This past week over 4,200 advocates, teachers, policymakers, administrators, consultants, and board members attended the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ (NAPCS) 2017 National Charter School Conference in Washington DC.
The conference boasted over 135 sessions, which were broken into five different strands—governance, policy, leadership, operations, and instruction. Some of the “featured” topics included social-emotional learning, innovation in K-12, in-house teacher prep, the role of charter authorizers, and how ESSA will impact charter schools, to name a few.
Importantly, Tony Simmons, Executive Director for Minnesota’s High School for Recording Arts, and a board member at Education Evolving, was a co-presenter for a session on “Mission-Driven Metrics for Reengaging Opportunity Youth.”
Chartering and the Trump Administration: A Delicate Relationship Between the Two
One unavoidable topic of the conference was the Trump administration and charter schools. In the opening, all-group session, NAPCS President and CEO, Nina Rees, encouraged attendees to embrace the Trump administration’s support of charter schools. She noted that even though President Bush and President Obama had some controversial education policies (NCLB and Race to the Top), charter advocates still got behind their support of charter schools.
While Rees did not explicitly speak to the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts at the conference, NAPCS released a statement in May on the topic. In the statement, they indicated their support for his expansion of charter schools, but also expressed concern with his proposed cuts: “The proposed $54 billion in overall cuts to nondefense discretionary spending—over $9 billion coming from the Department of Education alone—would have long-lasting, far-reaching negative consequences for children, families, communities, and our country as a whole.”
Secretary DeVos Reinforces Choice and Calls for More Innovation
USDE Education Secretary Betsy DeVos spoke at the conference, despite the controversies surrounding her stances on school choice and school vouchers. In an email to the conference attendees, NAPCS explained that since the launch of the conference in 2000, “Secretaries of Education from both the Bush and Obama Administration have addressed our attendees,” and so in the spirit of “bipartisan tradition” Secretary DeVos would give an address.
In her speech, Secretary DeVos reinforced the Trump Administration’s support for school choice and allowing families to choose the school that best fits the needs of their child, “I suggest we focus less on what word comes before ‘school’ – whether it be traditional, charter, virtual, magnet, home, parochial, private or any approach yet to be developed – and focus instead on the individuals they are intended to serve.”
Additionally, Secretary DeVos’ called for conference attendees to “re-engage and recommit to the entrepreneurial spirit” of the original charter school leaders. She cautioned against “playing it safe” and indicated that somewhere over the past twenty-five years, the innovation and creativity that charters were originally intended to have has been lost. She asserted that, “Embracing more change, more choices and more innovation will improve education opportunities and outcomes for all students.”
Success Academies Receives Broad Prize
The prestigious Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools, which recognizes charter management organizations (CMO) that have “demonstrated the best outcomes, particularly for low-income students and students of color” was awarded at the conference to New York’s Success Academy. The high-performing, high-profile, and sometimes controversial CMO will receive $250,000 that must be used for college-readiness efforts.
While accepting the award, Success Academy founder and CEO, Eva Moskowitz, said, “I wanted to show what was possible for children if we were only willing to rethink, reinvent, and reimagine schooling.” She went on to announce that, later this week, Success will launch a digital platform where they can share their curriculum, training, school design, and other materials with charter schools around the country.
Last night, Governor Dayton signed the policy and funding bills that laid out Minnesota’s next two-year, $46 billion dollar budget, which includes over $18 billion for K-12 education.
However, even though Governor Dayton signed the bills, he used his line-item veto power to eliminate funding for the Legislature, which will likely force another special session. In a letter to the Speaker and Majority leaders, Governor Dayton asserted that he would only allow a special session if they agreed to “re-open and re-negotiate” five provisions, one of which is the overhaul of the teacher licensure system.
Even though a second special session is likely imminent, we have provided in-depth policy summaries for a few of the provisions that we have previously covered, as well as other provisions that have been widely covered during this legislative session.
First Things First, What Isn’t in the K-12 Education Bill?
One noticeable provision not included in the Education Bill is the tax credit scholarships. Opponents of the scholarships claimed that they were “proxy school vouchers” that move state funds toward private education, while proponents asserted that it would give parents more freedom in finding a school that fits the needs of their child.
Innovation Research Zone Pilot Program (Lines 67.6-70.30)
The Innovation Research Zone Pilot Program enables the establishment of innovation zones (IZs) that “allow school districts and charter schools to research and implement innovative education programming models designed to better prepare students for the world of the 21st century.” Read more about the new program in our earlier blog post, and in this summary.
The IZ legislation was championed by Education Evolving, the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, and the Minnesota School Boards Association, and had the support of Schools for Equity in Education and Ed Allies.
Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) State Accountability Plan (Lines 71.1-71.12)
The commissioner must submit the state’s ESSA accountability plan to the legislature’s education policy and finance committees at least 30 days before submitting the plan to the US Department of Education. Additionally, the state plan must be “consistent and aligned, to the extent possible” with the World’s Best Workforce. This language is much more relaxed than earlier versions of the bill that prescribed what should be included in the school quality and student success indicator.
Funding for PreK Programs and the Creation of “School Readiness Plus” Program (Lines 51.28-154.15 & 154.27-155.7)
It’s no secret that Governor Dayton is a champion for voluntary prekindergarten. In his letter to the Speaker, he wrote that he is “pleased” that the bill has additional funding for prekindergarten, but that the bill “failed to meet the known demand for the prekindergarten program established last session” and that since the funding is one-time only it will be a “detriment to establishing ongoing programs to serve our youngest learners.”
The “additional funding” Governor Dayton referenced in his letter was the $50 million that the legislature allocated for mixed delivery, voluntary prekindergarten programs and for the new “School Readiness Plus” program. The purpose of the “School Readiness Plus” program is to “prepare children for success as they enter kindergarten,” by allowing a district, charter school, or a combination of the two to establish a program for students ages four to kindergarten entrance.
For the “School Readiness Plus” program, district and charter schools are able to contract with a charter school, Head Start or child care center, family child care program, or a community-based organization to provide “developmentally appropriate services.”
The $50 million allocation is in addition to the $67 million dedicated to school readiness, $140 million for early learning scholarships, and $50 million for Head Start for the two-year biennium.
Alternative Teacher Preparation Grant Program (Lines 60.26-62.16)
The commissioner, in consultation with the Board of Teaching, must establish and manage a program that will annually award grants to eligible alternative teacher preparation programs. In order for a program to be eligible for the grant, they must be a “school district, charter school, or nonprofit” that has been in operation for three continuous years in Minnesota or any other state, and must be working to fill the state’s teacher shortage areas. The commissioner must give preference to programs that are based in Minnesota.
A couple of the uses that the grant monies can be put towards are recruiting, selecting, and training teachers of color and for establishing professional development programs for teacher who obtained their teacher licenses via alternative teacher preparation programs. The legislature allocated $750,000 for the program for the 2018 fiscal year.
Tiered Teacher Licensure System—At Least for Now (Article 3)
Under the new tiered teacher licensure system the Board of Teaching is abolished and replaced by the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB), which is responsible for issuing teacher licenses to qualified candidates.
The meat of the law lies with the four-tiered teacher licensure system, which follows the recommendations from the 2016 OLA report and the Legislative Study Group on Educator Licensing, who both asserted that a tiered system would provide “transparency, consistency, and flexibility.” Starting with Tier 1, candidates have prescribed pathways and requirements for how they can work up to the paramount license, Tier 4.
Changes to this newly passed system, however, are likely given that Governor Dayton stripped the Legislature of its funding and mandated that they re-open negotiations on the teacher licensure system, and four other provisions, in order for a special session to occur.
Education Evolving will continue to follow and report the development of the teacher licensure system, as well as other relevant education policy topics.
On Tuesday evening, members of the House cast a party-line 72-59 vote to pass the education finance omnibus bill. It includes things like a 1.5 percent funding increase to the basic education formula — a number that falls short of the 2 percent increase opponents say is needed to help schools keep up with the cost of inflation. It also earmarks dollars for school readiness funding and early learning scholarships, but doesn’t include funding for the expansion of Gov. Mark Dayton’s signature voluntary pre-K program. And it abolishes the Perpich Center for Arts Education, redirecting resources to establish an arts outreach division at the Department of Education.
There’s another item in the bill having to do with school accountability that’s far less attention-grabbing, but still significant. In brief, state legislators want to review the state’s new federal accountability plan — the Every Student Succeeds Act, commonly known as ESSA — at least 30 days before it gets submitted to the U.S. Department of Education for approval this fall. Language in the bill directs the commissioner to ensure there’s alignment with the existing state school accountability system, the World’s Best Workforce, “to the extent practicable.” That’s an aim that most can agree on.
But when it comes to selecting which new indicator should be adopted to create a more holistic definition of school quality and student success, it appears that the Department of Education’s preferred frontrunner — chronic absenteeism — may be up against an unexpected hurdle.
“I just think chronic absenteeism has become trendy,” Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, chair of the House Education Innovation Policy Committee, said, noting it’s included in several other draft ESSA plans from states who hit the first deadline for submission. “Why doesn’t Minnesota do something different? If absenteeism is really what we think we should do in a school quality indicator, lets look at it a little differently.”
Why chronic absenteeism?
From a technical standpoint, Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius points out, state legislators are laying out parameters that contradict federal law. As currently written in the education omnibus bill, “The school quality or student success accountability indicator required by ESSA must be an academic indicator.”
“That’s against federal law,” Cassellius said in a phone interview. “The federal law requires that the school quality or student success accountability indicator be nonacademic. It’s not that it can’t be academic. It’s just that it also has to include a nonacademic measure.”
One of ESSA’s distinguishing characteristics is that it gives states greater flexibility in setting student achievement goals and directs them to look beyond test scores to gauge school performance. This addition of a so-called “fifth indicator” — which measures things like the number of minutes students spend in physical education, parent engagement, social-emotional learning or some other factor outside of test scores and graduation rates — signals a widely hailed shift away from the more punitive, test-centric No Child Left Behind law. States can opt to add more than one of these new indicators to their accountability plan.
To be clear, the addition of a fifth indicator to round out how schools are evaluated doesn’t mean the hallmark school accountability data sets — proficiency in reading and math, along with high school graduation rates — go to the wayside. Rather, states must now track these measures, along with academic growth (which Minnesota already does in reading and math) and English-language proficiency, plus at least one other indicator of school quality or student success. Also, as states assign a weight to each indicator, ESSA specificities that the indicator of school quality or student success must count much less toward a school’s score than the combined weight of the other indicators.
The commissioner’s preference for using chronic absenteeism as a fifth indicator was guided by a pretty intensive community engagement process. She toured the state seeking feedback on all aspects of the new ESSA plan. And folks at the state Department of Education conducted dozens of meetings over the past year and a half with community members, education advocates, teachers, administrators, parents and data experts who served on two ESSA accountability committees.
The two groups explored the possibility of tracking postsecondary readiness, access to student support services, school climate, student engagement, social-emotional learning and more. They reached a general consensus around tracking chronic absenteeism for a couple of main reasons. First of all, it’s a data set that doesn’t require a heavy lift. Using attendance numbers that are already collected for the Minnesota Automated Reporting Student System (MARRS) reports, state department staff can simply divide each students’ number of days attended by the number of days they were enrolled.
Secondly, there’s value in paying better attention to which students are missing out on a critical portion of their education. This new use of existing data would reveal which students are missing 10 percent or more days of the school year — a threshold that puts them at greater risk of falling behind. In Minnesota last year, for instance, nearly a quarter of students enrolled in the free or reduced priced meal program were chronically absent. Rates also largely broke down along racial lines, with minority students missing more school days. The thinking is that as disparities are identified, schools can dig into the underlying causes and better direct resources to support students.
The state education omnibus bill spells out four academic options legislators would rather see the state Education Department adopt as part of its ESSA plan, all of which can be pulled from existing state accountability assessments. That list includes: reading and math growth for students performing in the bottom quartile, third grade reading proficiency, eighth grade mathematics proficiency, and science proficiency.
This push to fall back on existing data points prompts an important question: Is Minnesota going to stick with the status quo? Or is it going to use new, innovative, data points to tackle one of the worst achievement gaps in the nation?
Time to make a decision
Erickson says the options listed out in the education bill focus on what’s most important: academic outcomes that highlight what teachers are doing in the classroom. She has concerns that focusing on chronic absenteeism will put pressure on schools to change their attendance policies and will distract from what’s going on in the classroom.
“I don’t know how we solve this chronic absenteeism other than kids have to be in school,” she said. “And usually they’re not because they don’t have a parent at home who’s making sure they get to school. We can’t legislate parenting. I guess I would have to say it’s going to take the school district …. actually getting out there and visiting the homes of the children who are not showing up at school, and finding out what the reason is, and helping the parent to get more organized. Maybe social work gets involved.”
Erickson says she realizes the commissioner will likely move forward with adopting chronic absenteeism anyway. But she also laid out a third guideline in the bill, regarding the state’s ESSA plan, directing the commissioner to include a measure for college and career readiness. For instance, tracking student success or attainment in advanced placement or international baccalaureate examinations would be one way of looking at which students are not only accessing, but also succeeding in courses designed to prepare them for a postsecondary education.
It’s a popular indicator that’s made the cut in a number of state ESSA plans that have already been submitted for federal review. And it has quite a bit of popular support in Minnesota. The holdup, at least for now, says Cassellius, is figuring out a meaningful, reliable way to collect that data, statewide.
“We need to be digging into those numbers and finding out who has access and who doesn’t have access to those classes, but we don’t have a reliable way to collect that yet. Once we’re able to get good compliance in school districts on their Minnesota course catalog, we’ll be able to see all of that information,” she says, noting less than half of schools currently report their course information. “We’ll also be able to see, because of our STAR report, who’s teaching that and what tier those teachers are at, teaching those subjects, in the future. But we’re building those systems now.”
Once the Education Department is equipped to better support this data collection, she says, she can write to the U.S. Department of Education and add new indicators by simply amending the state’s ESSA accountability plan.
Madaline Edison, executive director of the Minnesota branch of Educators for Excellence, who’s been a part of the ESSA meetings held at the department of education, is hoping for a compromise that takes alignment with World’s Best Workforce and the opportunity to innovate into account.
“The spirit of the law is really about going beyond your typical graduation scores and test rates to look at other measure of the student experience in school that are deeply correlated to academic and life outcomes,” Edison said. “It’s not surprising that the legislature would like to play a role in such an important decision in our state as this. But it is troubling to me this is happening so late in the process. In hindsight, I wish the department and legislators would have been working together throughout this whole process.”
A little over a year ago, Barack Obama signed into law the biggest K-12 education reform in over a decade: the Every Student Succeeds Act, a product of years-long compromise in Congress, was intended to smooth over the shortcomings of the previous education law of the land, No Child Left Behind.
The bill, informally called ESSA, aims to lighten the footprint of the federal government in K-12 education policy. Democrats and Republicans in Congress agreed to give local education policymakers greater authority to decide how schools and students were performing, and to decide how to allocate federal education dollars.
Minnesota and other states are currently working on their plans for complying with ESSA, and they will ultimately require approval from the U.S. Department of Education. Those plans, however, will arrive in a Washington under much different leadership than the one that signed ESSA into law.
Where Obama’s team believed there was an important role for the federal government to play in education, President Donald Trump’s controversial Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, has supported conservative education causes — like providing vouchers to students attending private schools — and an ethos of taking power away from D.C.
Educators at the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis credit the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) with increasing awareness about their historic music program.
“MacPhail is one of the nation’s oldest and largest music education non-profits,” said Claire Forrest, the digital communications and public relations coordinator at the center. “We serve 15,500 students, transforming lives and communities through exceptional music learning for all ages, backgrounds and abilities.”
The center boasts 245 teachers with instruction in 35 instruments, including voice. Youth can explore the world of music in an age-appropriate and fun environment.
Forrest noted that certain provisions included in ESSA will provide educators with more tools to assist students. Those provisions include the requirement that all students in America be taught to high academic standards that will prepare them to succeed in college and careers.
ESSA was enacted to help increase the effectiveness of public education in every state. Under ESSA, states have greater flexibility under federal regulations. The law also ensures that every child, regardless of race, income, background, or where they live has access to a high-quality education.
The law also helps to support and grow local innovations, including evidence-based and place-based interventions developed by local leaders and educators.
Forrest and others credit the provisions under ESSA with boosting more interest in the program and gaining even more tools to assist students.
“Students learn in many ways and ESSA acknowledges and supports that with the emphasis on well-rounded curriculum and well-rounded students,” said Paul Babcock, president and CEO of the MacPhail Center for Music. “The inclusion of music and arts both supports student engagement in creative arts and allows students to learn through active participation in arts making.”
Babcock continued: “These are items important to all students and especially important to students in underrepresented communities where opportunities are limited.”
Babcock said that early exposure to the arts help to level the playing field and allow students’ talents to be nurtured in ways that are vital to their future success in life and the workplace.
And MacPhail offers dozens of ways to explore those talents.
It’s “Sing, Play, Learn” program allows young ones to experience the joy and the benefits of music while it’s “Suzuki” program is one of the largest and most established of its kind in the country, Babcock said.
Students learn music fundamentals, technique and appreciation from some of the most qualified musicians around and they can develop musical skills in a fun, collaborative setting with group music lessons, classes, and ensembles or in private lessons at MacPhail.
The center also hosts summer camps and music therapy options to help children improve their physical, psychological, cognitive, behavioral and social functioning through clinical and evidence-based research and practices by working with an experienced, board-certified music therapist.
“In our early childhood and school partnership programs, students often do not have access to music education due to the constraints on school time and budgets,” said Babcock. “The focus of school time and resources in many of those cases is put towards subjects that are being tested and how schools are being measured.”
Babcock said that, as a result, music and arts education is often ignored. Babcock noted that when McPhail’s School Partnership programs are being instituted at schools that did not have music, the students have demonstrated gains in social, emotional and executive functioning skills; they students also become more engaged in their communities.
“These advancements for the students are directly benefiting students’ attendance at school and therefore their accomplishments in school,” said Babcock. “ESSA’s focus on the well-rounded student provides the opportunity for resources to be directed to music and the arts, therefore, removing the time and resource limitation.”
Washington — Teachers, at least two former education secretaries, and others with links to education are speaking out about President Donald Trump’s executive order issued Friday that suspends refugee admissions into the U.S. for 120 days, bars all immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, and indefinitely bans refugees from Syria.
For Rachel Rowan, a high school social studies teacher in Prince George’s County schools in Maryland, the controversy happens to match up with her lessons: This week, Rowan told us, she’ll be discussing the U.S. Constitution’s Article II (the section governing the powers of the presidency) and what exactly executive orders are. And she said she’ll be emphasizing to them that “looking at different perspectives is often the most productive thing they can do with an issue” to learn about it and understand it. (We spoke with Rowan while she was on her way to attend a demonstration near the U.S. Capitol against the nomination of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick to be education secretary.)…
WASHINGTON — Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Department of Education, sought to use her confirmation hearing to beat back the notion that she would undermine public education as head of the department, as Democrats pressed her on everything from her views on the civil rights of gay and lesbian students, to states’ responsibilities for students in special education, and guns in schools.
“If confirmed, I will be a strong advocate for great public schools,” DeVos said. “But, if a school is troubled, or unsafe, or not a good fit for a child—perhaps they have a special need that is going unmet—we should support a parent’s right to enroll their child in a high-quality alternative.” She also noted that her mother, Elsa Prince, was a public school teacher.
But those assurances didn’t seem to quell the anxieties of Democrats on the committee, including Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking member. “I have major concerns with how you have spent your career and fortune fighting to privatize public education and gut investments in public schools,” she said.
In the early stages of a tense hearing that lasted three and a half hours, Murray asked DeVos if she would be willing to commit not to “cut a penny from public education” or use her perch at the department to privatize public schools. DeVos said she would seek to give parents and children the best educational options possible, which Murray essentially took as a no.
DeVos didn’t delve into the specifics on many of the big questions on the table, like whether she would rein in the department’s office of civil rights, or how she would handle key details of the federal student lending program. And at times she seemed unclear on key policy details, including during a pair of exchanges with Democratic senators on whether federal special education laws should apply to all schools. (More here.)…
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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…
“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.
