A key section of Michigan’s plan to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act is so sparse that the U.S. Department of Education isn’t sure it’s ready for formal review, according to a letter the agency published Tuesday.
The department told the state chief, Brian Whiston, the information it provided “was insufficient” to “adequately review” the section of the plan dealing with the state’s accountability system, arguably the heart of ESSA. That could be partly because the state’s application, filed this spring, Michigan offers three possible approaches on accountability. (Michigan has since settled on one of them, a “dashboard”, Whiston said.)
Otherwise the letter, which followed a phone call between state officials and the education department on the plan, is fairly light when it comes to the list of things the state needs to fix. (More on that below).
Acting Assistant Secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education Jason Botel may not hold that title much longer, sources say. Botel, who was named to his post in April, may take on another role within the administration or leave altogether.
Botel, a former charter school principal and state advocate, has been the administration’s point person on implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, in the office that oversees key federal K-12 programs.
In that role he’s gotten criticism, including from Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate education committee and an ESSA architect. Alexander and others have said Botel has gone beyond the boundaries of the law, particularly in his feedback to Delaware which questioned the ambitiousness of the state’s goals. Alexander told Education Week that it appeared Botel hadn’t read the law carefully…
It is 50 years since the Detroit riot, which followed a police raid on an unlicensed bar in 1967. The intensity of that event was surpassed previously only by the 1863 New York City draft riots during the Civil War, and subsequently by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. By the time it ended, 43 people were dead and over 1,000 injured. The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and the National Guard were deployed. At least 2,000 buildings were destroyed in a neighborhood that, half a century later, remains largely a wasteland.
The chaos, violence and brutality erupted in a city of multiple ills, with discrimination in policing, housing and employment rife; the quality of public education incredibly poor; and limited access to medical services. The riot erupted in one of the most neglected neighborhoods, in one of the nation’s most segregated cities—and little changed as Detroit continued its decline in the 50 years that followed. The city’s traditional public school system—which could and should have been a great equalizer, helping erase other injustices—has been dubbed the worst in the nation.
Today, as in many other cities where the public education system all but collapsed, public charter schools, which operate independently of the traditional school system, educate a large share of students enrolled in public schools. Taxpayer-funded and tuition-free—like traditional public schools—public charter schools may determine their own school curriculum and culture, while being held accountable for improved student performance by their authorizer, which can demand changes and even close campuses.
[/media-credit] Dr. Ramona Edelin is executive director of the D.C. Association of Chartered Public Schools.
Proficiency as measured by standardized test scores is better than at its nadir, but still far from satisfactory. There are some bright points, however. Charters have helped raise student proficiency. Of those public school students who took standardized tests in school year 2015-2016, 50 percent were enrolled in charters—but 61 percent of those who scored as “proficient” were charter students, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. And nearly half of charter students significantly outperform their Detroit Public Schools counterparts, Stanford University’s Center for Research and Education found.
With 53 percent of public school students enrolled in charters, Detroit has followed a similar path to the nation’s capital, which has a 46 percent charter school share. Only Katrina-hit New Orleans at 92 percent is higher among large cities. Washington, D.C. had similar problems with its public school system, as well as many of the same economic and social issues. Washington also began to innovate in its public schools with charters in the mid-1990s, amid a traditional system that, like Detroit, was seriously in decline academically, organizationally dysfunctional and dangerous to student safety.
If anything, the charter and other education reforms introduced in the District of Columbia have produced even more significant gains for the public education offering in the city as a whole.
Before the charter reform, half the public school students dropped out before graduating. Last year, the on-time—within four years—high-school graduation rate was 73 percent for charters, and 69 percent for DCPS, lower than the national rate, but fast catching up.
Standardized test scores also significantly improved at both charters and DCPS, with the strongest gains in the most underserved neighborhoods—not at the expense of a varied and diverse curriculum, but alongside one.
As public schools of choice, charters have brought options to families who pre-reform would have lacked the means to access alternatives to substandard schooling—especially important in a city where three in four public school children are economically-disadvantaged and half are defined as “at risk.”
The demand for these unique public schools is such that nearly 10,000 students are on waiting lists to attend one or more charter campuses in the school year about to begin. Demand for traditional public schools in the out-of-boundary program also has increased. And parental choice has been simplified by DCPS and D.C. charter participation in the common lottery, which allocates places when schools’ popularity causes them to be over-subscribed.
Charters’ success also has catalyzed improvements in the traditional public school system, following the introduction of mayoral-control of DCPS and the appointment of three reforming School Chancellors.
From Detroit, Washington, D.C. and New Orleans to the 13 other urban school districts where the charter share is above 30 percent, education reform has been a beneficial agent of change. This reform transforms the lives and life prospects of children growing up in our nation’s most troubled and vulnerable urban communities—for both traditional and chartered public school students.
Our blog post last week introduced the topic of “charter-district collaboration”, and reported on the status of Minneapolis’ District-Charter Collaboration Compact, as well as the Minneapolis Public Schools and Hiawatha Academies Collaboration Agreement.
In a January 2017 report, the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) wrote about the status of collaboration in the 23 cities that have signed a District-Charter Collaboration Compact. CRPE determined that five cities—Boston, Chicago, Denver, Central Falls, and New Orleans—have charter and district schools working together in a robust manner such that “systemic issues of equity for students and access to resources are being addressed.”
Below are summaries of the benefits that the aforementioned cities’ districts and charters have experienced from the Compacts, as well as key takeaways for Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities.
Boston
In September 2011, Boston’s mayor, 16 charter school organizations, and Boston Public Schools (BPS) signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact, with the Catholic Archdiocese joining later on. According to CRPE, “Boston’s Compact is one of the strongest and most successful collaboration efforts in the country.” Some of the benefits that have resulted from the collaboration are:
School partnerships between district, charter, and Catholic schools in order to identify and share classroom level strategies
Shared use of data to locate and learn from classrooms and schools where students are thriving academically
Nationally recognized, researched based professional development for teachers from all three sectors for English language learners
Coordinated release times across sectors helped BPS save roughly $1 million per year in transportation costs
Two charter organizations (three schools) received leases for vacant buildings
The Compact was renewed in the fall of 2015 with new personnel dedicated to continuing the collaborative work between the three sectors. In September of 2015, Mayor Walsh called upon the Compact to help improve Boston’s enrollment process so that it would be “simple, unified, and equitable for all public schools.”
Additionally, in April 2017, the Boston Compact announced one of their new initiatives, the Boston Educators Collaborative. Through the Collaborative, Boston teachers are able to attend free classes that cover a range of topics from mathematical thinking to the impact of culture in the classroom.
Chicago’s District-Charter Collaborative Compact was signed in November 2011 by Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the Illinois State Board of Education, and the Illinois State Charter School Commission (INCS). Over the course of six years, across three CPS superintendents, and with constant help from INCS, Chicago has accomplished substantial achievements for both district and charter schools. Some of the accomplishments include:
Joint lobbying by both district and charter schools produced increases in funding for all public schools
A cross-sector committee designed the School Quality Rating Policy, which is a common tool that provides parents with comparisons of schools across multiple metrics
District and charter leaders are regularly brought together for professional development, with feedback on the program being very positive
Charter schools saw a rise in facility funds from the district
Denver signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact in December 2010 and, in 2012, they were awarded $4 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to continue and build on their work. Since then, Denver has had several wins, including:
Implementing a common enrollment system
Creating a unified accountability system
Correcting an inequitable distribution of levy dollars across district and charter schools
Cross-sector professional development specifically targeted to better serve special education students and English Language Learners
Denver also has a District-Charter Collaborative Council that discusses and develops policy recommendations to improve the way that the district and charter schools collaborate and work together.
In August 2011, Central Falls signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact. The Compact had been largely pushed by Central Falls’ superintendent, Dr. Frances Gallo, and received support from the school board. Early in the Compact the focus was on joint professional development, sharing a reading curriculum and bilingual language knowledge, cross-sector teacher fellowships, combined teacher recruitment, and facilities.
Even though Gallo retired in 2015, Central Falls School District and charter school leaders have continued to collaborate. According to their website, the Compact is collaboratively working on strategies around human capital and STEAM learning strategies, special education, and parent engagement.
While New Orleans’ citywide portfolio model is very different from the educational landscape in Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities, there are still lessons that can be learned from their June 2012 Charter-District Collaboration Compact. For example, the initial Compact agreement helped launch the OneApp common enrollment system and produced an “equity report”, which includes information regarding student achievement, growth, and demographic data for each school in New Orleans. They also developed a new, equitable system for distributing per-pupil funding to schools for their students with special needs.
Additionally, New Orleans’ district and charter leaders collaborated to create a set of universal school discipline standards that were adopted by all of the city’s public schools. Further, all of the city’s public schools implemented the Louisiana Recovery School District’s centralized school expulsion system, which has ensured consistent behavioral expectations across schools and has resulted in a decrease in expulsion rates.
Even though Minneapolis’ District-Charter Collaboration Compact is currently inactive, there is no reason why they, or other Minneapolis cities, cannot take advantage of the benefits that come from charter-district collaborative relationships. Some of the key takeaways from the five cities’ Compacts are that collaboration between the two sectors can result in:
Increased funding for all public schools
Sharing of best practices and professional development, particularly with regard to students who are ELL or have special needs
Unified data, accountability, and enrollment systems
Increased charter access to facilities and facility funding
In their report, CRPE asserted that for a rising number of school districts, “cooperative action between districts and charter schools is a necessity, not a nicety.” With over 21 percent of Minneapolis students, 23 percent of St. Paul students, and 15 percent of Duluth students attending charter schools, it’s time for the two sectors to set aside their differences and develop collaborative relationships for the benefit of students, schools, families, and communities.
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. – West Virginia students showed improvement in math in six of the seven grade levels assessed on the 2017 statewide summative assessments, and half of the students in grade 11 were proficient in English language arts (ELA), according to results released today at the West Virginia State Board of Education meeting.
Results from both the 2017 West Virginia General Summative Assessment and the West Virginia Alternate Summative Assessment were combined to obtain the final assessment results released today. About 150,000 students took the West Virginia General Summative Assessment, while about 2,200 students who have significant cognitive disabilities took the alternate assessment.
“I am pleased to see improvements within mathematics, but recognize we still have work to do to ensure our students are mastering the skills necessary at each grade level,” said West Virginia Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Steven Paine. “I am confident we will continue to see improvements as our standards are fully implemented and new math instructional materials are adopted.”
Results were presented for math and ELA in grades 3-8 and grade 11. The West Virginia State Board of Education voted not to test students in math and ELA in grades 9 and 10 earlier this year.
Math scores improved in grades 4-8 and 11, but dropped 1 percentage point, from 49 percent to 48 percent, in grade 3; however, that grade still had the highest percent proficient in math across all the grade levels. The biggest gain in math occurred in grade 4 where 43 percent of students were proficient in 2017 compared to 40 percent in 2016.
Although ELA did not see as many gains as math, the percent proficient in ELA was still greater than the percent proficient in math in most grades. ELA proficiency ranged from a low of 45 percent in in grades 3, 6 and 8 to a high of 50 percent in grade 11. The percent proficient in grade 11 increased 1 percentage point from last year’s 49 percent, but ELA scores dipped slightly in grades 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8; the percentage proficient in grade 8 stayed the same as last year at 48 percent.
In science, the percent proficient in grade 10 increased from 36 percent last year to 39 percent this year, while 37 percent of students were proficient in grade 5 and 38 percent in grade 8. In previous years, the science test was administered in grades 4, 6 and 10.
Spring 2017 was the third and final administration of the Smarter Balanced assessment. In response to legislation passed in 2017, the WVDE has issued two request for proposals to identify new assessments that will be used during the 2017-18 school year. One assessment will be selected for grades 3-8 and another assessment, which must be a college-entrance exam, will be selected for grade 11. The WVDE plans to announce the new statewide assessments by September 1.
Fifty Democrats in Congress have urged Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to nominate a “qualified individual” to run the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights, and are continuing to criticize her approach to issues ranging from sexual assault to transgender student rights protections.
In a letter Tuesday, the Democratic lawmakers specifically singled out Candice Jackson, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights, for displaying a “hostility towards the very mission and functions of the office she is charged to lead.” More broadly, the lawmakers criticized the department’s approach to investigations involving students of color, English-language learners, and LGBTQ students, among others.
DeVos’s approach to civil rights has become one of the most controversial parts of her work during her first six months on the job. The secretary has said that the education department’s office for civil rights under Obama was too aggressive and too eager to pursue broad cases against institutions, leaving individual students’ civil rights complaints to languish…
Remember the Every Student Succeeds Act’s brand new program aimed at helping states try out new forms of testing?
If not, you’re in good company. We hardly hear anything about ESSA’s “innovative assessment pilot” anymore, including from the U.S. Department of Education. That could change, however. The agency is considering next steps to open the pilot in the 2018-19 school year, a spokesman said.
When ESSA passed back in December 2015, the pilotâwhich would initially allow up to seven states to try out new forms of testing in a handful of districts for federal accountability purposesâwas one of the most eye-catching pieces of the new law. State officials crammed conference rooms and jumped on webinars to figure out how to apply. Two big states, New York and California, expressed at least some interest. And Colorado even passed a law requiring the state education agency to seek the flexibility…
Last week, the Pennsylvania Department of Education released a draft of its plan to comply with the new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Under the new law, states were given more leeway in how to set education policy and spend federal public school dollars. The most notable news within the report was the announcement that PDE plans to unveil a new school quality metric in 2018 that it believes will foster a more holistic student experience, one less narrowly focused on state standardized tests.
But within the 133 page report there were a few other noteworthy facts about Pennsylvania public schools that caught our attention.
We can all agree that students are a key stakeholder in their own education. When they are involved in the assessment process and in their own learning, the result is an improvement in achievement. So while reviewing test results with them after the fact is important, communicating with students – as a class or individually – before they test is equally important. Here are seven things to consider discussing with your students before testing:
Explain where the test fits in the bigger picture.Any given test or assessment is just one piece of their overall progress as students. This one test on this one day is not the sole measure of their potential or their future. A better understanding of context will help them better understand how it all fits together.
Share how the test results will affect their overall class grade.Often, students are unaware of why they are being tested or why the teachers need the data they are looking for. Is it going to be used for setting student or class goals, establishing a grade, or for placement purposes? Share this information with your students before the test so that they are aware of exactly what the score of the test will mean to them. If it does not affect their class grade, let them know that, too.
Pre-empt questions about what their data will look like and who will be seeing it.Depending on the age of your students, you should consider sharing with them what results you’ll be receiving after the test, what results they as students will receive, and what will be shared with their parents.
Take the fear out of the testing jargon.Words like evaluate, criteria, evidence, and scores can be scary for some students. While they may seem obvious and interchangeable to you as a teacher, it’s helpful to students to explain these definitions to them and set their minds at ease.
Clarify the testing environment.Some students are less familiar than others when it comes to testing and how testing schedules can interrupt a given week. Providing better clarification can help alleviate student stress. Let them know if it will be a one-day test or if it will happen over a period of days. Provide insights into breaks, whether they can use the restrooms, and what they should bring with them on testing days.
Make any transition to computers or tablets easy.If there is a computer lab being used as part of the testing process, be sure they know where the lab is, how the computer will be used as part of the test, and how to log in.
Provide the dates of the next assessment.When you explain growth over time to students, it helps to share a basic schedule of how the assessments will be administered. Let them know when the next one will occur and whether it will be similar to the one they are preparing for now. This is a great way to emphasize a focus on growth.
Getting students on the same page before an assessment or test can really help settle nerves and reduce stress. If you have time, consider one-on-one meetings with your students to allay individual concerns or answer specific questions. If your students are taking the MAP® Growth™ assessment, you should consult this post in particular – 11 Talking Points for Teachers Preparing Students for the MAP Test. And stay tuned here on the blog, where every Tuesday we will feature some of our best tips and resources as you head back to school.
By Ramona Edelin Special to the AFRO
We can all agree that students are a key stakeholder in their own education. When they are involved in the assessment process and in their own learning, the result is an improvement in achievement. So while reviewing test results with them after the fact is important, communicating with students – as a class or individually – before they test is equally important. Here are seven things to consider discussing with your students before testing: