While students are gearing up for the new school year, education leaders across the country have been hunkering down all summer to finish up their state education plans as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Sixteen states and the District of Columbia submitted their state plans to the U.S. Department of Education back in April, while the remaining 34 states will submit next month.
Among those states in the throes of ESSA planning, New York stands out for the size and diversity of its student population: The state has more than 2.6 million public school students, half of whom are students of color. New York also has been a national leader in engaging educators, parents and communities in improving education. In recent years, the state has done laudable work to refine its state standards and annual assessments improving education for all students—and notably, New York has excelled in involving stakeholders in that process. Recently, as state leaders have been developing their ESSA plan, they have put real effort into gathering input from communities—from Buffalo to Brooklyn—on what they want for their public schools.
With this strong educational groundwork laid, New York released its draft ESSA plan on July 31, about six weeks before the final plan is due to the U.S. Department of Education. This six-week window offers an opportunity for both the public and experts to offer feedback and guidance on ways New York—and states everywhere—can design the best plan to support student success.
With this in mind, Bellwether Education Partners and the Collaborative for Student Success brought together a panel of independent peer reviewers—myself included—to conduct an interim evaluation of New York’s draft ESSA plan. This panel is an extension of Check State Plans, a larger effort to provide an independent review of all states’ ESSA plans. In the spirit of supporting states as they strengthen their education systems, Bellwether and the Collaborative will conduct a full review of the 34 state plans that are submitted in September, including a final review of New York’s plan.
Our goal for the interim review is to identify both strengths and areas for improvement in New York’s plan and offer constructive recommendations for ways the state could refine its planned approach for supporting public schools and students before submitting to the U.S. Department of Education. Our panel has found both bright spots and areas of recommendation for New York’s draft ESSA plan.
On the positive side, the plan reflects New York’s prioritization of student progress and supports for schools.
Incentivizing Academic Progress. We are encouraged that New York’s performance index—which gives schools credit for student performance at four different levels—places a strong incentive on students meeting grade-level standards. However, the state’s approach to monitoring student growth compares students to their peers rather than an overall standard of mastery and thus doesn’t do enough to ensure that students are on track for graduation.
Supporting Schools. New York’s plan outlines a system that provides differentiated supports to schools based on their needs, as well as a process to support school improvement efforts by requiring schools to complete a comprehensive, diagnostic needs assessment. While this approach is commendable, it could benefit from more detail on how parents, educators and other stakeholders will be engaged in the school improvement process.
Our review panel has also identified four opportunities for New York to provide greater clarity and detail about how the state will reach its goals of supporting all schools and students.
Ensuring that All Students Receive a High-quality Education. The plan could be stronger in detailing how historically underserved students (i.e., students of color, low-income students, English learners, students with disabilities, and Native students), referred to in ESSA as “subgroups,” will be supported — both in terms of how they fit into the state accountability index and how schools with consistently underperforming subgroups will be identified for support. Additionally, the state plans to use n-sizes that would omit many students. We recommend New York reconsider these choices.
Setting Ambitious Goals. Related to supporting all students, New York has set a goal of reducing achievement and graduation rate gaps by 20 percent within five years. On the face of it, this goal seems ambitious, but the plan lacks data to confirm that this is the case—or that the goal is attainable. We recommend incorporating more evidence to back up this goal and clarifying whether this and other goals are to be acted on or are part of the state’s longer-term vision.
Identifying Schools in Need of Support. We appreciate that New York’s accountability system has a simple list of indicators, but its process for using those indicators to determine which schools are low-performing is very complicated. Moreover, the plan neglects to mention what will happen to schools that don’t fall into the very low-performing category. We encourage the state to consider simplifying its accountability calculations and provide more information on how the accountability system will impact the 95 percent of schools that are not among the lowest performing.
Moving Schools to Improved Status. Because several of New York’s accountability indicators aren’t tied to objective goals, low-performing schools may not know what they would need to accomplish to show sufficient progress. Our panel recommends that the state create more rigorous criteria for how these schools can demonstrate sustained improvement over time.
We applaud New York’s leadership in engaging all of its stakeholders to improve its public education system, and we believe that this spirit of collaboration and shared commitment to progress can drive New York officials to continue to refine its draft ESSA plan before submitting the final plan in mid-September.
Other states are sure to look to New York’s draft as they design their own plans, and we hope that they will look for ways to model the way in which New York monitors the academic progress of students across the performance spectrum while continuing to emphasize the importance of meeting grade-level standards. We also hope that our independent review will inspire New York officials to take a second look at key parts of their plan—and at best practices from other states, such as those identified in the Alliance for Excellent Education equity analysis—to ensure that their plan truly will support the best outcomes for every student in their state.
Phillip Lovell is vice president of policy development and government relations at the Alliance for Excellent Education
Earlier this week, the State Education Department released the results of the 2017 Grades 3-8 English language arts (ELA) and mathematics tests. Overall, there was a modest improvement in scores statewide, which means we’re moving in the right direction. In ELA this year, the percentage of students in grades 3-8 who scored at the proficient level (Levels 3 and 4) increased by 1.9 percentage points to 39.8, up from 37.9 in 2016. In math, the percentage of students who scored at the proficient level increased this year to 40.2, up 1.1 percentage point from 39.1 in 2016.
This progress is a result of the hard work and dedication of our teachers, students, and parents. Thank you for all you do.
The achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white peers also narrowed slightly statewide for both ELA and math. For ELA, black students saw a 2.8-percentage-point increase in those achieving proficiency while Hispanic students experienced a 2.4-percentage-point increase. In both cases, the increases were greater than those seen by white students, who saw a 1.1-percentage-point increase statewide.
Math scores tell a similar story with increases made by black and Hispanic students outpacing those made by white students. Proficiency rates in math for black and Hispanic students went up by 1.4 and 1.3 percentages points, respectively, while proficiency rates for white students increased by only 0.4 percentage points. While these improvements are encouraging, we know there is still more work to be done to close these gaps.
Every Big 5 City made progress this year, with New York City’s ELA proficiency rate (40.6) now slightly exceeding the statewide rate (39.8). Of the Big 5, Yonkers made the biggest gains in proficiency in ELA and math, with a 3.6-percentage-point increase in ELA and a 3.7-percentage-point increase in math.
Charter schools and students who received ELL services prior to, but not during, the 2016-17 school year (“Ever ELLs”) had some of the largest gains in proficiency this year. ELA proficiency rates for Ever ELLs rose 5.5 percentage points to 45.2 percent, more than 5 points higher than the statewide rate. In math, Ever ELL proficiency increased by 3.2 percentage points to 46.8 percent, nearly 7 points higher than the statewide rate. Statewide proficiency rates for charter schools in ELA and math are now 45-percent and 48.2-percent, respectively, also above the statewide rates.
Overall, this news is promising – our students are moving in the right direction. However, black and Hispanic student scores still trail those of white and Asian students, and the ELA and math proficiency rates for English Language Learners and students with disabilities, while up, are still far too low. Our work to diminish these troubling gaps will continue by expanding prevention, early warning, and intervention programs through My Brother’s Keeper; implementation of the state’s ESSA plan; and our equity initiative.
Still, it is clear we must do more. It is also clear that test results don’t give us the complete picture of how well our schools are doing. For that reason, our draft ESSA plan takes a more holistic approach to accountability and considers multiple measures of school and student success, not just test results. We developed our draft plan in a way that was deliberate, inclusive, and transparent, and we took the same approach in making changes to our standards and assessments.
I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer vacation. Savor the remaining days as much as possible because the first day of school will be here very soon.
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…
The New York State Education Department is requesting comments on three proposed waivers of statutory requirements of Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), for possible submission to the United States Department of Education in conjunction with New York’s ESSA plan. Comments can be submitted via e-mail to ESSAComments@nysed.gov with “ESSA Comments from (sender/organization name)” in the subject line. Comments submitted via mail should be sent to the attention of Dr. Lisa Long, New York State Education Department, Office of Accountability, 4th Floor, 55 Hanson Place, Brooklyn, New York 11217. Comments will be accepted through close of business on September 8, 2017.
New York State Education Department ATTN: ESSA Comments
Office of Accountability, Rm 400
55 Hanson Place
Brooklyn, New York 11217
Comment Period:
Tuesday, May 9, 2017 – Friday, June 16, 2017
Remember the Every Student Succeeds Act’s brand new program aimed at helping states try out new forms of testing?
If not, you’re in good company. We hardly hear anything about ESSA’s “innovative assessment pilot” anymore, including from the U.S. Department of Education. That could change, however. The agency is considering next steps to open the pilot in the 2018-19 school year, a spokesman said.
When ESSA passed back in December 2015, the pilotâwhich would initially allow up to seven states to try out new forms of testing in a handful of districts for federal accountability purposesâwas one of the most eye-catching pieces of the new law. State officials crammed conference rooms and jumped on webinars to figure out how to apply. Two big states, New York and California, expressed at least some interest. And Colorado even passed a law requiring the state education agency to seek the flexibility…
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.
ALBANY – The state Education Department has released a revised schools accountability proposal that’s slated to be considered for adoption in September.
The latest version of the plan, released Monday, includes proposals to use out-of-school suspensions as a measure of school quality and student success beginning in 2018-19; to cut down math and English language arts testing requirements for third through eighth graders from three days to two (something the Board of Regents already has voted on); and to revise benchmarks for schools educating English language learners.
In a noteworthy sign of the political times, the plan was revised to more explicitly highlight concerns about the implementation of a new state law to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18, and its impact on educational services as minors transition out of county jails and take courses in secure and non-secure detention facilities and other voluntary placement agencies. That law, which raises the age from 16 years old, was approved as part of the state budget in April.
The federal Every Student Succeeds Act serves as a guiding document for accountability statewide. States were authorized to come up with such accountability systems under eponymous congressional legislation approved last year to replace the No Child Left Behind Act.
The state Education Department produced the initial draft in May. The plan includes proposals to rate schools based on student performance science and social studies in addition to English and math; on five- and six-year graduation rates instead of just on four-year numbers; and on students’ “civic readiness,” in addition to existing college- or career-readiness benchmarks.
The standards would be used to score schools and identify those that require state intervention and improvement plans.
The draft plan now goes to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has 30 days to review it, make suggestions for inclusion in the final plan, and choose to sign or not sign it.
A Cuomo spokesman said the executive will review the draft.
he Board of Regents is set to take action on the plan in September. With that, education officials can send it on to the U.S. Department of Education for final approval, with implementation to follow.
“Through ESSA, New York is poised to take a more holistic approach to accountability that looks at multiple measures of school and student success,” Board of Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa said in a statement. “This approach allows us to continually evolve and adapt so we can ensure that our systems are culturally responsive and place an emphasis on educating the whole child.”
The revisions to the plan follow a public comment period that drew more than 800 written comments and 270 verbal responses.
A full breakdown of changes to the plan can be found here. The full plan is here.
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
There were few fireworks Wednesday as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testified before a House appropriations subcommittee on the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal. DeVos deflected much of the skepticism she received and continued to push the administration’s support of school choice.
President Trump’s proposal, which has drawn sharp criticism from educators and lawmakers alike, calls for $1.4 billion to expand school choice — namely vouchers and charter schools — but slashes $10.6 billion from after-school programs, teacher training and federal student loans and grants.
In her opening statement, DeVos said Trump’s budget proposal would return power to states and school districts and give parents a choice in their child’s education.
Democrats, including New York Rep. Nita Lowey, accused DeVos of taking money from public schools to fund school choice.
“We’re not proposing any shifting of funding from public schools to private schools,” DeVos responded. “In fact, all of the proposals set forth in the budget commit to fully funding public schools as we have.”
“If you’re pouring money into vouchers, the money is coming from somewhere,” Lowey said.
Many Republicans, while upset about proposed cuts to career and technical training programs, expressed support for DeVos.
“We are beginning to see the early stages of a much-needed, robust discussion about how we begin the process of getting our federal budget under control,” Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas said.
Democrats questioned DeVos about whether she would allow federal funds to go to private schools that discriminate against particular populations.
Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts brought up Lighthouse Christian Academy, a school in Bloomington, Indiana that receives $665,000 in state vouchers and denies admission to children of LGBT parents.
“Is there a line for you on state flexibility?” Clark asked.
“You are the backstop for students and their right to access quality education. Would you in this case say we are going to overrule and you cannot discriminate, whether it be on sexual orientation, race, or special needs in our voucher programs?” Clark added. “Will that be a guarantee from you to our students?”
DeVos sidestepped the question.
“The bottom line is we believe that parents are the best equipped to make choices for their children’s schooling and education decisions,” DeVos said. “Too many children today are trapped in schools that don’t work for them. We have to do something different than continuing a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach.”
DeVos’s appearance before Congress was her first public seating since a rough confirmation hearing before the Senate back in January.
