes for all students,
including individual subgroups of students. And while states and districts will continue to be required to
take comprehensive action to turn around struggling schools, they have new flexibility, working closely
with stakeholders, to choose evidence-based interventions that are tailored to local needs.