A major change is coming to public education in the USA. President Obama and Congress finally replaced the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB, which has been shaping national education policy for over 15 years, is often regarded as a major failure. Many parents, students, and teachers across the country are unhappy with the increased standardization and intensive testing regime that it brought about. NCLB failed to actually live up to its name. As the extensive test results NCLB has accumulated prove, millions of students in the United States are let down by our schools yearly. Students, especially racial minorities and those facing disabilities, are often left to flounder. And since NCLB and its successor are both inherently Civil Rights laws, this failure feels especially poignant.

The signing of ESSA in December, 2015.

Professor Erin McCloskey and I began research following the implementation of NCLB’s successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This new bill returns most of the control over education to the individual states, and disempowers the Department of Education for the first time since 1965. Little is known about how the bill will be implemented due to its recency, but major change is coming. Thus, now is the perfect moment to begin gathering data. Our longterm goal is to follow the implementation of ESSA to uncover how the law impacts special education teachers and students with disability classifications. Will every student, including those with disabilities, truly achieve, as the law’s name claims?

Because the law has not yet been implemented, our research has thus far mostly been preparatory—reviewing literature, news, and preliminary interviews with teachers. I spent the summer coding, transcribing, and writing an extensive literature review. My work should provide a foundation upon which Professor McCloskey can build her research as she continues her work.