U.S. Department of Education Approves ESSA Vermont State Plan
September 1, 2017
Betsy DeVos Approves Vermont and Maine ESSA Plans
U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has approved Vermont’s and Maine’s state accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the Education Department announced Thursday.
The plans detail how the states will comply with the federal law which goes into effect this fall. The Education Department cited several components of the states’ plans in announcing the approvals.
In Vermont’s case, that includes the inclusion of physical fitness in its accountability system, as well as tracking the percentage of high school students who go on to college, the workforce, military, or trade school 16 months after graduation…
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Trump Ed. Dept. Critiques ESSA Plans From Arizona, North Dakota, and Vermont
Arizona, North Dakota, and Vermont will have to make changes to their plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act when it comes to accountability, low-performing schools, and more, according to feedback letters released Thursday.
We read the letters so you don’t have to:
Arizona, like a host of other states, will need to change the way that science factors into its accountability system. Science can be included in the systems but it can’t be part of the “academic achievement” portion of state plans. (More here.) The state also must revamp how schools’ test participation will factor into their overall ratings…
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School Accountability in First-Round ESSA State Plans
By Samantha Batel and Laura Jimenez
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.
- Summary
- Arizona
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Illinois
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Nevada
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- North Dakota
- Oregon
- Tennessee
- Vermont
- Washington, D.C.
- All states
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.
Grading State ESSA Plans on How They Treat Parents and High-Poverty Schools
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…
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Vermont State Plan
Can States Use Science Tests to Rate Schools Under ESSA?
There’s been a ton of confusion lately about whether and how states can incorporate science, social studies, and other subjects into their systems for rating schools under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
The upshot is that, yes, states can indeed use science, social studies, the arts, and other subjects beyond reading and math for accountability. But there are some caveats when it comes to just how they do that. (More below.)
First, some background: U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos got pushback last month when her team told four of the 17 states that have submitted ESSA plans so far Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, and Tennessee that their vision for incorporating science into their accountability plans didn’t pass muster. Advocates for science teachers sent DeVos’ team an angry letter, saying they thought this was a poor policy choice...
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REPORT: State Legislatures Opting in to Opting Out
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.
Email research.policy@act.org for more information. © 2016 by ACT, Inc. All rights reserved. MS489
REPORT: State Pre-K Funding for 2015-16 Fiscal Year: National Trends in State Preschool Funding. 50-State Review
Emily Parker, Bruce Atchison and Emily Workman
Education Commission of the States
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
NATIONAL: Seventeen State ESSA Plans Now Complete and Ready for Review
Seventeen state plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act have passed the U.S. Department of Education’s initial completeness check and are ready for peer review, the next step in the approval process, the department announced Friday.
“Today’s announcement is a big win for ESSA implementation. I am committed to returning decisionmaking power back to states and setting the department up to serve the support and monitoring roles intended by Congress,” U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in a statement. “The department worked with states to ensure their plans included all statutorily required components laid out in the…
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