Happy Monday! And welcome to the next edition of “Answering Your ESSA Questions.” Our next question comes Nick Scott, who works for an Arizona-based company that manufactures LED crossing guard signs for school districts. Scott wants to know, essentially, if districts can use their Every Student Succeeds Act dollars to purchase crossing guard signs. Scott noted that his company has evidence it can point to that these signs really work. (ESSA is all about evidence-based practices.)
The short answer: Most likely, yes.
The longer answer: If districts want to purchase these crossing guard signs, their best bet is using money from the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants, aka Title IV Part A of ESSA. That’s one of the much closely watched K-12 federal programs these days, in part because the money can be used for almost anything under the sun, from drama classes to counseling services.
And the program just got a whopping $700 million boost in the most recent spending bill, bringing its funding to $1.1 billion for fiscal 2018.
Broadly, Title IV dollars are supposed to be geared to improving student health and safety, making students more well-rounded, or bolstering the use of technology in learning. Crossing guard signs could fit under that safety umbrella…
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Do districts need state permission to take advantage of new ESSA flexibility to substitute a nationally recognized, college-entrance exam (like the SAT or ACT) instead of the state test for high-school accountability purposes?
The short answer: Yup.
The longer answer: ESSA does indeed allow districts to use a college-entrance test instead of the state test for high school accountability. But the state has to be OK with it. Districts can’t just do this on their own, without the state’s approval.
This guidance, from the U.S. Department of Education, makes that crystal clear: “A state has discretion as to whether it will offer its [local education agencies] this flexibility.”
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos used a speech at the American Federation for Children’s national summit in Indianapolis on Monday to rally states behind the cause of expanding school choice, even though the Trump administration won’t force them to do so.
In the speech before the school choice advocacy group that DeVos used to lead, the education secretary said President Donald Trump soon will propose “the most ambitious expansion of education choice in our nation’s history.”
She didn’t provide any details on how those choice programs would work as the Trump administration prepares to release its fiscal 2018 budget. But DeVos did say that while Washington won’t force states into expanding choice programs and will leave states a lot of flexibility, those states that decline to do so will be held accountable by their constituents.
“If a state doesn’t want to participate, that would be a terrible mistake on their part,” DeVos said. “They will be hurting the children and families who can least afford it. If politicians in a state block education choice, it means those politicians do not support equal opportunity for all kids…”
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House Democrats and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos sparred over civil rights, the Every Student Succeeds Act, and teachers’ salaries at a hearing Tuesday, but lawmakers from both parties largely avoided controversial questions about school safety in the aftermath of a Texas high school shooting last week that left 10 students and staff dead.
Appearing before the House education committee, DeVos emphasized that the federal school safety commission she leads is working quickly, and that its ultimate goal is to ensure that schools “have the tools to be able to make the right decisions to protect their own buildings and their own communities.”
She said the commission was developing a timeline for its work, but also said that she planned to have the commission report its findings by year’s end.
“We are looking forward to [hearing from] every interest group, every constituency, particularly teachers, parents, and law enforcement and school leadership,” DeVos told lawmakers, later adding that, “We seek to look at models across the country.”
The commission has only met once since it was created in March after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., although the secretary met last week with school safety researchers, as well as parents of children killed in school shootings. Its other members are Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. DeVos previously has said that schools should be able to decide if they want to provide staff with firearms to improve safety, but did not share detailed personal opinions on school safety in general with the committee…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Source: Education Week Politics K-12. May require Education Week subscription.
Earlier this year, shortly after 17 students and teachers were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., President Donald Trump created a school commission, led by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, to explore solutions.
And now that there has been another deadly school shooting, at Santa Fe High School in Texas, educators, parents, and others, including advocates in Washington and folks on social media, are wondering just what the commission has been up to since its inception in early March.
Parents of public school students should consider pulling their children out of school until the nation passes new restrictions on gun laws, former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan tweeted Saturday.
Duncan, who has long argued that tighter gun restrictions would save children’s lives, was co-signing an idea, also floated on Twitter, from his one-time communications chief, Peter Cunningham. Cunningham now heads up Education Post, a K-12 advocacy and communications organization.
This is brilliant, and tragically necessary.
What if no children went to school until gun laws changed to keep them safe?
My family is all in if we can do this at scale.
Parents, will you please join us? https://t.co/Yo4wsFuJI5
“I’m open to other ideas, I’m open to different ideas, but I’m not open to doing nothing,” Duncan told the Post. “We will see whether this gains traction, or something does, but we have to think radically…”
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U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has given the thumbs up to two more state Every Student Succeeds Act plans: Alaska and Iowa.
That brings the total number of states with approved plans to 44, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Still waiting for the OK: California, Florida, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Utah.
Alaska is working local interim tests into its accountability system, as a measure of school quality or student success for elementary schools. The state will also consider chronic absenteeism and literacy by 3rd grade. High schools will be measured on chronic absenteeism, “on track” freshmen, and how many students are eligible for “Alaska Performance Scholarships,” which are based on GPA, completion of a certain curriculum, and achieving a certain score on tests such as the ACT. The state also makes it clear it can’t ‘”coerce” a parent to make a child take standardized tests…
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One of the biggest changes in the Every Student Succeeds Act is that states and districts get to come up with their own school improvement ideas, as long as they are backed by evidence.
Here’s how that works: Schools that get Title I money that’s been specifically set aside for school improvement have to come up with a plan with at least one component that has at least one well-designed “correlational study” to back it up. Ideally, the law encourages districts and states to push schools toward ideas that have at least one strong randomized control trial behind it. (A randomized control trail is considered a better test of a strategy than a correlational study, researchers say.)
So what about schools that have been flagged as low-performing but aren’t getting school improvement funds? Schools don’t have to choose a strategy with a particular study to back it up, but they do need to come up with a plan that has a rationale behind it, and then carefully study the results.
So how should states go about that? Results for America, a research organization, and Chiefs for Change, an advocacy organization for state and district officials, have some thoughts and recommendation, outlined in a new report released Thursday…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
School officials urged federal lawmakers to update the law governing the handling and disclosure of student data, saying that it must provide more clarity to education leaders and reflect challenges educators face in the digital learning environment.
In a hearing at the House education committee Thursday, school leaders and advocates also discussed how they try to safeguard important data on children, from faculty training to limiting the type of data that’s collected.
Data privacy issues in general have become more prominent this year following revelations about the mishandling of Facebook users’ data, for example. It’s unclear to how changes to how Facebook handles data might impact K-12. But altering how federal law deals with these complicated data-privacy issues has proven to be a challenge on Capitol Hill.
Practices that rely on students’ data can “greatly enrich the student experience” and inform teachers’ work, said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., the committee chairwoman. However, she also said in opening remarks, “Questions of privacy will always accompany any discussion of student data collection, as well they should.”
She stressed that more must be done to protect student data, including updating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), first enacted in 1974…
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In a heated primary battle between two prominent supporters of school choice on Capitol Hill, a third candidate stepped in and beat them.
Indiana GOP Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita lost in a three-way race for the GOP nomination to run for Indiana’s U.S. Senate seat to Mike Braun, a businessman. Braun will be the Republican nominee against Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., in the November Senate election. He captured 41.2 percent of the vote on Tuesday with 99 percent of precincts reporting, with Rokita getting 30 percent and Messer earning 28.9 percent.
On the section of his campaign website covering his main positions, Braun did not highlight education, although he does advocate for less government spending. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment about his positions on K-12 issues.
We profiled the potential face-off between Messer and Rokita last summer, before either had officially declared their candidacy for the GOP nomination. The two have been rivals for some time, and traded personal accusations as they sought the nomination, which may have created an opening for Braun to step in and win the primary…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week Subscription.
Happy Monday! And welcome to the next edition of “Answering Your ESSA Questions.” Our next question comes Nick Scott, who works for an Arizona-based company that manufactures LED crossing guard signs for school districts. Scott wants to know, essentially, if districts can use their Every Student Succeeds Act dollars to purchase crossing guard signs. Scott noted that his company has evidence it can point to that these signs really work. (ESSA is all about evidence-based practices.)
