States Ignore Social Competency for Students in ESSA Plans

States Ignore Social Competency for Students in ESSA Plans

By Lauren Poteat, NNPA/ESSA Contributor

According to a recent report by Education Week, states have largely ignored a critical mandate of the Every Student Succeeds Act that calls for schools to measure the social and emotional competencies of their students.

“Not a single state’s plan to comply with the federal education law—and its broader vision for judging school performance—calls for inclusion of such measures in its school accountability system,” according to Education Week.

However, advocates for measuring social-emotional learning have said that the current tools need more refinement, before the U.S. Department of Education weighs in.

“Existing measures of social and emotional development, which largely rely on students’ responses to surveys about their own character traits, are not sophisticated and consistent enough to be used for such purposes, they have long argued,” the Education Week article said.

Even as school districts in Anchorage, Alaska; Austin, Texas; Chicago, Ill.; Nashville, Tenn.; Oakland, Calif.; and Sacramento, Calif., are actively engaged in incorporating social and emotional learning into their curriculums, civil rights leaders continue to encourage Black parents to get involved with the implementation of ESSA.

“We have noticed that, under the Trump administration, there has been a shift in priorities concerning the implementation of some practices of ESSA, since its inception in 2015,” said Elizabeth Olsson, a senior policy associate for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “However, state and district officials still have to comply with the law.”

Olsson continued: “The U.S. Department of Education needs to make sure that it continues to scrutinize state programs to ensure that states are recruiting effective educational strategies, reducing practices that push students of color out of school systems, and identifying support programs, including professional teacher development and funding for alternative classes, like restorative justice.”

Olsson said that restorative justice programs really help get to the root of student behavior.

Liz King, the senior policy analyst and director of Education Policy for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that there are still a lot of open questions about how Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is going to implement ESSA.

Earlier this year, after a hearing with a House Appropriations subcommittee, DeVos was roundly criticized by the civil rights community, when she seemed to endorse a state’s right to discriminate against children.

During the hearing, when Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) asked DeVos, if her Education Department would require states, like Indiana, to end the practice of funding schools that openly discriminate against LGBTQ students and families, “DeVos didn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” Slate.com reported. “She just smiled and stuck to the generations-old cover for violent oppression in America. ‘The states set up the rules,’ she said. ‘I believe states continue to have flexibility in putting together programs.’”

King called those comments “deeply concerning.”

King continued: “What we need to hear from the president and the secretary of education is a commitment to the law, the Constitution, and the rights of all children in the United States, focusing particularly on historically marginalized students.”

King said that the biggest difference between the way that ESSA was handled during President Obama’s administration versus the way the law is being handled now is the commitment to protect the civil rights, dignity, safety and respect for all children in this country. King added that children feel less safe and feel like their rights are being taken away, under the Trump Administration.

Education Week reported that, “DeVos rescinded the Obama administration’s transgender guidance to schools designed to give students more protection.”

In a letter to Senator Patty Murray (D-Was.), DeVos claimed that the way that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) handled “individual complaints as evidence of systematic institutional violations,” under the Obama Administration, “harmed students.” DeVos also promised to return OCR to a “neutral, impartial investigative agency.”

The Education Department has approved ESSA state plans from Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont.

As minorities continue to enroll in schools across the country at higher rates than their White peers, King said that parents and community members need to act now to make sure that the myriad needs of students of color are fully addressed in ESSA state plans, that includes access to advanced English and math courses and addressing the disparities that exist between how Black students are disciplined compared to White students.

“We have to address the issue of ESSA now, because decisions that are being made will have consequences for years to come,” King said. “One thing that is important to remember is that the implementation of ESSA does not happen in a vacuum.”

King continued: “ESSA is the opportunity for parents to work together with various coalitions, the press and grassroots organizations to shape the way the educational system will look for their children and for their futures in their own states.”

Policy Experts Discuss Educating Black Students in the New Jim Crow Era

Policy Experts Discuss Educating Black Students in the New Jim Crow Era

By Stacy M. Brown (NNPA Newswire Contributor)

After decades of desegregation efforts, federal civil rights laws, and other attempts to close the achievement gap, a high quality education remains an elusive goal for most Black children.

In an effort to engage Black parents around reaching that elusive goal, educators and community stakeholders tackled leadership, educational equity and policy in urban schools, during a recent panel discussion.

Led by moderator Linda Tillman, professor emeritus of education leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the panel discussed the challenges faced by African American teachers and leaders, as they work to educate Black children and young adults in urban communities.

“We are here to revisit old discussions and bring fresh ideas,” Tillman said. “Jim Crow has affected Blacks in so many ways. Black education is a right [that’s] not solely based on White norms.”

Panelist Terri Watson, a City College of New York (CCNY) educator and co-creator of the CCNY-based “Growing Our Own Doctor’s Project,” said that there’s not only a need for better education, but that there’s also a need for safer communities for Black students.

“We have to focus on creating space where kids are informed and active, that’s important,” Watson said. “We have to let the kids know that the world is waiting for them, they’re up next and we have to change their mindset that the world views them as disposable.”

Rodney Hopson, a professor and associate dean of education psychology at George Mason University, Sonya Douglass Horsford, an associate professor of education leadership at the Teachers College at Columbia University, and M. Christopher Brown II, the president of Kentucky State University also participated in the panel that took place during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference.

Both Brown and Horsford, longtime friends, said the majority of public schools are now non-White. The proliferation of charter and alternative schools has also chipped away at the effectiveness of public schools.

The federal government has played such a major role in shaping education policy and schools now mostly prepare African Americans for prison, not college, Brown said.

“The school’s structure that’s used is that they teach our kids how to stand in a straight line, to raise their hands when they have to go to the bathroom…you do that in prison, so that’s the training they’re getting,” Brown said.

He then quoted what he said was a prophetic statement made by W.E.B. Du Bois 57 years ago.

“[African American] teachers will become rarer and in many cases will disappear,” Brown said quoting Du Bois, noting that the prediction has come to pass.

Brown continued, quoting Du Bois: “[African American] children will be instructed in public schools and taught under unpleasant if not discouraging circumstances. Even more largely than today, they will fall out of school, cease to enter high school, and fewer and fewer will go to college.”

Horsford, like the other panelists, said no one should be surprised, because, after all, resegregation has occurred and education is the “new civil rights in the new Jim Crow.”

“We shouldn’t operate from the assumption that our schools are broken,” she said. “They are doing exactly what they were designed to do, which is to sift and sort children into different categories for economic reasons.”

Horsford added that African Americans must tap the potential, possibilities and gifts of the young people who truly hold the answers to society’s pressing problems.

Even educators have suffered and are poorly valued in a system guided by high-stakes testing and performance-based accountability, Horsford said.

“We have to engage in parallel efforts…we need to reimagine schools and school systems that support everyone,” said Horsford. “We also have to make sure that, in the meantime, we are preparing students to not only survive, but also thrive in an era of extreme inequality.”

Segregating Public Schools Won’t Make America Great Again

Segregating Public Schools Won’t Make America Great Again

By Rushern Baker (County Executive, Prince Georges County, Md.)

On November 4, 1952, Dr. Helen Kenyon addressed the Women’s Society of Riverside Church in New York City and opined that, “Eleven o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. often paraphrased the quote.

Today, sadly, our public schools best reflect Dr. Kenyon’s and Dr. King’s sentiment as the most segregated place in America.

The rampant re-segregation of American public schools poses a greater threat to the trajectory of America’s progress than terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and Russian meddling in our elections. Sixty-two years after Brown v. Board, the GAO (Government Accountability Office) reported that from the years 2000-2014, both the percentage of K-12 public schools in high-poverty and the percentage of African American and Hispanic students enrolled in public schools more than doubled, and the percentage of all schools with so-called racial or socioeconomic isolation grew from 9 percent to 16 percent.

Research shows that racial and socioeconomic diversity in our classrooms leads to higher than average test scores, greater college enrollment rates, and the narrowing of achievement gaps. These gains don’t just apply to poor and minority children either—every student benefits from learning and engaging with peers from different backgrounds. Despite the evidence, today our public schools are more segregated than they were 40 years ago.

As an advocate for children and families, and as a public servant, who has fought for more resources for students, I believe we must act boldly to save free, high-quality public education for all.

Some of the very leaders tasked with solving the negative effects from school re-segregation offer shortsighted policies that exacerbate racial and economic divisions. The ripple-effect, consequences of their misguided thinking remains the greatest policy foible of the modern era. Lazy logic behind bad policy feeds a perception that that the achievement gap exists simply, because poor and minority students learn differently than their wealthier, White peers. Rather, it is directly tied to declining enrollment, lower property values, and the dwindling resources available to tackle mounting challenges in the communities that surround underperforming public schools.

The greatest irony remains that those promoting harmful education policies use the same language of “giving every child a chance at a high-quality education” to pitch their tax-dollar-poaching and resource-pilfering experiments to desperate parents.

Rather than making public education a number one priority, a Hunger-Games-like competition for vouchers and charter schools leaves parents and students fending for themselves. The families that lose the education lottery end up at schools with increased needs and declining resources. In Maryland, our Governor’s BOOST voucher program set aside $5 million dollars of public money to help 2,400 families pay for their child’s education. Yet, 80 percent of the families receiving these grants had children who were already enrolled in private schools.

Vouchers, whose American roots can be traced back to some Southern states’ attempts to avoid integration, perpetuate segregated education and are nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to cut off funds to public schools. It gets even worse. Some communities have simply seceded from the larger school district, as we’ve seen in Alabama and Tennessee, to keep from integrating their schools. Since 2000, the U.S. Justice Department has released 250 communities from their desegregation orders and consequently facilitated their financial and administrative secession from their school districts.

After all those factors lead to a dip in school performance, students and their communities are stigmatized as “failing.” Schools close. Quality of life drops; economic prospects dwindle; public safety decreases; and the cycle repeats, so that higher needs populations receive even fewer resources.

I know. I’ve lived through it. It’s time to back up the big talk of “opportunity for all” with policies that don’t ask parents to compete for a few spots, but instead, make public dollars work for every child.

We’ve embraced this mission in my home of Prince George’s County, Maryland where I serve as County Executive. Though we know our best days are to come, we’ve seen incredible progress: increased enrollment; higher graduation rates; an increase in innovative academic programs; and more students receiving college scholarships.

The debate over how we improve public education can’t begin with state-funded segregation, which harms communities and students, especially our most vulnerable. Let’s secure our children’s futures and the future of America by making a meaningful investment in quality public schools for all.

Rushern Baker, a graduate of Howard University, is the county executive in Prince George’s County, Maryland. You can follow him on Twitter at @CountyExecBaker.

Georgia’s Every Student Succeeds Act State Plan Is a Step in the Right Direction

Georgia’s Every Student Succeeds Act State Plan Is a Step in the Right Direction

By Dr. Elizabeth Primas (Program Manager, NNPA/ESSA Public Awareness Campaign)

Georgia is making every effort to ensure that students have a better chance of performing at proficient or advanced levels on all state exams. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) prioritizes narrowing the achievement gap. As states move to implement ESSA, according to federal guidelines, this priority serves as a guiding force. Georgia proposes a target of decreasing the achievement gap by three percent, annually, which is a small number, when compared to the aggressive goals of ESSA’s predecessor, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which required the achievement gap be closed by the 2013-14 school year. Educators believe that Georgia’s adjusted target is more attainable. NCLB primarily focused on accountability; this translated into more and more assessments and little attention was paid to the actual instructions and interventions that would guarantee that students receive the quality education needed to advance academically. Schools quickly realized that the targets and goals of NCLB were unrealistic and unachievable.

Under the recently submitted ESSA proposal, Georgia has indicated that they believe substantial progress can be made in closing the achievement gap in 15 years. Georgia will re-evaluate and adjust strategies for improvement every five years using the state’s proposed three percent annual decrease of the achievement gap as a benchmark. This will ensure steady progress towards the goal of 100 percent of students attaining scores at/or above grade level by 2032.

The Every Student Succeeds Act requires each state to provide a detailed plan as to how aggressive goals to close the achievement gap will be met. Georgia has decided to use assessment scores from the 2017-2018 school year to determine the baseline for each student subgroup. That means that they will identify the starting point for each subgroup based on data they collect this school year. Georgia will then determine how much each subgroup should move in a brief period (1-5 years), and how much they should move over the long period (1-15 years), thus establishing short- and long-term goals. Georgia will then look at each student subgroup (diverse populations) to determine where each group is scoring on the English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies tests. After an analysis of the data, Georgia will set incremental goals for each subgroup that align with state-wide short-term and long-term goals.

Throughout the planning process, Georgia has engaged parents, community members, colleges and universities, teachers and administrators, as well as governmental agencies to help set realistic expectations for Georgia’s students.

Several key components emerged from the stakeholder meetings including:

  1. End-of-course exams should be aligned to the actual instructions the students received.
  2. Once students complete core requirements (English, math and science classes) they are eligible to take advanced courses. The advanced courses are offered through a variety of venues…on-line, before and after school, and during the school day.
  3. Georgia will offer dual-language immersion in eight Local Educational Agencies (LEAs), with Spanish and English as the dual-languages.
  4. Students will have the opportunity to earn advanced credits through accelerated enrollment programs, which may be offered through AP/IB and/or dual-enrollment. Georgia pays the tuition for all dual-enrollment high-school students, making this program accessible for disadvantaged and low-income students.
  5. A common thread across statewide feedback sessions emerged: “parents want to ensure that students are exposed to a well-rounded curriculum.”

It appears Georgia is determined to engage the community in a meaningful way and bring community partners into the school improvement process.

Get involved with education in your community and learn more about the Every Student Succeeds Act at www.nnpa.org/essa.

Dr. Elizabeth Primas is an educator, who spent more than 40 years working towards improving education for children of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds. Dr. Primas is the program manager for the NNPA’s Every Student Succeeds Act Public Awareness Campaign. Follow Dr. Primas on Twitter @ElizabethPrima3.

Black Students in the Nation’s Capital Deserve Better

Black Students in the Nation’s Capital Deserve Better

By Lynette Monroe (Program Assistant, NNPA ESSA Media Campaign)

In my role as the program assistant for the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s (NNPA) Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Public Awareness Campaign, I closely followed the proposal process for the District of Columbia’s ESSA plan. I have to admit, I was disappointed by the final version of the plan submitted to the U.S. Department of Education. Overall, D.C.’s ESSA plan is, at best, an incomplete assignment. The ‘to be continued’ tone of the plan could be partly due to the discontent expressed by many community members during the final stakeholder meetings. Parents and educators alike expressed concern about the lack of resources and implementation strategies to support the Office of the State Superintendent of Education’s (OSSE) aggressive goals for academic proficiency and high school graduation. The participants at the meetings noted the glaring socioeconomic disparities throughout the district and the unique resources required to increase achievement in each ward. One could conclude that OSSE’s aggressive academic goals are mirroring the affects of a rapidly gentrifying city that continues to marginalize the needs of its majority Black residents.

According to District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), 71 percent of their student population is Black and 70 percent of the entire student population qualifies for free or reduced lunch. In August, DCPS released the latest scores for tests under the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC). Black students showed the smallest improvements with a 4.8 percent increase in English Language Arts proficiency and a 2.1 percent increase in math proficiency. In both categories, less than 20 percent of Black students achieved proficiency in reading and math. This increase is compared to a 6.2 percent increase in English Language Arts proficiency for Hispanic students in the district and a 9.6 percent increase by their White counterparts. Similarly, Hispanic students showed a 5 percent increase in math proficiency while White students increased their proficiency by 4.8 percent. According to the PARCC assessment, less than 30 percent of Hispanic students are proficient in reading and math. While more than 80 percent of White students, according to PARRC, exhibit proficiency. White students make up just 10 percent of the DCPS student population.

DCPS needs to try harder to raise the test scores of its Black students. DCPS should also quickly work to reaffirm their commitment to expanding college and career support for students, especially Black students.

At a recent town hall meeting hosted by the National Newspaper Publishers Association in Atlanta, Ga., Vickie B. Turner, a school board member for District 5 in the DeKalb County School District, encouraged participants to reach out to parents, who were not present at the town hall and who are not engaged, declaring “we are preaching to the choir.”

Nevertheless, we all share a responsibility to educate our children. Some parents may not be able to dedicate as much time to participate in their child’s education as others. You can help out by dedicating an hour, as often as you can, to make sure Black parents are present, represented, and fighting in the best interest of our children. “It takes a village” is not just a cliché or an excuse to discipline a stranger’s child. It is a vow to develop the whole child, irrespective of his or her parent’s shortcomings.

To learn more about the District of Columbia’s plan, or your state’s plan, to implement ESSA, the nation’s new education law, visit nnpa.org/essa.

Lynette Monroe is a master’s student at Howard University. Her research area is public policy and national development. Ms. Monroe is the program assistant for the NNPA’s Every Student Succeeds Act Public Awareness Campaign. Follow Lynette Monroe on Twitter @_monroedoctrine.

VIDEO: ‘Huge Lift’ Remains as Puerto Rico Schools Struggle to Reopen

VIDEO: ‘Huge Lift’ Remains as Puerto Rico Schools Struggle to Reopen

Education Week logoSchools in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico are slowly getting to their feet, but the struggle is particularly difficult in areas outside major urban centers, as Congress and federal officials continue to work out aid packages that could help the island’s still mostly shuttered educational system.

When Hurricane Maria struck the island Sept. 20, the nearly 1,200 schools in Puerto Rico went dark, leaving about 350,000 students in the public K-12 system out of school. And many schools that began to reopen in recent weeks were operating largely as community-support centers, rather than normal instructional environments, until recently.

As of the week of Oct. 23, 119 schools had officially opened their doors for instruction in the cities of San Juan and Mayaguez, according to Puerto Rico Secretary of Education Julia Keleher. Some of the 190 schools on the island that had been operating as community centers since Maria have consolidated their operations.

Keleher said she hoped that approximately 150 more schools in Bayamon and Ponce (two relatively large cities in the U.S. territory) could restart classes this week.

At the moment, Keleher said her schools’ biggest need is electricity. She said she did not know how many of the schools that had opened were doing without electricity.

Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.

Will ESSA Reduce States’ Accountability in Special Education? – Education Week

Will ESSA Reduce States’ Accountability in Special Education? – Education Week

Law gives flexibility on subgroup reports

October 24, 2017

As unpopular as No Child Left Behind was by the time it was ushered off the stage in 2015, advocates for students with disabilities could always point to one aspect of the law that they liked: by requiring that test scores of different student groups be reported separately, the law exposed the low academic performance of students in special education and required schools to do something about it.

The replacement for NCLB, the Every Student Succeeds Act, still requires that the academic performance of students with disabilities be reported, along with other student subgroups.

But the law trades federal mandates for state flexibility on what should happen to a school whose students with disabilities are consistently lagging their peers.

States and some lawmakers have cheered the end of what they call federal overreach. But some advocates worry that the accountability goals states have set for themselves won’t move the needle for a group of students who have long struggled with low achievement. At worst, they worry, states can create rules that allow the performance of students with disabilities to again be obscured by the relatively higher test scores of the general student population.

Lower Goals

“A lot of the really crucial decisionmaking got left to the states,” said Ricki Sabia, the senior policy advisor at the National Down Syndrome Congress. “Our concern was with how they would use this discretion.”

Sabia and Candace Cortiella, the founder of the Advocacy Institute, examined drafts of the accountability roadmaps developed by 37 states. All of the states have submitted ESSA plans to the U.S. Department of Education for evaluation; the department has given its stamp of approval to 14 states and the District of Columbia.

A reading of the draft plans illustrates some of Sabia’s and Cortiella’s concerns. In New Mexico’s accountability blueprint, for example, it set a goal for itself to increase the high school graduation rate of students with disabilities to 79 percent in 2022, up from 62 percent in 2016.

At the same time, however, the plan sets a goal to have 50 percent of students with disabilities scoring proficient on the state’sEnglish/language arts and math assessments by 2022. That’s an ambitious goal—less than 7 percent of New Mexican special education students meet that bar now.

But “it is difficult to understand how [students with disabilities] can be expected to graduate at a rate of 79 percent in 4 years while just 50 percent are expected to be proficient in reading and math,” Sabia and Cortiella wrote in a letter intended to support local advocates.

Plan Omissions

Another concern is that the goals for students with disabilities are too low. New York, for example, is aiming for 63 percent of its students with disabilities to graduate with a standard diploma by 2022, up from 55 percent in 2016. New York notes that its end goal for all students, including students with disabilities, is a 95 percent graduation rate. But it also proposes resetting its goals each year.

Educators didn’t like the 100-percent proficiency goal that was embedded in the old law, Sabia said. “But how do you say that some students aren’t going to be proficient? How do you say it’s OK if 5 percent or 10 percent aren’t? That’s what some of these new plans do.”

The education nonprofit Achieve, in its analysis of state plans, found that 26 states and the District of Columbia set the same long-term graduation goal for all subgroups. Twenty-four states set different end point goals for students with disabilities and other subgroups.

Others have pointed not to what’s in the state plans, but what they believe has been left out. Laura Kaloi is a government relations policy consultant with the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a group that represents children in special education and their families. COPAA was looking for states to offer specific plans about how to prevent bullying and harassment, discipline that removes children from the classroom, and “aversive behavioral interventions that compromise student health and safety.”

In an examination of the state plans that were submitted this spring, she said, those topics were not addressed.

“We know many, many school districts need work in this area,” Kaloi said.

The plans are light on some details because states were not required by the law to provide them. In March, the Senate overturned some accountability guidelines that were passed during the Obama administration, saying they were too prescriptive and not keeping in the spirit of the law and its focus on state-based accountability. For example, the law requires states to identify a minimum number of students in a particular subgroup that a school would have to enroll in order for that group to be counted in school accountability, known as the N-size. Under the ESSA accountability rules that the Senate threw out, states could select any N-size but had to offer a justification if they chose a number over 30. The Education Department does not require states to provide a justification for its N-size selection.

Some states, such as Ohio, have chosen to provide such justification, however, suggesting that in some cases states are committing to a more rigorous standard.

Ohio is moving from an N-size of 30 down to 15 by the 2019-2020 school year, which means that more schools will potentially be subject to accountability measures. After the change, 86 percent of the state’s schools will have to report on the progress of the special education subgroup, compared to 58 percent that are required to do so now.

Melissa Turner, the senior manager for state policy for the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said her organization is also examining the state plans, with an eye to strong accountability for student subgroups, clearly defined policies that explain how states will help struggling groups of students, and greater use of accommodations and the appropriate use of “alternate assessments.”

ESSA places a 1 percent cap on the percentage of all students who can take alternate assessments. That equates to about 10 percent of students with disabilities. Such alternate assessments are intended for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. Some groups, such as NCLD, have been concerned that schools have steered students to the alternate assessments in the past, instead of providing the teaching and support that would allow students to take the same tests as their peers in general education.

Positive Implications

Turner mentioned some plans that stand out as potentially positive for students with disabilities. Iowa, for example, has organized its ESSA accountability blueprint around “multitiered systems of support,” which are intended to provide research-backed instruction for all students in academics and in social-emotional development.

Turner also singled out New Hampshire for its plans for personalized learning. “That’s something that we applaud. We think that’s a strong opportunity for states to meet the needs of all kids,” she said.

The organization is concerned, as other groups are, about different goals for different student subgroups. If the overall graduation rate goal is 95 percent, it should be the same for students with disabilities, she said.

“We’re really hoping to see that gap narrow in the long-term goals,” she said.

Every Student Succeeds Act in Episode 84 of Transition Tuesday

Every Student Succeeds Act in Episode 84 of Transition Tuesday

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has been revised by Congress several times. In 1965, Congress created the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which was later reauthorized as The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and was most recently reauthorized in 2015 as The Every Student Succeeds Act. This act is important because it means that States and school districts are responsible to ensure that every child achieves.

According to the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), this bill is important for Special Education because it “…goes even further than the original NCLB in many ways to assist these students to successfully graduate and become college and/or career ready.” The ESSA ensures three important things for students with special needs including ensuring:

  • Access to the general education curriculum
  • Access to accommodations on assessments
  • Concepts of the Universal Design for Learning will be used The Every Child Succeeds Act includes provisions that require schools to provide evidence of interventions in schools with consistently underperforming subgroups. The ESSA also requires states to address things like how they will improve conditions for learning, reduce harassment and bullying, and prevent overuse of discipline practices including restraints and seclusion.

The ESSA does other important things to help students in Special Education including:

  • Takes a proactive role in making sure students with learning and attention issues have access to general education curriculum and are not off track from being able to receive a high school diploma
  • Maintains annual reporting of assessment data disaggregated by subgroups of students including students with special needs
  • Maintains a 1% cap (with some modification provisions) of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities who can take alternative assessments that are aligned to alternative academic achievement standards
  • Requires disaggregation of key data about student progress to ensure that students with disabilities receive the supports they need The Every Student Succeeds Act also recognized that the IEP team (including parents) is in the best position to make important decisions related to a student’s academic, assessment, and social emotional needs.

The Every Student Succeeds Act also recognized that the IEP team (including parents) is in the best position to make important decisions related to a student’s academic, assessment, and social emotional needs. The ESSA also mentions Specialized Instructional Support Personnel (SISPs) which are able to implement early intervention programs for students who need specific support and help them to transition into a general classroom. For states that allow parents or guardians to do, the ESSA acknowledges the rights of parents and guardians to opt their children out of statewide academic assessments.

As part of each episode of Transition Tuesday, we provide additional tips, teacher tools, and resources related to the topics we cover. For this week’s bonus, we are providing a PDF with three great resources regarding the Every Student Succeeds Act, which can be accessed by clicking this link – http://tensigma.org/episode84bonus

To learn more about Ten Sigma’s educational resources for teachers or parents, please visit our website http://tensigma.org and you can also connect with us on social media at:

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Ten-Sigma-15…
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If you know anyone else who would benefit from the information we share in these videos, please share this video and invite them to visit http://transitiontuesday.org We hope you enjoyed this episode and that the information we shared about the Every Student Succeeds Act is helpful to you.

Betsy DeVos to State Chiefs: Time for Ed. Dept. to ‘Let You Do Your Job’

Betsy DeVos to State Chiefs: Time for Ed. Dept. to ‘Let You Do Your Job’

Washington — In two nearly identical speeches…, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told state chiefs and state school board members that she wants to them to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act.

“It’s time for the [Education] Department to get out of your way and let you do your job,” DeVos told the Council of Chief State School Officers’ annual legislative conference. “Once your state has developed a plan to provide a quality education in an environment that is safe and nurturing for all children, you, €”together with your governors, €”should be free to educate your students. And that’s the real key to ESSA.” (DeVos gave almost the same speech to the National Association of State Boards of Education earlier in the day.)

And she continued to press her number one priority: expanding school choice. She gave a shout-out to John White, Louisiana’s state superintendent, for supporting the state’s push to expand options for parents, including both vouchers and charters. She also gave Tony Smith, the state chief in Illinois, a nod for his work in helping to broaden student options…

Read the full article here. May require an Education Week subscription.