The Delaware Department of Education released the first draft of the Delaware Every Student Succeeds Act this evening. I have read about 90% of it and I have many thoughts on it. Some I loathe just seeing them in writing, some I actually like, and some need to marinate for a day or two. There are a lot of variables with this: final regulations from the United State Dept. of Education, stakeholder group conversations in the next couple of months, and the usual big one: state funding.
In my opinion, it is going to be very hard to get accurate feedback until the regulations from the U.S. Department of Education have been finalized. Will this plan be a trick or a treat? Happy Halloween! Here is the plan. It begins with Delaware Secretary of Education Dr. Steven Godowsky’s letter, followed by the six sections, and some items from the appendices. I will have much, much more to say on this in the coming days.
Clarke moved to Delaware from New York a few years ago, and says she had a hard time finding information about daycare and preschool programs for her two young children.
“It’s just a lot of having to ask people and rely on people,” Clarke said. “And my concern there is, I’m an educated person working in the field of education and these are the hoops I have to go through, so I can imagine what it’s like for somebody who doesn’t have this much experience or doesn’t have the right resources.”
She’s now paying for her son to attend preschool at the Goddard School in Wilmington, but says she has just as many unanswered questions about kindergarten options now.
Delaware’s second draft ESSA plan states a commitment to strategies shifting to a pre-K through 12 model – instead of just K-12.
But it’s still unclear how the state plans to incorporate pre-K data into its accountability model.
“When you go into kindergarten, you’re expected to be able to write your letters: A, B, and C,” Clarke said. “But if you went to a daycare where you just sat and watched TV all day, and scribbled on paper, now you’re in kindergarten with 15 other students who do know their A,B,Cs and 5 students don’t – that’s an issue, that’s an issue for the teacher.”
Education advocates like Atnre Alleyne are happy the state’s plans are also adding factors like chronic absenteeism, but says the goal of cutting the achievement gap in half by 2030 isn’t ambitious enough.
“But what are the interim benchmarks that will let us know that students are actually getting towards their goals so that we don’t get to 2020, 2025 and 2030 and then once again it’s another reset?” Alleyne said.
The final draft plan will be released next Tuesday. That draft will be provided to the Governor and available for public comment for 30 days.
The Department of Education has said there could still be changes to the plan before it’s submitted to the US Department of Education on April 3rd.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have told the U.S. Department of Education that they are aiming to file their plans for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act by early April, in time for the first deadline set by the Obama administration.
Those states are Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont, plus the District of Columbia.
States have spent the past year reaching out to educators and advocates to decide how to handle everything from teacher effectiveness to school ratings to that brand new indicator of student success and school quality…
Sen. Jeff Sessions expressed skepticism during his confirmation hearing to be U.S. attorney general on Tuesday about executive branch guidance that has not gone through the full notice-and-comment rulemaking process and said he would be “dubious” about asking courts to defer to such guidance.
The Alabama Republican, who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice, was asked about such guidance by Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, who did not specifically cite the controversy over the Obama administration’s informal guidance on respecting the restroom choices of transgender individuals, but Lee appeared to have had that issue in mind…
A Delaware business’ $100,000 donation will allow 200 science teachers from across the state to continue in a leadership and professional learning program.
LabWare’s donation will allow the NextGen Teacher Leader project to extend into a third year.
Governor Jack Markell thanked Vance Kershner, president and CEO of LabWare, a Delaware-based laboratory informatics company, for his company’s continued support.
Under the NextGen Teacher Leader program, educators from across the state have developed and field tested units aligned to the new standards, sharing their knowledge and experiences with their colleagues in their buildings and across the state.
“The NextGen Teacher Leader project is not only an important initiative for supporting quality science education but also an opportunity for science educators to take on leadership responsibilities, one that allows them to do this without leaving the classroom for an administrative position,” Markell said.
This is the second gift LabWare has made to the program. Two years ago, LabWare donated $60,000 to help the state launch the program.
“LabWare is honored to be able to continue to support this very special initiative that will allow Delaware educators to continue their development and will allow students to understand core scientific concepts, to understand the scientific process of developing and testing ideas, and to have a greater ability to evaluate scientific evidence,” Kershner said.
Delaware was among 26 states that participated in the development of the Next Generation Science Standards, which emphasize inquiry, engineering design and understanding the broad concepts common to all scientific disciplines. The State Board of Education unanimously adopted the standards in September 2013, and the state has spent the years since preparing for implementation.
“For more than 200 years, our state has had a tradition of innovation in the sciences and technology, and employers continue to seek employees skilled in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. If we are going to ensure that Delaware students can meet that need, Delaware schools need to effectively prepare them for STEM careers,” Markell said. “That is why this investment means so much.”
Michelle Kutch, Brandywine School District’s director of STEM, science and social studies and co-chair of the Delaware Science Coalition, said that with the adoption of new standards comes the need for new curricula materials and a great deal of professional development for teachers.
“This is no easy feat and typically brings a large price tag that not one local education agency can carry on its own. The Science Coalition relies on the collaborative philosophy of sharing resources among member districts and charters, however new initiatives require monies above and beyond our budget. We are very thankful for the generosity of LabWare’s donation to our teacher leader program. We will be able to continue building our capacity in teacher leadership by providing quality professional development to our staff in supporting science education throughout the state,” she said.
Shelley Rouser, director of K12 initiatives and educator engagement at the Delaware Department of Education, said investments such as this in our teachers are so valuable.
“When it comes to ensuring the best education for our students – the best science education – we know it’s more about investing in people and less about purchasing programs. That is what is so significant about LabWare’s support,” she said. “Their trust in and support of teacher training and leadership development supported the launch of this teacher leader program two years ago, and we are thankful that they are committed to support sustaining it.”
Delaware Foundation for Science and Mathematics Education (DFSME) Executive Director Randy Guschl, Governor Jack Markell and LabWare President and CEO Vance Kershner
“Supplement, Not Supplant” Provision Ensures Federal Education Funding Provides Additional Programs, Supports, and Services to Help Schools and Students Most in Need”
Washington, DC – United States Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), along with seven other senators, urged the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to use the authority that it was given by Congress to fully enforce the “supplement, not supplant” provision in the recently-passed Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This provision helps ensure the law meets it goal of protecting the civil rights and educational opportunity for all students. The letter was signed by Senators Warren, Murphy, Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
The senators explain in their letter that the core purpose of the federal K-12 education law is “to protect the civil rights and educational opportunity for all students, especially our most vulnerable students,” and that the “supplement, not supplant” provision “is critical to ensure that states and districts spend federal education dollars to provide additional resources to low-income schools, and to not simply replace existing investments that states and school districts are already supposed to be making.”
The senators continue, “Simply put-we believe that state and local educational agencies should not use federal funds as an excuse to spend less money on low-income children…The Department has the authority and responsibility to enforce the fiscal accountability safeguards in ESSA through strong regulations and oversight, and that’s precisely what we expect to see.”
Read a PDF copy of the senators’ letter to ED here.
With the dust finally settling on the passage of ESSA—the Every Student Succeeds Act—the implications are clear: The pendulum has swung. No matter who becomes our next president, we are entering an era in which the federal government is loosening its grip on public education policy. Without that backstop, the onus of school accountability will rest squarely on the states with the start of the 2017-18 school year. As a result, public and private leaders at the state and local levels will need to fundamentally rethink their roles.
This has been a long time coming. The No Child Left Behind Act, the ESSA predecessor passed by Congress in 2001, created a fairly muscular federal role in public school accountability. Through legislative authority and funding allocations, the federal government inspired a shift toward rewards and sanctions based on student assessments developed by each of the states.
The Obama administration’s Race to the Top challenge, in 2009, took things further. By offering hundreds of millions of dollars of grant funding in exchange for important but hard-to-implement state strategies, the U.S. Department of Education catalyzed higher standards; aligned assessments; stronger teacher and school accountability; better college access; classroom innovation; and a raft of efforts to support these ideas at the classroom level.
Today, 14 years after No Child Left Behind was signed into law and six years after Race to the Top—its dollars spent and scrutinized—the country has repositioned the role of the federal government in education. Despite several unknowns about the path ahead, the left and the right seem to agree that power and influence should swing from the feds to the states…
A Delaware business’ $100,000 donation will allow 200 science teachers from across the state to continue in a leadership and professional learning program.
