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Botel was responding to assertions that federal officials were applying a lighter touch to the most recent batch of plans after receiving criticism for alleged overreach in their response to an earlier group, including Delaware鈥檚.

While calling each plan unique, Botel said, 鈥淚 think from the very first state plan we looked at up to the present, we鈥檝e taken the same approach. We鈥檙e reading each state plan as it鈥檚 written and we鈥檙e reading the statute as written.鈥�

Here are the week鈥檚 other top developments:

Connecticut, Louisiana, New Jersey, Oregon, and Tennessee received their preliminary feedback from the U.S. Department of Education last week. This follows the that Delaware, Nevada, and New Mexico received a few weeks earlier.

Education Week鈥�s Alyson Klein the department鈥檚 comments, noting, 鈥淚t looks like Tennessee is being discouraged from using so-called 鈥榮uper sub-groups鈥� which combine different groups of kids 鈥� such as Hispanics, students in special education, and English-language learners 鈥� for accountability purposes.鈥�

In response to federal officials issuing an 鈥渋ncomplete鈥� on Connecticut鈥檚 draft ESSA plan, Laura Stefon, chief of staff for the state education department, that Connecticut 鈥渨ill provide clarification where necessary, make tweaks if appropriate, and respectfully disagree with USED where necessary.鈥�

In the first draft of its ESSA plan, Indiana has shared its intention to grade schools on more than academic performance and include the results from student surveys on culture and climate.

鈥淲e know from research and also know from the feedback we鈥檝e gotten from parents and communities聽that the climate and culture of schools is very important,鈥� said , policy director for the Indiana state education department and lead writer of its ESSA plan. 鈥淲e think that developing … a climate聽and culture survey聽is a way to get at those hard-to-reach elements of school that previously have not been included in an accountability system in Indiana.鈥�

While the state gets the survey up and running, it will measure chronic absenteeism.

Florida Education Commissioner Pam Stewart has been clear that she intends to seek waivers for additional flexibility around ESSA. So along with the state鈥檚 first draft plan, Stewart has laid out requests for items such as flexibility on testing English learners. According to the , 鈥淔lorida also seeks a waiver on the federal rule about reporting learning gains, saying it would report the information for each student subgroup separately rather than for all students jointly. In a related request, the state asks for a waiver of the rule that school grades be changed if a school does not test at least 95 percent of all students in each subgroup.鈥�

The department is giving states and districts an extra year to comply with new financial transparency requirements within ESSA to show the amount of money spent per student.聽But many civil rights groups that praised the requirement when it was included in ESSA are about the delay.

Liz King, director of education policy at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told Education Week, 鈥淚f we keep waiting until states and districts have the capacity before we require them to acquire that capacity, we will be waiting forever.鈥�

However, shows states are having a difficult time arriving at the per-pupil spending number and the reprieve may be what鈥檚 needed for them to figure it out.