The grinding, two-year process of drafting accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act has upended states’ K-12 political landscape and laid bare long-simmering factions among power brokers charged with putting the new federal education law into effect this school year.
The details tucked into dozens of plans being turned in to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos this week were hammered out by a hodgepodge of elected and appointed officials—from governors and legislators to state school board members and local superintendents—during sometimes sparsely attended meetings, caucuses, and task force sessions.
Further complicating matters, 12 governors, half the nation’s state superintendents, and half of legislatures’ education committee chairpersons are new to office since the passing of ESSA in December 2015, when significant policy leeway was handed back to the states from the federal government.
“The problem with devolution and decentralization is that, by definition, you’re going to get a lot of variation … in terms of effort, political will, and the effectiveness of those efforts,” said Patrick McGuinn, a political scientist at Drew University in New Jersey who has studied state and federal policy and followed the implementation of ESSA.
In many cases, politicians, lobbyists, and membership organizations used their political prowess, technical expertise, and longevity to successfully push their agendas in the crafting of 51 state-level ESSA accountability plans.
Friction Points
Hammering out plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act has been a source of tension for rival policymakers in many states.
Governors
Governors in Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, and Wisconsin rejected their states’ ESSA plans after the required 30-day review process. The plans can be submitted without governor approval—indeed, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos approved Louisiana’s plan—but such a thumbs-down indicates to the federal Education Department that there’s not political consensus over details.
State Boards of Education
In states such as Delaware, North Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia, legislatures attempted to strip the powers of their state boards of education over key education policy areas even as the states readied their approaches to ESSA implementation. In North Carolina, the state board sued the legislature over an education law passed during a special session that board members said violated the state’s constitution.
Legislatures
Lawmakers in states such as Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, and West Virginia passed bills that dictated components of states’ ESSA plans regarding school accountability and testing. That left local superintendents and state board members frustrated.
State Chiefs
State superintendents in Alabama, Colorado, and New Mexico resigned in the middle of the ESSA-planning process after high-profile debates over key policies, leaving practitioners in the lurch and states in some instances making last-minute changes.
But the nature of state politics left out other groups, some of which will spend the coming months restructuring their spending and staffing priorities to more effectively lobby in the inevitable battles to come over the new law.
“The politics of federalism is going to dramatically change going forward,” said Sandra Vergari, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Albany who has studied federal education policy. Following all 50 states “is going to be a lot more work for us scholars, policy analyst, and advocates.”
Unlike prior federal versions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESSA required “meaningful stakeholder engagement” in crafting state plans—without defining who a stakeholder is or how much or what type of engagement needs to be conducted.
Many state superintendents said shortly after ESSA was passed that they had a natural incentive to put an end to years of polarizing debates over standards, accountability, and testing. But as the ESSA planning process unfolded, power grabs ensued in a number of states. Those traditionally in charge of education policy sparred with each other and with lawmakers eager to take on a share of the new responsibility.
In North Carolina, for example, the Republican-controlled legislature—just days before Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper took office this winter—decided during a special session that the state board should no longer oversee key accountability and school turnaround decisions, and that those decisions should be left up to the state’s recently appointed Republican state superintendent.
The board sued, and a judge decided last week to delay the law, which has held up the state’s ESSA planning process.
Delaware’s legislature stripped its state board of several powers, and a pending bill in Washington would scrap that state’s board of the ability to oversee portions of its accountability system.
And after years of infighting, Indiana’s legislature decided this year that the state’s elected superintendent should instead be appointed by the governor.
Hot-Button Issues
In other states, crucial policy decisions over testing, state goals, and how to define an ineffective teacher fanned flames between advocacy groups and politicians.
The governors in Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, and Wisconsin all refused to sign off on their states’ plans before sending them to Secretary DeVos. (A plan still can be turned in without the governor’s signature.)
And Michigan Lt. Gov. Brian Calley asked DeVos to send the plan back (something his office is not allowed to do) after he took issue with portions that dealt with special education students. That state’s board-appointed superintendent involved more than 300 people in the development of the plan, a process the lieutenant governor said still left the state’s special education community without a voice.
“What we have in our system is all these interest groups across the political spectrum that have a lot of power and say,” said Calley, who has a child with special needs. “There’s no organized group with PACS and electoral power in our system that represents the parents.”
State superintendents, many with their own political agendas, were left walking a political tightrope in some states. Several didn’t survive.
In a political snub, Hawaii’s since-replaced state Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi wasn’t invited by Democratic Gov. David Ige to sit on the state’s ESSA task force.
New Mexico’s secretary of education, Hanna Skandera, resigned in June shortly after turning in her state’s controversial plan, which upset the state’s teaching force. And just last week, Alabama Superintendent Michael Sentance resigned after a bruising evaluation by the state’s district superintendents who took issue with his leadership style and the ESSA development process.
Advocates Weigh In
National, state, and local advocacy organizations all scrambled throughout ESSA planning to adjust to the fluid situation. A board meeting in California in July, for example, fielded dozens of comments protesting the state’s proposed accountability system.
In other states, advocates skipped state board meetings and went straight to their legislature.
Maryland’s Democratically-controlled legislature, pressured by the state’s teachers’ union, effectively wrote the state’s accountability system into a law called “Protect Our Schools Act.” The bill survived Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto and inflamed state board of education members who accused politicians of trapping students in failing schools.
Ohio’s teachers’ union and parent groups managed to convince the state’s superintendent in the spring to stall the turning in of that state’s plan after they convinced enough people that the plan would ramp up school testing.
And Kentucky’s legislature passed as part of its new ESSA-aligned accountability system a sweeping education bill that mostly scrapped a historic school governance model that had elevated parent voices in the form of school-based-decision-making councils.
The battle pitted Kentucky’s politically weak parent groups against the state’s well-financed superintendents’ association and teachers’ union. It flew in the face of a working relationship the three parties had forged over the years in fighting for more school funding from the legislature as the coal industry collapsed.
“We’ve been together for so long and through so much together,” said a disappointed Lynne Slone, the attorney for the Kentucky Association of School Councils.
In Florida, Rosa Castro-Feinberg, a civil rights activist for minority and English-language-learner students, said she will shift her efforts to the local level if the state’s ESSA plan passes federal muster. Castro-Feinberg launched a petition and letter-writing and media campaign to stop several waiver requests from being attached to that state’s plan, an effort that ultimately failed.
Others, however, see an opportunity for advocates and policymakers to forge ties across state lines in the wake of the sometimes-tense ESSA planning, especially on common issues such as the achievement gap, the effects poverty has on schools, and stagnant student performance.
“For some states that are diving into this more deeply, doing the soul-searching, you’re seeing a lot less partisanship,” said Michelle Exstrom, the Education Program Director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Education shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I think when you have a sense of urgency, you figure out that it’s in everyone’s best interest to improve outcomes, and leaders get motivated to go to the table to fix it.”
Washington — As part of its ongoing efforts to aid Hurricane Harvey relief efforts and in the wake of Hurricane Irma, the Department of Education released the following update:
Higher Education
Last week (Sept. 6 and 7), FSA conducted pre-disaster outreach to nearly 2,400 institutions in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, foreign schools located in the Caribbean, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. FSA also continues to reach out to institutions in Texas and Louisiana impacted by Hurricane Harvey.
On Sept. 8, 2017, FSA issued a post-disaster email to more than 260 institutions in the Caribbean impacted by Hurricane Irma. In the coming days, FSA will send the post-disaster email to institutions in the continental U.S. impacted by Hurricane Irma.
FSA has established contact with nearly 20 institutions in Puerto Rico affected by Hurricane Irma and is responding to requests for regulatory relief and reporting flexibilities.
FSA has invited 446 impacted institutions to participate in a webinar on Wednesday, Sept. 13 at 10:00 a.m. Central Time. FSA and other U.S. Department of Education officials will provide updates on the Department’s guidance related to Hurricane Harvey, as well as ongoing assistance.
FSA has updated the StudentAid.gov/naturaldisaster page to provide general information relevant to students, parents and borrowers affected by a federally declared natural disaster (including hurricanes Harvey and Irma, as well as the wildfires burning in the western U.S.).
K-12
The Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) has entered into discussions with the Texas Education Agency about its Project School Emergency Response to Violence (SERV) program. Project SERV grants support activities and services that enable schools to restore the learning environment after a natural or man-made disaster.
OESE will be conducting a webinar on Sept. 19 in collaboration with FEMA on its Public Assistance Program. The Public Assistance Program provides supplemental federal disaster grant assistance for debris removal, life-saving emergency protective measures, and the repair, replacement or restoration of disaster-damaged publicly-owned facilities.
OESE is working with its Federal partners and reaching out to State educational agencies in localities impacted by Hurricane Irma to understand the nature and scope of the damage that Irma has inflicted on their educational institutions.
The Department’s Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) has contacted charter schools or their representatives in state affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma regarding their emerging needs. These states are still assessing damage, and the Department expects to provide technical assistance and support as needed in the coming weeks.
OII has contacted the major private school associations in Puerto Rico, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Kentucky via email, in addition to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for their VI schools, to receive updates on the status of their schools in Irma-impacted areas. OII will send a message to all hurricane-impacted areas on Sept. 12 regarding the upcoming ED/FEMA Public Assistance webinar on Sept. 19, 2017.
Office of the Inspector General
On Sept. 10, a team of 10 agents from the Office of the Inspector General arrived at a staging area at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, as part of a quick response team in support of the Federal government’s Emergency Support Function #13 (Public Safety and Security) for Hurricane Irma. They have been assigned to provide security for a Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) in the Florida Keys.
The Department’s K-12 and Higher Education stakeholders who are seeking informational resources as well as those seeking relief from Department-based administrative requirements should contact the Department toll free at 1-844-348-4082 or by email at HarveyRelief@ed.gov and Irmarelief@ed.gov.
School choice programs the Trump administration wants in next year’s budget haven’t gotten traction, at least with House lawmakers. (We still don’t know yet how the Senate feels.) But those aren’t the only choice plans Congress has the chance to consider. So how are these doing?
We checked in on the progress of a few, relatively high-profile pieces of legislation on Capitol Hill designed to expand school choice in various ways, and to various degrees. Here’s a status report for each.
H.R. 610,Choice in Education Act: This bill was introduced by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, in January. It would create vouchers using federal funds. It was introduced in the House education committee in January, but lawmakers haven’t acted on it since…
WHAT:
Meeting between the U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Reverend Dr. RB Holmes and K-12 and HBCU Leaders
WHEN:
Wednesday, August 30, 2017, 11:45 – 3:00 p.m.
WHERE:
Bethel Family Life Center
406 N Bronough Street Tallahassee, FL 32301
Today, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos met with a broad spectrum of education leaders in Florida. The meeting was divided into two 45-minute sessions. The first session was titled “Saving, Sustaining and Strengthening Public Education and Schools of Choice” and the second was titled “Saving, Sustaining and Strengthening HBCUs and Higher Education.”
In each session, the group discussed:
Policies and Procedures
Challenges and Concerns
Secretary DeVos offered the following comments on the meeting:
“As we confront the many challenges facing our education system today, it is paramount that we hear from those on the front lines: local leaders who confront these issues head on each and every day. Today’s discussions were great examples of how local leaders – whether they are administrators, educators, elected officials or religious leaders – can come together to share best practices and work together to find innovative solutions that help our students and communities succeed.
“I want to thank Rev. Dr. RB Holmes for convening this summit, and also, more importantly, for his long track record of working on behalf of often-disadvantaged students who without his tireless efforts would not have the opportunities they enjoy today.”
ATTENDEES INCLUDED:
Reverend Dr. RB Holmes, Pastor, Bethel Missionary Baptist Church
Education Roundtable Participants Invited to Attend:
Dr. Timothy Moore, Director of Research, Florida A&M University
Rodner Wright, Provost, Florida A&M University
Dr. Castelle Bryant, Past President, Florida A&M University
Dr. Henry Lewis Lewis, Past President, Florida A&M University
Ms. JoLinda L. Herring, Esq. – Florida Memorial University, Board of Trustees
Dr. Freddie Grooms-McLendon – Edward Waters University, Chairman, Board of Trustees
The Honorable Senator Bill Montford – Florida Senator
The Honorable Congressman Al Lawson – United States Representative
Chancellor Hershel Lyons – FL State Dept. of Education K-12 Chancellor
Commissioner Pam Stewart – Commissioner of Education
Chancellor Rod Duckworth – Career and Adult Education
Superintendent Alex “Lex” Carswell, Jr. – Columbia County
Superintendent Dr. Patricia Willis – Duval County
Superintendent Traci Moses – Franklin County
Superintendent Marianne Arbulu – Jefferson County
Ms. Beverly Owens – Leon County Schools Office of Federal Programs & Charter School
Mrs. Diane Townsend – Principal, Tallavana Christian School
Dr. Roslyn Wilson – Principal, Bethel Christian Academy
Dr. Julius McAllister – Trustee, Edward Waters University; Pastor, Bethel AME Church
Dr. Joseph Wright – Florida Baptist General State Conventionm Pastor, Jerusalem Baptist Church
Bishop A.J. Richardson – Bethune-Cookman University, Board of Trustees,
14th Episcopal District, African Methodist Episcopal Church
Pastor Lee Johnson – Pastor, Trinity Presbyterian Church
Dr. Richard Mashburn – Associate Minister, Bethel Missionary Baptist Church
Dr. Isaac Manning – Moderator, 1st Bethlehem Baptist Association
Dr. Ronald Holmes – Holmes Education Post
Dr. Marvin Henderson – Retired Deputy Superintendent, Leon County Schools
Ms. Georgia “Joy” Bowen – President, Leon County School Board
Mrs. Caroly D. Cummings, Esq.
Mr. James Coleman – Vice-Chair, Board of Trustees, Bethel Missionary Baptist Church
Dr. Elaine Bryant – Chair, Board of Trustees, Bethel Missionary Baptist Church
Mr. James Mathews – Chairman of Finance, Bethel Missionary Baptist Church
Dr. Barbara Barnes – Retired Provost, Florida A&M University
Mr. Malcom Barnes – Retired Professor, Florida A&M University
Dr. Malinda J. James – Educational Consultant
Reverend Dr. RB Holmes, Jr. – Pastor, Bethel Missionary Baptist Church
Dr. Gloria Holmes – Administrator, Bethel Christian Academy
Dr. Shawnta Friday-Stroud – Dean of the School of Business and Industry, Florida A&M University
Superintendent Rocky Hanna – Leon County Schools
Dr. Patricia Green-Powell – Interim Dean and Professor, College of Education, Florida A&M University
Dr. Charles Weatherford – Title III Programs, Interim Executive Director
Mr. Christopher Petley – Project Manager, Office of District Communications
Dr. Linda T. Fortenberry – Director of Christian Education, Bethel Missionary Baptist Church
Ms. Taralisha Sanders, Office Manager, The Capital Outlook
When the Every Student Succeeds Act passed, one of the things that educators were most excited about was the chance to cut down on the number of tests kids have to take, Specifically, the law allows some districts to offer a nationally recognized college-entrance exam instead of the state test for accountability.
But that flexibility could be more complicated than it appears on paper.
Here’s a case in point: Oklahoma, which hasn’t finalized its ESSA application yet, has already gotten pushback from the feds for the way that it had planned to implement the locally selected high school test option in a draft ESSA plan posted on the state department’s website. In that plan, Oklahoma sought to offer its districts a choice of two nationally recognized tests, the ACT or the SAT. Importantly, the state’s draft plan didn’t endorse one test over the otherâboth were considered equally okay…
A national coalition of civil rights groups want U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to reject Florida’s soon-to-arrive waiver request that will ask to be relieved from key pieces of the Every Student Succeeds Act dealing with the nation’s most vulnerable and historically disadvantaged students.
Approving Florida’s request, activists say, will set a disturbing precedent for other states.
“Sometimes it feels like we’re playing three-card monteor a game of cat and mouse,” said Liz King the Director of Education Policy for The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. She said approving the waiver request will effectively make ESSA toothless. “Everytime we make progress, someone finds a way to cut it back.”
The waiver, still in draft form, asks for the state to be allowed to forego using minority student subgroups and the results of English-learners’ language proficiency exams in its statewide accountability system. And because Florida education officials say English is the state’s official language, it doesn’t want to conduct standardized tests in recently-arrived immigrant students’ native languages.
Those provisions were the biggest victories for national civil rights activists when ESSA was passed in 2015 and they fear that if Secretary DeVos approves the waiver this fall, other states, eager to break free from decades of federal badgering over the nation’s stagnant achievement gap, would follow suit.
The Florida education agency gathered feedback on the request over several weeks and it’s expected to soon be considered by Republican Gov. Rick Scott. It has broad support from the state’s district superintendents who want to keep the state’s politically volatile accountability system mostly intact.
This week, the Leadership Conference, made up of 23 minority rights groups, sent a tersely worded letter to all 51 state superintendents urging them to follow the law as written rather than follow in Florida’s footsteps.
“Low-income children, children of color, children with disabilities, English-learners, and Native children have been left behind for far too long and deserve no less than robust and thorough state policy to ensure an excellent and equitable education,” the letter said.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) also sent a letter to congressional leaders and Secretary DeVos that more specifically urges her to reject the waiver request outright since, they say, the request flies in the face of ESSA’s civil rights legacy and circumvents the state’s legal obligations to English-language learners.
And a group of local civil rights activists in Florida will ask next week for a sit-down meeting with Florida department officials.
The department said in an e-mailed statement that they welcome any feedback to its plans.
“We appreciate everyone who took the time to submit input on Florida’s ESSA draft state plan,” said Meghan Collins, a spokeswoman for the department.
In its waiver request, the department said their accountability system is meant to improve the outcomes of all students, rather than students with a particular ethnicity, special need or language requirement. Instead of English proficiency exams, the state wants to use its English Language Arts test to measure ELL students’ langauge acquisition.
But the civil rights groups say that flies in the face of decades of research regarding how to close achievement gaps between minority students and their peers. Because the state for so many decades segregated its schools and denied a litany of basic education services to minority students and students with special needs, the state is obligated to provide tailored remedies to those groups’ unique needs.
“If this waiver is approved, there will be no accountability whatsover for ELL students’ progress in English Language acquisition,” said Rosa Castro-Feinberg, a civil rights activist, education consultant and former school board member in the Miami-Dade district. “I think the department has been misadvised by folks who are not up on the research related to ELL issues and subgroup accountability issues.”
One out of every 10 students in the state qualifies for ELL services.
The waiver request will create a political dilemma for Secretary DeVos who has been criticized both for her theories on the department’s role in upholding civil rights and her department’s feedback to states’ submitted plans.
“One thing we’re learning through the ESSA implementation process is that too often the decision makers at the federal, state and local level are disconnected from children who aren’t getting a fair shakeout from policy decisions,” King said.
Yesterday, a twelve-member task force, convened by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), released a report on “Quality Education.” The task force was formed in December 2016 after the NAACP’s October 2016 call for a national moratorium on expanding charter schools until a set of conditions were met.
The charge of the task force was to bring forward “practical recommendations that respond to the urgency of this resolution and the inequities undermining public education.” In order to fulfill their charge, from December 2016 to April 2017, the task force held public hearings in seven cities—New Haven, Memphis, Orlando, Los Angeles, Detroit, New Orleans, and New York.
The report acknowledged that, from testimonials at the public hearings, they found some positive aspects of charter schools. However, the report ultimately concluded that “even the best charters are not a substitute for more stable, adequate and equitable investments in public education in communities that serve all children.”
Criticism of Public Hearings
According to NAACP task report report, the “hearing format [for the public meetings] ensured testimony” from all of the following stakeholders: educators, administrators, school policy experts, charter school leaders, parents, advocates, students, and community leaders. However, some have questioned the authenticity and fairness of these meetings, claiming that they did not include groups and individuals who were charter supporters.
For example, in Tennessee, members of Memphis Lift, a parent-activist organization, voiced disapproval when they were only allowed 12 minutes at the end of a four-hour meeting. Additionally, in Orlando, Minnesota education activist Rashad Anthony Turner was ushered out of the meeting by police after he interrupted a speech by Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers President, because opponents of the moratorium were kept waiting.
Task Force Provides Five Recommendations Based on Public Hearings
According to the report, the testimonials illuminated the “perceived” benefits and problems with charter schools. Using those testimonials, the task force created five recommendations, summarized below, that would improve the quality of charter schools.
Recommendation #1: Provide more equitable and adequate funding for schools serving students of color. The task force argued that education funding has been “inadequate and unequal for students of color for hundreds of years.” In order to remedy the problem, the task force recommended that states should implement weighted student formula systems and model them after the systems that Massachusetts and California have pursued. They also recommended that the federal government should “fully enforce” the funding equity provisions within the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Recommendation #2: Invest productively in low-performing schools and schools with significant opportunity and achievement gaps. In order to ensure that all students receive a high-quality education, the task force recommends that federal, state, and local policies need to “sufficiently” invest in three things: creating incentives to attract and retain teachers, evolving instruction to be more challenging and inclusive, and providing more wraparound services for students such as health and mental services.
Recommendation #3: Develop and enforce robust charter school accountability measures. There were five parts within this recommendation. They are as follows:
Create and enforce a rigorous chartering authorizing and renewal process. The task force recommends that states should only allow districts to serve as authorizers. This is significant since, of the 44 states that allow charter schools, only four—Wyoming, Virginia, Iowa, and Kansas—have district-only charter authorization.
Create and enforce a common accountability system.
Monitor and require charter schools to admit and retain all students. This recommendation calls for open enrollment procedures, and asserts that charter schools should not be allowed to counsel out, push out, or expel students that they “perceive as academically or behaviorally struggling, or whose parents cannot maintain participation requirements or monetary fees.”
Create and monitor transparent disciplinary guidelines that meet students’ ongoing learning needs and prevent push out. The report recommends that charter schools should be required to follow the “same state regulations regarding discipline as public schools,” and use restorative justice practices.
Require charter schools to hire certified teachers. Many states allow charter schools to hire uncertified teachers at higher rates than traditional public schools, however Minnesota is not one of them.
Recommendation #4: Require fiscal transparency and equity. The task force recommends that all charter schools be held to the “same level of fiscal transparency and scrutiny as other public schools.”
Recommendation #5: Eliminate for-profit charter schools. This recommendation not only states that all for-profit charter schools should be eliminated, but that all for-profit management companies that run nonprofit charter schools should be eliminated as well. Approximately 13 percent of U.S. charter schools are run by for-profit companies. Additionally, at least 15 states allow virtual schools, with many of them operated by for-profit organizations.
Report Elicits Scrutiny from Education Advocates
In response to the NAACP report, Nina Rees, CEO and President of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), issued a statement where she indicated that NAPCS was glad to see the NAACP recognize the value of charter schools and agreed with them that “whoever oversees a public school should take that responsibility seriously, have the highest expectations, and hold educators in the school accountable” for educating students.
However, Rees also asserted that the NAACP’s policy resolution and report failed to “acknowledge that Black parents are demanding more and better public-school options,” citing a nationally representative survey which found that found 82 percent of Black parents favored allowing parents to choose their child’s public school.
She also cited a 2015 CREDO Urban Charter Schools Report, which found that Black public charter school students gained 36 days of learning in math and 26 in reading over their non-charter school peers.
Chris Stewart, based in Minnesota and former director of outreach and external affairs for Education Post, asserted that “the NAACP has lost its way,” claiming that they have become an “unwitting tool of teacher unions” due to the union’s significant contributions to the NAACP over the years. He also claimed that the unions are “threatened by the growth and success of non-unionized charter schools.”
District-Charter Collaboration: Hope in a Time of Political Tension
The growing and contentious disagreements between education organizations and advocates regarding the merits of charter versus traditional district schools are not new and will likely continue to dominate the news cycle.
However, in recent years, a growing number of districts and charter schools have put aside their political differences and worked together in order to do what’s best for students. Our next two blog posts will examine the cities where some of those collaborative relationships are taking place, as well as provide history on district-charter collaboration in Minnesota.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos took over the Education department, first and foremost, to move the ball forward on school choice, her long-time passion. She’s been in the job less than six months, but already, time may be running out to get a sweeping school choice initiative over the finish line, at least this year.
One big reason: There have been broad, school choice proposals floated, but no details.
The Trump administration has been signaling for months that it may push for a federal tax credit scholarship program, allowing individuals and companies to get a break on their taxes if they donate to a scholarship-granting organization. That could help low-income or special needs students cover private school. But it’s July, and there aren’t specifics on that. (Sources say that there could be details soon, however.)…
By: Michelle Croft and Richard Lee ACT Research and Policy
Despite (or because of) the federal requirement that all students in certain grades participate in statewide achievement testing, stories of parents opting their student out of the testing gained national attention in the media in the spring of 2015. Ultimately, twelve states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin—received a notice from the U.S. Department of Education that they needed to create a plan to reduce opt-outs due to low participation rates.
When statewide testing came in spring 2016, there were more stories of opt-outs, and information about districts failing to meet participation requirements will follow in the coming months.3 Early reports from New York indicate that 21% of students in grades 3–8 opted out in 2016, which was slightly more than the prior year. (See attached PDF below for reference information.)
Participation Rate Requirements
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (both the No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds authorizations) requires that all students annually participate in statewide achievement testing in mathematics and English in grades 3–8 and high school as well as science in certain grade spans. Ninety-five percent of students at the state, district, and school level must participate; otherwise there is a range of consequences.
Under the No Child Left Behind authorization, the school would automatically fail to meet Adequate Yearly Progress if the school—or subgroups of students within the school—did not meet the participation rate requirement. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides states with greater flexibility to determine how to incorporate the participation rate into the state’s accountability system. However, in proposed regulations, the state will need to take certain actions such as lowering the school’s rating in the state’s accountability system or identifying the school for targeted support or improvement, if all students or one or more student subgroups do not meet the 95% participation rate.
Michelle Croft is a principal research associate in Public Affairs at ACT. Richard Lee is a senior analyst in Public Affairs at ACT.
This report highlights significant investments made by both Republican and Democratic policymakers in state-funded pre-k programs for the fourth year in a row. In the 2015-16 budget year, 32 states and the District of Columbia raised funding levels of pre-k programs. This increased support for preschool funding came from both sides of the aisle–22 states with Republican governors and 10 states with Democratic governors, plus the District of Columbia.
In contrast, only five states with Republican governors and three states with Democratic governors decreased their pre-k funding.
Overall, state funding of pre-k programs across the 50 states and the District of Columbia increased by nearly $755 million, or 12 percent over 2014-15. While this progress is promising, there is still work to be done to set children on the path to academic success early in life. Still, less than half of preschool-aged students have access to pre-k programs.
Increasing the number of students in high-quality preschool programs is broadly viewed as a way to set young learners on a path to a secure economic future and stable workforce. This report includes several state examples and an overview of the pre-k programs they have in place. Data tables on total state pre-K funding and state pre-kindergarten funding by program are appended. [Megan Carolan contributed to this publication.]
Education Commission of the States. ECS Distribution Center, 700 Broadway Suite 1200, Denver, CO 80203-3460. Tel: 303-299-3692; Fax: 303-296-8332; e-mail: ecs@ecs.org; Web site: http://www.ecs.org
