HEA Policy Shifts Update: How Are Educational Stakeholders Responding?
Explore the latest HEA policy updates, how institutions are responding, and how solution providers can adapt to stay aligned with shifting regulations.
April 22, 2025
One thing you should know about education is that there’s an acronym for everything from IDEA to FERPA. Teachers do not like wasting time. As a former educator, I can attest to this. ESSA is one of those acronyms. What is ESSA, or as I now call it, School and Student Performance, and how does it affect me?
Whether you know it or not, it affects you. You will have had ESSA affect you at least once in your life, if you went to a public school in the US. The way ESSA affects you also shapes your perspective on it. Parents, students, and teachers have all experienced ESSA at some point every year. Your level of engagement will shape your view on education. Recently, I have had the pleasure of a new perspective that is not common but still worthwhile: that of a data analyst.
ESSA stands for Every Student Succeeds Act, which was passed in 2015, 10 years ago. I know most of us remember testing as children long before 2015. I remember testing every April, hoping I would not have to test. Still, just like clockwork, I was sitting with a freshly sharpened number two pencil in my hand, sitting on a wooden chair, patiently waiting for my teacher to read the mundane directions repeatedly.
Yes, standardized testing was done on paper back in the day. Many of us are now adults and can recollect a similar memory. Children nationwide have had to endure standardized testing under a different name for many decades. Before 2015, we had No Child Left Behind that hoped to create high standards and accountability while also tying in federal funding. Standardized testing is a somewhat universal experience in the United States, and it doesn’t end there. Your children and your children’s children will probably have to live through the same type of testing. The purpose of all this is to ensure that every child in the United States has a high-quality education that has prepared them for college and careers.
What does ESSA do? So much that I cannot name it all in one blog, but here are the highlights:
Through the lens of a former educator, I can recall the tense atmosphere during standardized testing. I recall thinking there was still a month or two left in the school year, meaning students would not have been exposed to all the material on the test. Once some of my students saw they were being tested on unknown material, I knew that some would shut down or panic and fill in bubbles indiscriminately. I often felt this one-size-fits-all test did not fit most students, at least not those I taught.
There is also the feeling of impending doom for students like mine who historically didn’t test well. They often had significant deficits in Math, which—although I tried to mitigate them—were insurmountable. Each student was in a different place on the K-7 math curriculum. The test was based on Colorado’s adopted state standards. How was I supposed to teach 126 students the same lesson when most would not understand? It turns out that to teach students how to simplify fractions (or “reduce” fractions for older generations), you need to know your multiplication facts; you need to know simple division, skills which most had not yet acquired. The leap from 3/12 to 1/4 did not register for them because they did not know their multiplication facts for 3 or division facts for 3. I was not raised to be a quitter. I did my best. I remediated often, tried filling in gaps, and pushed my students. I retaught 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade math to help students learn new 6th and 7th grade standards. Still, all the stress and effort were not enough. Covid had killed the confidence of my students, and all motivation was lost.
For those who decry, “We need to hold teachers accountable, and that’s what standardized tests do,” I say maybe—if all schools were well funded, and all students grew up in two-parent households, where their parents’ focus was their children and not surviving. Maybe. Just like students fall in distinct parts of the math curriculum spectrum, they also fall in different places on the socio-economic spectrum. Students do not begin their journey of life at the same starting line. By the time ESSA comes around, students will have been tested multiple times in many subjects. I gave weekly quizzes and tests every 2-3 weeks.
Administrators and lead teachers scrutinized tests. Let’s not forget that the district also gives out a standardized test that they choose to scope where students are academically. We have tests galore, holding teachers accountable even without standardized testing. Each state gets to decide what standards to test children on and what test to use.
Here comes the data analyst lens. I now work for the data team at Agile Education Marketing. My team and I collect ESSA data or standardized test scores. We collect proficiency scores for all students in English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies. Each state decides what scores qualify as proficient. Each state chooses the test. We also collect information on Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) schools, Additional Targeted Support and Improvement (ATSI), and Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) schools; these are the lowest-scoring 5% of schools in that state. If available, we collect information on SAT or ACT or both scores for English, Math, and composite scores (SAT composite scores are English and Math scores combined).
ESSA also requires states to present high school graduation rates; we collect those, too. We read data dictionaries to decipher pages and pages of information, one state at a time. According to my co-worker, Mike LeClare, there was a time—back when Agile’s entire data team was comprised of only two members—when they had to meticulously scour 300-page documentation to find what they were looking for. That amount of devotion is impressive.
Due to the freedom and flexibility of each state, our ETL (Extract, Transform Load) process for each state is unique (just when you think you’ve escaped the acronyms, another one sneaks up on you). Agile’s state-by-state approach ensures you have access to up-to-date and accurate proficiency scores for different states.
Last year, a state changed what they considered proficient, essentially moving the goalpost. It appeared state scores jumped by as much as 33%, while internal state records indicated actual academic gains have been stagnant. The problem was that the state did not inform schools or the public about these changes until after scores were released. Agile’s data showed this even before it was disclosed to the public. Since the same member of our team collected the data for that particular state last year and years prior, he noticed the scores were higher than usual. The human factor in our collection process gave us a better understanding of the data. He knew something was off, and he questioned it. When a data team member finds something isn’t quite right, they reach out to the state and ask questions, seeking clarity.
That’s what we do at Agile. We do not simply copy and paste data into our database. We determine the most impactful and actionable data through the millions of data points presented. If the data is bad or suppressed, we find out why because understanding every individual piece of information that goes into our database is an imperative. Our quality control measures are vast, and our processes to get the correct information continually evolve.
Given what happened in the state mentioned above, I can see the pressure to improve, especially regarding school and student performance. State administrators could have looked at districts that made significant gains and asked how they achieved such a feat. Sometimes, looking outward can help you see inward. I think back to teaching. When I struggled with an aspect of the job, such as classroom management, I would reach out to those with great classroom management skills and implement their tried-and-true strategies. I recall something my school’s principal, James Nason, often said: There’s always going to be someone who’s smarter or better at something than you; ask them questions.
Agile Education Marketing recently did this. Our Chief Information Officer, Verlan Stephens, dug deep into our historical data to find districts that made genuine growth, and his findings are featured in the Districts of Distinction eBook on our website. Cheap plug, I know, but it’s honestly good stuff. He found districts that made significant growth in their performance scores based on our data. Then, to contextualize these findings, he compiled a list of ten U.S. school districts that achieved the most significant performance gains, highlighting the unique approaches each district took to successfully improve learning outcomes. These findings were then publicly presented at EdWeek Market Brief Summit 2024 Conference.
Now that I am a data analyst, I see the numbers differently. I see things at an objective macro level, while before, I saw them subjectively at a micro level. I knew why my students scored low in one-step equations, ratios, and proportions. I knew the story behind that. I had taught it in September, and by March, my students had forgotten most of the material. It wasn’t weaved into the curriculum like it should have been. Given the time constraints, the reteaching, the interventions, and the many—and I mean many—state standards, I had to prioritize the most important ones. The district timelines set the dates for which standards to address at what time, and I abided by those. Still, I often fell short with dated curriculum and student learning deficits.
Even though I am no longer a teacher, I still understand their challenges. I can look at the data and see the story it tells. I can see the patterns and trends that emerge from the data, and behind that, I see a teacher doing her best. I can step away from the scores now that I have a new role, but I will never forget that children are behind the numbers, and teachers are supporting those students. I may not be the typical data analyst because I come from a different background than most. Still, it gives me an interesting take on data, especially ESSA/School and Student Performance data.
Janette is a data analyst at Agile Education Marketing. Before joining Agile, she worked in education as a math teacher at the middle and high school level, as a substitute teacher, and as a paraeducator. Janette received a Bachelor’s from Colorado State University of Pueblo and a Master’s in Educational Leadership Policy Studies from the University of Northern Colorado Greeley. She is a stepmother and mother with her husband of 18 years.
Explore the latest HEA policy updates, how institutions are responding, and how solution providers can adapt to stay aligned with shifting regulations.
Tis the season for…standardized testing. Nationwide, schools are preparing for their state assessments, as teachers and students have been preparing
Creating a targeted educator contact list is key to successful marketing and sales outreach. Whether you’re connecting with teachers, principals,
We’re here ready to answer your questions! Share a little information with us below and one of our Agile experts will be in touch shortly.
We use cookies to give you the best online experience. Cookies keep our site secure and reliable. They allow us to personalize agile-ed.com to you and help us analyze how the site is used.