SEAs Shift from Implementers to Designers under ESSA

Dr. Paula Love wrote this analysis in January 2017 about how state and local education agencies would take on more design responsibility under the Every Student Succeeds Act. A new section after Love’s text describes what ESSA state plans contain and what a 2026 round of federal waivers allows states to change.

New roles beg new questions

By Dr. Paula Love

I fondly remember the day I received my first driver’s license—and the newly found sense of independence it offered. But I also recall the realization that my freedom came with a trade-off: the huge liability of operating a vehicle. The weight of that responsibility was felt as I paid my insurance premiums, navigated a near-miss with another car in a parking lot, and of course, minded the speed limit.

In a similar way, State Education Agencies (SEAs) and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) have been given a new license of freedom under the education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  However, that freedom comes bound with greater fiscal and programmatic responsibilities. In many regards, SEAs and LEAs will move from implementers to designers under the new education law. The success of this shift will be determined by the state and local agencies’ ability to meet the expanded expectations of their role under ESSA.

Freedom from mandates, but increased responsibility for SEAs

Though education in the United States has always been primarily the responsibility of state and local agencies, the federal government has had varying degrees of authority. Under the previous education law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), federal mandates significantly increased. Strict requirements included meeting adequate progress, or being forced to implement prescribed interventions.

ESSA reverses this trend, handing much of the responsibility back to states. From accountability requirements to the funding of key programs, many decisions previously dictated by the U.S. Department of Education (USED) will now lie with state or local agencies. For the first time in several decades, SEAs and LEAs have an opportunity to set new priorities and enact meaningful reforms and programs.

More local and state control over accountability & standards

Though the federal government still dictates testing for specific grades under ESSA, states now can decide which tests are used, so long as they are high-quality. The federal parameters for testing have been simplified to move away from the “high-stakes” nature of previous assessments, but accordingly, ESSA requires more indicators. States must include five indicators: student proficiency on tests, another measure of academic achievement such as student growth, high school graduation rates, progress toward proficiency for English Language Learners, and another measure of school quality (e.g. school climate) that can be tracked for subgroups.

However, because these indicators can—and will—vary widely among states, designing assessments that align to those indicators may be a challenge. States also must be prepared to address a new requirement of ESSA: assessing higher-order thinking skills.

Similarly, ESSA offers states the flexibility to adopt their own challenging academic standards—a welcome move for some states previously wedded to the Common Core State Standards. However, this freedom means that state-specific standards must be implemented in ways that are reflected in accountability measures and align with state higher education entrance requirements and career/technical education standards. Again, these requirements may prove to be a challenge for SEAs.

More funding flexibility with block grants, Title 1 funds

One of the biggest ways that ESSA offers state and local flexibility is through funding. A new $1.6 billion block grant, the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grant, will be given to states to pass along to districts within a very flexible framework of guidelines. For districts with allocations of $30,000 or more, at least 20 percent of funding must be spent on activities to help students become well-rounded, and another 20 percent must be spent on an activity that helps students be safe and healthy. The remaining 60 percent may be used for the effective use of technology in the classroom, with no more than 15 percent used for infrastructure.

It is fair to assume that this funding will open the door for more local choice at the LEA—and perhaps even school—level. This funding can be used to support district or school programs to expand arts education, career, and technical education (CTE), and a wide variety of other options.

Title 1 funds are also poised to offer more flexibility to LEAs. Under NCLB, Title 1 funds could only be used for “schoolwide programs” in schools in which more than 40 percent of students come from low-income backgrounds. Under ESSA, a state may grant a school a waiver from that 40 percent threshold after considering the impact of those funds on student achievement. As a result, more Title 1 funds could be spent on schoolwide expenditures in states that are willing to grant the new waiver.

States, districts determine improvement efforts

Prior to ESSA, federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) required the implementation of one of a handful of federally-prescribed intervention models. Now, state and local education agencies can work together to create intervention plans that meet localized needs. Each state gets to decide whether to make improvement funds available using formula or competitive grants.

SEAs also have the flexibility to determine how they will identify schools in need of improvement interventions. These tasks have proven to be time-intensive for states, leading the USED to extend the states’ deadline for comprehensive plans until the 2018-19 school year, and for identifying schools until the 2019-20 school year.

How much involvement LEAs have in the process of creating those plans and developing turnaround models will vary widely by state.

All states have provided stakeholders—both within the school system and the general public—an opportunity to weigh in, but it is unclear how much of that feedback will be reflected in state plans.

Amidst new program management, concerns arise over SEA capacity

Under ESSA, SEAs will take on additional responsibilities, including designing rigorous standards, creating high-quality assessments that are aligned to those standards, and developing evidence-based turn-around models. In some cases, SEAs also must create and fund new positions. For example, the new law requires that SEAs establish set-aside funds to provide equitable services to eligible children enrolled in private schools, and to create an ombudsman position to ensure equity for those students.

However, these new responsibilities bring concerns of expertise and capacity. Consider the various states’ size disparities in terms of ability and resources – from both perspectives. Los Angeles Unified School District alone has three times more students than the combined total of every district in the state of Maine. This variance brings challenges and opportunities alike to SEAs and LEAs as they decide how they will design programs under ESSA. Larger states may have more expertise, funding, and staffing to develop new programs, but they also tend to deal with larger populations of struggling students. Smaller states might have the ability to directly meet the local needs of their schools but might struggle to find local expertise. In both situations, third-party vendors might be called upon to help.

Who ultimately holds a state’s decision-making power?

Many stakeholders are asking who will make the final decisions around ESSA plans: a state board of education, legislators, or the SEA? The answer varies widely from state to state and is not always clear. In some states, such as Colorado, control over decisions is being contested between legislators and the state board of education. In Louisiana, educators felt that the state board of education was not listening to their input during ESSA engagement meetings. As a result, the governor formed a separate ESSA advisory board. How the two groups will marry the collective input is unclear.

It’s worth noting that the current federal administration echoes ESSA’s goal to empower state and local decision-makers. During his campaign, President-Elect Trump suggested that he might eliminate the USED altogether. His pick for U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, has been a vocal proponent of school choice, localized education, and dismantling the Common Core State Standards. The tone of the administration leans heavily toward more state and local control, fueling stronger authority for SEAs and LEAs.

New law brings new opportunities for success and failure alike

As ESSA begins its official roll-out, there are many uncertainties. Will this shift to state and local decision-making have the intended impact of increasing student proficiency and outcomes? Who will ultimately decide how to prioritize funding and programs? How much say will LEAs have in determining their own priorities? In most states, it is too early to say.

But one thing is clear: states and districts are no longer merely implementers—they are also serving as creators and designers. Whether they are up to the task remains to be seen.

ESSA state plans in 2026: what they contain and what states can now ask to change

Dr. Paula Love’s column above was written in January 2017, while states were still drafting their ESSA state plans, and it ended with open questions about whether the shift to state and local decision-making would work. Several years of plans, amendments and federal guidance have answered some of those questions. This section describes what ESSA state plans turned out to look like, and what a new round of federal waivers is changing for states in 2026.

What ESSA state plans are

To receive money under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as ESSA amended it, a state must have an approved consolidated state plan. The plan tells parents and the public how the state will handle academic standards, assessments, school accountability, support for struggling schools and the supply of effective educators. A state may ask to amend its plan after approval, which is why many states have filed amendments since 2018.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia had plans approved by the fall of 2018, according to an October 2018 analysis of the approved plans by ExcelinEd, an education policy organization that supports school choice and accountability measures. That analysis is a useful check on the questions Love raised.

How much states actually varied

Love expected the indicators to “vary widely among states,” and the approved plans bear that out. ExcelinEd found that 45 states and the District of Columbia give each school a summative rating, and that 13 of those states use an A to F letter grade. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia measure student-level growth, though only 19 states use growth models that hold schools accountable for students progressing toward proficiency before graduation. In 35 states, student outcomes make up 80 percent or more of an elementary or middle school’s rating, which means the “other measure of school quality” that Love describes carries a smaller share of a school’s rating than the headline test results.

ExcelinEd also reported that most plans did not describe a clear approach to turning around low-performing schools, and that only 17 states planned to use competitive grants to direct federal school improvement money. This bears on Love’s concern about capacity. The task of designing evidence-based intervention was the part of the new role that many state agencies had the least to say about in writing. Readers should keep in mind that ExcelinEd advocates for particular accountability policies, so its judgments about what counts as rigorous reflect that view, while its counts of what states put in their plans can be checked against the plans themselves.

The 2025 and 2026 waiver round

The most recent development is a federal invitation for states to ask for more flexibility than ESSA’s plan process gave them. As the law firm commentary in K-12 Legal Insights describes it, the U.S. Department of Education sent states a letter on July 29, 2025 inviting waiver requests, with up to 120 days to decide each one and waivers lasting up to four years.

Iowa submitted its request on September 22, 2025, and on January 7, 2026 the Department approved it, making Iowa the first state to receive approval. According to the Iowa Department of Education, the waiver lets the state run a single block grant that combines its state-level funds from Title II-A, Title III-A, Title IV-A, Title IV-B and the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, a total of about $3.8 million for federal fiscal years 2024 and 2025. The state estimates that the flexibilities will move nearly $8 million in time and resources from compliance work to classrooms over four years. Districts also gain program-specific waivers for Title I-A, Title I-D and Title IV-A funds.

What the waivers do not change

The limits matter as much as the new freedoms. In its analysis of the Iowa approval, the consulting firm Whiteboard Advisors notes that the waiver does not allow block grants to districts or change how funds flow to them, and it leaves ESSA accountability in place. Maintenance of effort and the rule that federal funds supplement rather than replace state and local spending still apply in full, and the formulas that set local allocations stay as they were. Each element has an end date and can be reconsidered if the state does not meet the terms. Iowa must also report each year on how the waivers are working.

The change is therefore a larger version of the designer role Love described in 2017, inside the same federal framework. Whether other states have received similar approvals is not settled in the sources reviewed here, and readers should check the Department of Education’s site for the current list.

What state and district leaders can do

1. Read your state’s approved plan and its latest amendment, and note which indicators actually drive school ratings.
2. Ask your state agency whether it has requested or plans to request a waiver, and which funds and which years it covers.
3. Keep records that show how flexible funds still meet each program’s purpose, because the requirements Whiteboard Advisors lists stay in force.
4. For testing questions that affect your district, see edCircuit’s discussion of state testing amid shifting federal policy.

Further Reading

1. The 74 – States Keep Their Focus on ESSA Implementation Amid Upheaval in D.C. and Beyond
2. THE JOURNAL – Feds Finalize Assessment Parts of ESSA
3. The TENNESSEAN – Nashville ESSA town hall creates plenty of feedback, questions

Related reading

• Navigating State Testing Amid Shifting Federal Winds
• Dan Domenech: Letter to Mr. Trump
• All of the Testing, None of the Guilt

More on Education Policy and Government