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This update on the Every Student Succeeds Act and the education plans now being implemented by states and school districts is produced in partnership with ESSA Essentials, an ongoing series from the Collaborative for Student Success. It鈥檚 an offshoot of their聽聽newsletter, which you can聽! (See our recent ESSA updates聽from previous weeks right here.)

鈥淎s rural districts work to turn around struggling schools identified for improvement under the Every Student Succeeds Act, they face the challenge of finding evidence-backed strategies that actually work in their particular contexts,鈥� Evie Blad in聽Education Week. 鈥淩ural school systems often enroll relatively small numbers of students distributed over large geographic areas鈥� and 鈥渙ften have trouble recruiting and retaining teachers,鈥� and 鈥渕ost are far from institutions, like universities, that may be helpful partners in school improvement efforts.鈥�

Blad notes that even 鈥渁n educational intervention that has been backed by the highest quality of peer-reviewed research may not work in a rural school system if it was tested in an urban or suburban district with different strengths and challenges,鈥� according to superintendents. 鈥淭here’s a lack of rural research in certain areas,鈥� says the National Rural Education Association鈥檚 Allen Pratt, who serves as executive director of the organization at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. 鈥淣ot every school is equipped the same way, and not every community is equipped the same way. It can become an equity issue.鈥�

Illinois district shows the power of ESSA鈥檚 financial transparency rules

In , a new report, which is based on ESSA-required school-level spending data, to the District 65 school board 鈥渟hows a $42,000 range in per pupil spending from school to school across the district 鈥� and a $5,000 difference across the K-8 schools.鈥� District business manager Kathy Zalewski notes that the 鈥渕ain premise of ESSA is equity and a belief that the students with the greatest needs deserve the greatest share of our public education resources,鈥� and as a result, 鈥渇inancial resources are distributed equitably, but not equally鈥� with 鈥渟tudents and schools with greater needs鈥� receiving more funding.

Connecting schools online with art resources聽

Linda Jacobson for Education Dive about the Chicago-based arts education advocacy organization Ingenuity, which has created Artlook, an online tool that 鈥渃onnects schools with arts organizations wanting to partner with them.鈥� Ingenuity is collaborating with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to expand the Artlook platform to cities across the country, including Jacksonville,聽Baltimore,聽New Orleans, Houston,聽Portland (Oregon),聽and Sacramento. The expansion of the platform 鈥渃omes as arts educators are calling for more ways to produce data about the benefits of arts programming for students and as some states are beginning to include participation in the arts as part of their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans.鈥�

Easing the kindergarten transition

Jacobson also about 鈥渢wo fresh resources鈥� that New America, a centrist think tank, has designed to help make the transition to kindergarten easier. The first is 鈥渁 set of four profiles聽describing schools and districts taking a comprehensive approach to this major transition.鈥� The 鈥渟econd resource聽details state, federal and other funding streams districts can use to support transition efforts, such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant, the Every Student Succeeds Act, Head Start, the Preschool Development Grant,聽and the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program.鈥�

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