School districts: Interested in having your local, state, and federal funding follow children, so that kids with greater need have more money attached to them? Now’s your chance.
The U.S. Department of Education is officially opening up the “Weighted Student Funding Pilot” in the Every Student Succeeds Act. The department can allow up to 50 districts to participate initially, and ESSA leaves open the possibility of opening that up to more districts down the line.
So what’s the weighted student funding pilot? Participating districts can combine federal, state, and local dollars into a single funding stream tied to individual students. English-language learners, kids in poverty, students in special education—who cost more to educate—would carry with them more money than other students. Some districts, including Denver, are already using this type of formula with state and local dollars.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is pretty excited about the pilot.
“This is a great opportunity for local district leaders to put students first,” she said in a statement. “Instead of relying on complex federal rules to allocate funds, local leaders can use this flexibility to match funds—local, State or Federal—to the needs of students.”
Read the full story here: May require an Education Week subscription.
This past fall I had the opportunity to visit the U.S. Virgin Islands, twice — first, in October, and two weeks later, in the company of Secretary DeVos. There, I saw firsthand the wholesale destruction left by back-to-back hurricanes. The experience was both humbling and uplifting.
During my first visit, I joined the Commissioner of Education for the U.S. Virgin Islands, Dr. Sharon McCollum, on a car trip around the Islands. On our way, she noticed the owner of a damaged wholesale club store — he was outside, combing through inventory, trying to salvage any goods that Hurricanes Maria and Irma had spared.
Pausing our scheduled tour, Dr. McCollum stopped the car in front of the store. She began negotiating the sale of cleaning supplies to be used in some of the many schools under her care. Simply getting students physically back to school is a monumental undertaking, she said: they shouldn’t have to fear getting sick from mold and the like once they’ve returned to the classroom.
Her goal that day — as it is every day — was to return a sense of normalcy to the more than 14,000 students whose lives and studies were interrupted by the powerful storms. I learned that, these days, such encounters are an integral part of Dr. McCollum’s day-to-day work: staff told me she can often be found out in the field, exploring the Islands in search of supplies and other resources to help students get back to school and engaged in learning again.
This is a fundamental objective on the Islands, where the scale of devastation from the storms defies description. Surveying the damage by military helicopter, I was overwhelmed by what I saw. Roofs had been ripped off houses; stores destroyed; roads impassable. School facilities that had once been home to fine arts and music — integral parts of the culture and education on the Islands — are gone forever, with many well-loved instruments, such as the region’s iconic steel drums, lost.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos today announced the approval of Minnesota and West Virginia’s consolidated state plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
“States continue to embrace the flexibility and power given to them under ESSA,” said Secretary DeVos. “I am pleased to approve these plans, which comply with the requirements of the law. I look forward to seeing how the states turn ideas into action to improve outcomes for all students.”
Allowing states more flexibility in how they deliver education to students is at the core of ESSA. Each state crafted a plan that it feels will best offer educational opportunities to meet the needs of the state and its students. The following are some of the unique elements from each state’s approved plan as highlighted by each state:
Minnesota
Plans to ensure that by 2020, 90 percent of all students will graduate from high school in four years and that the state aligns its efforts with its workforce development goals.
Identifies 25 percent of the lowest-performing schools across three domains—math, reading and English learner proficiency—to ensure all schools in need of support are identified and assisted, with the greatest support directed to the most acutely low-performing schools.
“Nothing is more important to Minnesotans than making sure every child has access to a great education,” said Minnesota Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius. “That consensus was shared by a broad majority of parents, community members and stakeholders across our state who made equity and ambitious goals the central tenants of our ESSA plan. Together, we created a shared definition of equity that serves as the foundation for a plan that is actionable, research-based and rooted in the best practices for supporting schools. Combined with rigorous accountability expectations, strategic support for schools that need it most, and the promise of easy-to-understand and transparent reporting for teachers, parents, and the public, this plan is a significant step forward in our shared vision for all kids. I look forward to implementing our new plan, and supporting every Minnesota educator as they work even harder to ensure every child has the same opportunity to learn, succeed and thrive.”
West Virginia
Plans to reduce the number of non-proficient students, overall and for each subgroup, in half by 2030.
Provides LEAs access to evidence-based interventions and professional development based on performance on individual indicators within the Statewide Accountability System, so that any school struggling with a single indicator receives support.
“The intent of our ESSA plan is to be a catalyst for economic growth and development in West Virginia. Our goal is to ensure that every student is provided the opportunity to be successful after graduating high school in their chosen career and/or post-secondary endeavors. Our comprehensive system will individualize support and capitalize on a network of education partnerships, while supporting Gov. Jim Justice’s focus on education and economic development,” said Steven Paine, West Virginia’s state superintendent of schools.
The U.S. Department of Education is almost done critiquing states’ Every Student Succeeds Act plans. In fact, Idaho, which received a letter from the department on Dec. 27, is the second to last state to get a response. (The lone state still waiting: South Carolina, which turned in its plan late for weather related reasons).
Like the other thirty-two states that have gotten feedback so far this winter, Idaho has a long list of things to work on. For instance:
Idaho is planning to create a “minority children” subgroup that combines six different groups of students. Civil rights groups say that combining subgroups that way masks achievement gaps. And the department says they are an ESSA no-no if states try to use those “super subgroups” on their own for accountability.
Idaho doesn’t have a clear method of measuring English proficiency and incorporating it into its accountability system. That’s not Kosher under ESSA, the department says. (Florida has a similar issue.)
Idaho needs to be more specific about how it will identify schools where subgroups of students are consistently low-performing.
Quick refresher: Sixteen states and the District of Columbia turned in ESSA plans in the spring. So far, all of them have been approved, except Colorado. The other 34 states submitted plans this fall. And all of them have gotten feedback, except of course, the Palmetto State. You can read all of the feedback letters here. Nearly every state had a lot to improve.
With the 2018-19 school year in full swing, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has finished approving nearly every state’s plan to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. But in some ways, the federal government’s work on ESSA is just beginning.
The federal K-12 law’s hallmark may be state and local control, yet the Education Department still has the responsibility to oversee the more than $21 billion in federal funding pumped out to states and districts under ESSA. That will often take the form of monitoring—in which federal officials take a deep look at state and local implementation of the law.
And the department has other oversight powers, including issuing guidance on the law’s implementation, writing reports on ESSA, and deciding when and how states can revise their plans.
Even though ESSA includes a host of prohibitions on the education secretary’s role, DeVos and her team have broad leeway to decide what those processes should look like, said Reg Leichty, a co-founder of Foresight Law + Policy, a law firm in Washington.
Given the Trump team’s emphasis on local control, “I think they’ll try for a lighter touch” than past administrations, Leichty said. But there are still requirements in the law the department must fill, he added.
“States and districts shouldn’t expect the system to be fundamentally different [from under previous versions of the law.] They are still going to have to file a lot of data,” Leitchy said.
But advocates for traditionally overlooked groups of students aren’t holding their breath for a robust monitoring process, in part because they think the department has already approved state plans that skirt ESSA’s requirements…
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This year featured a new president, a new education secretary, and the first year schools began shifting to the Every Student Succeeds Act. It’s been a busy year for us, and to cap it off, we’re highlighting the 10 blog posts we wrote that got the most readership in 2017. Here we go, from the post with the 10th-most views to the post with the most views:
President Donald Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail in 2016 that he wanted to end the Common Core State Standards. So when U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said this to a TV news anchor in April, she was channeling Trump’s stated desire. But DeVos’ statement wasn’t accurate, since more than three dozen states still use the content standards. The Every Student Succeeds Act also prohibits DeVos from getting involved in states’ decisions about standards.
Along with promoting school choice, one of DeVos’ big goals this year has been to restrain the federal government’s role in education when it comes to regulations, as well as the size and scope of the U.S. Department of Education. It doesn’t look like her push to significantly slash the department’s budget has the support of Congress, but DeVos has been trying to trim the department’s staffing levels recently.
The U.S. Department of Education is cranking out responses to state’s plans for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act at a fast and furious pace. The latest states to hear back are: Hawaii, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. (Scroll down to see which other states have gotten feedback and who has been approved.)
All five states, whose feedback letters were released Thursday, have work to do on the nuts-and-bolts of the accountability plans, their ideas for identifying and fixing schools, and more. Here’s a quick look at some highlights of the responses. Click on the state name to read the full letter.
Hawaii: The department wants the Aloha State to identify languages other than English spoken by a significant number of students. States must “make every effort” to offer tests in those languages, according to ESSA. And Hawaii needs to be more specific about what it will take for a school to get out of low-performing status. Right now, Hawaii says those schools need to make “significant improvement,” but it doesn’t say what that means. Hawaii also needs to make sure disadvantaged and minority students have access to their fair share of qualified teachers.
Kentucky: Kentucky needs to make sure that its English-language proficiency indicator stands alone, right now, it’s lumped in with other indicators in the state’s accountability system. The state also needs to make clear that it is targeting schools as “chronically underperforming” because of the performance of historically overlooked groups of students and not for another reason. And Kentucky cannot include writing test scores as part of a school’s overall “academic achievement” score, because those tests aren’t offered in every grade…
Read the full story here: May require an Education Week subscription.
EDUCATION WEEK — Minnesota, New York, Virginia, and West Virginia have some work to do on their plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
All four states, who were among the 34 that turned in their plans this fall, were flagged for issues with accountability, helping low-performing schools improve, and other areas. So far, ten other states that turned in their plans this fall — Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming—have received feedback from the feds. Puerto Rico has also gotten a response on its plan. (Check out our summaries of their feedback here and here.)
Plus, sixteen states and the District of Columbia, all of which submitted plans in the spring, have gotten the all-clear from U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Colorado, which asked for extra time on its application, is the only spring state still waiting for approval.
So what problems did the department find in this latest round of states? Here’s a quick look. Click on the state’s name for a link to the feds’ letter…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Washington — A charter network that puts a premium on social-emotional learning. Public school districts that have improved their graduation rates through a focus on personalized learning and technology. A faith-based organization that exposes students to work-based learning experiences while they earn a high school diploma.
These are all educational institutions that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos highlighted Tuesday in a wide-ranging summit about how to “Rethink K-12 Education.” Also on hand: representatives from other charter networks, home schools, religious schools, and public school districts that have tried out new models, such as museum schools.
“This is not a conversation about school choice,” DeVos told reporters after the event wrapped up at U.S. Department of Education headquarters. “This is a conversation about doing what’s right for individual students. And it’s pretty clear from all of the participants today that we have innovation going on in traditional public schools. We have innovation going on in private schools and charter schools and home schools. And the focus really of the conversation is doing what’s right for students and looking for new ways to break down barriers to those opportunities for students.”
Big prevailing themes of the day included empowering children to take charge of their own learning, preparing teachers to offer students a more customized approach, and helping charters and other schools that offer a different approach to partner with traditional public schools…
Read the full story here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming are the latest states to receive feedback on their plans for implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
The U.S. Department of Education staffers seem to be burning the midnight oil on feedback letters lately. Four other states—Georgia, Maryland, Puerto Rico, and Utah—got responses last week. Every state has submitted a plan to implement ESSA. And 16 states and the District of Columbia have had their plans approved.
So what do the latest letters say? They are extensive and almost all of them ask for a lot more detail on testing, school turnarounds, accountability, goals, teacher distribution, and more.
Here’s a quick look at some highlights. Click on the state name to read the full letter.
Alabama: The department wants to state to make its student achievement goals clearer, and better explain how student growth on state tests would be used to calculate a school’s academic score. And the feds aren’t clear on how Alabama will calculate English-language proficiency and incorporate it into school ratings—an ESSA must. The state also needs to make it clear that it will flag schools that don’t get federal Title I money for extra supports with subgroups of students…
Read the full story here: May require an Education Week subscription.
School districts: Interested in having your local, state, and federal funding follow children, so that kids with greater need have more money attached to them? Now’s your chance.
With the 2018-19 school year in full swing, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has finished approving nearly every state’s plan to implement the 
