Florida Education Plan Lacking in Both Promise and Practice

Florida Education Plan Lacking in Both Promise and Practice

By Dr. Elizabeth Primas, NNPA ESSA Awareness Campaign Program Manager

How is Florida addressing the needs of its lowest-performing schools under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)? Last year, the Collaborative for Student Success an independent non-profit education advocacy organization, sought to find out. They did so by convening a group of education experts from around the country to take an in-depth look at the way 17 states were supporting and encouraging local school improvement efforts.

The experts, both from the federal and district level, provided education officials and state lawmakers with independent information on how each state could improve their plans and implementation. However, what they discovered in Florida’s ESSA plan was not encouraging.

In September 2018, Florida received final approval from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) for its ESSA State Plan. Florida was the last state in the nation to receive such approval, as state and federal education officials squabbled for months over the state’s proposed plan.

The Florida plan was originally submitted to the DOEin September 2017, but officials failed to include the waiver requests for the specific portions of the law to which it objected.

Federal officials sent the plan back to Florida Department of Education, saying they couldn’t pick and choose which aspects of the law to follow, and that they needed to submit waivers for the areas where they would like to be granted exceptions.

Florida submitted a revised ESSA plan to the DOE in April 2018 in an effort to comply with their requests and included a separate federal school rating system—one that factors in English-language learner proficiency and subgroup performance—which would work alongside the state’s existing A-F grading methodology to target struggling schools.

The primary areas of difference between Florida’s education officials and those within the DOE had to do with the Florida’s proposed approach to provisions regarding English-language learners and demographic-based subgroups — and federal officials weren’t the only ones saying that Florida’s plan left a lot to be desired. Civil rights groups repeatedly raised the alarmas well, asking Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to rejectFlorida’s ESSA plan.

In a November 2017 letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, more than a dozen civil rights groups said they had “significant concerns” regarding the plan, which they believed failed “to serve the interests of marginalized students in the state” and “to comply with the requirements of the law.”

According to Dr. Rosa Castro Feinberg, who serves on the committee for LULAC Florida, an advocacy group serving all Hispanic nationality groups, Florida’s “current plan includes features that contradict common sense, expert opinion, popular will, and the intent of the ESSA. Contrary to the purposes of the ESSA, the Florida plan denies attention to struggling subgroups of students. Without attention, there can be no correction.”

A year later, with Florida now implementing a revised state accountability plan, the peer reviewers convened by the Collaborative had similar (and additional) concerns.

While noting that “empowering local leaders is a core component of successful school turnaround,” the peer reviewers worried that “too much autonomy, without sufficient state supports, may not help the students and schools in most need.”

This, the peer reviewers believe, reflects a “lack of commitment to closing achievement gaps by not addressing subgroup performance or English learner proficiency in the state’s accountability system,” meaning “districts and schools are less likely to focus on these populations as they plan and implement school improvement strategies.” The same concern and fear raised by civil rights groups a year earlier.

The peer reviewers did applaud Florida for its “overall clear, student-focused vision around high standards, college and career readiness, and rigorous accountability and improvement,” and “clearly defined and easy-to-understand A-F grading system, which places a strong emphasis on academic growth and accelerated coursework.”

However, the peer reviewers recommended that the state rework its accountability system to incorporate student subgroups and English-language learner proficiency. They also noted that Florida’s use of dual accountability systems “raises issues with school improvement implementation as it can cause confusion about which schools are being identified and how to prioritize efforts.”

Read the full report here.

Elizabeth Primas is an educator who spent more than 40 years working to improve education for children. She is the program manager for the NNPA’s Every Student Succeeds Act Public Awareness Campaign. Follow her on Twitter @elizabethprimas.

Betsy DeVos Has Been Scarce on Capitol Hill; Why Is That? – Politics K-12 – Education Week

Betsy DeVos Has Been Scarce on Capitol Hill; Why Is That? – Politics K-12 – Education Week

Education Week logoU.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos hasn’t testified before the House or Senate education committees since becoming secretary more than a year ago—and Democrats aren’t happy about that.

For one thing, it’s a departure from the record of her recent predecessors, each of whom had appeared before the two education committees at least once—and in many cases, more often—by this point in their tenures. And even when you widen the lens to look at other committees on Capitol Hill, DeVos is still behind the pace of her predecessors.

All in all, DeVos has testified before Congress just four times so far, including her confirmation hearing in January of last year, and three education spending committee appearances.

That’s not to say DeVos is dodging lawmakers. The party in control of Congress—in this case, the GOP—gets to decide when a cabinet secretary appears before Congress. “Every time the Secretary has been called up to testify she has made herself available to do so,” said Elizabeth Hill, a spokeswoman for the department.

Still, top Democrats on the House and Senate education committees—Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington—are not happy that they haven’t gotten a chance to hear from DeVos directly. They have big concerns about the way DeVos is implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act, her school choice agenda, and what they see as her rollback of Obama-era civil rights protections. They want to question her about those issues in person.

House Republicans say they fully intend to have DeVos speak to the committee, they’ve just run into scheduling conflicts.

Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.

Civil Rights Groups Urge Education Department to Continue Reporting Key Educational Equity Data

Civil Rights Groups Urge Education Department to Continue Reporting Key Educational Equity Data

Civil Rights groups showed an outpouring of support last week for the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), a mandatory biennial survey of schools that measures key equity indicators, such as disproportionate discipline practices and inequitable access to rigorous coursework.

The support came in response to a call for public comment, published in the Federal Register by the Obama Administration at the end of December 2016, on the data collection and whether or not it is necessary to the proper functions of the U.S. Department of Education (ED). This allowed organizations to publicly voice their support for the CRDC and even go one step further to share how the CRDC could be strengthened.

So why does the CRDC matter? Without good data, it is more difficult to draw attention to, and ultimately solve, these and other deficiencies in our education system.

With this logic in mind, the Alliance joined the chorus of Civil Rights groups by sending a letter to ED highlighting how the CRDC is essential to ED’s mission of advancing educational excellence and equity at the federal, state, and local levels.

“The core mission of ED is to ‘foster educational excellence and ensure equal access.’ Such efforts must begin with information about how students are doing in schools across the country, which allows ED—along with leaders in states, districts, and schools; parents; advocates; and members of the public—to understand better which students are succeeding and growing and which students are struggling so they can make informed decisions about programs and policies that are working and how best to use limited resources.”

“Thus, the CRDC supports the most critical functions of ED as a promoter of educational equity and enforcer of the civil rights of the nation’s children, and allows other policymakers and community leaders to do the same. The Alliance urges ED to continue to conduct and strengthen the CRDC biennially and consider how the CRDC can be conducted on an annual basis.”

In their letter of support, chairs of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), known collectively as the Congressional Tri-Caucus, focused on the critical role that CRDC has played in highlighting issues to disproportionate discipline practices that have directly impacted students of color and students with disabilities.

“Analyses utilizing the CRDC demonstrate that these students are systematically excluded from education opportunities through the use to suspension, expulsion, seclusion, and restraint,” the letter says. “Without the CRDC, researchers, parents, and policymakers would be unable to hold schools accountable and reduce discriminatory practices.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights submitted a letter signed by thirty-two civil rights and education groups, including the Alliance, that emphasizing that the CRDC allows students, parents, and advocates to answer specific questions like:

  • Does enrollment in calculus at this school reflect the school as a whole?
  • Are White students less likely to be suspended out of school than Black students?
  • Are students at this school restrained more often than students at other schools?
  • Do teachers at schools where most students are low-income have greater or fewer years of experience than teachers at schools where students are more affluent?

The letter explains that “answers to these questions help us all to know whether individual students or groups of students are experiencing discrimination and whether or not there is equal educational opportunity.”

Organizations are not the only parties interested in the CRDC. U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), who serves as the Ranking Member on the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, inquired about the CRDC in questions she submitted to then nominee for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos after her confirmation hearing.

Education Week’s Politics K-12 reports that “DeVos also said she would support the Civil Rights Data Collection, which has uncovered disparities among racial and ethnic minorities and their white peers.”

Civil rights advocates are certainly hopeful that DeVos will maintain and strengthen this critical measure of resource equity.