Betsy DeVos Approves Testing Flexibility Under ESSA for Two More States

Betsy DeVos Approves Testing Flexibility Under ESSA for Two More States

The number of states that can try out new ways to test students under the Every Student Succeeds Act just doubled.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that she had approved Georgia and North Carolina to try out new assessment methods for the 2019-20 school year, joining Louisiana and New Hampshire as states to successfully apply to participate in this pilot.

Georgia’s approach to the pilot is particularly notable, since it will be trying out not one but two assessment systems for the upcoming academic year. One will rely on adaptive assessments, which present students with questions based on their answers to previous ones, instead of relying on a fixed progression of test questions. The other will rely on “real-time” information on student performance. Meanwhile, North Carolina’s pilot system will rely on customized “routes” based on students’ prior answers on formative assessments. (More on formative assessments here.)

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COMMENTARY: Financial Literacy Transforms Students’ Lives. Here’s Where to Start

COMMENTARY: Financial Literacy Transforms Students’ Lives. Here’s Where to Start

Personal finance education is most effective when teachers are comfortable with it themselves

By Annamaria Lusardi & Nan J. Morrison, Education Week

Would a school allow athletes into a game without any practice? Send kids to their library or point them online but not help them learn to read? Should schools stop teaching math because some children find it hard or might fail? The notion, as advocated by some, that America should let students slide into adulthood without teaching basic personal finance concepts is equally shortsighted. As a researcher and a leader of a financial education organization, we could not disagree more. In fact, we experience every day the profound, lasting impact that financial education has on our nation’s young people.

One high school senior who recently completed classes in economics and personal finance told us that this practical curriculum was transformational: “At first, it felt like a foreign language. Now, I understand how to make more thoughtful decisions about my life. It’s a new way to think,” the student said. We’re thrilled the teacher was able to get the training necessary to master the subject and inspire kids in another avenue of knowledge.

Not every teacher, student, or school has that option.

They should.

“Teachers, like many other Americans, need to build the competence and confidence to teach this subject.”

The 12th grader’s observation puts a fine point on who needs financial education and how to deliver it. If we want to demystify the language of finance and build capability, we must ensure that every child has access to quality financial education. That happens best in the classroom when personal finance is treated like any other subject. Ideally, these essential life lessons should be integrated into the K-12 curriculum—a bit each year, culminating in a full semester class. In a standard math education, for instance, we teach kids to count in kindergarten so they build readiness for algebra years later. Personal finance education should be treated similarly.

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DeVos Seeks to Align Education Grants With Trump-Backed Economic Initiative

DeVos Seeks to Align Education Grants With Trump-Backed Economic Initiative

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos wants to put a priority on competitive grants that square with the Trump administration’s initiative to improve economic opportunities in distressed areas.

In the Federal Register, which is where the U.S. government publishes agency rules and public notices, DeVos’ proposed priority is to “align the Department of Education’s … discretionary grant investments with the Administration’s Opportunity Zones initiative, which aims to spur economic development and job creation in distressed communities.”

Perhaps the best-known program to get funding through discretionary grants is the Expanding Opportunity Through Quality Charter Schools Program, which gets $440 million and supports new charters as well as those seeking to expand. In fact, the department announced at the start of this month in a rule that a priority for distributing these charter school grants will be to fund charters that are in Opportunity Zones, which provide tax breaks to investors in exchange for long-term investment in identified areas. (More on that below.)

But the department’s proposed rule, published on Monday, could broaden the extent to which these competitive federal grants are tied to the zones. It’s possible federal grants to magnet schools, arts education, and programs like TRIO and GEAR UP that help bridge gaps between K-12 and higher education could also prioritize Opportunity Zone investments in the future…

And in general, there’s some hope these Opportunity Zones could strengthen schools by bolstering and diversifying the services available to students in struggling communities.

Remember: The big-ticket education funding programs, such as Title I services for disadvantaged students and special education state grants, rely on formulas and not competitive-grant applications. So those funding streams wouldn’t be affected by this new grant priority.

To read the full article, visit Education Week. May require a subscription.

Marion S. Barry Summer Youth Employment Program:  A Personal Essay

Marion S. Barry Summer Youth Employment Program: A Personal Essay

By Aleisia Canty, Washington Informer Summer Employee

The Marion S. Barry Summer Youth Employment Program has played a crucial role in my development as a professional in the workforce.

The program, which began years ago during Marion Barry’s first term as mayor, allows teens as young as age 14 to be employed in the summer months.

Barry’s program changed the outcome of many teenagers’ lives, allowing them to build a work history that would afford better chances of future employment. I have been able to reap many benefits from my experience as an MBSYEP worker.

I obtained my first job at age 14, working at Friendship Collegiate high school; where I was enrolled for my freshman year. Friendship Collegiate looked for incoming freshman who were MBSYEP workers to attend a form of summer school referred to as “Summer Bridge” to familiarize them with their new stomping grounds.

Throughout my summer at Friendship Collegiate, I took creative writing and theatre classes that assisted in shaping my artistic lens. I also connected with incoming classmates to make the process from middle school to high school smoother.

The following summer I was assigned to work at “Split This Rock,” a nonprofit organization that cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry centering on social issues to provoke social change.

I learned about the organization through a friend who was a member of their youth slam team. I worked closely with the DC Youth Slam Team, that utilizes poetry to teach and empower teens from the metropolitan area to speak up about social justice issues.

While participating with the Team, my writing skills improved. I also gained had the confidence to push past my fears about performing on stage.

Since I never referred to myself as a poet due to my fear of not being understood, I was initially apprehensive about performing.  Therefore, the Team helped me realize that as long as I conveyed emotion in my poetry, my message would get through.

I spent the entire summer discovering the poetry community in DC. There are poetry-based restaurants such as Busboys & Poets and Sankofa Video Books & Cafe. I pushed myself to perform at these businesses during their open mic nights.

It was during one of these open mic nights that I performed an extremely personal poem in honor of my cousin, Relisha Rudd, who went missing in March 2014.  While watching a news update of her disappearance with my grandmother, I found out that we were related. This revelation led me to write many poems about Relisha.

Split This Rock also held weekly writing workshops that I took advantage of to enhance my skills and become comfortable performing for a crowd.  My time with Split This Rock and The DC Youth Slam Team was a defining moment in my work career, as it caused me to work with a passion and larger goal for society. I enjoyed my job so much that I requested and obtained it again the next year, which has allowed me to some meet amazing poets, who have become friends, mentors and role models.

After spending two years with Split This Rock, I was assigned a job with the National Parks Service as an interpreter at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. This was my first customer service job and I worked daily, providing guests with the story of Frederick Douglass’s life.

That opportunity allowed me to learn more about Douglass’s life than I did in high school. The gist of my knowledge prior to working at the Douglass home consisted of him being born a slave, taking back his freedom, the publishing of his first book and his work as an abolitionist.

These are just milestones on a timeline that really didn’t speak to Douglass’s personality, which I learned more about over my time at his home. I became aware of dinner time theatrics, his oratorical skills; which were so profound, that many White people did not believe he was a former slave.

I learned about Douglass’s daily life, lifting barbells and walking from his home in Anacostia to his office on H Street to stay in shape, as well as his love for music with his daughter playing the piano while his grandson played the violin. My time at Douglass’s home taught me about Douglass the man; not the public figure.

My most recent summer job has been working at The Washington Informer, a Black-owned, female published newspaper, that has been covering stories across the District, Virginia and Maryland area since 1964.

Each summer job has expanded my knowledge of the uniqueness of D.C., regarding both its present and past.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to serve as an MBSYEP participant.

This article originally appeared in The Washington Informer.

States Hunt for Evidence to Underpin School Turnaround Efforts

States Hunt for Evidence to Underpin School Turnaround Efforts

Education Week logoBy Alyson Klein

Allendale County’s school district sits in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, in an impoverished, rural region near the coast known as the “corridor of shame” for the chronic poor quality of its education system. Until recently, three of the district’s four schools were considered among the lowest performing in the state.

But after an assist beginning more than a year ago from the state—which is working to rebrand the area as the “corridor of opportunity”—two of those schools made it off the state’s list of the lowest performers….

Read full article here. May require subscription to Education Week.

Puerto Rico’s Outgoing Education Secretary: ‘We Need the Help…’

Puerto Rico’s Outgoing Education Secretary: ‘We Need the Help…’

Education Week logoBy Julia Keleher

Seventeen months ago, and eight months after I became the secretary of education in Puerto Rico, the worst hurricane in over a century decimated much of the island, dislocating thousands of families and bringing daily life here to a halt. Our school buildings were no exception; those that weren’t destroyed suffered damage ranging from power outages to missing roofs. We continue to wait for approval from FEMA to address most of our physical infrastructure needs and are hopeful that the federal government will honor its promise to ensure all students have access to a safe, healthy, and engaging learning environment.

The storm created an opportunity for the world to see the challenges confronting Puerto Rico’s schools. Hurricane Maria and its economic repercussions exposed the negative impacts of poor decision-making and the politicization of the public education system. The operation of the public schools was largely ineffective and inefficient and characterized by a mass exodus of students and teachers. Over the years, the system neglected to prioritize the provision of basic resources, such as books and technology, or allow for the development of innovative and more effective instructional practices.

Since then, Puerto Rico has made dramatic improvements in the quality of its public education system. Dedicated families, communities, teachers, and students have made it possible for great things to take place since the hurricane left our shores.

Read full Article here. May require subscription to Education Week.

ESSA’s Growing Pains Evident Amid Progress

ESSA’s Growing Pains Evident Amid Progress

By Mike Bomster

Education Week logoIf the Every Student Succeeds Act were a schoolchild, it would be a preschooler—not much more than 3 years old, making steady progress, but still stumbling a bit along the way.

The first major rewrite of the nation’s main K-12 law in more than a decade, ESSA was signed into law at the end of 2015, replacing and updating the groundbreaking—but problematic—No Child Left Behind Act.

In theory, the last couple of school years should have been enough time for states and districts to begin making good on ESSA’s promises. Chief among them: a loosening of the federal reins in favor of greater local and state leeway over setting K-12 policy and satisfying the law’s demands for strict accountability, school improvement, and public transparency.

This latest Education Week special report recaps what’s been achieved by states and districts…

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New Mexico Gets Rid of A-F School Grading System

New Mexico Gets Rid of A-F School Grading System

By Cindy Long

For the past several years, students at Dulce Elementary School, on the Jicarilla Apache Nation reservation in New Mexico, faced the threat of school closure. The only elementary school in the district, if it closed students would have to rise before dawn for a long bus ride over bumpy, dusty roads to the closest schools, more than 30 or 40 miles away.

But rather than punishing the students and their tribal community by closing the only elementary school for miles, New Mexico’s new governor and secretary of education will amend the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), scrap the A-F school grading system and replace the policy of labeling schools as ‘failing’ in favor of actually supporting schools in need and celebrating successes of schools doing well or making progress.

This is ESSA done right, says NEA–New Mexico Vice President Mary Parr-Sanchez.

“The proposed changes to New Mexico’s ESSA plan will ensure that the state and local school districts are measuring things that are important and highlight what is good about a school as well as what needs improvement,” Parr-Sanchez says. “Before, the state ESSA plan merely highlighted shortcomings of schools, with no offer of how to support.

All three schools in the Dulce Independent Public School District on the Jicarilla Apache Nation will finally receive the funding they so desperately need, have applied for, and have been denied under the punitive measures of the previous education secretary, which focused on test scores. Now the district will receive support on things like family engagement and attendance and the emphasis on test scores will be reduced.

Don’t Flunk Schools, Support Them

Beyond the Apache reservation, support will extend throughout the state to the many schools who need assistance. Last year, more than two thirds of the New Mexico’s schools received Ds or Fs; in Santa Fe, 56 percent of schools received the lowest grades.

NEA-New Mexico and other public education advocates called for legislators to recognize that slapping bad grades on a school and threatening them with closure or privatization was not the solution; students at these schools needed better supports.

The new governor, Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, ran on making big revisions to the ESSA plan put in place by her predecessor. Those included getting rid of teacher evaluation through test scores, the A through F system for grading schools, and PARCC tests.

NEA-New Mexico members overwhelmingly supported Grisham in the election and from “Day One,” says Parr-Sanchez, “Grisham has worked to change the bad and harmful practices of her predecessor. From Day One, she ended PARCC testing and the grading and labeling of schools in need,” Sanchez says. “This is why elections are so important for educators.”

Accountability to Come Through New Indicators

The shift does not mean that “there are no consequences for underperformance,” said Karen Trujillo, New Mexico’s new secretary of education. “With high levels of support must come high levels of accountability.”

The state is planning to launch a “New Mexico Spotlight Dashboard” in fall 2019, will celebrate the success of the highest performing schools, identify schools that the department will support with federal grant money, and provide families with an opportunity to learn more about their local schools.

“We believe that when schools struggle academically, the system is failing the school, not the other way around,” says education secretary Trujillo.

Based on indicators of academic performance and school climate rather than test score data alone, the New Mexico Education Department will collaborate with districts, schools, and communities to determine what resources are needed to support schools on their path to student success.

Trujillo says the dashboard will give more nuanced information about schools not offered with a simple A-F grade.

Recognizing that there is much more to a school’s story than test scores, the proposed amendments shift points for elementary and middle schools from test scores to educational climate. For high schools, the amendments increase the points for improvements in graduation rates to emphasize an improvement-oriented approach.

“This shift in philosophy will allow the education department to allocate federal resources where they can make the most impact and help every student succeed,” says Trujillo.

This article originally appeared in NeaToday.

Federal Flash: The Education Question Betsy DeVos Can’t Answer

Federal Flash: The Education Question Betsy DeVos Can’t Answer

By Rachel Bird Niebling

During a wide-ranging hearing held by the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos testified on a wide range of Education Department priorities.

Federal Flash covers the controversial exchanges during the hearing, including one question that DeVos struggled to answer.

The House Education and Labor Committee hearing this week examined the policies and priorities of the U.S. Department of Education. It was the first oversight hearing for Secretary DeVos to testify before the Committee since Democrats regained control of the House. While members asked questions on a variety of topics ranging from student loan debt to affirmative action to the rights of transgender students, many focused on implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA.

In one heated exchange, Representative Jahana Hayes from Connecticut pressed Secretary DeVos about an Education Department memo she obtained citing that the Secretary does have sufficient authority to block states from using ESSA Title IV funds to buy guns for schools. Our viewers may recall that funding for Title IV, or the Student Support and Academic Enrichment program, was hotly debated last year when Secretary DeVos said she did not have the power to block states from using Title IV funds to purchase firearms. The memo Representative Hayes presented, however, stated exactly the opposite.

While the exchange between Representative Gregorio Sablan from the Northern Mariana Islands and Secretary DeVos may not have received as much attention, Representative Sablan raised a very important issue regarding the Department’s approval of state ESSA plans that do not consider the performance of historically underserved students…

Read the full article  in Alliance for Excellent Education