On Monday, September 18, Governor Wolf signed off on the commonwealth’s compliance plan for complying with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. The plan – which was formulated after 18 months of meetings with educators, parents, and other stakeholders across the state – was submitted to U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for her approval. Now state officials must wait for USDE’s response to the plan. Initially, USDE will conduct a compliance and completeness check, followed by a peer review, an informal phone discussion; and then a formal letter will be sent laying out the federal department’s recommended revisions to the plan. All of this is expected to happen within the next 120 days. The plan establishes what PDE has described as “ambitious yet attainable” goals. Those goals include raising student performance, increasing graduation rates, having English learners move toward achieving English language proficiency, shortening state exams for third through eighth graders, establishes a new school report card that expands the indicators used to measure performance and places less emphasis on state test scores.