The plans detail how states will go about complying with the federal law in the coming years. The law goes into effect this fall.
DeVos has now approved 10 of the 17 submitted state ESSA plans. All of the states that have turned in plans have received feedback from the department…
A key section of Michigan’s plan to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act is so sparse that the U.S. Department of Education isn’t sure it’s ready for formal review, according to a letter the agency published Tuesday.
The department told the state chief, Brian Whiston, the information it provided “was insufficient” to “adequately review” the section of the plan dealing with the state’s accountability system, arguably the heart of ESSA. That could be partly because the state’s application, filed this spring, Michigan offers three possible approaches on accountability. (Michigan has since settled on one of them, a “dashboard”, Whiston said.)
Otherwise the letter, which followed a phone call between state officials and the education department on the plan, is fairly light when it comes to the list of things the state needs to fix. (More on that below).
Acting Assistant Secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education Jason Botel may not hold that title much longer, sources say. Botel, who was named to his post in April, may take on another role within the administration or leave altogether.
Botel, a former charter school principal and state advocate, has been the administration’s point person on implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, in the office that oversees key federal K-12 programs.
In that role he’s gotten criticism, including from Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate education committee and an ESSA architect. Alexander and others have said Botel has gone beyond the boundaries of the law, particularly in his feedback to Delaware which questioned the ambitiousness of the state’s goals. Alexander told Education Week that it appeared Botel hadn’t read the law carefully…
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is the primary legislation related to federal K-12 education programs. ESSA replaces many provisions contained in the previous reauthorization—the No Child Left Behind Act—to give states more authority in the design of their school accountability systems and to encourage them to use measures beyond test scores to measure school performance. States, districts, and schools also have greater autonomy to design and implement school improvement strategies for struggling schools.
The law, however, continues to require states and districts to track and respond to low performance of schools and subgroups of students within schools. They must also be able to disaggregate the data they use to determine interventions by race and ethnicity, disability status, English language learners, and income. These critical protections ensure that all students—including the most disadvantaged—cannot be ignored.
Sixteen states and Washington, D.C., submitted their ESSA plans—which cover multiple provisions of the law—to the U.S. Department of Education for review during the first submission window. The Center for American Progress reviewed these submissions for their school classification systems and school improvement plans. The summary provides critical context and methodology. The 17 individual state fact sheets break down each state’s school classification system in addition to school improvement timeline, grant structure, types of schools identified, and key improvement strategies.
Laura Jimenez is the director of standards and accountability at the Center for American Progress. Samantha Batel is a policy analyst with the K-12 Education team at the Center.
Will parents be able to understand their child’s school’s performance under the Every Student Succeeds Act? And will schools with students from difficult socioeconomic backgrounds get a fair shake?
Those are two key questions that folks at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute set out to find answers for in a new report. In an analysis of the 17 plans turned in so far, Fordham President Michael Petrilli and Editorial Director Brandon Wright based their answers on three main questions:
How clear are school ratings are to parents, educators, and the general public?
Do the plans push schools to focus on all students, not just those furthest behind? and
Are schools are treated fairly, particularly those with a large share of students in poverty, and judged in part by academic growth, not just achievement?
Fordham is often identified with right-leaning education policy positions, such as support for school choice. On ESSA, the think tank has also…
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ team have told states that they need to make bunch of changes in their plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. But in some cases, states have said thanks-but-no-thanks to the department’s advice, turning in revised plans that may or may not be kosher under the new law.
Case in point: The U.S. Department of Education, which has given official feedback to nine of the 17 state plans that have been turned in, dinged Tennessee for using super-subgroups, which combine different historically overlooked groups of students (think English-language learners and students in special education) for accountability purposes…
So now the agency is changing the process, Elizabeth Hill, a spokeswoman for the department confirmed. Instead ofjust sending letters to states on their plans, the department will first have two-hour phone conversations with states and go over any the issues that peer reviewers had…
If the Senate’s attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act that crashed and burned Friday morning comes back to life, it could push congressional action on education further down the priority list.
Why? Several senators, Democrats in the main, complained that the health-care legislation was not considered by the “regular” process. If Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., decides to start over and try to move a bill through the relevant committees, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., suddenly becomes a very important figure in the process. That’s because, as many readers know, he chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions…
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.
Tennessee’s state education leaders have launched a plan that positions the state’s schools for a historic opportunity. The Volunteer State — more than any other state so far — is taking important steps to reframe accountability from a system of sanctions and compliance to one of aligned supports and authentic outcomes. Other states should take note as they devise their own accountability plans.
Tennessee was one of the first states to submit a plan for the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. The comprehensive approach prepared by Commissioner of Education Candice McQueen and her team represents a powerful blueprint for updating the state’s instructional programs.
The Tennessee Succeeds plan addresses achievement gaps with strategies informed by leading-edge school practices like personalized learning, which have begun to take root in diverse settings like Knox County Schools and Rocketship charter schools in Nashville. In addition, leaders like those at Tullahoma City Schools have pursued the use of innovative educational technology that incorporates cutting-edge digital tools into everyday learning.
Like every state in the union, Tennessee has large and persistent achievement gaps between poor and non-poor students, as well as between minority and non-minority students. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (also known as “The Nation’s Report Card”), there is a nearly 25-point gap between poor and more-affluent students. A similar gap exists between white and black students in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. While the differences in performance between white and Hispanic students have narrowed since 2011, the white-black achievement gaps have increased.
These gaps are evidence that large numbers of historically underserved students are not able to read at grade level or competently perform in math. Lags in either subject or grade can lead to academic struggles, the potential to drop out, and a lack of college or career readiness. Tennessee states in its ESSA plan that nearly half of all high school graduates do not go on to college and that first-time students in community colleges need at least one remedial course.
ESSA requires states to address achievement gaps, and Tennessee is tackling the challenge head-on. In its plan, the state emphasizes that “All Means All” by providing individualized support and opportunities to all students, particularly those who are behind. In fact, Tennessee states in its plan, “To support the department’s rigorous standards, aligned assessments, and strong accountability model, the department recognized the need for more personalization in the learning experiences for teachers and for students.”
The sad reality is that disproportionate numbers of poor and minority kids wind up in special education due to a lack of educational success. These students often slip through the cracks until their cumulative learning deficits become too large to ignore and their needs are finally addressed through individual attention mandated by federal disability law. Personalized learning holds real potential to turn this all-too-familiar pattern on its head by providing students immediate learning support when it is needed. Instead of waiting for students to fail before they get more time and attention, personalized learning is a just-in-time approach that can help teachers address academic deficiency before it snowballs into failure.
School accountability under the new plan will better support personalizing teaching and learning. In personalized learning models, students can learn at their own rates in different subjects with standards-aligned content. Among a number of changes, the state is proposing to use growth in student achievement over time to measure performance and reward academic growth at all levels of achievement, rather than just grade-level proficiency.
The state also lays out four areas of focus for piloting personalized learning approaches for students and teachers:
Blended learning for Algebra I:Launched last school year, this pilot was the state’s first personalized learning initiative and is set to double in size to 10,000 students for the 2017–18 school year. This effort is guided by evidence that technology can support teachers in delivering personalized instruction by leveraging data and quickly diagnosing student needs.
Predictive analytics:Personalized learning strategies often leverage technology to increase the efficiency of the learning cycle by using data trends to develop insights into learning patterns and streamline data-informed decisions.
Teacher micro-credentialing:Thisapproach to professional development more closely aligns the acquisition of teaching knowledge and specific skills with identified needs, instead of the generic, one-size-fits-all approach. During the 2017–18 school year (the initiative’s second year), the state plans to reach up to 5,000 educators by partnering with districts to use micro-credentials.
Competency-based education:To support personalizing learning, the plan calls for encouraging initiatives that allow students to demonstrate mastery and advance through curricula and grades as mastery is achieved, informed by progress seen by some districts trying this approach and others outside Tennessee.
To take full advantage of the state’s ESSA plan, Tennessee districts will need to take action and put the state’s plans to good use. Tennessee is poised to make an innovation leap, using ESSA to launch efforts to personalize the education experience of every learner, combining effective teaching with adaptive technology to bring individualized instruction to every student.
And nationally, the Volunteer State has drafted a plan that its peers can — and should — seek to emulate within the context of their own unique educational ecosystems. There is no question the nation faces a national imperative to improve educational outcomes for all students, and Tennessee’s comprehensive approach to layering innovation and personalization into its strategic design seems destined to yield results.
Doug Mesecar is an adjunct scholar at the Lexington Institute. He previously served as a senior official at the U.S. Department of Education and in Congress.
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