CROSSROADS NEWS — Parents, grandparents and anyone raising school-age children, as well as property owners in DeKalb and across Georgia, can find out about the new national education law – Every Student Succeed Act, or ESSA – at a Black Parents’ Town Hall Meeting on Educational Excellence on Oct. 23 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
The law, which will impact how children are educated, takes effect in 2018, but while Georgia completed its 112-page State Plan on Sept. 18, there has been little conversation in our communities about the plan.
The town hall panel of experts includes Georgia PTA President Tyler L. Barr; Patrice Barlow of the Atlanta NAACP Education Committee and an Urban League of Greater Atlanta education advocate; Deborah Gay, Georgia Department of Education deputy superintendent for Federal Programs and Special Education; and Dr. Knox Phillips, DeKalb School District’s executive director of Research, Assessment, and Grants.
It takes place 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., and is hosted by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, “The Black Press,” as part of a national public awareness campaign to heighten awareness among African-American stakeholders about opportunities presented by ESSA, which President Barack Obama signed into law to replace the No Child Left Behind law.
Parents and other stakeholders will get to ask questions and get clarification about how they can best advocate for their children under the new law.
Dr. Elizabeth Primas, NNPA’s ESSA program manager, said that education has been a bridge leading to upward mobility for African-Americans in the United States even before emancipation.
“Now, more than ever, it is important that we ensure our voices are heard to ensure the academic success of our children,” she said. “ESSA prioritizes high quality education, equity, and closure of the achievement gap. By raising awareness of ESSA, we are seeking to empower stakeholders to advocate for such policies.”
The meeting is hosted by Atlanta’s black-owned newspaper publishers, including CrossRoadsNews.
Jennifer Parker, CrossRoadsNews editor and publisher, said the town hall meeting is a great opportunity for parents and stakeholders, including homeowners, to find out about the law and what is coming.
She said that even homeowners who don’t have children in the school district should attend, because the quality of our schools directly affects our property values and they too can be advocates for quality education.
“People buy homes in counties with quality schools, so this affects all of us,” Parker said. “And parents with kids in school need to know how to navigate the law to get the best resources for their kids education.”
Dr. Benjamin Chavis, NNPA’s executive director, said NNPA is asking church leaders across Atlanta to announce the meeting at services and send emails to their congregation.
“Moral leadership in education is paramount,” said Chavis, a former NAACP executive director and civil rights leader who at age 24 was sentenced to 34 years on arson charges with the Wilmington Ten.
Chavis and the other nine members walked to their freedom in 1980 after the federal appeals court overturned the convictions. They were pardoned by N.C. Gov. Beverly Perdue on Dec. 31, 2012.
The Black Parent Town Hall Meeting takes place in Ebenezer Baptist Church’s Martin Luther King Sr. Community Resources Complex at 101 Jackson St. N.E.
Free parking is available behind the Community Resources Complex; across the street from Ebenezer’s sanctuary; and in the National Martin Luther King Center’s parking lot off Irwin Street.
For more information, call Jennifer Parker at 404-284-1888.
Linda Banks, a parent from Prince George’s County, Md., talks about the Every Student Succeeds Act after the National Black Parent Town Hall meeting hosted by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) authorities convened with black publishers from around the country to discuss how to hold states accountable in assuring equity to its most vulnerable students.
During the 190th anniversary of the Black Press, the National Newspapers Publishers Association (NNPA) with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation held a breakfast on Friday, March 24, at the Dupont Circle Hotel in Northwest to strategize against those who threaten to pigeonhole the federal education law.
“We have to continue to press our federal rights,” said Hilary O. Shelton, director of NAACP’s Washington bureau. “The new ESSA law does not have the same robust implementation that we’ve had before. What this means is that we still have to work hard to make sure the plan is right.
“But it’s not right if we’re not pushing the government to make sure they come up with the resources that we need,” he said. “They have more flexibility than ever before to undercut a lot of the gains that we have made even with the last three authorizations.”
Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington Bureau, speaks during a March 24 breakfast held by the National Newspapers Publishers Association (NNPA) at the Dupont Circle Hotel in northwest D.C. during the celebration of the 190th anniversary of the Black Press to discuss implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. (Roy Lewis/The Washington Informer)
Shelton said the NAACP is deeply worried about new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and how “our children” will be affected. He challenged the black and Hispanic publishers in the room to do diligent reporting, bringing the facts to its communities.
“You have to find out what your schools are in putting in their implementation plans before they are submitted to the Department of Education,” Shelton said. “Being able to report what that looks like before the implementation deadline day on April 3 is key.
“See exactly what officials in your local area have in store for our students,” he said. “I’d like to encourage you to monitor all that goes on along those lines. We’ve seen the tricks that get played throughout the country. We would like your stories to show what’s going on, on the ground so we can know what fight we have here in Washington, D.C.”
Susie Saavedra, senior director for policy and legislative affairs for the National Urban League’s Washington bureau, stressed how important ESSA is to communities of color.
“Education for the Urban League is the key to economic power and self sufficiency,” she said. “During the past few years we’ve been very engaged in education advocacy work through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
“You might wonder what role do civil rights organizations play in this space, but for the Urban League it’s the heart of our mission,” Saavedra said. “We serve communities that are underserved in today’s public school system. The demographics have shifted as we know — the majority is kids of color and kids that live in poverty.”
Kristen Amundson, president and CEO of the National State Board of Education, said that when President Lyndon B. Johnson first signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the goal had been to promote equity and equality.
“Now we have the passage of ESSA and a great deal of that power and authority is coming back to states,” Amundson said. “When I tell you that it is states that is going to have to be protectors of equity and equality I understand that is a big ask.
“The part about the legislation that is going to be so essential is the stakeholder engagement,” she said. “It spells out groups that needs to be involved in the implementation of states plans including State Boards of Education members and civil rights organizations.”
Amundson said that states are, more or less, doing that, though some of them have done better than others.
“Now next month states are going to file their plans,” she said. “The real question is going to become is the stakeholder engagement one and done, or is this going to become a set way states do business. My argument is [that] it has to become engrained in everything you do. If parents, teachers and civil rights organizations are at the table, they will hold schools accountable.”
Amundson said a simple way for anyone with a vested interest to engage lawmakers is to demand a seat at the table.
“This is not the prom — don’t wait to be asked,” she said.
As the first deadline to submit state plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act rapidly approaches, community stakeholders in Washington, D.C., voice their support and concerns for how city administrators will implement the new law.
Last November, the Department of Education (DOE) issued two firm deadlines for the submission of ESSA state plans—April 3, 2017 and September 18, 2017. The Education Department will conduct a peer review process of the submitted state plans after each of the deadlines.
Following years of the increasingly cumbersome requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the bipartisan-approved ESSA allows state-level programs to continue, and even expand, on the progress that educators, parents, and students have made across the nation in recent years.
Today, high school graduation rates are at all-time highs, dropout rates are at historic lows, and more students are going to college than ever before.
Dr. Elizabeth Primas, the project manager for the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s (NNPA) new ESSA grant, is among those touting the strengths of ESSA.
The NNPA/ESSA Media Grant, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is focused on raising awareness about the education law in the Black community.
“I am excited about the promise of ESSA to effect positive change in our lowest-performing schools, where children have been underserved, undereducated, and for all intent and purposes, forgotten about,” said Primas. “I don’t want to see ESSA derailed by politics before it even gets underway.”
ESSA not only removes many of the federal restrictions regarding K-12 education, returning the authority to states and local school districts, it also requires states to include strategies and innovations in their plans for the nation’s most vulnerable students in the nation’s lowest performing schools.
According Hanseul Kang, the superintendent of the district’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), “only about a quarter of D.C. students are prepared for college and career readiness, and there are serious and persistent gaps among our lowest income students.”
The district’s draft plan states that only “17 percent of its economically disadvantaged students are on track for college and career readiness in mathematics, compared with 54 percent of their peers who are not economically disadvantaged,” said Kang.
Washington, D.C. is one of the 20-plus jurisdictions planning to submit plans by the April 3 deadline. The majority of states are opting for the later submission date.
Although OSSE has complied with the federal requirement for a minimum 30-day comment period, many stakeholders feel that the current plan has issues that should be addressed before the comment period ends at midnight on March 3 and before OSSE’s scheduled submission date of April 3.
At a February 23 community engagement meeting in Washington’s Ward 5, many stakeholders supported waiting until September to allow more input into the plan from the community.
Jeff Schmidt, a D.C. resident and alumna of the University of California at Irvine, is convinced that the district’s plan will harm minority children with its “lower math and proficiency goals for Black and Latino children than for White children for the next 22 years—until 2039. D.C. could easily come up with an education plan that is free of racial pre-judgment,” he said.
David Tansey, a math teacher at McKinley Technology High School in Washington, D.C., is not happy with OSSE’s decision not to include a “well-designed school survey” of high school students as part of its plan.
“McKinley Tech’s typical student grows more than 70 percent [compared to their] peers citywide, the highest level of any DCPS high school,” said Tansey. “OSSE’s plan should not be approved until there is a plan to design and roll out a statistically valid school survey.”
Gary Ratner agreed.
Ratner, the founder and executive director of Citizens for Effective Schools, suggested that, “DCPS should administer the School Climate Assessment Instrument (SCAI) to all DCPS students, teachers and parents. SCAI would be an invaluable tool for identifying each school’s strengths and weaknesses.”
The SCAI can vary in scope from district to district; according to the National Center for Community Schools, the SCAI measures physical, social, affective/emotional, learning and moral indicators when assessing the quality of a school’s climate.
OSSE reported that they met with more than 100 organizations at 50 hosted meetings, before they released their draft on January 30. The ward-based community meetings in Washington, D.C., began February 7 and will end with the last meeting scheduled for February 28. For details, visit the OSSE website at www.osse.dc.gov/essa.
Primas also urged stakeholders to join the NNPA for an ESSA community awareness breakfast on March 24 in Washington, D.C. For details about the breakfast, contact Elizabeth Primas by email at eprimas@nnpa.org.
As deadlines approach for states to present the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) with final draft accountability plans for implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the DC State Board of Education (SBOE) recently revisited the District’s plan, coming up with nearly a dozen recommendations for improving the proposal.
The recommendations, which impact both traditional public and charter school students, were provided on March 10 to the Office of the State Superintendent for Education (OSSE).
“[D.C.’s plan for implementation of ESSA] will set long-term goals and strategies for citywide academic success and student support across all education sectors,” said Ward 8 SBOE member Markus Batchelor, who met earlier this month with OSSE staff, the Ward 8 Education Council and others to discuss details of D.C.’s plan which must be submitted by April 3.
“Most pertinent to the work of the board is the School Accountability Framework that will, for the first time, give families a clear picture of how well both DCPS and public charter schools are serving our students,” Batchelor said, noting that “schools will be ranked on a 5-star system based on a plethora of factors.”
President Barack Obama congratulates members of the House and Senate after signing the Every Student Succeeds Act into law in December 2015. (Official White House photo)
He added that while Ward 8 children stand to gain the most from ESSA’s successful implementation, they also have the most to lose from lack of public participation in conversations surrounding the legislation and last minute changes to the final draft.
“We’re midstream at this point, as we haven’t seen OSSE’s final draft yet and we did have some deep concerns with the initial draft,” he said. “We’re hoping OSSE includes our recommendations of what we heard during the public engagement period on Feb. 28 where parents, students and teachers expressed what schools should be accountable for.”
ESSA mandates the development of new state accountability systems during the 2016-17 year which will be implemented in the 2018-19 term.
DOE, in accordance with the timeline set by the Obama administration, has established two deadlines this year — April 3 and Sept. 18 — for the submission of plans. D.C. lists along with 17 states that include Arizona, Delaware and Louisiana angling for the early deadline.
SBOE’s 10 recommendations include establishing task forces to measure high school growth, conducting a study on testing in DC schools, disaggregation of economically disadvantaged students and exempting students with severe impairments from taking the standardized assessment, known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.
ESSA, signed into law on Dec. 10, 2015, by President Barack Obama, replaces the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, often criticized for setting unrealistic expectations for schools and students. One example: expecting 100 percent of the nation’s public school students to achieve proficiency in basic math and reading skills.
State Superintendent Hanseul Kang, unavailable for comment, explained in a community letter that DC’s plan focuses on how it will support specific groups of students and define quality schools.
“ESSA offers new flexibilities to states and opportunities for D.C. regarding supports for students and schools, teacher and leader training and evaluations and statewide student assessment,” he said. “D.C.’s plan will include these areas and a major component will address a common system for rating and reporting on all D.C. public and public charter schools.”
Meanwhile, the D.C.-based National Newspaper Publishers Association — an organization of more than 200 black-owned media outlets, received a three-year, $1.5 million grant in January from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in support of a multi-media public awareness campaign focused on ESSA-aligned educational opportunities.
“The ESSA law was established to help increase the effectiveness of public education in every state,” NNPA President and CEO Dr. Ben Chavis said in an interview with Washington Informer Senior Writer Stacy Brown.
“Our task is to inform, inspire and encourage parents, students, teachers and administrators to fulfill the intent and objectives of ESSA with special focus on those students and communities that have been marginalized and underserved by the education system across the nation,” Chavis said.
States across the country, including Maryland, Virginia, California, Michigan and Georgia, continue to fine-tune their ESSA plans in preparation for the upcoming DOE submission deadline.
