NAESP Comments on Every Child Achieves, Pushes for Early Ed in ESEA with State Boards Group

Earlier this week, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman, Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Ranking Member, Patty Murray (D-WA), released a negotiated bipartisan bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015. In response to the legislation, NAESP joined other principals’ organization to commend the Chairman and Ranking Member for their commitment to a bipartisan process and including significant improvements to current law that will provide greater support for the role of principals. As noted in the joint letter, several areas of the bill direct funding to states and districts to improve the recruitment, preparation and on-going support for instructional leaders. 

During the week of April 13, the HELP Committee will consider the bipartisan legislation to update ESEA, and in anticipation of this important debate about the future of the nation's K-12 education system, NAESP also joined the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) to call for a core commitment to strengthen connections between high quality preschool programs and elementary school. The ESEA bill developed by Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray takes a strong step in the right direction by ensuring that local leaders can use key federal resources to support early learning initiatives.  NAESP strongly supports additional policies for improving the quality of early childhood education, extending access to high quality programs to more low income families, and creating a more seamless continuum of learning for children coming from early earning settings into the early grades.

NAESP's advocacy team plans to work closely with the Chairman, Ranking Member, and other leaders during the committee's consideration of the bill to ensure that the issues raised are addressed as the process to reauthorize the law advances.

For a full copy of the letter click here