Several years ago, when she was a high school teacher, a new assistant principal at Ockley Green Middle School broke a rule, partly because Portland Public Schools wasn’t vigilant about communicating and enforcing the standard.
Twice, Regina Sackrider drank alcohol while on school field trips, first on an overnight stay and later when she ordered a drink with a meal. She didn’t appear drunk and no one got hurt, state discipline records indicate. Both times she wasn’t the only adult drinking. Portland Public Schools officials didn’t feel the conduct merited action, but the state agency that licenses educators did after an investigator discovered the drinking while looking into an unrelated matter.
The ensuing investigation found her guilty of unprofessional conduct. State regulators put her on probation for two years, but also granted her a little-known mercy: Her misconduct would stay secret.
Since 2009, regulators have had the ability to punish educators in private as a way to give them a conditional second chance. This is done through an informal letter that goes only to the educator and the educator’s employer.
This method keeps secret from the public not only the conduct of the educator, but the actions of the educator’s bosses. For example, the secret Teacher Standards and Practices documents that The Oregonian/OregonLive obtained detail not only Sackrider’s mistakes but also reference “a lack of training and policy conformation on the part of the school district…”
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The question: This one comes from a school-based leader who preferred to remain anonymous. This leader wants to know “What are the federal guidelines for ‘testing transparency?’ Schools are mandated to get 95 percent participation, but how is that possible is we tell parents of their opt out rights?”
The answer: ESSA is actually really confusing when it comes to test participation. The law says that states and schools must test all of their students, just like under No Child Left Behind, the law ESSA replaced. Under NCLB, though, schools that didn’t meet the 95 percent participation requirement—both for the student population as a whole and subgroups of students, such as English-language learners—were considered automatic failures.
Now, under ESSA, states must figure low testing participation into school ratings, but just how to do that is totally up to them. And states can continue to have laws affirming parents’ right to opt their students out of tests (as Oregon does). ESSA also requires states to mark non-test-takers as not proficient.
State plans—44 of which have been approved by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team—are all over the map when it comes to dealing with this requirement…
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The Every Student Succeeds Act may have kept annual testing as a federal requirement. But it also aims to help states cut down on the number of assessments their students must take by giving districts the chance to use a nationally-recognized college entrance exam, instead of the regular state test, for accountability purposes.
When the law passed back in 2015, some superintendents hailed the change, saying it would mean one less test for many 11th graders, who would already be preparing for the SAT or ACT. Assessment experts, on the other hand, worried the change would make student progress a lot harder to track.
Now, more than two years after the law passed, it appears that only two states—North Dakota and Oklahoma—have immediate plans to offer their districts a choice of tests. Policymakers in at least two other states—Georgia and Florida—are thinking through the issue. Arizona and Oregon could also be in the mix.
That’s not exactly a mad dash to take advantage of the flexibility.
Offering a choice of tests can be a tall order for state education officials, said Julie Woods, a senior policy analyst at the Education Commission of the States. They have to figure out how to pay for the college entrance exams, design a process for districts to apply for the flexibility, and find a way to compare student scores on the state test to scores on the SAT, ACT, or another test.
That’s “potentially a lot more work than states are currently doing,” Woods said. “States have to decide what the payoff is for them…”
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All 50 states and the District of Columbia have now submitted their plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act, and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team are ready to examine the dozens of plans submitted by the second deadline last month.
Thirty-four states and Puerto Rico turned in their ESSA plans in September and October. (The official deadline for submitting plans was September 18, but hurricane-ravaged Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Texas got extensions). And all of those plans have now been deemed “complete” by the feds. That means the plans aren’t missing key details, at least according to the department’s initial review…
Education Evolving
Originally Published, January 4, 2017
For the past five months, we have followed the development of Minnesota’s state accountability plan as mandated by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). While the US Department of Education (USDE) has defined what must be included in four of the plans’ required indicators, states have the freedom to choose which measures they will include in their fifth indicator, of school quality/student success (SQ/SS).
As we’ve previously written, because of the lack of available data, chronic absenteeism was identified by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) as the only SQ/SS measure that’s currently feasible for Minnesota. However, on November 29th, USDE extended ESSA implementation by one year, giving MDE’s Advisory Committee additional time to create a well-rounded SQ/SS indicator that would, ideally, include more than chronic absenteeism.
While most states have not released their ESSA draft plans, thirteen have—Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington. Arizona, Idaho, Montana, and North Carolina, however, do not define what possible SQ/SS measures their state will use.
All of the other states, except South Carolina, indicated that they intend to use chronic absenteeism as one of their SQ/SS measures; with Delaware, Maryland, Tennessee, and Washington using it only for elementary and middle schools.
Two SQ/SS measures were prominent throughout the state’s draft plans—Career and College Readiness and 9th Grade On-Track. Below are descriptions of the measures.
College and Career Readiness Measure
Seven states—Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington—have some form of a College and Career Readiness measure that calculates a school’s performance on or access to Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), SAT, ACT, Career and Technical Education (CTE), and Dual Enrollment.
South Carolina’s measure is more complex, with high schools earning points based on the percentage of students who meet the College Ready/Career Ready benchmark, which is comprised of several different metrics, such as earning a 3 or higher on an AP exam or meeting ACT benchmarks in mathematics (22) and English (18).
Similarly, Tennessee’s measure, Ready Graduate, is calculated by multiplying the graduation rate and the highest percentage of students who do one of the following:
Score a 21+ on the ACT OR
Complete 4 Early Postsecondary Opportunities (EPSOs) OR
Complete 2 EPSOs and earn an industry certification
Washington’s measure is more prescriptive. It only has a metric for dual credit participation, which is measured by the percent of students who participate in a dual credit educational program.
Delaware is the only state whose measure includes a metric for elementary and middle schools. Specifically, Delaware uses a “growth to proficiency” metric, which measures the percentage of students on track to be at grade level in a given content area within three years.
Minnesota initially considered including a College and Career Readiness measure, but due to insufficient and misaligned data systems, the Technical Committee decided at the October 25th meeting to delay its inclusion.
9th Grade On-Track Measure
Three states—Illinois, Oregon, and Washington—indicated in their draft plans that they intended to use 9th-grade on track as a measure, which is the percent of first-time 9th grade students in a high school who do not fail a course.
Other SQ/SS Measures
Illinois: Early childhood education, which would be measured by kindergarten transition, pre-literacy activities, and academic gains. Unfortunately, the draft plan did not flesh out what “kindergarten transition” would measure, but it did indicate that it might not be ready for the 2017-18 academic year.
Illinois’ plan indicated that they may also use a school climate survey. Currently, Illinois uses the 5Essentials survey, which was developed at the University of Chicago and measures a school’s effectiveness in the following five areas:
Effective Leaders
Collaborative Teachers
Involved Families
Supportive Environments
Ambitious Instruction
Louisiana: Their ESSA Framework included a comprehensive list of SQ/SS measures that were divided into four categories:
Mastery of Fundamental Skills
Serving Historically Disadvantaged Students
Fair and Equitable Access to Enriching Experiences
Celebrating and Strengthening the Teaching Profession
Louisiana’s entire list of SQ/SS measures can be found here.
South Carolina: An “Effective Learning Environment Student Survey”, which would be administered every January to students in grades 4-12 and would include 29 items that measure topics on equitable learning, high expectations, supportive learning, active learning, progress monitoring and feedback, digital learning, and well-managed learning.
We will continue to report on ESSA updates in Minnesota and the country. MDE’s next ESSA Accountability meeting is scheduled for Thursday, January 5th from 5:30-8:00 PM. For more information about MDE’s ESSA implementation plan, visit their website.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team have been approving state plans for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act at a fast and furious pace: They’ve announced approvals for 13 states and the District of Columbia over the past few weeks.
For those keeping score: Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, North Dakota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont have gotten the green light so far. Massachusetts is still waiting on its approval. Colorado got feedback from the Education Department, and then asked for more time to get its revised plan in.
The big ESSA onslaught is yet to come. Thirty-three states are scheduled to turn in their plans on Sept. 18, less than a week from now. (Hurricane-ravaged Texas gets extra time.)
So what did we learn from the first round of ESSA approvals? Here are some big takeaways.
1) The department’s feedback on plans may not be as influential as you’d expect.
The feds flagged certain issues with state plans. But by and large, states didn’t make big revisions in those areas—and got approved any way.
For instance, Connecticut and Vermont got their way on measuring student achievement. Both states will be able to use so-called “scale scores.” Those help capture student progress as opposed to straight up proficiency rates, which is what many people— including, at least initally, the department—said ESSA requires. Connecticut in particular did not stand down on this issue, telling the department that, “Webster’s dictionary defines proficiency not only as a state of being proficient, but also as an advancement in knowledge or skill.”
Tennessee will still get to use so-called “supersubgroups,” which combine different historically overlooked groups of students, such as minorities, English-language learners, and students in special education, for accountability purposes. That’s despite the fact that the department said this was a no-no in its initial feedback to the state.
In its revised plan, Tennessee promised to use both combined and broken-out subgroups in identifying schools for “targeted improvement” under the law. And the state provided some data to explain its reasoning behind having a combined black, Hispanic, and Native American subgroup. Tennesee argued that more schools would actually be identified as needing help using the supersubgroup approach than would be otherwise. That appeared to convince DeVos and her team, which gave Tennessee’s plan the thumbs-up in late August.
ESSA for the first time calls for states to factor into their accountability systems whether English-language learners are making progress in mastering the language. It’s supposed to be a separate component in the accountability system. But Connecticut incorporates English-language proficiency into the academic growth component of its plan. The department told the Nutmeg State to change that. Connecticut instead provided some more information to explain its thinking, and that seemed to work for the feds.
2) States worked the hardest to fix their plans in the areas where the department pushed the most.
3) Some state plans may not be as ambitious as some of ESSA’s architects hoped.
Arizona got approved to give much lower weight to the reading and math scores of students who have only been at a particular school for a short amount of time. Experts worry that it will diminish the importance of kids from transient populations—including poor and minority students.
North Dakota was told it needed to make sure that academic factors—things like test scores and graduation rates—carried “much greater weight” than other factors, such as student engagement and college-and-career readiness. So North Dakota upped the percentage from 48 percent for academic factors to 51 percent, according to an analysis by Chad Aldeman, a principal at Bellwether Education Partners, who reviewed select plans. That may not be what Congress had in mind when it used the words “much greater” weight, he said.
The department also asked North Dakota to be more specific about how it would decide which schools fall below the 67 percent graduation rate, triggering whole-school interventions. The state decided to go with schools where the six-year graduation rate falls below that threshold. That wouldn’t have flown under the Obama administration’s regulations for the law, which Congress nixed.
4) Some things in plans are still TBD, even though plans themselves are already approved.
Illinois is planning to use a mix of school quality indicators, including school climate and chronic abseneteeism. But the state is also hoping to add another unspecified measure aimed at elementary and middle schools, and a fine arts measure. The Land of Lincoln still has to figure out the details on those indicators.
And states haven’t yet had to provide lists of which schools will be flagged as needing extra help—or what kinds of strategies they’ll use to fix them. The lists of schools pinpointed for improvement won’t come out until after the 2017-18 school year.
“For the most part, [ESSA] hasn’t been a wild, crazy laboratory of reform, on how to identify and improve schools, that’s all sort of TBD,” Aldeman said.
Contact: (202) 401-1576, press@ed.gov
WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos today announced the approval of the District of Columbia, Illinois, Oregon and Tennessee consolidated state plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
“As more and more state plans come under the Department’s review, I am heartened to see how states have embraced the spirit of flexibility under ESSA to improve education for individual students,” said Secretary DeVos.
Allowing states more flexibility in how they deliver education to students is at the core of ESSA. Each state crafted a plan that it feels will best offer educational opportunities to meet the needs of the state and its students. The following are some of the unique elements from each state’s approved plan as highlighted by each state:
District of Columbia
Creates the School Transparency and Reporting (STAR) framework, a universal framework for every public school in DC that will provide an easy-to-understand annual rating to each school based on 1-5 stars.
Measures the quality of Pre-Kindergarten through use of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), which assesses the quality of teacher-child interactions in early childhood classrooms.
“DC’s plan is guided by our commitment to providing equitable access to high quality education for all students and flexibility for our schools to meet the unique needs of all students,” said DC State Superintendent for Education Hanseul Kang. “This plan is the right one for DC, and I am proud that it was informed by rigorous engagement with partners and community members, including the DC State Board of Education, local education agencies, parents, educators, and advocates.”
Illinois
Creates a College/Career Ready Indicator for high schools that measures the readiness of students for college based on several indicators, including GPA, performance on postsecondary readiness exams and attendance, in addition to considering community service hours, summer employment, participation in ROTC, and/or earning industry credentials.
Uses survey responses from students to help assign schools a “school climate” score, giving students a chance to provide meaningful feedback and ensuring the student perspective will be a part of the school’s overall summative rating.
“Illinois is committed to supporting the whole child in transforming learning opportunities for all students in our state,” said Illinois State Superintendent of Education Tony Smith, Ph.D. “We want every child to feel well known and well cared for in our schools and to receive the individual support they need for academic excellence and postsecondary success. The Illinois ESSA Plan gives us the opportunity to foster collaboration and partnerships to build educators’ and leaders’ capacity for improved student outcomes. We appreciate the partnership with the U.S. Department of Education throughout the ESSA process, and we look forward to our continued efforts on behalf of each and every child.”
Oregon
Prioritizes four commitments in its plan: advancing equity; creating a well-rounded education; strengthening district systems; and fostering ongoing stakeholder engagement.
Implements a new “Freshmen on track” measure to confirm that students have completed at least 6 credits within the first semester of freshmen year, recognizing the importance of credit attainment in early high school in order to graduate on time.
“Today is a tremendous milestone for Oregon. Oregon’s State Plan is founded on equity and represents the voices and communities we serve,” Oregon Deputy Superintendent Salam Noor said. “We want to put every one of our learners on a path to success from birth through high school, and beyond. And whether our students choose to attend college or go straight into the workforce, it’s critical that their school experience is full of opportunity, and ensures they are college and career ready.”
Tennessee
Supports teacher and principal residencies to create more high-quality pipeline opportunities for prospective candidates to move into those roles; also establishes new grant initiatives that focus on increasing innovation and diversity in the educator workforce.
Focuses on college readiness through the Tennessee Promise initiative.
“Our ESSA plan is built on what we’ve started in Tennessee and centered on the belief that every student should be ready for postsecondary when they graduate high school,” said Tennessee Education Commissioner Candice McQueen. “Tennessee’s education community helped us to create a strong plan that will help us take our work to the next level, and we look forward to continuing these partnerships now as we move forward.”
The plans detail how states will go about complying with the federal law in the coming years. The law goes into effect this fall.
DeVos has now approved 10 of the 17 submitted state ESSA plans. All of the states that have turned in plans have received feedback from the department…
No one ever said that higher education wouldn’t cost money. Across the country, tuition is steadily rising and students are taking longer to pay off their student loans.
Today, 44 million consumers share $1.4 trillion in borrowed student debt – more than double what it was in 2008. On average, graduating seniors with a bachelor’s degree begin their careers with about $30,000 in student loans, while graduate students are almost assured of incurring six-figure student debt.
All of these financial burdens have been acquired against a backdrop of an increasingly competitive global economy. The 21st Century marketplace is also dependent upon a highly-skilled workforce. Gone are the days when manufacturing could provide a steady and comfortable living. From steel to textiles and more, global competition requires America to work smarter and harder.
So why would the Trump Administration propose a $9.2 billion cut in education?
Over the next decade, the White House wants to ‘save’ $143 billion from college loan programs, including an end to $26.8 billion in subsidized loans. Currently, Pell Grants, designed to assist low-income students, are capped at less than $6,000 per scholastic year despite the average cost of tuition at a public college for its own state students approaching $10,000 per year.
Here’s one White House explanation on how less access to higher education going to help the nation’s ability to remain economically competitive.
“We’re no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs, but by the number of people we help get off of those programs,” said White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney during a May 23 press briefing.
It seems like the White House is really averse to more Americans receiving a higher education at a time when college costs and its resulting debt are on an upward trajectory. Certainly, education budget cuts will not ‘make America great again’.
Two days later and on the floor of the U.S. Senate, a diverging view was spoken, “Let’s give struggling students a fair chance,” said Illinois’ Senator Richard Durbin.
“We are seeing an increase in the wealth gap between college graduates with student debt and those without student debt”, Durbin continued. “The burdens of student debt are threatening the notion that being college-educated is enough to get ahead.”
Sen. Durbin went on to share the story of a Chicago constituent, the first in her family to attend college, who appealed to his office for help. The majority of the former student’s debts totaling $120,000 were private loans with high interest rates and monthly payments that were just as costly. The student also felt she had no chance of financial improvement due to an ill-conceived enactment of a bill that prevented such debts being discharged in bankruptcy.
Since 2005, student loan debt, unlike other types of unsecured debt cannot be a part of a bankruptcy filing. In other words, it’s the kind of debt that could potentially follow borrowers to the grave.
The Fairness for Struggling Students Act of 2017 (S. 1262), introduced by Sen. Durbin and co-sponsored by 11 other Senators would allow financially struggling borrows to discharge private student loans in bankruptcy. The law is anticipated to relieve high-cost private loans that seldom come with many of the flexible repayment terms offered by federal ones. Some private student loans come with variable interest rates, high origination fees and scant – if any – repayment options.
Already the bill has attracted the support of a large coalition of educational, student, civil rights and consumer organizations that include: the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), NAACP, the American Federation of Teachers, the Empire Justice Center, National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL).
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), in 2012, at least 850,000 private loan borrowers were in default in the amount of $8 billion. Two years later in 2014, CFPB analyzed more than 5,300 private student loan complaints filed between October 2013 and September 2014. That analysis found that the lack of affordable repayment plans, not a disregard for the debt, drove many borrowers to default.
Defaulting on a private student loan has the potential to bring even more financial calamity to borrowers. In some cases, the entire loan balance may become due in full, immediately. Loan defaults can also lower consumers’ credit profiles, preventing some borrowers from passing a background check for a job, obtaining housing, or accessing low interest forms of credit.
Additional CRL research has found that:
Four years after graduation, Black students with a bachelor’s degree owe almost double the debt their white classmates owe; and
While for-profit college enrollment represents 9.1 percent of all college students, these schools generate over 35 percent of all students who default on their loans; and
“Quality education is an investment – not a cost – to our nation’s future, noted Whitney Barkley-Denney, a CRL policy counsel. “Its policies and practices must assure student success while minimizing costly debt errors that become unnecessary burdens,”
“When students fall off a financial cliff, they should be able to discharge their private student loan debt in bankruptcy – just like people can with other kinds of debt,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren. “Banks fought hard more than a decade ago to exempt student loan debt from bankruptcy protections, and now we’ve seen the consequences: too many students are crushed by debt with no chance for a new start.”
Several years ago, when she was a high school teacher, a new assistant principal at Ockley Green Middle School broke a rule, partly because Portland Public Schools wasn’t vigilant about communicating and enforcing the standard.
The question: This one comes from a school-based leader who preferred to remain anonymous. This leader wants to know “What are the federal guidelines for ‘testing transparency?’ Schools are mandated to get 95 percent participation, but how is that possible is we tell parents of their opt out rights?”
Charlene Crowell, Published: 06 July 2017