Have you been waiting for President Donald Trump to work with the Republican-controlled Congress and get rolling on a big K-12 education initiative? If so, you might be getting a little bit antsy. But is that unusual during the first 100 days or so of a presidential administration?
Here’s a quick sketch of some of the bigger things the Trump administration has gotten done so far on public school policy after nearly 100 days in office:
Struggling Hoosier students can be helped with more focused classes and perhaps mentorships with teachers, but it will come at additional costs.
That assessment came Monday night at Indiana University Kokomo as 100 educators and parents met to discuss the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal replacement for No Child Left Behind.
The Indiana Department of Education is hosting discussions that may help mold the state’s approach to ESSA, which was signed into law in December 2015.
Like its predecessor, ESSA holds states accountable for high standards, maintains state accountability systems, requires annual tests in Grades 3-8 and in high school, and sustains support for struggling schools and development of teachers. It also allows for more state input and direction.
But through ESSA, states can determine how they want to reach policy goals and have more local control in their approach, officials said.
“ESSA is similar to No Child in that you still have accountability,” said Adam Baker, Indiana Department of Education press secretary. “You still have assessments. You still have the end result, which is ensuring children are academically sound and prepared for the future.”
The state is to send its plans to the U.S. Department of Education by Sept. 18 but will have the proposal online by July.
Monday night, the group gathered at the IUK campus to discuss how to measure a school’s success, how to support all students and how to improve schools in need, among other issues.
In the latter, a group of about 12 suggested that struggling students, notably those of low socioeconomic status, could be in classes for a longer part of the day…
Any lingering questions over how aggressively the Trump administration was going to pursue school privatization were answered on March 16 with the release of its FY2018-19 budget proposal. If approved by Congress, federal education programs will be slashed across the board, all to pay for an initial down payment of $1.4 billion this fiscal year on a national expansion of private school voucher programs. The eventual price tag for the program will be $20 billion annually.
It doesn’t matter how their proponents try to disguise them – education savings accounts, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships – vouchers are destructive and misguided schemes that use taxpayer dollars to “experiment with our children’s education without any evidence of real, lasting positive results,” says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García,
That was also the consensus of a panel of experts who convened recently at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank based in Washington D.C, to explore the implications of the Trump-DeVos privatization agenda. The discussion focused on three ways school vouchers pose a danger to the nation’s most vulnerable students, which were identified by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) in a memo to her Senate colleagues and summarized in her keynote remarks.
Vouchers Help Private Schools Skirt Accountability and Transparency
Strong accountability measures help prevent students from falling through the cracks. “We fly blind without the information we need to make sure our students are succeeding,” said Murray. “We strive to make accountability as effective as possible. ‘Unfortunately that system breaks down completely when it comes to public money going to private schools.”
Unlike public schools, private schools have almost complete autonomy with regard to how they operate: who they teach, what they teach, how they teach, how — if at all — they measure student achievement, how they manage their finances, and what they are required to disclose to parents and the public.
In addition to the financial fraud and abuse that some voucher programs have generated, students in these programs often end up doing worse academically. “We’ve seen real negative impacts on achievement,” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach of the Brookings Institution. Recent evaluations of voucher programs in Indiana, Louisiana and Ohio found that students attending private schools on a voucher scored worse than their public school counterparts on reading and math assessments.
Vouchers Fund Discrimination
Anna Caudill, a parent of a special needs child in Tennessee, told the CAP audience that vouchers do give students a choice: “You can trade your child’s federally-protected civil rights under the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for a one-time monetary amount to pay for private school tuition.”
After her son fell too far behind academically in public school, Caudill looked for another option. Her family was offered an “Individualized Education Account,” the state’s version of a voucher. The Caudills would have received $6,300 – as long as their son waived his rights under IDEA. They also would have had to re-enroll annually with no guarantees they would receive the same amount. And even with the voucher, Caudill’s family still wouldn’t have been able to afford full-time private school instruction.
The best solution is for Congress to fully fund IDEA. Caudill said. “I believe in public schools. I believe that general and special education teachers with support from their districts and their states are the best equipped professionals to address the unique learning needs of students with disabilities.”
Neena Chaudhry, Director of Education and Senior Counsel at the National Women’s Law Center pointed out that vouchers use taxpayer dollars to discriminate against many other vulnerable groups. “We see this regarding LGBT students and students of color especially,” Chaudhry said.
Some voucher-funded, private religious schools in the South, for example, have explicitly anti-gay policies. And a recent study from the Century Foundation found that voucher programs actually increase racial segregation. Some states have expanded eligibility to include more higher-income families, who are more likely to be able to take advantage of the voucher. “Vouchers can be used as tools of white flight,” Chaudhry explained.
Accountability is critical because “allowing private schools to operate in the dark will only exacerbate these problems.” Even under a new national voucher program, states can find ways to skirt federal civil rights protections. In fact, Chaudhry warned, members of Congress may design the legislation to make that easier.
Vouchers Leave Communities and Students Behind
In many remote areas of the country, private schools are simply not an option. An expansion of vouchers nationwide, Senator Murray said, could “devastate rural schools.” She cited the example of the tiny community of Plevna, Montana, where the closest non-boarding private achool is 240 miles away. “If funding is diverted to private schools, not only would the school in Plevna sever, its students wouldn’t even be able to access the private school that are receiving public funds,” Murray explained.
A new CAP analysis on vouchers found that there 9,000 “sparse” school districts (five or fewer schools) that would be decimated by a national voucher program. The ability of an additional 2200 “average” districts (5-8 schools) to serve all its students would be seriously undermined. Together, “sparse” and “average” districts constitute roughly 85% of the nation’s regular school districts.
Cassia County School District in south central Idaho has 17 schools but is still located in a remote area. “Our biggest challenge is funding,” said Superintendent Gaylen Smyer, “We have a hard time finding qualified teachers. and bringing in new opportunities for students so they can compete after they graduate. Vouchers are not going to help. If anything, I think they would just undermine our public schools.”
Is there a demand for vouchers in Idaho? “I’m not seeing it,” Smyer said. “Geographic distances pose a challenge for private schools to be set up and parents aren’t willing to transport their children a long way to a private school. So there’s no demand for vouchers in south central Idaho. Our focus is on improving all schools for all our students.”
Senator Murray calls the Trump-DeVos privatization agenda a “false choice,” because it leaves out the best option for students: strong, well-funded public schools in their own neighborhood. “Public schools by definition are open and inclusionary and many students thrive in their neighborhood schools,” Murray said.
But the federal government must make the proper investments and “ensure that the states are creating strong accountability and improvement mechanisms so that groups of students previously denied access to an equitable education do not fall through the cracks once again.”
(INDIANAPOLIS) – The Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) will host a meeting to gather input and discuss implementing Indiana’s plan to fulfill the new federal education requirements known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in Indianapolis on April 4, 2017.
ESSA was signed into law in December 2015 as the update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. ESSA replaces the previous update to the law, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). While ESSA mirrors NCLB in that ESSA holds states accountable for high standards, maintains state accountability systems, requires annual tests in grades 3-8 and in high school, and sustains support for struggling schools and development of teachers, ESSA also allows for more state input and direction. Through ESSA, states can determine how they want to reach each of these policy goals and have more local control in crafting their approach.
In an effort to ensure student success, IDOE will host a series of meetings across the state to solicit recommendations from educators, administrators, parents, community members, and local leaders. Each meeting will begin with a brief overview of ESSA, followed by small group discussions involving attendees and IDOE staff. The input and recommendations gathered will then be compiled into a community meeting report and will help drive IDOE’s response to meeting ESSA requirements.
MEETING: ESSA Community Engagement Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday, April 4, 2017
LOCATION: Indianapolis Urban League at 777 Indiana Ave. in Indianapolis
TIME: 6:30 P.M. – 8 P.M. ET
For information regarding upcoming dates, times, and locations of ESSA meetings, or to RSVP, please visit: www.doe.in.gov/essa/essa-community-meetings. To learn more about ESSA, please visit: www.doe.in.gov/essa.
Chairman Kruse and Members of the Senate Education Committee:
With SB 416, we have the opportunity to strengthen Indiana’s School Accountability System. A strong accountability system must be in place; a system that is accurate and transparent—a system that drives improvement. I believe in accountability, and I have been held accountable as a classroom teacher for 34 years.
The Department of Education is committed to strengthening our school accountability system to address its flaws that have been talked about in our schools and in our community. As you know, there has been previous testimony opposed to our current accountability system. I am sure several of you have heard stories in your own communities, as well. Our current A-F system is so complicated that the grades are unexplainable; educators are unable to communicate to parents and the community the meaning of the grades. Schools and communities can’t comprehend how a school can be a 4-Star school one year and D-rated school the next year with very little change in ISTEP+ performance. There is no apparent explanation for how some schools went from being A schools to being F schools and how F schools became A schools in a year’s time. While the assigning of grades A, B, C, D, or F should invoke a sense of security and transparency it has instead cause great controversy in our communities.
During the past few transition weeks, there have been many questions to the department regarding A-F. My department is doing its due diligence to provide answers. For the 2011-12 school year, 135 appeals were filed. Inconsistencies have been found to cause question about the system’s integrity and validating the accuracy of the calculations is daunting. Because of this, I am not able to answer specific questions at this time regarding the inconsistencies, but the department is doing a thorough review. Right now, I am unable to communicate to a school how they can improve their overall grade. Schools deserve to have straightforward data to inform their school improvement plans. With sanctions placed upon schools for poor performance, we must have a system that is accurate and transparent.
This bill voids the administrative rule that has established the current A-F accountability model and allows for the creation of a subsequent rule that provides Indiana with a more rigorous accountability system in compliance with P.L. 221 that can report accurate and direct percentage data for schools in both student academic growth and academic achievement. In other words, the percentage of students showing academic growth from school year to school year would be reported and the percentage of students meeting or exceeding at grade-level performance cut-scores would be reported.
Measuring Academic Growth
Our current method of showing academic growth takes students’ scores and compares them with their peers around the state of Indiana; thus educators and parents do not have a clear picture of each child’s academic growth. To strengthen accountability, educators and parents need to see each child’s true measure of growth from year to year. The most direct method of reporting percentage data for student growth is to administer true student growth measure assessments at the beginning of the school year and the end of the school year to show individual growth in a given school year.
However, since Indiana does not currently have true student growth measure tests in place, we must calculate individual student growth on our pass/fail ISTEP tests from school year to school year using individual scores.
Conceptually, one way to calculate individual student growth can be determined by calculating the gap between a student’s performance score and the cut-score from year to year. The percentage of students in each school showing academic growth could then be reported.
Measuring Academic Achievement
For achievement, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding the cut-score can be reported which reflects grade level achievement.
Establishing P.L. 221 Improvement Categories
According to Indiana’s Elementary Secondary Act (ESEA) Flexibility Waiver that has been granted by the U.S. Department of Education in February 2012, schools would ultimately be classified as Reward Schools, Focus Schools, or Priority Schools. Classification in these categories would be determined by performance in both growth and achievement.
With both growth and achievement being reported, schools can determine a course of action through the school improvement process to raise both students growth and student achievement in language arts and math.
Under this system, each student’s improvement counts equally. This means there would be no comparison to a student’s peers, attention would not be paid to only the “bubble” students who are close to meeting the cut-scores, and schools would not be penalized for students already demonstrating high achievement.
Every student would carry equal weight and focus. School improvement would be focused on each and every child…creating a very rigorous system that is accurate and transparent to strengthen school accountability.
Thank you for your attention. I urge this committee to support SB 416.
Early college high school, apprenticeships, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education take center stage as governors continue to give state of the state addresses.
South Dakota: Gov. Dennis Daugaard Dives into Dual Credit and Remediation
During his January 10 state of the state address, South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) praised the state’s dual credit program, calling it a win-win-win. “Students win because these are the cheapest college credits they will ever buy, and they get a head start on college or tech school. High schools win because they can expand their course offerings at no cost to the school district. Universities and technical institutes win, because they attract students who are better-prepared when they come to campus.”
Daugaard had numbers to back up the program’s success, sharing that, in the past school year:
2,139 high school students took at least one dual credit course from a university, and another 899 took a technical institute course.
The passage rates were 94 percent for university courses and 88 percent for technical institute courses.
High school students and their families saved a total of $4.4 million.
Daugaard also touched on the issue of remediation, noting that last year 30 percent of first-year, full-time freshman at state universities took at least one remedial course in math or English. He discussed a free program to help test students who may need remediation in high school to avoid the costs and difficulty of remedial courses in college.
He gave a nod to the strengthening of career and technical education programs across the state through workforce education grants awarded by the Building South Dakota Fund.
Hawaii: Gov. David Ige Calls for School Transformation and Increased Early College Access
Hawaii Gov. David Ige (D) talked about school transformation during January 23 state of the state address, expressing his desire to have a system that gives more flexibility to schools so that those closest to the students, who “best understand how they learn and what motivates them” are the ones designing programs and implementing plans. He also mentioned a new Innovation Grant Program to help support school-level innovations that work to close achievement gaps for students with disabilities, students from low-income families, and immigrant students.
Ige also proposed to expand the state’s Early College Program, to allow more students to begin earning college credits in high school. To make his case, Ige noted that studies say this may be “one of the most powerful tools to advance college enrollment and success among our public high school graduates—especially for lower-income and first-generation college students.”
Rhode Island: Gov. Gina Raimondo Expands Early College Options
Rhode Island is working to give its people a “real shot in the economy of the future,” said Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) in her January 17 state of the state address. For Raimondo, that means expanding early college options. She noted that in 2016 nearly 4,000 students took college courses while still in high school, some earning enough credits to have a full college semester completed before graduating from high school.
Raimondo also discussed the state’s push to have more individuals with a degree or credential beyond high school, which currently is less than half of Rhode Islanders. To reach a goal of 70 percent of Rhode Island adults with degrees or certificates by 2025, Raimondo noted that the state is working to make college more affordable and accessible, and will continue to invest in training and certificate programs.
Alaska: Gov. Bill Walker Shares Top Five Priorities for Education
In his January 18 state of the state addressAlaskaGov. Bill Walker (I) shared five top priorities for the state’s public education system. Put together by the State Board of Education after a public outreach process, the priorities include.
Improving student learning
Ensuring excellent educators
Modernizing the system
Inspiring tribal and community ownership
Promoting safety and well-being.
Walker noted that final recommendations in these areas would be shared with his office at the end of 2017 and that legislative efforts for reform would begin.
Michigan: Gov.Rick Snyder Makes the Case for Apprenticeships and STEM Education
In his January 17 state of the state address, Michigan: Gov. Rick Snyder (R) emphasized the importance of not treating education, the economy, and careers as silos, but instead to create the connection between school and career while inspiring lifelong learning. As the economy changes and jobs fluctuate, Snyder expressed the need to have the flexibility to respond accordingly in education. One method Snyder mentioned is apprenticeships, sharing the state’s growth as a leader in this area, with a 14 percent increase in registered apprenticeships over 2016. He talked about the need for even more growth and his intention to work with the state legislature and private sector partners to make this happen.
Snyder also hits on the hot topic of STEM education, and the need to expand access to STEM courses in Michigan schools as more STEM-related jobs require computer coding and computer science knowledge.
Other Education Highlights
Graduation rates receive a mention in Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R)’s January 17 state of the state address, as Bryant acknowledges both the state’s all-time-high 80 percent graduation rate and gains on reading and math tests.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) called for one million dollar annual increases in K-12 STEM education and in the federal E-rate program during his January 17 state of the state address. Holcomb noted that more than half of Indiana’s schools do not have wi-fi in the classroom, and that this increased funding will enable more schools to participate in the E-rate and improve digital connectivity in schools.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) mentioned efforts to expand apprenticeship programs for high school students to strengthen career pathways in his January 25 state of the state address, an initiative of the Governor’s Cabinet on Children and Youth alongside the Illinois State Board of Education, high schools, community colleges, and employers.
By Andrew Chiappazzi and Daveen Rae Kurutz, timesonline.com
On a Wednesday night in late May, Erie Superintendent Jay Badams stood in front of his school board and a packed auditorium of parents to make a startling proposal: Rather than make more cuts and eliminate sports, arts and music programs, the district should pass an unbalanced budget.
Badams said he’d rather shut down all four of the city’s high schools than continue with program cuts. Drastic matters call for drastic actions, he said. When Badams took the helm of the state’s 10th-largest district in 2010, he erased a $26-million shortfall by cutting 240 teaching positions.
Enough was enough.
“The only things left substantial that we have to cut are student programs,” Badams said. “And that’s something we’ve tried avoid like the plague for the past five years.”
The Indiana Department of Education released 2015 educator licensing data today. The data show that the Indiana Department of Education issued 3802 initial practitioner licenses during the 2014-15 school year, down from 4806 during the 2013-14 school year. This is a 21% drop from the previous year, and a 33% since the 2009-10 school year.
Educators who received multiple licenses were only counted once in the graph below. Additionally, initial practitioner licenses include administrative, instructional, and support services licenses (eg: counselors, etc).
Any lingering questions over how aggressively the Trump administration was going to pursue school privatization were answered on March 16 with the release of its FY2018-19 budget proposal. If approved by Congress, federal education programs will be slashed across the board, all to pay for an initial down payment of $1.4 billion this fiscal year on a national expansion of private school voucher programs. The eventual price tag for the program will be $20 billion annually.
Strong accountability measures help prevent students from falling through the cracks. “We fly blind without the information we need to make sure our students are succeeding,” said Murray. “We strive to make accountability as effective as possible. ‘Unfortunately that system breaks down completely when it comes to public money going to private schools.”
Anna Caudill, a parent of a special needs child in Tennessee, told the CAP audience that vouchers do give students a choice: “You can trade your child’s federally-protected civil rights under the 
In many remote areas of the country, private schools are simply not an option. An expansion of vouchers nationwide, Senator Murray said, could “devastate rural schools.” She cited the example of the tiny community of Plevna, Montana, where the closest non-boarding private achool is 240 miles away. “If funding is diverted to private schools, not only would the school in Plevna sever, its students wouldn’t even be able to access the private school that are receiving public funds,” Murray explained.
