President Trump has issued a regulatory freeze for 60 days. Most presidents freeze the implementation of a previous administration’s regulations that have not taken effect yet at the start of their administrations. The Trump administration has paused any regulatory action or implementation of any regulations that have yet to take effect.
What does this mean for ESSA regulations and implementation? The U.S. Department of Education (ED) under the previous administration released three sets of regulations:
Accountability, State Education Plans, and Data Plans
Title I, Part A Assessments
Title I, Part B Innovative Assessments
The Accountability and State Plan regulations were scheduled to go into effect January 30th but are now frozen for the next 60 days. The other two regulations went into effect in early January and are not affected by the regulatory freeze.
So what happens next? The Trump Administration and incoming ED officials will conduct a review (60 day period which ends March 20th) of the Accountability and State Plan regulations and can take one of the following actions:
- Leave current regulation as is
- Further delay implementation of regulation
- Tweak current regulations to their liking
- Rescind and reopen the regulatory process for new regulations to be drafted
Regardless of this pause, MNPTA plans to continue to engage with the MN Department of Education to support moving forward on development of the MN ESSA State Plan to meet the goal of submitting a State plan by September 18. Full implementation of ESSA begins in the 2017-2018 school year.
