Congress retained the measure, formally called the “unsafe school choice option,” when it replaced NCLB with the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. But the provision has rarely been used.
The issue: The law left it up to states to determine what counted as “persistently dangerous,” and the criteria states chose meant only a handful of schools ever qualifed.
That became clear shortly after No Child Left Behind first took effect. In 2003, 44 states plus the District of Columbia did not designate any schools as “persistently dangerous,” Education Week reported at the time. Among the remaining states, just 54 schools received the label.
That hasn’t changed much in the decades since, Sanon wrote in her recent memo to the states. In the 2023-24 school year, the Education Department counted just 25 persistently dangerous schools in five states, she wrote. Four schools got the label in 2022-23, and no schools were reported as persistently dangerous in 2021-22.
