The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is being lauded for its provisions for local control and attempts to steer clear of a one-size-fits-all approach, but its reliance on standardized testing for federal accountability contradicts its supposed intent.

And although the method of standardized testing is not proscribed by ESSA, the state Department of Education’s Strive HI system of evaluating school performance is likely to keep Smarter Balanced Assessments (SBA) as its gauge for judging school performance.

In other words, what should be new and shiny can be tarnished even before it is out of the box.

Gov. David Ige assembled a task force of 19 of teachers, principals, legislators and members of the community to come up with recommendations for revamping public education in Hawaii.

That group conducted a summit earlier this month in Honolulu, with 1,000 people attending.

The task force has scheduled a series of town hall forums on all islands next month.

At the summit, Ige was quoted as saying the state needs to “design a system that empowers those closest to the children to make decisions about how resources can best be used for them.”

Under ESSA, that included assessments to provide accountability. But rather than dictate what those assessments would be, ESSA allowed states to determine what assessments would be used, as well as the standards they would assess.

In other words, there was no requirement to use SBA, nor was there a requirement to use Common Core standards, the cornerstones of Strive HI.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) is a standardized test consortium associated with Pearson PLC, the largest education company and textbook publisher in the world.

SBAC created Common Core State Standards- aligned tests (“adaptive online exams”) used in several states. Its counterpart in the effort to become a leading multi-state test provider is the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).

SBA and Common Core have been highly controversial, roundly criticized as statistically unreliable, regionally biased and institutionally racist.

Regardless of the reason, many states have dumped PARCC-affiliated assessments after burgeoning complaints from educators, parents and students.

Personal experience with SBA included students frustrated to tears as they struggled to understand what was being asked of them.

Students who spoke no English were expected to take the tests. Special-needs students with severe disabilities were expected to take the tests.

One can only wonder whether the expectations included students made to feel inadequate by their inability to understand the tests. What measure of school accountability is possible under these circumstances?

It is disingenuous to maintain that Hawaii should take advantage of the local control afforded by ESSA, but stay the course on standardized testing. The failed No Child Left Behind enacted by the Bush administration had as its cornerstone standardized testing.

NCLB became reviled even by Republicans in Congress who initially supported it.

Finally replaced by ESSA, the approval was non-partisan, and supported for the provisions that returned school-system decision-making from federal to local control.

ESSA specifically provides for localized testing, using localized standards. True differentiation is the only way to make sense of using testing for public school accountability.

Alan Isbell teaches fourth grade at Wailuku Elemen-tary School on Maui. He was recently elected president of Hawaii State Teachers Association, Maui Chapter.