By Lynette Monroe (Program Assistant, NNPA/ESSA Public Awareness Campaign)
I don’t remember my grandparents assisting me with homework beyond holding up flash cards for me to recite. They could have, I just don’t remember. I do remember Lil’ Bow Wow’s release of “Beware of Dog” in 2000 followed by my incessant pleading to hang his poster on my bedroom wall. I also remember hearing my mother’s inevitable “no” as she repeated her “no posters on these walls” policy.
In a fast-paced, tech-obsessed world, assisting your child with homework can prove a daunting task. New teaching methods are adopted every day. Even professionals with advanced degrees are not necessarily equipped to help children with homework.
However, all parents should feel empowered to teach their children social and emotional development. Social and emotional competence yields similar academic gains as strictly educational interventions. Parents, churches, and communities bear the brunt of the responsibility for socializing children. This is where we, as a community, have an opportunity to shine.
A report from the Brookings Institution, published in May 2015, called for the prioritization of social and emotional development as the U.S. Congress worked on the bill that would become the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), that was signed into law by Barack Obama in December 2015.
The report, titled “Social and Emotional Development: The Next School Reform Frontier,” claims social and emotional competence directly correlates to a child’s ability to learn and achieve in school. The report cited the findings of a study of more than 200,000 students from kindergarten to high school who participated in social and emotional development learning (SEL) programs at school. The study found that students who completed SEL programs demonstrated greater social skills, less emotional stress, better attitudes, fewer conduct problems, and more frequent positive behaviors, such as cooperation and help for other students—benefits that translate to the workplace.
In November 2017, after all 50 states and the District of Columbia submitted their state ESSA plans, Lauren Poteat reported that states were ignoring opportunities to address social competency in the new national education law. Social and emotional development is a child’s ability to understand and control his/her feelings, acknowledge and respect the feelings of others, and to form meaningful relationships. In layman’s terms, social/emotional development is the authoritative, waving finger of your mother, father, grandma, grandpa, aunt or uncle saying: “Remember who you representin’, when you walk out this door.” Or, for those of us familiar with Christianity, social and emotional development echoes Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
So, what can Black parents do to supplement the lack of school-based SEL programs? Here are a few things my grandparents did.
1. Respect Your Child’s Voice
If there was a rule I didn’t agree with, my grandma always took the time to hear my perspective. She didn’t listen just waiting to reply; she listened intently, to understand. Most times I didn’t change her mind, but a few times I did. Those experiences taught me that my voice was valid, that you didn’t’ have to agree with someone to understand their perspective, and that simply acknowledging someone else’s perspective can create an environment for enlightenment.
2. Give Your Child Tangible Heroes
There was a ‘no posters on these walls’ policy in my house. I am almost certain my grandma didn’t want posters of celebrities on her wall for respectability devotions. However, the unintended outcome was an elevated perception of self-worth. Since, my grandma never provided me the opportunity to idolize my favorite pop stars, I learned to look to the people around me for role models and guidance. Ultimately, I learned that whatever tools I needed to succeed were already within me. I learned how to control my behavior. I held the sole responsibility for my choices and whenever I felt confused, the first people I looked to for help were in my immediate support system.
3. Encourage Your Children
I never received a reward for expected behavior. I didn’t get taken out for pizza or ice cream for good grades or behavior. Nevertheless, my grandpa never missed an opportunity to show his appreciation for a job well done, either through a big bear hug or a cheesy smile. My grandpa showed his love for me regardless of any accolades I obtained. He made it clear that he loved me; just for me. He told me I was beautiful before anyone else ever got the chance to. On bad days, I still here his voice saying, “That’s a pretty dress there. Twirl around, let me see it all the way around.” In that moment I would feel as if I was the only girl in the world. I felt we had similar interest in pretty dresses and that made him more than just my father figure; that made him my confidant. I credit this experience for my ability to form meaningful relationships.
Neither of my grandparents graduated high school, however they were able to have a profound impact on my academic progress by simply validating my voice, providing a strong support system, and encouraging me regardless of accolades from the outside world.
Learn more about social and emotional development and the Every Student Succeeds Act at nnpa.org/essa.
It’s one of the most controversial questions about the Every Student Succeeds Act and accountability in general: How should schools be graded?
Since nearly all states have at least turned in their ESSA plans, and many ESSA plans have been approved, we now have a good idea of how states are answering those questions. Keep one thing in mind: ESSA requires certain low-performing schools to be identified as needing either targeted or comprehensive support. States have no wiggle room on that. But beyond that, states can assign things like A-F grades, stars, or points. Based on the states that have turned in their plans—and remember, not every state has—We did some good old-fashioned counting and came to the following conclusions, in chart form:
Here are a few notes about that chart.
1) Many states use some kind of points system only as a starting point, since they then use those systems to arrive at final grades or scores that are presented differently to the public…
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.
GLASGOW – Kentucky Education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt came to Glasgow High School on Thursday to hear feedback from teachers and administrators about the accountability system the Department of Education is working on.
The system for school accountability is being formulated in compliance with the Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in 2015, Pruitt said before the forum.
The system under development is based on input from an earlier series of forums held throughout Kentucky, he said.
“We took the main themes we heard from our town halls last year and started to cultivate that into this whole new system,” he said.
So far, the current round of town hall meetings, which KDE is using to determine how to fine tune the accountability system, has mainly yielded positive comments, Pruitt said.
Back in November, I praised the Obama Administration’s Every Student Succeeds Act accountability regulations for permitting states to use performance indices in lieu of simple, problematic proficiency rates. Such applause is, of course, water under the bridge after congressional Republicans and President Trump repealed those rules and, instead of replacing them, will rely on promises, “Dear Colleague” letters, and other means that fall short of formal regulation.
Yet new praise is in order for Secretary DeVos et al.’s recently released “State Plan Peer Review Criteria,” which explains the process through which state ESSA plans will gain approval or rejection. It, like the regulations that came and went before it, expressly permits accountability systems that measure student achievement at multiple levels—not just “proficient”—using a performance index.
This is an important—even essential—innovation. Despite the good intentions of No Child Left Behind, which ESSA replaced a year ago, it erred by encouraging states to focus almost exclusively on helping low-performing students achieve proficiency and graduate from high school. Consequently, many schools ignored pupils who would easily pass state reading and math tests and earn diplomas regardless of what happened in the classroom—a particularly pernicious problem for high-achieving poor and minority children, whose schools generally serve many struggling students. This may be why the United States has seen significant achievement growth and improved graduation rates for its lowest performers over the last twenty years but lesser gains for its middling and top students.
The Every Student Succeeds Act requires the use of an academic achievement indicator that “measures proficiency on the statewide assessments in reading/language arts and mathematics.” There are, however, multiple ways to interpret this. And earlier versions of Department of Education regulations, under President Obama and Secretary King, seemed to expect states to use proficiency rates alone to fulfill this requirement and gauge school performance. Such a mistake would have merely extended NCLB’s aforementioned flaw.
How to improve D.C.’s flawed school accountability plan
WASHINGTON POST – In an opinion piece, Michael J. Petrilli and Brandon L. Wright of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute raised concerns over the District of Columbia’s proposed ESSA plan. Petrilli and Wright argued that the District’s accountability plan doesn’t “do nearly enough for high achievers, especially those growing up in poverty.”
They proposed three changes to fix this problem:
when calculating school grades, make growth of individual students from one year to the next count for at least 50 percent;
for the academic achievement indicator, give schools additional credit for getting more students to Level 5 on the PARCC assessment, instead of exclusively rewarding schools for students who merely reach proficiency; and
further signal that high achievers matter by making them a visible, trackable subgroup, akin to special education students or English language learners, and by publishing school ratings based on their progress.
The goal, the groups said, is to serve as an external check on the federal peer review process, and to look at whether states are going beyond compliance with the law to really set up a system that will accomplish their visions for K-12 education.
In general, the rubric will favor strong accountability systems, tied to college- and career-ready standards for all students. Reviewers will look for ambitious and achievable goals and for “guardrails” to focus attention on students who need the most help. They’ll also be on the lookout for bad accountability systems that can be “gamed” in unproductive ways and systems that push all students to a diploma even if they don’t learn anything along the way.
“The peer review process that the department will do is important; it’s required by the statute. I think it’s also important to have a review process that looks at not just are you complying with the minimum requirements of the law, but is what’s being proposed likely to do what’s right for kids, and that’s what this review is intended to do,” said Phillip Lovell, vice president of policy development and government relations at the Alliance for Excellent Education and one of the more than two dozen reviewers.
The two groups promise a “candid review,” though it won’t cover everything required to be in state plans.
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.
Today, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote to repeal important accountability regulations under the Every Student Succeeds Act that were issued by the Obama administration. Such action could have severe negative implications for low-performing schools and students.
If the regulations are repealed, groups of students with low graduation rates may fall through the cracks and not be identified for the additional support they need. Low-income students, students of color, special education students, English language learners and other traditionally underserved students are most likely to be negatively impacted.
Additionally, school letter grades could mask the low performance of traditionally underserved students and inaccurate graduation rate calculations may prevent low-performing high schools from receiving support.
To repeal the accountability measures, the Senate needs only a simple majority vote. Republicans hold 52 seats in the Senate, meaning that at least three Republicans need to vote against the measure. So far, U.S. Senator Rob Portmanof Ohio is the only Republican who has said he will vote against the measure.
Now is the time to call your Senators to urge them to vote NO. Call (202) 224-3121 and an operator will connect you directly with your Senator’s office. When you reach your Senator’s office, ask to speak with or leave a message for the person who covers education.
On December 10, 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law by President Obama. This bipartisan measure reauthorized the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the nation’s national education law. The New York State Education Department has established an ESSA Think Tank that will assist the New York State Education Department (NYSED or “the Department”) with development of New York’s ESSA state plan, which we anticipate that the Department will be required to submit to the United States Department of Education (USDE) in early 2017.
ESSA retains many of the core provisions of No Child Left Behind (the previous reauthorization of ESEA) related to standards, assessments, accountability, and use of Federal funds. However, ESSA does provide states with much greater flexibility in many areas, including the methodologies for differentiating the performance of schools and the supports and interventions to provide when schools are in need of improvement. To meet the requirements of ESSA, New York will also be required to submit a new state plan to USDE for the use of a wide array of Federal grant programs, including Title IA (Improving Basic Programs Operated by Local Educational Agencies, Title IB (State Assessment Grants, Title IC (Education of Migratory Children), Title ID (Prevention and Intervention Programs for Children and Youth who are Neglected, Delinquent or At-Risk), Title IIA (Supporting Effective Instruction), Title III (Supporting Language Instruction for English Learners and Immigrant Students), Title IVA (Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants), Title VB (Rural Education Initiative), and Title VI (Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native Education).
