State education chiefs at a Senate hearing Tuesday outlined how they are using the Every Student Succeeds Act to initiate and expand on efforts to improve college- and career-readiness and help low-performing schools. Senators, meanwhile, expressed concerns along partisan lines about the proper balance of power between Washington and the states.
Congress has been mostly silent this year on public school policy in terms of hearings and other events. But Tuesday’s hearing at the Senate education committee allowed for Candice McQueen of Tennessee, Christopher Ruszkowski of New Mexico, and John White of Louisiana to share their approaches to ESSA and how it was affecting their approach to public school more broadly.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the committee chairman, specifically praised the states represented by the chiefs testifying at the hearing. For example, he highlighted his home state of Tennessee’s work under ESSA to determine whether students are ready for the military or the workforce after high school, not just college. He also gave a thumbs-up to New Mexico for increasing access to services ranging from extra math help to early education through its ESSA plan…
Parents who opted their children out of state exams in recent years became the focal point of major education debates in the country about the proper roles of testing, the federal government, and achievement gaps. Now, under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states have a chance to rethink how they handle testing opt-outs.
So how are states responding in their ESSA plans they submitted to the federal government? In short, it’s all over the place, an Education Week review of the ESSA plans shows.
Keep this in mind: ESSA requires that students who opt out of those mandatory state tests must be marked as not proficient on those tests. Those not-proficient scores will in turn, obviously, impact accountability indicators. So while some states highlight this as their approach to handling testing opt-outs, it’s really no more than what the law requires…
For decades, district leaders have been clamoring for more say over how they spend their federal money. And when the Every Student Succeeds Act passed back in 2015, it looked like they had finally gotten their wish: a brand-new $1.6 billion block grant that could be used for computer science initiatives, suicide prevention, new band instruments, and almost anything else that could improve students’ well-being or provide them with a well-rounded education.
But, for now at least, it looks like most district officials will only get a small sliver of the funding they had hoped for, putting the block grants’ effectiveness and future in doubt.
The Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants, or Title IV of ESSA, only received about a quarter of the funding the law recommends, $400 million for the 2017-18 school year, when ESSA will be fully in place for the first time…
A little-noticed change in the country’s main federal education law could force many states to lower their high school graduation rates, a politically explosive move no state would relish.
Indiana is the first state to be caught in the crosshairs of the law’s new language, but other states are likely to be affected soon. The resulting debate could throw a sharp spotlight on a topic that’s been lurking in the wings: the wildly varying levels of accomplishment signified by a high school diploma.
“This is about to become a national issue,” said Phillip Lovell, the policy director of the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group that focuses on high school issues.
In Indiana, the state faces the prospect of having to lower its graduation rate from 89 percent to 76 percent, a move its state superintendent fears could harm its economy and reputation.
The state’s in a bind because it offers several types of high school diplomas, and some are easier to earn than others. Half of Indiana’s students earn the default college-prep diploma, known as the Core 40. Thirty-eight percent earn the Core 40 with honors, and 12 percent earn the “general” diploma, which has lesser requirements.
Diplomas with less-rigorous requirements are the target of new language in the Every Student Succeeds Act. The law requires states to calculate their graduation rates by including only “standard” diplomas awarded to a “preponderance” of students, or diplomas with tougher requirements.
For Indiana, that means the state might not be able to count its general diplomas. State officials are in talks with the U.S. Department of Education about that prospect. Indiana Superintendent of Schools Jennifer McCormick also reached out to Indiana’s congressional delegation for help, saying in a letter last month that the lower graduation rate will put Indiana “at a national disadvantage” and would “not reflect well upon our state and could negatively impact our economy.”
Officials from the federal Education Department declined to discuss how they would interpret the ESSA language. In an email to Education Week, a spokesman said only that the department would provide “technical assistance” to states as they complied with the law, and that states can consult federal guidance issued in January on the law’s graduation-rate provisions.
The preponderance language in ESSA is only now beginning to creep onto states’ radars. The exact number that could be affected isn’t clear, although a recent report found that 23 states offer multiple pathways to a diploma. Many states offer multiple types of high school diplomas, though most don’t track—or publicly report—how many students earn each type.
In Arkansas, two-thirds of students graduate with the state’s “smart core” diploma, and one-third earn its less-rigorous “core” diploma.
In New York state, 4 percent of graduates get a “local” diploma, which isn’t as rigorous as its “regents” and “advanced” diplomas. In Oregon, 3.7 percent of students earn a “modified” diploma, which is intended for students with a “demonstrated inability” to meet all the state’s academic expectations.
“The idea is to create a pathway toward a diploma for students with significant challenges,” Jennell Ives, a program specialist with Oregon’s department of education, explained in an email.
Diplomas that signify less-than-rigorous academic preparation, however, were the express target of the new requirement in ESSA. No such language was in the previous version of the law, the No Child Left Behind Act.
“We were trying to address concerns about those weaker diplomas, to put a signal in there to drive states to make sure that diplomas were really preparing students for success,” said a Senate aide who helped draft the Every Student Succeeds Act.
‘Make the Most Difference’
Advocates for lower-income and minority students, and those with disabilities, were key voices at the table when that section of the bill was being drafted. Those students tend to earn disproportionate shares of the lower-level diplomas.
“We wanted the language in ESSA to make the most difference for those students,” said Laura Kaloi, who participated in the talks on behalf of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a special-education advocacy group.
By inserting the preponderance language into ESSA, its authors pushed federal law into a new area: linking graduation rates to the quality of the diplomas, not just to how many diplomas are awarded.
A 2008 regulation broke new ground by requiring all states to calculate graduation rates the same way: by counting the proportion of entering freshmen who completed school four years later.
That regulation also ventured into new territory by tackling the related idea of which diplomas should be counted. It said states could count only “regular” diplomas, not alternative or equivalency credentials.
The concept of diploma quality was on policymakers’ minds as they sat down to write the accountability section of the Every Student Succeeds Act. There was “a lot of bipartisan agreement” that the idea of counting only regular diplomas should finally be written into federal law, the Senate aide said.
“You could see this as being about states that have to lower their graduation rates, or about trying to be honest about our graduation rates.”Phillip Lovell, Alliance for Excellent Education
“This is new. For a long time, federal officials have been focusing on graduation rates without caring what a diploma actually means,” said Michael Cohen, who was the assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education under President Bill Clinton and now heads Achieve, a group that has researched the wide variety in states’ diploma requirements.
Allowing states to report graduation rates based only on regular diplomas, and diplomas that require more rigorous study, is long overdue, according to Lovell of the Alliance for Excellent Education.
States could well feel the sting of public disapproval if they have to revise their graduation rates downward, but the resulting shift in message justifies the discomfort, he said.
“The statute calls for honesty,” he said. “We’re finally being honest about what a diploma means.”
But Lovell also worries that an unintended consequence of the law is that states could lower their regular-diploma requirements to keep their graduation-rate numbers high.
‘Perverse Incentives?’
Other consequences are already unfolding, showing up first in Indiana.
The state has long been recognized as a leader in getting students to complete college-prep courses of study: 88 percent take the four years of English and three years of math—through Algebra 2—that are widely viewed as a “college-ready” curricula.
Yet Indiana might have to pay the price of lowering its graduation rate because it chose not to require college-prep study for all. That situation strikes Cohen as creating “perverse incentives” for states to award less-rigorous diplomas to a “preponderance” of their students.
“States that do the best job of getting kids to take advanced coursework could be the ones at greatest risk under this policy,” he said. “They’ve succeeded their way into trouble.”
Lovell begs to differ. “You could see this as being about states that have to lower their graduation rates or about trying to be honest about our graduation rates,” he said. “Indiana is stepping up and being honest.”
Activists may differ on whether the preponderance requirements in ESSA are a step in the right direction. But they agree on another, more ironic truth, which is that the law will fall short of ensuring that all high school diplomas mean students are ready to do well in college.
Even among the many states that offer only one type of diploma, what students achieved to earn that diploma can vary wildly. Still, those states are unlikely to be affected by the preponderance requirement of ESSA, since all students earn the same diploma.
In Massachusetts, for instance, 77 percent of students complete a course of study that reflects the expectations of the University of Massachusetts. The rest finish high school with other assortments of courses. Yet all students earn the same diploma, said state education department spokeswoman Jacqueline Reis.
The same situation holds true in Maryland, where most students finish coursework geared to state university requirements, and the rest don’t, but all walk across the graduation stage with the same type of diploma.
In Oklahoma, students are automatically placed in the college-ready curriculum and remain there unless they opt into a less-rigorous one. But only the tougher course of study requires three years of math—through Algebra 2. And all Oklahoma students earn the same high school diploma, a state education department spokeswoman said.
By Gerry Tuoti
Wicked Local Newsbank Editor
Posted Aug 25, 2017 at 12:30 PM
Updated Aug 25, 2017 at 3:23 PM
THE ISSUE: Some students with severe disabilities take an alternative to the MCAS. THE IMPACT: A new federal requirement caps the number of students who can take the alternative assessment, and Massachusetts is over that limit.
New federal limits on the number of students allowed to take an alternative to the state’s MCAS exam could have significant impacts for some special education students in Massachusetts.
The federal Every Student Succeeds Act, the successor to No Child Left Behind, includes a requirement that no more than 1 percent of public school students in any state take the alternative assessment instead of the state’s standardized exam. Proponents of the cap say the vast majority of special education students are able to take the standard exam with accommodations, and that taking the alternative assessment in early grades could put students on a track that could delay or hinder the eventual attainment of a high school diploma.
In Massachusetts, more than 1.6 percent of students currently take the alternative assessment, or MCAS-Alt, primarily due to severe cognitive disabilities.
“Obviously, if a student is required to take MCAS, even with accommodations, if it’s not developmentally appropriate for the student, it’s going to have an impact on them,” said Jim Major, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Approved Private Schools, an organization of schools that educates severely disabled students whose educational needs cannot be met by their public schools.
Massachusetts is seeking a one-year waiver from the cap on the number of students taking the alternative assessment. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education expects to hear a decision from the federal government in early fall.
“I think what they’re proposing is not a fix; it’s another delay,” said Kathleen Boundy, executive director of the Boston-based Center for Law and Education.
When a student has special needs or a disability, a team meets to create an individualized education program, or IEP, that outlines how the public school can best accommodate him or her. The IEP team, which includes educators, psychologists and parents, is responsible for deciding, among other issues, whether the student will take the standard MCAS exam.
Roughly 10 percent of special education students are designated for the alternative assessment, which is intended for students with the most severe cognitive disabilities, such as nonverbal impairments, traumatic brain injury…
Add two more plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act to the “approved” pile: Connecticut and Louisiana. The states become the fifth and sixth to be approved by the U.S. Department of Education.
Connecticut’s plan was approved even though it didn’t make some big changes that the feds wanted to see, including when it comes to calculating student achievement and measuring the performance of English-language learners.
Instead of making the revisions the department suggested, Connecticut provided long explanations of why the state thought its approach was permissible under ESSA…
Our blog post last week introduced the topic of “charter-district collaboration”, and reported on the status of Minneapolis’ District-Charter Collaboration Compact, as well as the Minneapolis Public Schools and Hiawatha Academies Collaboration Agreement.
In a January 2017 report, the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) wrote about the status of collaboration in the 23 cities that have signed a District-Charter Collaboration Compact. CRPE determined that five cities—Boston, Chicago, Denver, Central Falls, and New Orleans—have charter and district schools working together in a robust manner such that “systemic issues of equity for students and access to resources are being addressed.”
Below are summaries of the benefits that the aforementioned cities’ districts and charters have experienced from the Compacts, as well as key takeaways for Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities.
Boston
In September 2011, Boston’s mayor, 16 charter school organizations, and Boston Public Schools (BPS) signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact, with the Catholic Archdiocese joining later on. According to CRPE, “Boston’s Compact is one of the strongest and most successful collaboration efforts in the country.” Some of the benefits that have resulted from the collaboration are:
School partnerships between district, charter, and Catholic schools in order to identify and share classroom level strategies
Shared use of data to locate and learn from classrooms and schools where students are thriving academically
Nationally recognized, researched based professional development for teachers from all three sectors for English language learners
Coordinated release times across sectors helped BPS save roughly $1 million per year in transportation costs
Two charter organizations (three schools) received leases for vacant buildings
The Compact was renewed in the fall of 2015 with new personnel dedicated to continuing the collaborative work between the three sectors. In September of 2015, Mayor Walsh called upon the Compact to help improve Boston’s enrollment process so that it would be “simple, unified, and equitable for all public schools.”
Additionally, in April 2017, the Boston Compact announced one of their new initiatives, the Boston Educators Collaborative. Through the Collaborative, Boston teachers are able to attend free classes that cover a range of topics from mathematical thinking to the impact of culture in the classroom.
Chicago’s District-Charter Collaborative Compact was signed in November 2011 by Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the Illinois State Board of Education, and the Illinois State Charter School Commission (INCS). Over the course of six years, across three CPS superintendents, and with constant help from INCS, Chicago has accomplished substantial achievements for both district and charter schools. Some of the accomplishments include:
Joint lobbying by both district and charter schools produced increases in funding for all public schools
A cross-sector committee designed the School Quality Rating Policy, which is a common tool that provides parents with comparisons of schools across multiple metrics
District and charter leaders are regularly brought together for professional development, with feedback on the program being very positive
Charter schools saw a rise in facility funds from the district
Denver signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact in December 2010 and, in 2012, they were awarded $4 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to continue and build on their work. Since then, Denver has had several wins, including:
Implementing a common enrollment system
Creating a unified accountability system
Correcting an inequitable distribution of levy dollars across district and charter schools
Cross-sector professional development specifically targeted to better serve special education students and English Language Learners
Denver also has a District-Charter Collaborative Council that discusses and develops policy recommendations to improve the way that the district and charter schools collaborate and work together.
In August 2011, Central Falls signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact. The Compact had been largely pushed by Central Falls’ superintendent, Dr. Frances Gallo, and received support from the school board. Early in the Compact the focus was on joint professional development, sharing a reading curriculum and bilingual language knowledge, cross-sector teacher fellowships, combined teacher recruitment, and facilities.
Even though Gallo retired in 2015, Central Falls School District and charter school leaders have continued to collaborate. According to their website, the Compact is collaboratively working on strategies around human capital and STEAM learning strategies, special education, and parent engagement.
While New Orleans’ citywide portfolio model is very different from the educational landscape in Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities, there are still lessons that can be learned from their June 2012 Charter-District Collaboration Compact. For example, the initial Compact agreement helped launch the OneApp common enrollment system and produced an “equity report”, which includes information regarding student achievement, growth, and demographic data for each school in New Orleans. They also developed a new, equitable system for distributing per-pupil funding to schools for their students with special needs.
Additionally, New Orleans’ district and charter leaders collaborated to create a set of universal school discipline standards that were adopted by all of the city’s public schools. Further, all of the city’s public schools implemented the Louisiana Recovery School District’s centralized school expulsion system, which has ensured consistent behavioral expectations across schools and has resulted in a decrease in expulsion rates.
Even though Minneapolis’ District-Charter Collaboration Compact is currently inactive, there is no reason why they, or other Minneapolis cities, cannot take advantage of the benefits that come from charter-district collaborative relationships. Some of the key takeaways from the five cities’ Compacts are that collaboration between the two sectors can result in:
Increased funding for all public schools
Sharing of best practices and professional development, particularly with regard to students who are ELL or have special needs
Unified data, accountability, and enrollment systems
Increased charter access to facilities and facility funding
In their report, CRPE asserted that for a rising number of school districts, “cooperative action between districts and charter schools is a necessity, not a nicety.” With over 21 percent of Minneapolis students, 23 percent of St. Paul students, and 15 percent of Duluth students attending charter schools, it’s time for the two sectors to set aside their differences and develop collaborative relationships for the benefit of students, schools, families, and communities.
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The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is the primary legislation related to federal K-12 education programs. ESSA replaces many provisions contained in the previous reauthorization—the No Child Left Behind Act—to give states more authority in the design of their school accountability systems and to encourage them to use measures beyond test scores to measure school performance. States, districts, and schools also have greater autonomy to design and implement school improvement strategies for struggling schools.
The law, however, continues to require states and districts to track and respond to low performance of schools and subgroups of students within schools. They must also be able to disaggregate the data they use to determine interventions by race and ethnicity, disability status, English language learners, and income. These critical protections ensure that all students—including the most disadvantaged—cannot be ignored.
Sixteen states and Washington, D.C., submitted their ESSA plans—which cover multiple provisions of the law—to the U.S. Department of Education for review during the first submission window. The Center for American Progress reviewed these submissions for their school classification systems and school improvement plans. The summary provides critical context and methodology. The 17 individual state fact sheets break down each state’s school classification system in addition to school improvement timeline, grant structure, types of schools identified, and key improvement strategies.
Laura Jimenez is the director of standards and accountability at the Center for American Progress. Samantha Batel is a policy analyst with the K-12 Education team at the Center.
Will parents be able to understand their child’s school’s performance under the Every Student Succeeds Act? And will schools with students from difficult socioeconomic backgrounds get a fair shake?
Those are two key questions that folks at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute set out to find answers for in a new report. In an analysis of the 17 plans turned in so far, Fordham President Michael Petrilli and Editorial Director Brandon Wright based their answers on three main questions:
How clear are school ratings are to parents, educators, and the general public?
Do the plans push schools to focus on all students, not just those furthest behind? and
Are schools are treated fairly, particularly those with a large share of students in poverty, and judged in part by academic growth, not just achievement?
Fordham is often identified with right-leaning education policy positions, such as support for school choice. On ESSA, the think tank has also…
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