Plan Emphasizes Fostering Equity in Education for All Students and Expands Measures for School Accountability & Student Success
Final Approval of the State’s ESSA Plan is Expected Early in 2018
September 11, 2017 — The Board of Regents today approved the New York Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan, which will be submitted to the United States Education Department (USDE) on September 18 for review and approval. It is anticipated that USDE will provide feedback to the Department in December 2017. Final approval of the state’s ESSA plan is expected early next year.
“Our ESSA plan is an action plan,” Board of Regents Chancellor Betty A. Rosa said. “The Regents and I are committed to ensuring that all students, regardless of background, zip code, first language or disability, get the help they need to succeed and thrive in school. Developing this plan has been an opportunity to incorporate the voices of communities, teachers and parents as we rethink how we look at accountability, equity and serving the whole child.”
“The ESSA plan we will now submit to USDE is responsive to the needs of students,” Commissioner MaryEllen Elia said. “This plan is the culmination of more than a year of collaboration with hundreds of stakeholders and members of the public who helped shape the plan throughout the process. And we’re not done. We will continue to engage with stakeholders to ensure everyone is given the opportunity to adjust to and feel comfortable with the new system as it’s implemented.”
The plan emphasizes fostering equity in education for New York’s students; expands measures for school support and accountability and student success; and requires school-level improvement plans for the lowest performing schools overall as well as schools with the lowest performance for certain student populations. The plan also includes strategies for supporting the professional growth of educators and ensuring that all students, including English language learners/Multilingual learners, immigrant students, migratory youth, homeless youth, and neglected and delinquent youth, have access to a well-rounded, culturally responsive education that supports their academic and social-emotional development.
The Department detailed highlights of the plan to the Board of Regents at its September meeting. Further, NYSED is developing summary documents for parents and teachers to explain the final ESSA plan, which is posted in full on the Department’s ESSA webpage.
Stakeholder Engagement
For the past year, NYSED has engaged diverse groups of stakeholders to solicit recommendations on how to craft an ESSA plan that best meets the needs of the state’s students, schools and communities. In support of these efforts, NYSED established an ESSA Think Tank with representatives from more than 100 organizations, including district leaders, teachers, parents, and community members. The Department also consulted with national education experts regarding ESSA, including Linda Darling-Hammond (Learning Policy Institute) and Scott F. Marion (National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment).
In addition, NYSED held more than 120 fall and winter regional in-person meetings across the state in coordination with the state’s 37 Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) and the superintendents of the state’s five largest City School Districts, which were attended by more than 4,000 students, parents, teachers, school and district leaders, school board members, and other stakeholders.
The Department received more than 800 written comments and 270 verbal comments at the meetings during public comment period. In addition to hosting 13 public hearings on the plan from May 11 through June 16, NYSED also held more than 120 stakeholder and public meetings between October 2016 and May 2017 to gather input to help inform the development of the draft plan.
Last month, NYSED released three ESSA waiver requests for public comment. The waivers, which will be submitted simultaneously with the draft ESSA plan, have been previously discussed with the Board of Regents and stakeholders. If approved these waivers will give New York additional flexibility in terms of the assessment of selected groups of middle level students who participate in Regents examinations, newly arrived ELLs/MLLs, and a small group of students with significant cognitive disabilities.
Next Steps
It is anticipated that USDE will provide feedback to the Department in December 2017. Final approval of the state’s ESSA plan is expected early next year. After the plan is approved by the USDE, the Department will work with BOCES District superintendents, superintendents, the ESSA Think Tank and other stakeholder groups to develop and provide guidance on implementing the ESSA plan.
The House bill funding the department for fiscal year 2018 would eliminate $2 billion in Title II funding for teacher training and class size reduction, and cut $100 million from current spending on after-school aid. (More on that last issue here.) The legislation, which was approved by a 211-198 vote, keeps Title I funding for disadvantaged students flat at about $15.4 billion, and also includes a $200 million increase for special education. It also rejects prominent elements of President Donald Trump’s budget proposal, most specifically on school choice—more on that below.
The House spending bill, which provides $66.1 billion to the Education Department as part of a broader $1.2 trillion spending package for various government agencies, must be reconciled with the Senate legislation. Unlike House lawmakers, Senators in charge of the appropriations process have so far, in the subcommittee and committee that oversee K-12 spending respectively, voted to increase spending slightly at the Education Department…
NY AMSTERDAM NEWS — In the months since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, activists and scholars have converged, condemning his violent and divisive racial rhetoric. In response to Trump’s rhetoric, leaders are working to build a resistance against an agenda that not only divides the country but also sets precedence for violent and discriminatory policies and actions.
The New School, known for its innovative work in areas of social change, has launched “Race in the U.S.,” a free and public lecture series on race relations in America. It features a dynamic lineup of conversations with community activists, scholars and policy changers.
As if it were planned for such a tense moment in our country, the lecture series was originally inspired by New School students’ desires to connect on the topic of race.
Michelle DePass, dean of the Milano School of International Affairs and one of the course organizers, said students were inspired by the work of the Black Lives Matter movement years ago and started galvanizing around race politics then. Now, with the launch of the lecture series, there is an opportunity to build a new program that integrates both an academic class of advocates and activists in the area of race.
“As we follow and work with our student body, we find that our students are very intersectional, and we realized that after this election, we cannot be in our silos anymore,” DePass said. “What this course is really doing is intersecting race with so many different aspects and elements of our society and lifting up the cover and saying that you really think you exist in this safe zone or this zone where the issues of the system have not touched you, but they actually have.”
What do we do in the toxic climate we have today? That is the question for which the lecture series hopes to stir up an answer. The New School social justice masterminds and scholars DePass, Maya Wiley and Darrick Hamilton joined forces to create this platform for impactful conversations with activists, organizers and scholars such as Shanelle Matthews of Black Lives Matter and Linda Saursour, a Muslim rights advocate and Women’s March organizer.
Wiley, fairly new to the New School staff, serves as the VP for social justice at the university. She previously served as a counsel to New York Mayor de Blasio, advising on legal matters. Now she is
working with the school to integrate social justice actions from the school community level to engaging students on social justice matters through curriculum.
This course, she says, is about engaging various groups within the community of social change both in academia and on the grass roots level.
“One of the things that we’ve always had at the New School is academics who are not just researching areas of injustice and inequalities, but are also thinking about how they get solved,” Wiley said. “So part of the ‘new’ in the New School is forms of pedagogy that work on and engage in real world solutions.”
Hamilton, who oversees the Ph.D. students within the Milano School and is an associate professor of economics and urban policy, is anticipating that the course will be a training ground for an “army of social justice warriors.”
Through public lectures like those offered in “Race in the U.S.,” students will be challenged by ideas and equipped with the tools they need to enact social change in strategic ways.
The organizers of the course believe that without properly understanding how to read and interpret data, activists cannot serve their causes, and it is in this way the worlds of academia and grass roots organizing converge.
“This course would have existed whether or not Donald Trump was president because we were talking about it well before the election was concluded,” Wiley stated. “But I do think it’s elevated the critical nature of the time we are in, that the discourse of what happened during the campaign has become the national discourse. I think about our students that are both active and horrified at the world they are inheriting and having some space not only about what it means, but how they can do something.”
The course will be held Mondays through Dec. 11, 2017 at the New School. It will also be available on Livestream. It is free and available to the public. For more information, visit https://courses.newschool.edu/courses/UTNS2000?sec=7497.
WisconsinGov. Scott Walker refused to sign the state’s ESSA plan. In a letter Walker and his administration cited concerns with the plan: “Your bureaucratic proposal does little to challenge the status quo for the benefit of Wisconsin’s students.
The New York State Board of Regents on Monday approved a plan laying out the state’s goals for its education system, as required by the sweeping federal education law signed by President Barack Obama in 2015 known as the Every Student Succeeds Act.
The Regents’ approval means the state can now submit its plan to the federal Department of Education for review and approval.
The plan details how the Regents will implement the federal law, including how individual schools will be evaluated and identified for what the law refers to as either comprehensive or targeted support and improvement.
Under the plan, elementary and middle schools would continue to be evaluated on English and math test scores and high schools on graduation rates. But the plan would also hold schools accountable for other measures, such as performance on science and social studies exams, the number of students making progress in achieving English language proficiency, college and career readiness, chronic absenteeism and, eventually, out-of-school suspensions.
Education Week — Last year at this time then-U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. was on a back-to-school bus tour through a swath of the South, touring school districts hit by a hurricane, and dropping by a charter high school in New Orleans to talk to students about a recent turnaround effort.
Now he’s the president and CEO of the Education Trust, which looks out for poor and minority children. And he’s got a new side gig, teaching an education policy class at the University of Maryland.
I caught up with King at his offices in Washington and talked to him about some of the changes in Washington over the past year and where he sees things heading…
Senators are pouring cold water on U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ vision of a big new investment in school choice, as well as the Trump administration’s plans to dramatically slash spending at the U.S. Department of Education.
Legislation on both fronts received bipartisan support from the full Senate appropriations committee last week. In addition to barring the administration from using federal funding for vouchers or public school choice, it would continue paying for two high-profile programs the Trump administration is seeking to scrap: Title II, which provides $2.05 billion in federal funding to hire and train educators, and 21st Century Community Learning Centers, which provides $1.2 billion for after-school and summer programs.
But the teacher-training program isn’t out of the woods just yet. The House of Representatives spending bill, which will have to be hashed out in conference with the Senate measure, still aims to eliminate that program. The House’s version of the bill would, however, provide $1 billion for 21st Century Community Learning Centers, meaning it is almost certain to stick around in the 2018-19 school year.
Bottom Line
Overall, the Senate’s spending bill includes a lot more money for the department’s bottom line than the administration wanted. It would provide $68.3 billion overall, a slight increase of $29 million over the current level for fiscal 2017, which ends Sept. 30 and generally affects the 2017-18 school year. That’s in contrast to the House’s proposal, which would provide $66 billion for the department, down $2.4 billion from the current budget.
The administration had been hoping for a $1 billion boost for the nearly $15 billion Title I program, the largest federal K-12 program, which is aimed at covering the cost of educating disadvantaged students. It had planned to use that increase for a new program that would allow districts to have federal funding follow students to the school of their choice.
And the Trump team had hoped to use a new $250 million investment in the Education Innovation and Research program—which is supposed to help scale up promising practices in states and school districts—to nurture private school choice.
The Senate bill essentially rejects both of those pitches. It instead would provide a $25 million boost for Title I and $95 million for the research program, a slight cut from the current level of $100 million.
But importantly, the legislation wouldn’t give DeVos and her team the authority to use money from either of those pots for school choice. In fact, the committee said in language accompanying the bill that the secretary needs to get the OK from Congress to create a school choice initiative with the funds.
That isn’t the first setback for DeVos’ school choice ambitions. The full House approved a funding bill last week that doesn’t provide any new money for the administration’s school choice proposals.
And it is looking less and less likely that the administration will be able to get a federal tax-credit scholarship included in a forthcoming measure to overhaul the tax code. Such a program, a version of which is in place in at least 16 states, would give a tax break to individuals or corporations that donate to K-12 scholarship-granting organizations. DeVos and her team are said to be working on the idea behind the scenes, but it’s already drawn pushback from conservative organizations, including the influential Heritage Foundation.
Small Victory
Still, the Trump team may end up with a small victory when it comes to charter schools, which for years have enjoyed bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. The Senate bill includes a $25 million increase for charter school grants, which would bring them to $367 million. That’s not as high as the $167 million boost the administration asked for, or even as high as the $28 million the House is seeking.
The committee is proposing $450 million for another program that the administration sought to zero-out completely: the Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants, the new block-grant program created under the Every Student Succeeds Act. The program, which can be used for almost anything from computer science programs to band instruments and Advanced Placement test fees, is now receiving $400 million. It is slated to receive $500 million under a bill approved by the House appropriations committee earlier this year.
Separately, the bill would provide level funding for special education state grants, keeping them at about $12.2 billion. It would allocate $1.1 billion for Career and Technical Education grants, the same level as last year. The Trump administration had pitched a $165 million reduction.
The Head Start program, an early-childhood-education program for low-income children, would receive $9.3 billion in the Senate bill. That’s about the same as the current level. The House bill includes a $22 million boost for Head Start. The National Head Start Association, which represents centers, said in a statement that the Senate’s plan to flat-fund the program could lead to cuts down the road.
Published in Print: September 13, 2017, as Senate Bill Blocks Trump, DeVos on K-12 Cuts, School Choice
BEACON – The Howland Public Library is all a buzz with excitement. The library’s teen Battle of the Books team, The Beacon Buzzers, took home first place in the Mid-Hudson Library System’s 2nd Annual High School Battle of the Books. The regional literary contest took place at Poughkeepsie Day School, on August 19th. Congratulations to Beekman Public Library’s team “Where’s Ralph” second place winners and Kingston Public Library’s “Hardcore Hardcovers T2” who came in third.
This year, eleven public libraries in the Mid-Hudson Library System’s five counties (Putnam, Dutchess, Columbia, Ulster and Greene) competed in this nationally recognized literature contest in which teens answer trivia questions based on books they all read this summer.
Individual library teams worked all summer with their coaches to prepare for this final regional battle. Mini-battles were played throughout the summer to practice for the big event. Over 60 students in grades 9-12 participated as coaches, family, and friends cheered on. The teams all proved to be winners when it came to knowledge, team spirit, and good sportsmanship.
A big thank you to the host venue, Poughkeepsie Day School, all of the volunteers and families who came out to support the teams, and the coaches and librarians who worked so hard throughout the year to make this special event possible. Much appreciated sponsors include The Allstate Foundation through the Sorrentino Agency in the Town of Newburgh and donations from many library Friends Groups. The Howland Public Library team would like to give a special shout out to the The Friends of the Howland Public Library who generously sponsor the Beacon team every year and Pleasant Ridge Pizza for keeping the team’s hungry minds fed all summer. The Howland Public Library is all a buzz with excitement. The library’s teen Battle of the Books team, The Beacon Buzzers, took home first place in the Mid-Hudson Library System’s 2nd Annual High School Battle of the Books. The regional literary contest took place at Poughkeepsie Day School, on August 19th. Congratulations to Beekman Public Library’s team “Where’s Ralph” second place winners and Kingston Public Library’s “Hardcore Hardcovers T2” who came in third.
This year, eleven public libraries in the Mid-Hudson Library System’s five counties (Putnam, Dutchess, Columbia, Ulster and Greene) competed in this nationally recognized literature contest in which teens answer trivia questions based on books they all read this summer.
Individual library teams worked all summer with their coaches to prepare for this final regional battle. Mini-battles were played throughout the summer to practice for the big event. Over 60 students in grades 9-12 participated as coaches, family, and friends cheered on. The teams all proved to be winners when it came to knowledge, team spirit, and good sportsmanship.
A big thank you to the host venue, Poughkeepsie Day School, all of the volunteers and families who came out to support the teams, and the coaches.
(CNN Money) — Florence Yu can’t believe her luck. She’s starting college the same year New York made tuition free for middle-class students like her.
New York’s Excelsior Scholarship is the first of its kind. It covers the cost of tuition for qualifying students who are enrolled in a two- or four-year degree program at any of the state’s 88 public colleges and university campuses.
Plans for the scholarship were announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo in January. At first, students planning to attend college this fall didn’t know whether it would become reality in time. It was officially approved by the legislature in April.
“I called my Dad at work, and I’m like ‘oh my God, Dad, I could get free tuition.’ It was so exciting and I remember it so vividly because it was so life changing,” Yu said.
She’s now a freshman at Stony Brook University double majoring in business and health science.
Like other students, Yu had to apply for the scholarship and didn’t find out until August whether she qualified. The good news finally came, just before it was time to pay the bill. Her parents, immigrants from Myanmar, always wanted her and her brother to go to college, but were worried about finances.
“I’ve never seen my Dad so happy. He knows I really wanted to go to Stony Brook and he was really stressed about paying. Now he’s able to, so it really changed a lot,” Yu said.
A ‘life changing’ option
When Governor Cuomo announced the program he said that college, like high school, “should always be an option even if you can’t afford it.”
While similar programs in other states have made tuition free for community college students, the Excelsior Scholarship is the first to include those pursuing a four-year degree.
The scholarship could save students as much as $27,000 over four years by cutting out tuition costs. The award doesn’t cover fees charged by the school, or room and board. Students must also agree to live in state after college for the same number of years they received the scholarship, or it will be converted to a loan.
Bonnie Tang, another Stony Brook freshman, is commuting from her home in Brooklyn, saving her about $13,000 in room and board costs. She’ll have to buy a monthly train pass. And she’ll still pay about $2,560 in fees this year. But everything else is free.
“My tuition is paid for and that saves me a lot of money,” she said.
Tyler Mendoza, also a freshman at Stony Brook, and James Martello, a freshman at the University at Albany, both say they probably would have gone to a community college instead if they hadn’t received the Excelsior Scholarship.
Gianluca Russo transferred to the University at Albany this year after finishing his associate’s degree from Schenectady County Community College. The scholarship, he said, convinced him to stay in state to pursue a bachelor’s in journalism.
Many won’t qualify
An estimated 75,000 people applied for the scholarship this year, but an initial projection from the governor’s office said only about 23,000 would receive it. An official number has yet to be released as summer course credits are counted and community college students continue to enroll for the fall semester.
Officials from several schools said the biggest reason why students were disqualified was because they receive other need-based grants that already cover the full cost of tuition. The Excelsior Scholarship doesn’t offer additional funds to help with other expenses.
Other students are disqualified because their family income is too high. This year, the scholarship is offered to those who earn up to $100,000 a year. The limit will rise to $110,000 next year, and then up to $125,000 for the 2019-20 school year and thereafter.
Some critics say the Excelsior Scholarship may spend too many taxpayer dollars subsidizing the cost of tuition for students who would be enrolling anyway, and still leaves students from the lowest-income families behind. The program is expected to cost $87 million this year, and $163 million annually once fully implemented.
The scholarship is designed to help those students whose families previously earned a little too much to qualify for financial aid.
“While many students with the greatest financial aid have always attended CUNY tuition-free, far too many families just above the income eligibility — which means most middle class families — received little or no state or federal aid,” said CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken in a statement emailed to CNNMoney.
The Excelsior Scholarship will “help remedy this problem,” he said.
Income isn’t the only eligibility requirement. Students must be a state resident and they must maintain a full time schedule. That disqualifies many community college students going to school while working. It also makes it tough for adults wanting to return to school to finish a degree they started years ago.
Ahmad James, 35, is one of those students. He has stopped and started college twice. Once because two deaths in the family required him to help out at home, and once because of Hurricane Sandy, which forced him out of his apartment. He found a new place in Long Island, but it extended his commute to work and didn’t leave time for class.
But after he applied for the Excelsior Scholarship, he was told he was ineligible because he “did not earn a sufficient number of credits in each year” he was previously enrolled. The program requires you to take an average of 30 credits a year.
He’s working on finding other ways to help pay for college so he can advance his career in social services.
“I have the experience, but I need the piece of paper to do exactly what I want to do with my life,” James said.
A ‘positive buzz’ on campus
It’s too early to tell the impact the scholarship will have on New York’s college campuses.
Many incoming freshmen had to enroll before officially being awarded the scholarship. Transfer students, though, were more likely to find out about the scholarship before making their decision. The University at Albany saw an 11% jump in applications from transfer students this year, which officials attribute at least in part to the Excelsior Scholarship.
More students are certainly expected to receive the scholarship in the future, as the income cap rises and awareness grows.
“It’s creating a very positive buzz about public higher ed,” said Stony Brook President Samuel Stanley.
“If you go around the country the story has generally been states pulling back on support of higher education, putting more of the burden on students and their families. So this is really changing that narrative in a very dramatic way,” he said.
NY AMSTERDAM NEWS — In the months since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, activists and scholars have converged, condemning his violent and divisive racial rhetoric. In response to Trump’s rhetoric, leaders are working to build a resistance against an agenda that not only divides the country but also sets precedence for violent and discriminatory policies and actions.
BEACON – The Howland Public Library is all a buzz with excitement. The library’s teen Battle of the Books team, The Beacon Buzzers, took home first place in the Mid-Hudson Library System’s 2nd Annual High School Battle of the Books. The regional literary contest took place at Poughkeepsie Day School, on August 19th. Congratulations to Beekman Public Library’s team “Where’s Ralph” second place winners and Kingston Public Library’s “Hardcore Hardcovers T2” who came in third.