We can all agree that students are a key stakeholder in their own education. When they are involved in the assessment process and in their own learning, the result is an improvement in achievement. So while reviewing test results with them after the fact is important, communicating with students – as a class or individually – before they test is equally important. Here are seven things to consider discussing with your students before testing:
Explain where the test fits in the bigger picture.Any given test or assessment is just one piece of their overall progress as students. This one test on this one day is not the sole measure of their potential or their future. A better understanding of context will help them better understand how it all fits together.
Share how the test results will affect their overall class grade.Often, students are unaware of why they are being tested or why the teachers need the data they are looking for. Is it going to be used for setting student or class goals, establishing a grade, or for placement purposes? Share this information with your students before the test so that they are aware of exactly what the score of the test will mean to them. If it does not affect their class grade, let them know that, too.
Pre-empt questions about what their data will look like and who will be seeing it.Depending on the age of your students, you should consider sharing with them what results you’ll be receiving after the test, what results they as students will receive, and what will be shared with their parents.
Take the fear out of the testing jargon.Words like evaluate, criteria, evidence, and scores can be scary for some students. While they may seem obvious and interchangeable to you as a teacher, it’s helpful to students to explain these definitions to them and set their minds at ease.
Clarify the testing environment.Some students are less familiar than others when it comes to testing and how testing schedules can interrupt a given week. Providing better clarification can help alleviate student stress. Let them know if it will be a one-day test or if it will happen over a period of days. Provide insights into breaks, whether they can use the restrooms, and what they should bring with them on testing days.
Make any transition to computers or tablets easy.If there is a computer lab being used as part of the testing process, be sure they know where the lab is, how the computer will be used as part of the test, and how to log in.
Provide the dates of the next assessment.When you explain growth over time to students, it helps to share a basic schedule of how the assessments will be administered. Let them know when the next one will occur and whether it will be similar to the one they are preparing for now. This is a great way to emphasize a focus on growth.
Getting students on the same page before an assessment or test can really help settle nerves and reduce stress. If you have time, consider one-on-one meetings with your students to allay individual concerns or answer specific questions. If your students are taking the MAP® Growth™ assessment, you should consult this post in particular – 11 Talking Points for Teachers Preparing Students for the MAP Test. And stay tuned here on the blog, where every Tuesday we will feature some of our best tips and resources as you head back to school.
CHICAGO—ALA Publishing eLearning Solutions announces a new session of our popular workshop, Serving Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder with Lesley S. J. Farmer. This workshop will consist of two 90-minute sessions and take place at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30 Central/12:30 Mountain/11:30am Pacific on:
Thursday, Oct. 5, 2017 and
Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017
Autism is one of the most commonly diagnosed serious developmental disability, and the number of children identified as autistic continues to grow. In this workshop, Dr. Lesley Farmer will take you through the basics of autism, explaining the forms the condition can take and how diagnosed children tend to be unique.
You will learn the library-specific challenges of working with this population, as well as best practices for both interacting with the children one-on-one and making the library environment, as a whole, more friendly. You will learn about resources and instructional strategies for serving this population.
Topics Include:
Identifying youth with ASD and understanding their developmental challenges
Making your library environment comfortable for youth with ASD
Strategies for successful one-on-one interaction
Understanding the print and digital resources available to librarians
About the Instructor
Dr. Lesley Farmer, Professor at California State University (CSU) Long Beach, coordinates the Librarianship program. She also manages the CSU ICT Literacy Project. She earned her M.S. in Library Science at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and received her doctorate in Adult Education from Temple University. Dr. Farmer chairs the IFLA’s School Libraries Section and is a Fulbright scholar. A frequent presenter and writer for the profession, she won American Library Association’s Phi Beta Mu Award for library education, the AASL Distinguished Services Award, and the International Association of School Librarianship Commendation Award. Dr. Farmer’s research interests include digital citizenship, information literacy, collaboration, assessment and data analysis. Her most recent books are Library Improvement through Data Analytics (ALA, 2016) and Managing the Successful School Library (ALA, 2017).
Registration for this ALA Publishing eLearning Solutions Workshop is available on the ALA Store. You can purchase registration at both individual and group rates.
ALA Publishing eLearning Solutions Workshops offer a convenient, hands-on learning experience that will help you and your colleagues make the best decisions for your library. This workshop is licensed for use by staff or users of the purchasing institution or library organization.
ALA Publishing eLearning Solutions (ELS) produces high-quality professional development events and materials for the library profession. ELS events cover modern issues on a wide variety of topics in formats that include live workshops, asynchronous eCourses, and print publications. We help ensure that today’s library employees have access to the professional development opportunities they need, whether they are brushing up on the basics or expanding their horizons with cutting-edge tools. Contact us at elsmarketing@ala.org.
Written by Mashea Ashton for the Arizona Informant
It’s fair to say the ultimate goal of the education reform movement, and the education community in general, is to ensure that all students – no matter where they live or what their background is – have access to a high-quality education. This is a big and intimidating challenge, an addressing it requires across-the-board commitment to three foundational goals.
First, we have to ensure that low-income families have access to high-quality educational opportunities at local private schools. Too often, those at the lower end of the income spectrum are limited to sub-par or failing public schools simply by virtue of what neighborhood they live in. This is an unacceptable outcome for those of us committed to educational equality, and that’s why we should focus time and resources on ensuring that workable solutions like vouchers and tax credits are an option for our nation’s most disadvantaged students.
Mashea Ashton
Second, we have to be committed to providing access to high-quality public charter schools. As public schools operated independently of their district, charter schools are in a unique position to lead in educational innovation, setting an example for both private and traditional district schools.
But too often they lack the funding and access to facilities that other public schools enjoy. All students deserve equal access to educational funding, facilities, and opportunities in areas where charter schools are available, and we have to work even harder to make sure charter schools are available as an option in those places that don’t currently provide educational opportunity.
Third, we have to work to improve the quality of the traditional public schools we already have. There’s a temptation for education reformers to focus on progress we can make outside district school systems. In many ways it’s easier to enact change through private and public charter schools than it is in district schools. But committing to high-quality education for all students means making sure that every school is providing the best possible education to its students.
It’s easy to embrace an “us versus them” mentality, especially between reformers and the establishment, but even among reformers. Each sector of the reform movement has its own priorities, and when we focus only on our goals we risk losing sight of our purpose. Ultimately, we’ll only realize our shared vision if we learn to work together, both as reformers with different priorities and in collaboration with the establishment.
That’s what we’re trying to do in Newark, New Jersey, where parents, educators, administrators, students, clergy, community leaders and other local stakeholders are coming together for educational opportunity. Despite significant budgetary and community challenges, we have been able to establish significant changes in the educational landscape. Nearly one-third of Newark’s public school students are now served in charter schools, and the entire community is talking about ways to continue expanding access to high-quality options.
I’ve said before, and it bears repeating, that we have to take a kids-first approach to the issue. If charter, private, and district schools can all acknowledge that we have the same universal goal, if we can acknowledge together that our children are more important than politics, ego, or legacy, we can increase access to high-quality options across the board.
Mashea Ashton serves on the board of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and is the CEO of the Newark Charter School Fund.
On July 4th, the vast majority of the 7,000 delegates from the National Education Association (NEA) voted to adopt a new charter school policy statement. The new statement is an overhaul of NEA’s former charter school policy statement that they had adopted in 2001.
Context for Charters Nationally and in Minnesota
A lot has changed since 2001, when chartering was just ten years old and the national enrollment was only 571,000 students. Since then, charter school enrollment has increased dramatically. Today, more than 3 million students are enrolled in charter schools across the country, which comprises 6.1 percent of national public school enrollment.
In Minnesota, even though charter school enrollment has grown by 36 percent in the past five years, it still accounts for just 6 percent of the state’s public school enrollment. According to Eugene Piccolo, executive director for the Minnesota Association of Charter schools, “We’ll see probably steady, slow growth” for charter school enrollment and expansion.
NEA Provides Criteria that “Charters Must Meet”
NEA President, Lily Eskelen Garcia, said that, “This policy draws a clear line between charters that serve to improve public education and those that do not.” Specifically, NEA’s new policy statement lays out three criteria that charter schools must meet in order to provide students with “the support and learning environments they deserve.”
Criterion #1: Charter schools must be authorized and held accountable by public school districts. Specifically, the statement asserts that charter schools only “serve students and the public interest when they are authorized and held accountable by the same democratically accountable local entity [school board] that authorizes other alternative school models in a public school district such as magnet, community, educator-led.”
Criterion #2: The charter school must demonstrate that it is necessary to meet the needs of the students in the district, and they must meet those needs in a manner that improves the local public school system. Additionally, charter school may only be authorized or expanded only after the public school district has “assessed the impact of the proposed charter school on local public school resources, programs and services.”
Criterion #3: The charter school must comply with the same basic safeguards as other public schools, which includes open meetings and public records law, prohibitions against for-profit operations, and certification requirements, among other things.
The policy statement contends that if these criterion are not met then no charter school should be authorized, and that NEA would support state and local moratoriums on “further charter authorizations in the school district.”
In addition to the three criteria, the policy statement asserted that “fully virtual or online” charter schools should be not authorizer at all because they “cannot, by their nature, provide students with a well-rounded, complete educational experience.”
NAPCS, NACSA Respond to NEA Policy Statement
On July 5th, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) issued a response to NEA’s statement. The response provided clarifications to some of the assertions that NEA had made. In response to NEA’s claim that charters are largely held “unaccountable” and are for-profit, NAPCS wrote, “Eighty-five percent of charter schools are either independently run or part of a non-profit network, but no matter their structure, all charter schools are public schools and all are held accountable to their authorizers and the families they serve.”
Further, the NAPCS noted several achievements in the charter sector over the past year, including that six of the ten best high schools in America, as ranked by U.S. News, were charter schools and that the National Teacher of the Year, Sydney Chaffee, is a Massachusetts charter school teacher.
Greg Richmond, President and CEO for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), asserted that NEA’s policy statement seems to indicate that “they are not against charter schools as long as they operate just like district schools,” and have union contracts and school board politics. Richmond asked, so then “What’s the point?”
He also said the statement missed some of the “nuance in the sector”. He noted that some charters are far more transparent than others due to state and local rules, but also indicated that virtual or online charters have consistently yielded poor results for students. He admitted that, “there is work to be done, but that won’t happen by making charter schools run exactly like district schools.”
As the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) affords states the flexibility to decide how to measure student achievement, two reports released June 23 show that schools play a key role in developing students’ soft skills such as beliefs about their intellectual capacity, sense of belonging at school, and eagerness to learn in the face of adversity.
“This law calls for a well-rounded education and a shifting away from the narrow focus on academics,” said Ulrich Boser, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), which hosted a panel discussion at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., to coincide with the release of the reports.
“Both reports are indicating that teachers see the importance of these skills,” said event moderator Katherine Bassett, president and CEO of National Network of State Teachers of Year (NNSTOY), which published the second report.
In recent years, there has been a steady growth in policies and practices that emphasize learning mindsets, which can be defined as “student beliefs.” In one case, students improved academically after participating in a program which encouraged them to reflect on ways in which daily classroom activities connected to lifelong goals.
According to both reports, ESSA provides state and district leaders new opportunities to cultivate positive student attitudes, values, and habits.
Teachers the Strongest Influence
“Social and emotional learning makes a difference for students in terms of their academic well-being in many respects,” said panelist Elizabeth Glennie, a research analyst at RTI International and NNSTOY report co-author along with Bassett and three others. “Teachers are probably the strongest influence in a school on a student’s social and emotional learning.”
According to the NNSTOY report, inter- and intra-personal (or, “social and emotional”) competencies include attitudes and behaviors that affect how students reflect on and apply their learning capacities and skills relative to managing relationships with others. These skills are sometimes referred to as 21st century skills, deeper learning, non-academic, non-cognitive, or soft skills.
While ESSA does not mention “learning mindsets and skills,” the law did replace references to “core academic subjects,” instead calling for a “well-rounded education” for all students.
“The emphasis for so long has been placed on academic performance and academic content mastery,” said panelist Rebecca Snyder, a co-author of the NNSTOY report and member of Greater Latrobe Education Association in Pennsylvania where she was teacher of the year in 2009. “I’m really encouraged by the shifts (in teaching) where we are taking more of a whole child orientation (while) focusing on social and emotional learning.”
In its report, NNSTOY employed three focus groups comprised of 28 former teachers of the year from across the country. Participants discussed, among other items, the importance of identifying and harnessing the following three student skills or competencies: grit, growth mindset, and a sense of belonging.
Nurturing Environment
“Research shows that a sense of belonging can increase academic performance, in fact, a whole range of academic measures,” Synder said. “Sometimes, that’s the reason they even walk into the building … because they know this (school) is a great place to be.”
Given a high degree of interest among educators to implement social and emotional learning, panelists agreed that there is a need for more professional development on how to integrate social and emotional learning into daily classroom lessons.
“Teachers are clamoring for this type of professional development,” Boser added. “We have a policy opportunity under (ESSA) that allows us to spend monies in new ways, create new partnerships, and to develop this work.”
According to the CAP report, ESSA gives state and district leaders a unique chance to advance learning mindsets and skills through reform efforts. A growing body of research shows that learning mindsets “significantly depend on the conditions within a student’s learning environment and the messages students receive about their learning ability. When educators nurture positive learning mindsets among their students, students are far better able to view new challenges as a natural part of the learning process.”
“This (ESSA implementation) is an opportunity for our students to receive a high quality education,” said panelist Amalio Nieves, an assistant superintendent for Boston Public Schools in Massachusetts.
Nieves alluded to the importance of acknowledging students who live under adverse conditions from low-income neighborhoods with limited community resources.
“Youth in urban settings bring assets to the table, like a level of resiliency,” he said. “How do we help our teachers capitalize on this mindset?”
Over the past 20 years, the number of English learner (EL) students in Minnesota has increased by 300 percent, making them the state’s fastest growing student group, and they currently constitute 8.3 percent of the state’s total K-12 public education student enrollment. However, despite the rapid growth, their academic progress, as compared to their non-EL peers, has plateaued.
In order to address the gaps that EL students face in the state’s public education system, the Coalition of Asian American Leaders and the Minnesota Educational Equity Partnership founded the Minnesota Multilingual Equity Network (MMEN), which is comprised of teachers, professors, parents, administrators, and advocates.
In July 2016, MMEN launched their EL-ESSA Initiative in response to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act’s (ESSA) requirement that states include progress toward EL proficiency as one of their academic accountability indicators. According to MMEN’s policy brief, ESSA’s requirement “is an opportunity to ensure that Minnesota’s education system adequately considers the academic success” of the EL student population.
Yesterday, over 60 educators, advocates, and legislators gathered at the Wilder Foundation to learn about the policy brief and recommendations that MMEN has developed over the past year. MMEN discussed the work they have done with hosting EL Parent Advisory Committee meetings in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Faribault, meeting frequently with the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) staff, actively participating in MDE ESSA committees, and partnering with other coalitions.
From this work, they created seven recommendations, which are summarized below, for MDE to consider as they are finishing the ESSA state accountability plan.
MMEN’s Seven Recommendations to MDE
Recommendation #1: Family Engagement– MDE should provide resources and support for MDE family engagement staff to work with EL families in order to meet the unique educational needs of their children. Additionally, MDE should engage EL families and communities in “developing and refining” policies that impact EL education.
Recommendation #2: Academic Native Language Literacy – MDE should strengthen academic native language curriculum and courses in order to support global citizenship for ELs, increased educational content access, and support for rigorous literacy development.
This recommendation comes from the state’s lack of access for EL students to participate in language immersion schools, which are primarily dedicated towards native English speaking students. Additionally, most of Minnesota’s programs that are accessible to EL students are mostly English-only, rather than multilingual. The brief acknowledges that ESSA focuses on English language proficiency, but adds that Minnesota can support multilingualism through ESSA implementation.
Recommendation #3: English Language Proficiency Goals – MDE should provide more robust and multidimensional calculations of EL proficiency growth. The brief gave an example of a composite indicator that contains three measurements:
Percentage of students that attain target growth based on their language level
Percentage of reclassified ELs
Percentage of long-term ELs (5+ years)
Recommendation #4: Standardized EL Entry/Exit Criteria – MDE and schools should create “consistent and objective criteria and school practices” that include family discussions for EL program placement and reclassification.
Recommendation #5: Options for Inclusion in Assessment and Accountability – MDE should establish and maintain high standards for all EL students by using baseline data from the recently arrived student assessments in order to properly measure growth.
Recommendation #6: Early Childhood Education – MDE should provide support as well as work to acquire more funding for the early development of dual language learners.
Recommendation #7: Comprehensive Improvement Plans – According to the brief, under ESSA, schools that receive Title 1 funding and are identified in the bottom 25% of academic performance are defined as “Continuous Improvement Schools.” These identified schools must do the following:
Conduct a needs assessment
Complete a comprehensive school improvement plan
Collaborate with parents regarding the school’s Continuous Improvement designation
MDE should use the Comprehensive Improvement plans, as well as federal funding sources, to strengthen professional development and programs that support ELs, with a focus on those in low-performing schools.
MDE Responds to Recommendations
After MMEN presented their recommendations, Stephanie Graff, MDE’s Chief Accountability Officer, and Leigh Schleicher, MDE’s Supervisor of Student Support, gave remarks in which they thanked them for their work and spoke to what MDE was doing to accomplish some of the recommendations.
Specifically, Schleicher referenced MDE’s efforts to ensure that teachers and staff are properly prepared to teach EL students through professional development, standardizing EL entrance and exit criteria, and and including recently arrived and former ELs in assessment and accountability.
Graff noted that, with the ESSA requiring EL proficiency as one of their accountability indicators, states have shift their mindsets regarding EL students; “ELs are all of our kids and we need to make sure that people have the tools to help them.”
MDE will make the state’s ESSA accountability plan available for public comment on August 1st, and will submit the plan to the US Department of Education on September 18th.
Fighting hunger has long been a priority for our family.
Frances Wolf (Commonwealth of Pa. photo)
Tom and I have seen firsthand how hunger affects families and communities and we are personally committed to ending hunger in Pennsylvania.
For years, we have worked as volunteers in our local soup kitchen, York Daily Bread, as well as others across the commonwealth – and we have supported both those in need and the organizations serving them.
That’s why I have been passionately advocating for a very specific component of Tom’s 2017-18 budget proposal – a $2 million investment to enhance our school breakfast program and help more students have the start to the day that they need to be successful.
It simply breaks my heart that 1 in 5 children – over 520,000 – right here in our great state of Pennsylvania don’t always know where their next meal will come from.
And many of them show up to school in the morning with an empty stomach, not having eaten anything since the night before.
As you can imagine, many of them cannot focus on their studies, lack energy and struggle with behavioral problems.
This is nothing short of devastating – as a mother and as a Pennsylvanian. And, it has an enormous impact on our schools and our kids’ future.
Improving our schools, and ensuring that our children and educators have the resources they need to succeed has been my husband’s top priority as governor. Tom and his team have fought for improving education from preschool through higher education in Pennsylvania since day one.
And, thankfully, that fight has produced real results for our students. Working with the legislature, Tom has successfully secured historic increases in education funding over the last two years.
But even with great schools and teachers, kids who are hungry struggle to concentrate and perform well in school.
Ask any teacher and they’ll tell you that food is a basic school supply, just like textbooks and pencils. When kids struggle with hunger, it’s harder for them to learn.
This $2 million is a relatively small investment compared to other state government programs, but it will have an enormous return. This investment will help the commonwealth leverage up to $20 million dollars in federal funding.
We know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It impacts a variety of outcomes in our children. We don’t need the research to tell us this. We see it as parents and teachers – both in academic progress, as well as behavior and the number of visits to the school nurse every day.
I am passionate about this because expanding access to breakfast in our schools is a smart investment and one that I know will have a lasting impact on our students and on Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s greatest resource is our young people and the public schools that prepare them to be our future leaders. Our goal is to support them in this great endeavor by providing the resources and opportunities they need to make the most of their educational experiences and to help prepare them for a competitive job market.
When children start the day with the nutrition they need, it has long-lasting consequences for the entire state – they grow up smarter, healthier, and stronger – and that means a smarter, healthier, stronger Pennsylvania.
Frances Wolf is the First Lady of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She writes from Harrisburg.
In December 2015, President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced No Child Left Behind (NCLB), as the nation’s major law governing public schools. ESSA retains the requirement that states test all students in reading and math in grades three through eight and once in high school, as well as the requirement that states ensure those tests align with states’ college- and career-ready standards. However, the law makes significant changes to the role of tests in state education systems.
For example, ESSA requires states to include a broader set of factors in school accountability systems rather than just test scores; provides funding for states and districts to audit and streamline their testing regimes; and allows states to cap the amount of instructional time devoted to testing. It also eliminates the requirement under the Obama administration’s NCLB waiver program that states evaluate teacher performance based on, in part, student test score growth. Taken together, these provisions greatly reduce the stakes of state tests for schools and teachers. They also give states substantially more autonomy over how they define school success and the interventions they employ when schools fail to demonstrate progress.
The likely result would be a significant reduction in the level of angst regarding testing among teachers and parents. Today, states have an opportunity to use the new flexibility embedded in ESSA to develop stronger testing systems without the pressure of NCLB’s exclusive focus on summative tests. They also have the opportunity to innovate: Through a new pilot program that will allow seven states to develop radically new approaches to assessments, states can experiment with performance based and instructionally embedded tests and use technology to advance testing.
These pilot states will have the freedom to imagine a testing system of the future in which standardized tests taken on one day each year are no longer the typical way of assessing student learning.
Over a six-month span, researchers at the Center for American Progress (CAP) interviewed dozens of parents, teachers, school leaders, system leaders, advocates, assessment experts, and policy leaders in an attempt to identify what can be done to ensure that tests are being used in service of teaching and learning. Although they are few and far between, models of coherent, aligned teaching and learning systems do exist.
In these systems, the curriculum and end of year summative assessments are aligned with high academic standards. Interim tests, administered at key points throughout the year, provide a check on whether students are on track to meet the grade level standards. Short, high-quality formative tests give real-time feedback to teachers and parents so that they can use the results to inform instruction and to course correct when needed. School and system leaders use data to determine if all students receive the high-quality education they deserve and to provide more support or intervention if the results show that individual students, entire classrooms, or schools are off track.
Unfortunately, these models are the exception. Because the problems with testing are structural and systemic, they do not lend themselves to an easy fix. Nevertheless, ESSA provides an opportunity for a fresh start, and system leaders can capitalize on the flexibility in the new law to make changes in the short and long run to develop a system of better, fairer, and fewer tests.
What’s important to keep in mind is that in the new education policy world of ESSA, testing systems continue to need to be refined–not discarded. Parents and teachers want annual standardized testing to continue. Despite media reports to the contrary, there remains significant support for tests. But parents also want tests to be useful and to provide value for their children. Within this changing policy landscape CAP recommends that states:
Develop assessment principles;
Conduct alignment studies;
Provide support for districts in choosing high-quality formative and interim tests;
Demand that test results are delivered in a timely fashion; and
Increase the value of tests for schools, parents, and students.
CAP also recommends that schools should provide parents with the data from all assessments–including formative, interim, and summative assessments-along with individualized resources to help their children improve. CAP recommendations for school districts, schools, and the U.S. Department of Education are also detailed in this report.
Dante Little, a former public middle school teacher in Boston, Massachusetts, was one of only a few black males teaching in the city. But then he reached his breaking point. While he was administering a state test, the assistant principal came in to ask if all the students had handed in their cell phones. Even though they told him they had, he wasn’t satisfied and began to search and frisk each of them to be sure. According to Little, the students were treated that way regularly. “This isn’t a prison,” he said before he decided to quit. “I’m just done.”
There’s a national shortage of teachers of color, and as Dante Little’s experience highlights, it has as much or more to do with retention than recruitment. Teachers of color leave the profession at a higher rate than white teachers, with most reporting dissatisfaction with working conditions, like the criminalization of students, as the main reason.
“We need to fix and change the way schools are run and organized,” Richard Ingersoll, a University of Pennsylvania professor and expert on teacher workplace issues, said at panel discussion at the 2017 Education Writers Association National Seminar on June 1, “Finding and Keeping Teachers of Color.”
The vast majority of initiatives focus on recruiting teachers of color, which has been relatively successful, particularly in hard to staff low-income schools. But those schools are hard to staff for a reason – conditions are difficult when resources are scarce. Without focusing on improving the school conditions that will keep teachers from leaving, investment on recruitment will be lost.
He said the problem is like a leaky bucket.
“We need to take some mud and fix some of the working conditions to repair the holes in the bottom of the bucket…”
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.
We can all agree that students are a key stakeholder in their own education. When they are involved in the assessment process and in their own learning, the result is an improvement in achievement. So while reviewing test results with them after the fact is important, communicating with students – as a class or individually – before they test is equally important. Here are seven things to consider discussing with your students before testing:
It’s fair to say the ultimate goal of the education reform movement, and the education community in general, is to ensure that all students – no matter where they live or what their background is – have access to a high-quality education. This is a big and intimidating challenge, an addressing it requires across-the-board commitment to three foundational goals.
On July 4th, the vast majority of the 7,000 delegates from the National Education Association (NEA) voted to adopt a new charter school 
