As the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) affords states the flexibility to decide how to measure student achievement, two reports released June 23 show that schools play a key role in developing students’ soft skills such as beliefs about their intellectual capacity, sense of belonging at school, and eagerness to learn in the face of adversity.
“This law calls for a well-rounded education and a shifting away from the narrow focus on academics,” said Ulrich Boser, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), which hosted a panel discussion at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., to coincide with the release of the reports.
“Both reports are indicating that teachers see the importance of these skills,” said event moderator Katherine Bassett, president and CEO of National Network of State Teachers of Year (NNSTOY), which published the second report.
In recent years, there has been a steady growth in policies and practices that emphasize learning mindsets, which can be defined as “student beliefs.” In one case, students improved academically after participating in a program which encouraged them to reflect on ways in which daily classroom activities connected to lifelong goals.
According to both reports, ESSA provides state and district leaders new opportunities to cultivate positive student attitudes, values, and habits.
Teachers the Strongest Influence
“Social and emotional learning makes a difference for students in terms of their academic well-being in many respects,” said panelist Elizabeth Glennie, a research analyst at RTI International and NNSTOY report co-author along with Bassett and three others. “Teachers are probably the strongest influence in a school on a student’s social and emotional learning.”
According to the NNSTOY report, inter- and intra-personal (or, “social and emotional”) competencies include attitudes and behaviors that affect how students reflect on and apply their learning capacities and skills relative to managing relationships with others. These skills are sometimes referred to as 21st century skills, deeper learning, non-academic, non-cognitive, or soft skills.
While ESSA does not mention “learning mindsets and skills,” the law did replace references to “core academic subjects,” instead calling for a “well-rounded education” for all students.
“The emphasis for so long has been placed on academic performance and academic content mastery,” said panelist Rebecca Snyder, a co-author of the NNSTOY report and member of Greater Latrobe Education Association in Pennsylvania where she was teacher of the year in 2009. “I’m really encouraged by the shifts (in teaching) where we are taking more of a whole child orientation (while) focusing on social and emotional learning.”
In its report, NNSTOY employed three focus groups comprised of 28 former teachers of the year from across the country. Participants discussed, among other items, the importance of identifying and harnessing the following three student skills or competencies: grit, growth mindset, and a sense of belonging.
Nurturing Environment
“Research shows that a sense of belonging can increase academic performance, in fact, a whole range of academic measures,” Synder said. “Sometimes, that’s the reason they even walk into the building … because they know this (school) is a great place to be.”
Given a high degree of interest among educators to implement social and emotional learning, panelists agreed that there is a need for more professional development on how to integrate social and emotional learning into daily classroom lessons.
“Teachers are clamoring for this type of professional development,” Boser added. “We have a policy opportunity under (ESSA) that allows us to spend monies in new ways, create new partnerships, and to develop this work.”
According to the CAP report, ESSA gives state and district leaders a unique chance to advance learning mindsets and skills through reform efforts. A growing body of research shows that learning mindsets “significantly depend on the conditions within a student’s learning environment and the messages students receive about their learning ability. When educators nurture positive learning mindsets among their students, students are far better able to view new challenges as a natural part of the learning process.”
“This (ESSA implementation) is an opportunity for our students to receive a high quality education,” said panelist Amalio Nieves, an assistant superintendent for Boston Public Schools in Massachusetts.
Nieves alluded to the importance of acknowledging students who live under adverse conditions from low-income neighborhoods with limited community resources.
“Youth in urban settings bring assets to the table, like a level of resiliency,” he said. “How do we help our teachers capitalize on this mindset?”
Over the past 20 years, the number of English learner (EL) students in Minnesota has increased by 300 percent, making them the state’s fastest growing student group, and they currently constitute 8.3 percent of the state’s total K-12 public education student enrollment. However, despite the rapid growth, their academic progress, as compared to their non-EL peers, has plateaued.
In order to address the gaps that EL students face in the state’s public education system, the Coalition of Asian American Leaders and the Minnesota Educational Equity Partnership founded the Minnesota Multilingual Equity Network (MMEN), which is comprised of teachers, professors, parents, administrators, and advocates.
In July 2016, MMEN launched their EL-ESSA Initiative in response to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act’s (ESSA) requirement that states include progress toward EL proficiency as one of their academic accountability indicators. According to MMEN’s policy brief, ESSA’s requirement “is an opportunity to ensure that Minnesota’s education system adequately considers the academic success” of the EL student population.
Yesterday, over 60 educators, advocates, and legislators gathered at the Wilder Foundation to learn about the policy brief and recommendations that MMEN has developed over the past year. MMEN discussed the work they have done with hosting EL Parent Advisory Committee meetings in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Faribault, meeting frequently with the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) staff, actively participating in MDE ESSA committees, and partnering with other coalitions.
From this work, they created seven recommendations, which are summarized below, for MDE to consider as they are finishing the ESSA state accountability plan.
MMEN’s Seven Recommendations to MDE
Recommendation #1: Family Engagement– MDE should provide resources and support for MDE family engagement staff to work with EL families in order to meet the unique educational needs of their children. Additionally, MDE should engage EL families and communities in “developing and refining” policies that impact EL education.
Recommendation #2: Academic Native Language Literacy – MDE should strengthen academic native language curriculum and courses in order to support global citizenship for ELs, increased educational content access, and support for rigorous literacy development.
This recommendation comes from the state’s lack of access for EL students to participate in language immersion schools, which are primarily dedicated towards native English speaking students. Additionally, most of Minnesota’s programs that are accessible to EL students are mostly English-only, rather than multilingual. The brief acknowledges that ESSA focuses on English language proficiency, but adds that Minnesota can support multilingualism through ESSA implementation.
Recommendation #3: English Language Proficiency Goals – MDE should provide more robust and multidimensional calculations of EL proficiency growth. The brief gave an example of a composite indicator that contains three measurements:
Percentage of students that attain target growth based on their language level
Percentage of reclassified ELs
Percentage of long-term ELs (5+ years)
Recommendation #4: Standardized EL Entry/Exit Criteria – MDE and schools should create “consistent and objective criteria and school practices” that include family discussions for EL program placement and reclassification.
Recommendation #5: Options for Inclusion in Assessment and Accountability – MDE should establish and maintain high standards for all EL students by using baseline data from the recently arrived student assessments in order to properly measure growth.
Recommendation #6: Early Childhood Education – MDE should provide support as well as work to acquire more funding for the early development of dual language learners.
Recommendation #7: Comprehensive Improvement Plans – According to the brief, under ESSA, schools that receive Title 1 funding and are identified in the bottom 25% of academic performance are defined as “Continuous Improvement Schools.” These identified schools must do the following:
Conduct a needs assessment
Complete a comprehensive school improvement plan
Collaborate with parents regarding the school’s Continuous Improvement designation
MDE should use the Comprehensive Improvement plans, as well as federal funding sources, to strengthen professional development and programs that support ELs, with a focus on those in low-performing schools.
MDE Responds to Recommendations
After MMEN presented their recommendations, Stephanie Graff, MDE’s Chief Accountability Officer, and Leigh Schleicher, MDE’s Supervisor of Student Support, gave remarks in which they thanked them for their work and spoke to what MDE was doing to accomplish some of the recommendations.
Specifically, Schleicher referenced MDE’s efforts to ensure that teachers and staff are properly prepared to teach EL students through professional development, standardizing EL entrance and exit criteria, and and including recently arrived and former ELs in assessment and accountability.
Graff noted that, with the ESSA requiring EL proficiency as one of their accountability indicators, states have shift their mindsets regarding EL students; “ELs are all of our kids and we need to make sure that people have the tools to help them.”
MDE will make the state’s ESSA accountability plan available for public comment on August 1st, and will submit the plan to the US Department of Education on September 18th.
CHICAGO — Literacy has now been recognized as a human right for over 50 years in several international declarations and initiatives. Every child has a right to read and we have a social responsibility, as parents, teachers, librarians, publishers, booksellers, campaigners and policy makers to ensure that they are able to exercise that right. “Reading by Right: Successful Strategies to Ensure Every Child Can Read to Succeed,” published by Facet Publishing and available through the ALA Store, provides a collection of chapters from international experts covering aspects of overcoming reading difficulties or reading reluctance in children and young people. Edited by Joy Court, the book reveals strategies that are proving effective in overcoming barriers to reading from birth to teens, looking at practices and projects from around the globe and revealing some common principles and drivers that have generated success. Content covered includes:
an examination of the current state of reading in the UK and internationally and what the latest research tells us about children who are failing to read;
how youngsters become “reluctant readers” and how to improve the situation for everyone;
examples of successful projects from the Republic of Korea and Finland, countries that consistently perform well in reading tests and international league tables; and
analysis of diversity in publishing and children’s books, drawing on expertise from authors and publishers.
Court is Chair of the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Medals Working Party. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the English Association and a Trustee and National Council member of UKLA. She is Reviews Editor for The School Librarian and author of “Read to Succeed.”
Customers outside of North America (USA and Canada) should contact Facet Publishingfor purchasing information.
Facet Publishing, the commercial publishing and bookselling arm of CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, is the leading publisher of books for library and information professionals worldwide. ALA Store purchases fund advocacy, awareness and accreditation programs for library professionals worldwide. Contact us at (800) 545-2433 ext. 5052 or editionsmarketing@ala.org.
Early on a Friday morning in May, Dale Fiess and his students took to the water. For the students, it literally was a sink or swim moment. The time had come to launch the solar-powered boat the students had built and see whether it could compete against the other teams entered in the California Solar Regatta.
The race was the culmination of three months and approximately fifty hours of work by students enrolled in the green energy pathway at Skyline High School in Oakland, California. Skyline is among the more than 400 schools in California that have implemented Linked Learning, an approach to transforming high school education that combines rigorous academics, career-based learning in the classroom, work-based learning, and integrated student support services.
High schools implementing Linked Learning focus on specific industry themes, such as engineering, health care, performing arts, and others, that teachers integrate across subject areas. At Skyline, students participate in one of four Linked Learning pathways, formerly known as academies: green energy, education and community health, visual and performing arts, and computer science and technology.
“The biggest draw of our academy is the science aspect and the science teachers,” explains Fiess, co-director of Skyline’s green energy pathway. “Kids who are interested in science are drawn to the program.”
Bonnie, a tenth-grade student, joined the green energy pathway to take advantage of the multiple real-world experiences the program provides, like the solar-powered boat project. “The majority of my friends are in green academy and I heard about the great opportunities it offers—internships, field trips, and a lot of hands-on activities,” she says.
Participating in the solar regatta had been one of Fiess’s goals for the program for about five or six years, he says. But this was the first year that Skyline entered the event, which typically attracts schools from more affluent districts. Of Skyline’s 1,837 students, 77 percent qualify for free or reduced-price meals and 94 percent are students of color. Additionally, almost half of the school’s students speak a language other than English at home including Spanish, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Filipino (Tagalog or Pilipino), Mien (Yao), Khmer (Cambodian), and Mam (Guatemalan).
“It was an exciting project that was unique, something that students could feel special about participating in,” Fiess explains. “It fit well with the theme of our academy and what the students had been learning about. I know most of my students don’t have the opportunity to build things, put things together, or create things of the scale that this project allowed.”
Fiess and the team of ten students worked with a professional boat builder on the design, but the students handled most of the boat’s construction and assembly. During the project, students developed practical skills in woodworking and water safety, but also applied core content knowledge on circuitry and solar energy they acquired in their green energy classes. The project also nurtured deeper learning skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration as students worked together to troubleshoot wiring challenges and ensure the solar panels directed enough energy to the boat’s motor.
“They used their curiosity and intellect in a real-world setting,” Fiess says of his students. “They learned how to reason through measuring angles, lengths, and depths through designing braces for the boat structure. They learned confidence in overcoming fears through operating power tools and paddling canoes on the water. They learned practical skills in tool use and electrical wiring that could be useful in the future. They learned that building things can be fun and that complex tasks can be interesting rather than daunting.”
For the students, the project offered an authentic opportunity to apply their classroom course work in real life.
“I thought it would be a good experience to build a boat,” says Kevin, an eleventh grader at Skyline. “When I found out we were using solar panels to power it I was even more excited since it really fits with the green academy concept.
The students’ hard work, commitment, and persistence paid off on the day of the boat race. The team completed two sprint races and a lap during the endurance race. Most importantly, Skyline’s team fared better than many of their competitors. “In the end, one [of the other] team[s] sank their boat, another burned out their motor, and another burned out two motors,” says Fiess. “Our boat worked, was reasonably fast, and the kids did their best.”
Skyline High School is one of three schools featured in “American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action,” an online gallery of nearly 300 original print-quality, royalty-free images of teachers and K–12 students engaged in activities that foster deeper learning. The Alliance for Excellent Education created the gallery with generous support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to demonstrate to school leaders, teachers, parents, and students that deeper learning can succeed in schools of every type with students from all backgrounds. To see more photos from the collection, visit www.deeperlearning4all.org/images.
Source: Kristen Loschert is editorial director at the Alliance for Excellent Education.
Fighting hunger has long been a priority for our family.
Frances Wolf (Commonwealth of Pa. photo)
Tom and I have seen firsthand how hunger affects families and communities and we are personally committed to ending hunger in Pennsylvania.
For years, we have worked as volunteers in our local soup kitchen, York Daily Bread, as well as others across the commonwealth – and we have supported both those in need and the organizations serving them.
That’s why I have been passionately advocating for a very specific component of Tom’s 2017-18 budget proposal – a $2 million investment to enhance our school breakfast program and help more students have the start to the day that they need to be successful.
It simply breaks my heart that 1 in 5 children – over 520,000 – right here in our great state of Pennsylvania don’t always know where their next meal will come from.
And many of them show up to school in the morning with an empty stomach, not having eaten anything since the night before.
As you can imagine, many of them cannot focus on their studies, lack energy and struggle with behavioral problems.
This is nothing short of devastating – as a mother and as a Pennsylvanian. And, it has an enormous impact on our schools and our kids’ future.
Improving our schools, and ensuring that our children and educators have the resources they need to succeed has been my husband’s top priority as governor. Tom and his team have fought for improving education from preschool through higher education in Pennsylvania since day one.
And, thankfully, that fight has produced real results for our students. Working with the legislature, Tom has successfully secured historic increases in education funding over the last two years.
But even with great schools and teachers, kids who are hungry struggle to concentrate and perform well in school.
Ask any teacher and they’ll tell you that food is a basic school supply, just like textbooks and pencils. When kids struggle with hunger, it’s harder for them to learn.
This $2 million is a relatively small investment compared to other state government programs, but it will have an enormous return. This investment will help the commonwealth leverage up to $20 million dollars in federal funding.
We know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It impacts a variety of outcomes in our children. We don’t need the research to tell us this. We see it as parents and teachers – both in academic progress, as well as behavior and the number of visits to the school nurse every day.
I am passionate about this because expanding access to breakfast in our schools is a smart investment and one that I know will have a lasting impact on our students and on Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s greatest resource is our young people and the public schools that prepare them to be our future leaders. Our goal is to support them in this great endeavor by providing the resources and opportunities they need to make the most of their educational experiences and to help prepare them for a competitive job market.
When children start the day with the nutrition they need, it has long-lasting consequences for the entire state – they grow up smarter, healthier, and stronger – and that means a smarter, healthier, stronger Pennsylvania.
Frances Wolf is the First Lady of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She writes from Harrisburg.
I was a fourth-grade teacher in Tulsa, Okla., when I decided to go back to school myself and study education research. I continued to teach and the difference in my instructional style after attending graduate school was like night and day. I attribute a great deal of my own personal growth as a teacher and the success of my class to simply addressing the social and emotional aspects of my students.
When I began my second year of teaching, I decided I needed to foster some social skills in my fourth-graders before I could really begin tackling the academic subject material. I remember feeling this might be a big risk. My class was below grade level academically, but I felt that not addressing the social and emotional issues was where I went wrong in my first year. As a consequence, my first year of teaching resulted in an out-of-control classroom that got in the way of numerous academic learning opportunities.
So, I began my second year by teaching my students how to talk to one another in a productive and nonjudgmental way. This may seem like something you would expect a nine or 10-year-old to be able to do, or a skill that they would simply pick up over time, but I felt that it was necessary to teach this as explicitly as one would teach multiplication.
During my first year as a teacher, I tried to limit student-to-student interaction because it often lead to arguments and disruptions, but I knew that this was a skill that all people needed in their lives. To directly teach this skill, we engaged in a lot of role playing as a class. Students would practice disagreeing about nonacademic subjects in a respectful way so that they could make the distinction between a subject disagreement and a personal attack. My goal was for them to be able to eventually talk about an idea and disagree about something, without taking it personally, and to be able to understand a different perspective.
To understand another perspective on a subject is a type of critical thinking, but also a form of empathy. So, when I designed the behavior system in my class, I wanted one of the first consequences to be a reflection sheet and one-on-one discussion with me and the student. Students would fill out a paper where they explained their behavior and the reasoning behind it. I would then ask them questions to walk them through the process to reflect on their choices and understand how the other student or students were feeling because of that choice. Then we would discuss different ways to handle the situation in the future so that the student could learn from his/her mistake instead of repeating it.
My second year of teaching was so much more enjoyable for me and my students, and I think a big reason was because of these changes. Instead of simply reacting to behavior, I could anticipate it and address some of the underlying causes head on. That year, my students grew substantially in their academic subject knowledge, but hopefully they also left my class with skills like empathy, collaboration and self-reflection which are just as important for success.
The Iowa Department of Education is soliciting feedback on the second draft of its plan to comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.
Ryan Wise, director of the state department, said the plan is a step toward implementing ESSA that input is needed “so we land on a final plan that is right for the state.”
ESSA is a replacement for the No Child Left Behind Act and is a re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the key piece of federal legislation that governs public schools.
A third draft of Iowa’s plan is anticipated in August. The new draft uses a template from the U.S. Department of Education, according to a release.
The plan must be submitted to the federal government by Sept. 18. Feedback on the draft will be taken through July 18.
Find a copy of the plan at tinyurl.com/iowaessa. Email comments to essa@iowa.gov or by mail to Iowa Department of Education, Attn: Deputy Director David Tilly/ESSA Feedback, Grimes State Office Building, 400 East 14th St., Des Moines, IA 50319-0146.
The U.S. Department of Education responded to these concerns at the end of last week, publishing a list of Frequently Asked Questions that seeks to explain exactly what its letters to three states, the first feedback states have gotten from the Trump team on ESSA, actually meant when it comes to DeVos’ approach to the law. The document may not clear up every question states and others may have, however. More on that below…
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is designed to ensure that all students have a significant opportunity to have a fair and equitable high-quality education and to close educational achievement gaps. These programs provide assistance to rural- and low-income schools and services to students who are migrants, at-risk (including neglected and delinquent), homeless and English learners. In addition, the programs provide assistance to 21st Century Learning Centers and professional development for teachers and leaders.
By design, Missouri’s ESSA plan outlines only a portion of the state’s system for school improvement. The Missouri School Improvement Plan (MSIP) is the accountability measure of school improvement in the state, and ESSA is a component of that effort. Missouri is well-positioned to lead the nation on student success through our own homegrown systems. By taking additional time to gather feedback and establish our vision for education in Missouri, we hope to create a high-quality plan that meets the needs of all children.
The timeline for the state ESSA plan is as follows:
Public Comment: Through July 15, 2017
Reaction and Revision as necessary: July 15 – August 1, 2017
Gubernatorial Consultation: August 1 – September 1, 2017
In September and October, the department held Regional Meetings on Education to discuss what matters most in public education. Please click the link above to read what feedback meeting attendees and post-meeting survey recipients marked as what matters most to them in education.
Waiver Notice Request for Comments
Continue “Right Test, Right Time” Administration of End-of-Course Assessments
By: Michelle Croft and Richard Lee ACT Research and Policy
Despite (or because of) the federal requirement that all students in certain grades participate in statewide achievement testing, stories of parents opting their student out of the testing gained national attention in the media in the spring of 2015. Ultimately, twelve states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin—received a notice from the U.S. Department of Education that they needed to create a plan to reduce opt-outs due to low participation rates.
When statewide testing came in spring 2016, there were more stories of opt-outs, and information about districts failing to meet participation requirements will follow in the coming months.3 Early reports from New York indicate that 21% of students in grades 3–8 opted out in 2016, which was slightly more than the prior year. (See attached PDF below for reference information.)
Participation Rate Requirements
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (both the No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds authorizations) requires that all students annually participate in statewide achievement testing in mathematics and English in grades 3–8 and high school as well as science in certain grade spans. Ninety-five percent of students at the state, district, and school level must participate; otherwise there is a range of consequences.
Under the No Child Left Behind authorization, the school would automatically fail to meet Adequate Yearly Progress if the school—or subgroups of students within the school—did not meet the participation rate requirement. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides states with greater flexibility to determine how to incorporate the participation rate into the state’s accountability system. However, in proposed regulations, the state will need to take certain actions such as lowering the school’s rating in the state’s accountability system or identifying the school for targeted support or improvement, if all students or one or more student subgroups do not meet the 95% participation rate.
Michelle Croft is a principal research associate in Public Affairs at ACT. Richard Lee is a senior analyst in Public Affairs at ACT.
As the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) affords states the flexibility to decide how to measure student achievement, two reports released June 23 show that schools play a key role in developing students’ soft skills such as beliefs about their intellectual capacity, sense of belonging at school, and eagerness to learn in the face of adversity.
