Colorado Officials Say ESSA Increases Burden on Schools

Published July 15, 2016

Republican HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander promised the nation the federal education law rewrite he pushed to President Barack Obama’s desk would roll back the federal role in education. After the Obama administration’s recent release of its new regulations for the law, state officials in Colorado are saying the new law does precisely the opposite.

Federal education bureaucrats “are going out and saying they’re respecting states. I would argue they’re not,” said Patrick Chapman, the Colorado Department of Education’s director of federal programs. “They’re saying the rules are creating more flexibility. I would argue they’re not.”

“Department officials told the board they believed about a quarter of the proposed regulations put new limits on states,” reports Chalkbeat Colorado. “Another quarter were not authorized by law. And ‘most concerning’ is that 12 percent of the regulations contained statements that conflicted with the law.”

The rule changes prompted Colorado State Board of Education members, Republican and Democrat alike, to discuss examining the costs of federal mandates versus the money national taxpayers send Colorado through the national government.

“The rules seem so distant from what the intent of the law was,” said board member Joyce Rankin.

SOURCES: Colorado Chalkbeat, Truth in American Education


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