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…
The grinding, two-year process of drafting accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act has upended states’ K-12 political landscape and laid bare long-simmering factions among power brokers charged with putting the new federal education law into effect this school year.
The details tucked into dozens of plans being turned in to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos this week were hammered out by a hodgepodge of elected and appointed officials—from governors and legislators to state school board members and local superintendents—during sometimes sparsely attended meetings, caucuses, and task force sessions.
Further complicating matters, 12 governors, half the nation’s state superintendents, and half of legislatures’ education committee chairpersons are new to office since the passing of ESSA in December 2015, when significant policy leeway was handed back to the states from the federal government.
“The problem with devolution and decentralization is that, by definition, you’re going to get a lot of variation … in terms of effort, political will, and the effectiveness of those efforts,” said Patrick McGuinn, a political scientist at Drew University in New Jersey who has studied state and federal policy and followed the implementation of ESSA.
In many cases, politicians, lobbyists, and membership organizations used their political prowess, technical expertise, and longevity to successfully push their agendas in the crafting of 51 state-level ESSA accountability plans.
Friction Points
Hammering out plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act has been a source of tension for rival policymakers in many states.
Governors
Governors in Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, and Wisconsin rejected their states’ ESSA plans after the required 30-day review process. The plans can be submitted without governor approval—indeed, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos approved Louisiana’s plan—but such a thumbs-down indicates to the federal Education Department that there’s not political consensus over details.
State Boards of Education
In states such as Delaware, North Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia, legislatures attempted to strip the powers of their state boards of education over key education policy areas even as the states readied their approaches to ESSA implementation. In North Carolina, the state board sued the legislature over an education law passed during a special session that board members said violated the state’s constitution.
Legislatures
Lawmakers in states such as Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, and West Virginia passed bills that dictated components of states’ ESSA plans regarding school accountability and testing. That left local superintendents and state board members frustrated.
State Chiefs
State superintendents in Alabama, Colorado, and New Mexico resigned in the middle of the ESSA-planning process after high-profile debates over key policies, leaving practitioners in the lurch and states in some instances making last-minute changes.
But the nature of state politics left out other groups, some of which will spend the coming months restructuring their spending and staffing priorities to more effectively lobby in the inevitable battles to come over the new law.
“The politics of federalism is going to dramatically change going forward,” said Sandra Vergari, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Albany who has studied federal education policy. Following all 50 states “is going to be a lot more work for us scholars, policy analyst, and advocates.”
Unlike prior federal versions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESSA required “meaningful stakeholder engagement” in crafting state plans—without defining who a stakeholder is or how much or what type of engagement needs to be conducted.
Many state superintendents said shortly after ESSA was passed that they had a natural incentive to put an end to years of polarizing debates over standards, accountability, and testing. But as the ESSA planning process unfolded, power grabs ensued in a number of states. Those traditionally in charge of education policy sparred with each other and with lawmakers eager to take on a share of the new responsibility.
In North Carolina, for example, the Republican-controlled legislature—just days before Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper took office this winter—decided during a special session that the state board should no longer oversee key accountability and school turnaround decisions, and that those decisions should be left up to the state’s recently appointed Republican state superintendent.
The board sued, and a judge decided last week to delay the law, which has held up the state’s ESSA planning process.
Delaware’s legislature stripped its state board of several powers, and a pending bill in Washington would scrap that state’s board of the ability to oversee portions of its accountability system.
And after years of infighting, Indiana’s legislature decided this year that the state’s elected superintendent should instead be appointed by the governor.
Hot-Button Issues
In other states, crucial policy decisions over testing, state goals, and how to define an ineffective teacher fanned flames between advocacy groups and politicians.
The governors in Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, and Wisconsin all refused to sign off on their states’ plans before sending them to Secretary DeVos. (A plan still can be turned in without the governor’s signature.)
And Michigan Lt. Gov. Brian Calley asked DeVos to send the plan back (something his office is not allowed to do) after he took issue with portions that dealt with special education students. That state’s board-appointed superintendent involved more than 300 people in the development of the plan, a process the lieutenant governor said still left the state’s special education community without a voice.
“What we have in our system is all these interest groups across the political spectrum that have a lot of power and say,” said Calley, who has a child with special needs. “There’s no organized group with PACS and electoral power in our system that represents the parents.”
State superintendents, many with their own political agendas, were left walking a political tightrope in some states. Several didn’t survive.
In a political snub, Hawaii’s since-replaced state Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi wasn’t invited by Democratic Gov. David Ige to sit on the state’s ESSA task force.
New Mexico’s secretary of education, Hanna Skandera, resigned in June shortly after turning in her state’s controversial plan, which upset the state’s teaching force. And just last week, Alabama Superintendent Michael Sentance resigned after a bruising evaluation by the state’s district superintendents who took issue with his leadership style and the ESSA development process.
Advocates Weigh In
National, state, and local advocacy organizations all scrambled throughout ESSA planning to adjust to the fluid situation. A board meeting in California in July, for example, fielded dozens of comments protesting the state’s proposed accountability system.
In other states, advocates skipped state board meetings and went straight to their legislature.
Maryland’s Democratically-controlled legislature, pressured by the state’s teachers’ union, effectively wrote the state’s accountability system into a law called “Protect Our Schools Act.” The bill survived Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto and inflamed state board of education members who accused politicians of trapping students in failing schools.
Ohio’s teachers’ union and parent groups managed to convince the state’s superintendent in the spring to stall the turning in of that state’s plan after they convinced enough people that the plan would ramp up school testing.
And Kentucky’s legislature passed as part of its new ESSA-aligned accountability system a sweeping education bill that mostly scrapped a historic school governance model that had elevated parent voices in the form of school-based-decision-making councils.
The battle pitted Kentucky’s politically weak parent groups against the state’s well-financed superintendents’ association and teachers’ union. It flew in the face of a working relationship the three parties had forged over the years in fighting for more school funding from the legislature as the coal industry collapsed.
“We’ve been together for so long and through so much together,” said a disappointed Lynne Slone, the attorney for the Kentucky Association of School Councils.
In Florida, Rosa Castro-Feinberg, a civil rights activist for minority and English-language-learner students, said she will shift her efforts to the local level if the state’s ESSA plan passes federal muster. Castro-Feinberg launched a petition and letter-writing and media campaign to stop several waiver requests from being attached to that state’s plan, an effort that ultimately failed.
Others, however, see an opportunity for advocates and policymakers to forge ties across state lines in the wake of the sometimes-tense ESSA planning, especially on common issues such as the achievement gap, the effects poverty has on schools, and stagnant student performance.
“For some states that are diving into this more deeply, doing the soul-searching, you’re seeing a lot less partisanship,” said Michelle Exstrom, the Education Program Director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Education shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I think when you have a sense of urgency, you figure out that it’s in everyone’s best interest to improve outcomes, and leaders get motivated to go to the table to fix it.”
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
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The West Virginia Board of Education will participate in an exchange of ideas and experiences with members of the Kentucky and Ohio Boards of Education on Tuesday, May 23, 2017, at 9:00 a.m. at Stonewall Resort, 940 Resort Drive, Roanoke, West Virginia. This event is hosted and sponsored by the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center.
AGENDA
WEST VIRGINIA BOARD OF EDUCATION
Stonewall Resort
940 Resort Drive
Roanoke, West Virginia
May 23, 2017 – 9:00 a.m.
NOTICE: This event is hosted and sponsored by the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center for members of the West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky Boards of Education.
I. Welcome – Pledge of Allegiance – Introductions – Call to Order
Thomas W. Campbell
II. Approval of Agenda – (Action)
AGENDA
APPALACHIA REGIONAL COMPREHENSIVE CENTER
State Boards of Education Ideas Exchange
9:00 – 9:10 a.m. Welcome/Overview
9:10 – 10:30 Session I
Assessment/Accountability
Finance Issues
10:30 – 10:45 Break
10:45 – Noon Session 2
Building Bridges: Working with and Strengthening Relations with Governor, Legislature, and State Education Agencies State ESSA Activities
Noon – 1:00 p.m. Lunch (Group Discussion with Report Out After)
1:00 – 2:30 Session 3
Department Organization (Staff Size, Allocation, Services Provided, Delivery Models) Consolidation and Regional Delivery Versus Community School Model
2:30 Event Concludes
AGENDA
WEST VIRGINIA BOARD OF EDUCATION
III. Future Meetings – (Information)
The next regular meeting of the WVBE will be held June 14, 2017, in Charleston, West Virginia. The meeting will continue on June 15, 2017, if the agenda is not completed on June 14, 2017.
Van Wert, Ohio — Long-time adversaries U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten spent more than four hours touring this rural Ohio district together Thursday. Both were still alive and well by the end of the day.
And so were the deep divisions in this corner of the country over K-12 education and President Donald Trump.
Even as DeVos and Weingarten counted model dinosaurs with preschool students, watched high school students demonstrate their robotics know-how, and chatted with teachers about social-emotional supports, small groups of protestors from both sides of the political divide gathered…
Earlier this week, the Brookings Institution released the fifth annual Education Choice and Competition Index, which ranks school choice in the largest school districts in the U.S.
During her address, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos claimed that “parents are the primary point of accountability.” When asked about policies that ensure that schools of choice are actually improving student performance, she answered that “the policies around empowering parents and moving the decision-making to the hands of parents on behalf of children is really the direction we need to go.” She later repeated the idea that transparency and information, coupled with parental choice, equated to accountability.
While it is indeed important to communicate information on school choice, transparency and information are only part of the accountability puzzle. In addition to these components, states also use accountability to ensure that schools that fail to meet academic or financial standards are improved or closed.
This is of particular importance for public charter schools, who have been given the authority to operate independently of school districts and many state rules or regulations. Accountability rules assure that students are learning and that public funds are spent responsibly.
While the accountability measures used for charter schools to demonstrate quality performance vary from state to state, they do exist, and they include more than just reporting information to parents.
Forty-three states had charter school laws in place when we completed this analysis (not including Kentucky, which passed a bill in March 2017 to allow charter schools). We examined four points of accountability within the charter school policies as recorded by the Education Commission of the States: annual reporting, specifications for termination, performance-thresholds, and technical assistance.
Annual Reporting
Most states require charter schools to submit annual reports as a part of their accountability obligations. Some annual reporting requirements include annual report cards, education progress reports, curriculum development, attendance rates, graduation rates, and college admission test scores. Many states that do not require annual reports still require financial reports, which speaks to the other side of accountability, appropriate usage of funds.
Some states, such as Washington, require charter schools to provide the same annual school performance reports as non-charter schools.
In Ohio, each charter is required to disseminate the state Department of Education’s school report card report to all parents.
North Carolina requires its charter schools to publish their report performance ratings, awarded by the State Board of Education, on the internet. If the rating is D or F, the charter school must send written notice to parents. North Carolina also requires specific data reporting related to student reading.
State Specification for Termination
Forty-two states specify the grounds for terminating a charter school, fostering accountability by establishing standards and consequences of failure to adhere to those standards. Failure to demonstrate academic achievement and failure to increase overall school performance are among the terms cited as grounds of termination among some states.
These state specifications for termination do not only apply to performance levels; they can be applied to a violation of any part of the charter law or agreement, such as fraud, failure to meet audit requirements, or failure to meet standards set for basic operations.
State Threshold
In addition to state specifications for termination, some states have set a threshold marking the lowest point where a school can perform before it is closed. Some states without a clearly communicated low-performance threshold have set other standards which specifically mark the lowest point of acceptable performance.
Setting a minimum threshold for performance for the automatic closure of failing schools may increase charter school accountability, and encourage high performance.
State-Provided Technical Assistance
Technical assistance to charter schools included leadership training or mentoring charter school leaders, or assistance with grant and application writing and other paperwork related to charter school operation.
In addition to holding charter schools accountable for high performance, several states offer technical assistance to ensure that charter school administrators understand how requirements are measured, and can be directed to resources to assist them with achieving performance goals, especially if they are at risk of closure due to failing to meet previously established standards.
These are clear displays of school accountability policies that help to ensure that parents have truly good schools from which to schools. Accountability relies not only on information for parents, but also consequences for schools that fail to educate students or use taxpayer dollars responsibly.
[1] The following states also require annual financial audits with their annual performance reports: Arkansas, Arizona, DC, Georgia, Hawaii, Oregon, Michigan, Texas, Utah
[2]Utah requires the most comprehensive technical assistance offerings, provided by the state charter school board which includes: assistance with the application and approval process for charter school authorization, locating private funding and support sources, and understanding and implementing charter requirements.
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.”
Making good on a promise to heed public input, Ohio’s top education official announced last week that he would delay submitting a federally-required education plan.
“The submission of the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) response should be an event that unites us,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Paolo DeMaria wrote in an open letter explaining the delay. “In recent weeks, we’ve heard from stakeholders who feel their input was not reflected in the ESSA template.”
The announcement was met with a sigh of relief from those who were critical of the state’s plan. In rare bipartisan fashion, state officials, educators and lawmakers from across the political spectrum agreed that a delay was in the state’s best interest. Part of the reason was the state’s unprecedented outreach for public input. And the public didn’t disappoint.
Going “Above and Beyond” for Stakeholder Outreach
In all, more than 15,000 Ohioans provided feedback on the state’s ESSA implementation plan: about 3,100 people participated in webinars; more than 1,500 people attended meetings with Philanthropy Ohio, a statewide charity network; Ohio Department of Education (ODE) staff participated in more than 70 meetings and presentation; and there were more than 11,000 responses to an online survey.
“The [Ohio education] department went above and beyond what they often do in terms of stakeholder engagement,” said Lisa Gray, project director for the Philanthropy Ohio Education Initiative, which directed ten engagement sessions across the state last year. Philanthropy Ohio also published a white paper on that engagement, which was just one part of the state’s outreach plan.
![[ESSA] State Plan Versions That Have Been Released So Far](https://nnpa.org/essa/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/essa-posts-featured_0060_iStock-460421987-1-1080x600.png)
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.