Despite constant gains in technology, infrastructure and industry across the United States, Black and brown children are still hampered by some of the largest educational gaps in the nation.
Of the Black and brown children suffering academically throughout the U.S. school system, boys in particular seem to be affected the most, with extremely high educational literacies disparities found in the nation’s capital and neighboring Baltimore.
With a mission to address and correct these educational imbalances, Shawn Hardnett, founder and CEO of the North Star College Preparatory Academy for Boys, recently collaborated with four other D.C. and Baltimore all-male schools for the inaugural “Black and Brown Hackathon,” in order to better facilitate and support Black and brown boys.
“While being here in D.C., my focus has always been on supporting Black and brown boys using the arts,” Hardnett said. “Through my many volunteer roles in education, I noticed a tremendous lack of adequately trained teachers and a [low] number of Black and brown boys succeeding academically and I really wanted to do something that would allow me to correct that.
“Through the help of some very special educators, community members and parents, my goal … is to give Black and brown boys a platform to share their own experiences in school and what it would take for them to do even better,” he said.
During the Oct. 2 event at the partnering Ron Brown College Preparatory High School, 100 male students and over 150 male and female volunteers participated in critical thinking exercises, friendship building games and leadership training.
Bishop John T. Walker School for Boys, Washington Latin Public Charter School and Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys also took part in the event.
”I’ve been to D.C. plenty of times, but when I learned that there was a leadership program for young Black boys going on, that made me really want to go,” said participant Denzel Mitchell. “Today was fun because we got a chance to talk about all these problems that happen to young Black males so that we can help them and enjoy fun activities.”
Desmond Johnson, an eighth-grade student at the Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys known for collectively organizing and helping other students, said the program had already begun to help him.
“Being here makes me think about how I can do and be something better than what I’m doing and being now, and really makes me want to show and tell younger kids how to improve and hopefully how to accomplish their dreams — and my own, too,” Desmond said.
And while students like Raymond Weeden III, a sixth-grader who attends Washington Latin Public Charter School, are fortunate enough to have a ever-present male role model in their lives, Kerel Thompson, a STEM instructor at North Star, said there is still more work to be done.
“Whenever we talk to Black and brown male students, they always list the same issues, with concentration stemming from home issues, attention from girls and the need and want to be cool,” Thompson said. “Our goal is to provide them with structure, keep them engaged and send them a message that they can be and do whatever they want in life. … We are concerned about boys, because we know they are in trouble and we as a society need to start finding out why.”
Sixty percent of Thurgood Marshall Academy’s Class of 2018 participated in the “Early Action” program, in which they applied to colleges and universities early in their senior year and, in some instances, even before the end of the first semester.
One of the most important factors in college admissions is SAT scores. To that end, the academy further invested resources to offer SAT prep classes to seniors, and as a result, 97 percent of its students scored better than 800. Additionally, 50 percent of the academy’s students earned a “super score” of 1000 or greater.
Board of Education Honorees
The D.C. State Board of Education recently honored Paul Howard as the District’s 2018 Teacher of the Year.
Howard, who has taught social studies at LaSalle-Backus Education campus in Northeast for the past five years, will represent D.C. in the Council of Chief State School Officers’ National Teacher of the Year competition.
The board also honored Banneker High and Horace Mann Elementary schools for being selected as a U.S. Department of Education 2017 National Blue Ribbon School.
The program recognizes public and private elementary, middle and high schools based on their overall academic excellence or their progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups.
Task Force Update
At its most recent meeting in November, the D.C. State Board of Education proposed changes to high school graduation requirements designed to ensure the District diploma fulfills its intended purpose.
They also suggested further edits to the requirements, indicating which of their peers’ changes they liked, disagreed with, or wanted more information about.
In the coming weeks, the board will present a new version of the draft to constituent groups and provide feedback from those conversations at their December meeting.
Team-Building Success
Under supervision of SEED DC Public Charter School teacher Nick Ford, program coordinator Indian Brown, partners at BUILD and six dedicated mentors, 30 ninth-graders spent a year dreaming up business ideas, forming teams and pitching their business plans to peers and local entrepreneurs.
Through a daily class supplemented by weekly evening programming, students built relationships with local mentors who helped them refine their ideas, products, and approach.
BUILD is a real-life testing ground for students to learn skills in critical thinking, collaboration, innovation, and self-management. And it worked: one SEED DC PCS team won BUILD’s year-end citywide competition for their “Chop-a-Cake” cake-cutter business plan and pitch, while another team took home an award for problem-solving.
AFRO NEWSPAPER — As public school students begin a new school year, they do so to an array of educational choice that is the strongest in decades—perhaps ever.
Backed by the decision to increase the Uniform Per-Student Funding Formula, which funds public school operating costs this school year and last, District families continue to demonstrate increasing confidence in D.C. public schools and D.C. charter schools.
[/media-credit] Dr. Ramona Edelin is executive director of the D.C. Association of Chartered Public Schools.
The new school year will doubtless see a further increase in public school enrollment after eight consecutive increases, following decades of decline and the flight of those with the means to choose alternatives to the District’s public schools. A trend that began only with charters, enrollment which has grown steadily for over two decades, now extends also to DCPS, where enrollment has increased for six years in a row now.
Charter schools, which educate nearly half of all District public school students, have been a key component in this educational renaissance. Charters are publicly-funded and tuition-free, like traditional public schools, but free to design and develop their school curriculum and culture, while being held accountable for improved student performance.
When charters were first introduced 21 years ago, half of all public school students dropped out before graduating. Yet today, the on-time—within four years—high-school graduation rate is 73 percent for charters, and 69 percent for DCPS.
Standardized test scores have significantly improved at both public charters and DCPS, with the strongest gains among D.C. charter schools serving our most disadvantaged communities, east of the Anacostia River. Just-released scores for last school year show that charter students in economically-disadvantaged Wards Seven and Eight are more than twice as likely to meet state college and career readiness standards as their peers in DCPS.
Importantly, improved test scores in both charters and DCPS have been accompanied by an enriched curricula and a wider range of extra-curricular options.
Bringing choice to our city’s least-advantaged residents has brought huge improvements, in terms of college and career-readiness, for those whose need for a quality education is greatest.
Accordingly, demand for these unique schools is such that nearly 10,000 students are on waiting lists to attend one or more charter campuses in the school year about to begin. Demand for traditional public schools in the out-of-boundary program also has increased. And choice for parents has been simplified by DCPS and D.C. charter participation in the common lottery, which allocates places when schools’ popularity causes them to be over-subscribed.
Charters’ success also has been the catalyst for improvements in the traditional public school system, following the introduction of mayoral-control of DCPS and the appointment of three reforming School Chancellors.
The District has replaced a vicious circle of declining standards and enrollment, and therefore a dwindling tax base, with a virtuous one of rising standards, increasing enrollment, and broader and deeper revenue sources.
Of course, more could be done to support the improvements made possible by the District’s charter school innovation—for newcomers and existing residents.
Not least among these is the fact that District law requires that D.C. charter school students receive the same city funding as their DCPS counterparts, at each grade and level of special education. Yet the city provides DCPS between $72 million to $121 million in extra funding annually—support that charters do not receive.
Additionally, D.C.’s government spends about three times as much on DCPS students for facilities, compared to their siblings and neighbors in D.C. charters. Subject to annual budget wrangling in a super-hot real estate market where charter schools must find their own space to educate their students, charters’ facilities allowance is inadequate to their students’ needs.
The Mayor’s proposed 2.2 % increase in charters’ facilities funding – approved by the Council—locked in for four years is a welcome step toward narrowing funding inequity. A facilities fund floor of $3,500 per-student, indexed to increasing costs, adjusting accordingly each year would make up for some lost ground, and reflect economic realities.
Leveling the playing field could enhance the choices that have created today’s confidence in education in the District. This—and continued adequate investment in operational and facilities funds—is required to build on the District’s education successes, fulfilling the potential of every child.
Dr. Ramona Edelin is executive director of the D.C. Association of Chartered Public Schools.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed by President Obama on December 10, 2015. ESSA reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and replaces the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. ESSA creates an important opportunity for DC to expand upon its efforts around school improvement, educator development and support, and sharing of transparent and comparable information about District of Columbia public schools.
The State Board Makes 10 Recommendations for Final Accountability Plan
Read the recommendations below. They reflect the consensus of the SBOE that the weight of test scores should be reduced and additional non-testing measures that encourage a well-rounded education be added. Additionally, they also recommend the establishment of task forces on School Climate/Well-Rounded Education and High School Growth Measures. These task forces would provide recommendations to SBOE and OSSE for inclusion in the accountability plan by April 2018. Further recommendations relate to the use of PARCC with English Language Learners. Finally, the SBOE agrees with OSSE that the accountability system be reviewed regularly to ensure that the system is providing the information our residents need. SBOE is recommending that that process be done jointly between OSSE and SBOE.
ESSA Updates
D.C. SBOE and OSSE are currently developing a new accountability system under ESSA that will meet the needs of D.C. students. ESSA implementation begins in the 2017-2018 school year. Working together, the SBOE and OSSE must decide what indicators of school quality should be included in the accountability system, goals for improvement in each category (for all students and each subgroup of students), and how to weight the various accountability components.
The Weight of Testing: How much should test scores count in the school rating? The OSSE discussion draft suggests 80%; the SBOE response memo suggests it should be much lower. Overwhelmingly, parents and teachers echoed sentiments in their testimony that so much weight on testing has damaged education and has lead to a narrowing of the curriculum. There is pressure on schools to focus on teaching students who are close to the proficient cusp instead of those who score substantially higher or lower; a disincentive for schools to enroll challenging students, whose test scores typically grow more slowly; and, not enough attention to the non-academic aspects of education, including providing a nurturing, safe, challenging, engaging environment. Moving forward, parents and teachers want testing to be set at the lowest level allowed by law.
The Weight of Growth (Individual Progress) in Relation to Proficiency (Achieving Set Standards): Rather than only holding schools accountable for reaching specific proficiency levels, ESSA offers the opportunity for DC to rate schools based on the academic progress students achieve. In spirited testimony throughout the evening, there was a nearly universal call for increasing the emphasis on student progress and including a measure of growth in the new plan.
The OSSE straw man draft gives equal weight to proficiency and growth. The SBOE has written in its response that giving equal weight to proficiency and growth is “unfair in principle and unhelpful in practice. Schools that enroll lower scoring students—on average, students who are poorer, don’t speak English, and are in special education—have to be many times more effective than their counterparts to earn an equivalent rating…. In effect, under the current and currently proposed system, “when students begin their year at a low score, the school is in effect penalized for not raising the child multiple grade levels.
Safety, Engagement and Environment Indicators: The SBOE believes that it is important for all students, teachers and parents to feel welcome, safe, and engaged in their school—all qualities that research says directly influence achievement. This relates to many factors including facilities, school discipline, attendance, bullying, parent engagement, teacher turnover, and student reenrollment. Policy experts testified to the need for a climate survey that is research-based. The goal would be to measure the aspects of safety, engagement and environment that predict achievement. When we focus primarily on test scores, we lead schools to overly focus on test prep and the two tested subjects rather than a well-rounded education.
SBOE Public Meeting Information on ESSA
During the March SBOE Public Meeting, the Board heard from three ESSA experts. Watch their discussion on best ESSA practices here.
During the June SBOE Public Meeting, the Board heard testimony related to school quality and student success. Watch the discussion here.
During the July SBOE Public Meeting, the Board heard testimony related to the potential impact of ESSA on vulnerable students. Watch the discussion here.
During the September SBOE Public Meeting, the Board heard testimony related to state leadership and implementation challenges. Watch the discussion here.
During the October SBOE Public Meeting, the Board heard testimony related to a Parent Summit that includes ESSA related sessions. Watch the discussion here.
During the December SBOE Public Meeting, three ESSA policy experts, a charter school Vice President of Policy, and a Ward 5 charter school parent provided testimony to the Board. Watch the discussion here.
During the January SBOE Public Meeting, the Office of the State Superintendent (OSSE) provided an overview of the major components of the consolidated statewide plan required by ESSA. In addition to school accountability, the consolidated plan includes sections on long-term goals, consultation and performance management, academic assessments, and supporting educators and students. Watch the discussion here.
SBOE Honors 2018 Teacher of the Year and Blue Ribbon Schools
At this month’s public meeting, the State Board honored the exceptional efforts of Mr. Paul Howard who was recently named the District’s 2018 Teacher of the Year. Mr. Howard has taught social studies at LaSalle-Backus Education campus for the last five years.
SBOE members applauded the outstanding leadership and commitment to student achievement exhibited by Mr. Howard. He will now go on to proudly represent the District of Columbia in the Council of Chief State School Officers’ National Teacher of the Year competition.
The State Board also honored DCPS’s Banneker High School and Horace Mann Elementary School for being selected as a U.S. Department of Education 2017 National Blue Ribbon School. The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program recognizes public and private elementary, middle, and high schools based on their overall academic excellence or their progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups.
The Office of the Ombudsman for Public Education provides conflict resolution services for parents and students across the city. Serving approximately 500 families per year, the dedicated staff of the office, under the leadership of Ombudsman Joyanna Smith, works on issues including: student discipline, special education, truancy, student enrollment, transportation, academic progress and bullying. The 2017 Ombudsman’s report builds upon the equity analysis provided in last year’s report by introducing a proposed equity framework for the city. This framework builds upon more than three years of collaboration with school-based, local, and national education leaders, and intervention with over 1,500 families in all eight wards.
The Office of the Student Advocate, led by Chief Student Advocate Faith Gibson Hubbard, assists District families in navigating the complex public education system. By supporting and empowering District residents, the Office of the Student Advocate strives to bring equal access to public education. The Student Advocate’s office focused this year on expanding the services our office offers in support of students and families throughout all eight wards of the city. By leveraging connections and partnerships with government agencies, schools, and community-based organizations and increasing strategic outreach efforts, the office has nurtured vital working relationships that are student and family-centric. In doing so, the office tripled the amount of families it was able to serve through its Request for Assistance line (350 families) and direct outreach engagement (2000 individuals).
Our SBOE #DCGradReqs Task Force held its seventh meeting on November 8, 2017. In case you missed our #FacebookLive broadcast, watch the replay here and read the minutes here.
Key Takeaways
Task force members split into four groups to react to a “straw man” set of requirements – proposed changes to high school graduation requirements designed to ensure the District diploma fulfills its intended purpose.
Members then suggested further edits to the requirements, indicating which of their peers’ changes they liked, disagreed with, or wanted more information about.
In the coming weeks, members will take a new version of the draft straw man out to their constituent groups and provide feedback from those conversations at our December meeting.
Tell us what you think of our progress so far! Please take a look at the updated draft straw man and tell us what you like about it, what you dislike about it, and what you would change. Please submit all comments by emailing sboe@dc.gov or by filling out an online form here. We also encourage you to join our Facebook discussion group here to make your voice heard.
The next #DCGradReqs task force meeting will be held on December 13, 2017.
The SBOE ESSA Task Force, led by Ward 4 representative Dr. Lannette Woodruff, held its fourth meeting on November 7, 2017. Representatives from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) provided an update on feedback received from recently held community focus groups on a new school report card. Dr. Lillian Lowery of The Education Trust delivered a presentation to task force members on equity.
On November 16th, SBOE staff members headed out on a #SBOESelfieTour to visit schools across Wards 7 and 8 to help spread the word about our #ESSATaskForce and the new DC report card. Check out which schools they visited here. The next ESSATaskForce meeting will be held on December 5th.
At this month’s public meeting, the State Board heard from two members of the DC Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network’s Backbone: Marlena Jones and Maya Garcia. The State Board supports Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics or STEM and recognizes that these subjects are vital components of a 21st century education. The Network updated the Board on their work and provided some opportunities where the Board and public can become more involved.
Washington Post — Students in the nation’s only federally funded school voucher initiative performed worse on standardized tests within a year after entering D.C. private schools than peers who did not participate, according to a new federal analysis that comes as President Trump is seeking to pour billions of dollars into expanding the private school scholarships nationwide.
“D.C. students who used vouchers had significantly lower math scores a year after joining the program, on average, than students who applied for a voucher through a citywide lottery but did not receive one. For voucher students in kindergarten through fifth grade, reading scores were also significantly lower. For older voucher students, there was no significant difference in reading scores.
“For voucher recipients coming from a low-performing public school — the population that the voucher program primarily aims to reach — attending a private school had no effect on achievement. But for voucher recipients coming from higher-performing public schools, the negative effect was particularly large.”
Most states are not planning to do enough to prevent low-income students and students of color from being disproportionately taught by ineffective or inexperienced teachers, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.
The Every Student Succeed Acts requires that states define “ineffective” and “inexperienced” teachers in their federally required plans, and describe ways they’ll ensure that low-income and nonwhite students aren’t being taught by these teachers at higher rates than their peers.
NCTQ, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, today released new analyses of 34 states’ plans, following its analyses of 16 states and the District of Columbia, which was released in June. In that earlier round, the group found a few bright spots, including New Mexico and Tennessee.
NCTQ looked at these metrics in its analyses:
How do states define inexperienced and ineffective teachers? NCTQ recommends that states define an inexperienced teacher as someone with two or fewer years of experience. An ineffective teacher should be defined by using “objective measures of student learning and growth” (like student test scores).
What data are states using? NCTQ advises states to report student-level data, and consider whether there are additional student subgroups that might have educator equity gaps.
When will states eliminate identified educator equity gaps? NCTQ calls for states to make publicly available timelines and interim targets for eliminating the gaps.
What are states’ strategies to target identified equity gaps? NCTQ says that specific strategies should be developed with stakeholder input and be evaluated over time.
(It’s important to note that these are not specified by the federal law; they are NCTQ’s interpretation of what states should be doing under ESSA.)…
Read the full article here. May require an Education Week subscription.
Our first question is on a pretty key part of the law: A school-based administrator asked, “Is testing the only way a student can achieve success” under ESSA?
The short answer is: No.
The longer answer: The Every Student Succeeds Act kept in place the testing regimen from the law it replaced, the No Child Left Behind Act. That means that states still have to test students in grades three through eight and once in high school.
But ESSA allowed—well actually, told—states they had to pick some other factor that got at school quality and student success. More than 30 states picked chronic absenteeism or attendance. And more than 35 states picked college- and career-readiness, defined as Advanced Placement participation or test scores, dual enrollment, career and technical certification, and more. Several states also included subjects other than reading and math into the mix, including science test scores. Others decided to measure school climate. ..
Read the full story here.May require an Education Week subscription.
By Lynette Monroe (Program Assistant, NNPA ESSA Media Campaign)
In my role as the program assistant for the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s (NNPA) Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Public Awareness Campaign, I closely followed the proposal process for the District of Columbia’s ESSA plan. I have to admit, I was disappointed by the final version of the plan submitted to the U.S. Department of Education. Overall, D.C.’s ESSA plan is, at best, an incomplete assignment. The ‘to be continued’ tone of the plan could be partly due to the discontent expressed by many community members during the final stakeholder meetings. Parents and educators alike expressed concern about the lack of resources and implementation strategies to support the Office of the State Superintendent of Education’s (OSSE) aggressive goals for academic proficiency and high school graduation. The participants at the meetings noted the glaring socioeconomic disparities throughout the district and the unique resources required to increase achievement in each ward. One could conclude that OSSE’s aggressive academic goals are mirroring the affects of a rapidly gentrifying city that continues to marginalize the needs of its majority Black residents.
According to District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), 71 percent of their student population is Black and 70 percent of the entire student population qualifies for free or reduced lunch. In August, DCPS released the latest scores for tests under the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC). Black students showed the smallest improvements with a 4.8 percent increase in English Language Arts proficiency and a 2.1 percent increase in math proficiency. In both categories, less than 20 percent of Black students achieved proficiency in reading and math. This increase is compared to a 6.2 percent increase in English Language Arts proficiency for Hispanic students in the district and a 9.6 percent increase by their White counterparts. Similarly, Hispanic students showed a 5 percent increase in math proficiency while White students increased their proficiency by 4.8 percent. According to the PARCC assessment, less than 30 percent of Hispanic students are proficient in reading and math. While more than 80 percent of White students, according to PARRC, exhibit proficiency. White students make up just 10 percent of the DCPS student population.
DCPS needs to try harder to raise the test scores of its Black students. DCPS should also quickly work to reaffirm their commitment to expanding college and career support for students, especially Black students.
At a recent town hall meeting hosted by the National Newspaper Publishers Association in Atlanta, Ga., Vickie B. Turner, a school board member for District 5 in the DeKalb County School District, encouraged participants to reach out to parents, who were not present at the town hall and who are not engaged, declaring “we are preaching to the choir.”
Nevertheless, we all share a responsibility to educate our children. Some parents may not be able to dedicate as much time to participate in their child’s education as others. You can help out by dedicating an hour, as often as you can, to make sure Black parents are present, represented, and fighting in the best interest of our children. “It takes a village” is not just a cliché or an excuse to discipline a stranger’s child. It is a vow to develop the whole child, irrespective of his or her parent’s shortcomings.
To learn more about the District of Columbia’s plan, or your state’s plan, to implement ESSA, the nation’s new education law, visit nnpa.org/essa.
Lynette Monroe is a master’s student at Howard University. Her research area is public policy and national development. Ms. Monroe is the program assistant for the NNPA’s Every Student Succeeds Act Public Awareness Campaign. Follow Lynette Monroe on Twitter @_monroedoctrine.
As unpopular as No Child Left Behind was by the time it was ushered off the stage in 2015, advocates for students with disabilities could always point to one aspect of the law that they liked: by requiring that test scores of different student groups be reported separately, the law exposed the low academic performance of students in special education and required schools to do something about it.
The replacement for NCLB, the Every Student Succeeds Act, still requires that the academic performance of students with disabilities be reported, along with other student subgroups.
But the law trades federal mandates for state flexibility on what should happen to a school whose students with disabilities are consistently lagging their peers.
States and some lawmakers have cheered the end of what they call federal overreach. But some advocates worry that the accountability goals states have set for themselves won’t move the needle for a group of students who have long struggled with low achievement. At worst, they worry, states can create rules that allow the performance of students with disabilities to again be obscured by the relatively higher test scores of the general student population.
Lower Goals
“A lot of the really crucial decisionmaking got left to the states,” said Ricki Sabia, the senior policy advisor at the National Down Syndrome Congress. “Our concern was with how they would use this discretion.”
Sabia and Candace Cortiella, the founder of the Advocacy Institute, examined drafts of the accountability roadmaps developed by 37 states. All of the states have submitted ESSA plans to the U.S. Department of Education for evaluation; the department has given its stamp of approval to 14 states and the District of Columbia.
A reading of the draft plans illustrates some of Sabia’s and Cortiella’s concerns. In New Mexico’s accountability blueprint, for example, it set a goal for itself to increase the high school graduation rate of students with disabilities to 79 percent in 2022, up from 62 percent in 2016.
At the same time, however, the plan sets a goal to have 50 percent of students with disabilities scoring proficient on the state’sEnglish/language arts and math assessments by 2022. That’s an ambitious goal—less than 7 percent of New Mexican special education students meet that bar now.
But “it is difficult to understand how [students with disabilities] can be expected to graduate at a rate of 79 percent in 4 years while just 50 percent are expected to be proficient in reading and math,” Sabia and Cortiella wrote in a letter intended to support local advocates.
Plan Omissions
Another concern is that the goals for students with disabilities are too low. New York, for example, is aiming for 63 percent of its students with disabilities to graduate with a standard diploma by 2022, up from 55 percent in 2016. New York notes that its end goal for all students, including students with disabilities, is a 95 percent graduation rate. But it also proposes resetting its goals each year.
Educators didn’t like the 100-percent proficiency goal that was embedded in the old law, Sabia said. “But how do you say that some students aren’t going to be proficient? How do you say it’s OK if 5 percent or 10 percent aren’t? That’s what some of these new plans do.”
The education nonprofit Achieve, in its analysis of state plans, found that 26 states and the District of Columbia set the same long-term graduation goal for all subgroups. Twenty-four states set different end point goals for students with disabilities and other subgroups.
Others have pointed not to what’s in the state plans, but what they believe has been left out. Laura Kaloi is a government relations policy consultant with the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a group that represents children in special education and their families. COPAA was looking for states to offer specific plans about how to prevent bullying and harassment, discipline that removes children from the classroom, and “aversive behavioral interventions that compromise student health and safety.”
In an examination of the state plans that were submitted this spring, she said, those topics were not addressed.
“We know many, many school districts need work in this area,” Kaloi said.
The plans are light on some details because states were not required by the law to provide them. In March, the Senate overturned some accountability guidelines that were passed during the Obama administration, saying they were too prescriptive and not keeping in the spirit of the law and its focus on state-based accountability. For example, the law requires states to identify a minimum number of students in a particular subgroup that a school would have to enroll in order for that group to be counted in school accountability, known as the N-size. Under the ESSA accountability rules that the Senate threw out, states could select any N-size but had to offer a justification if they chose a number over 30. The Education Department does not require states to provide a justification for its N-size selection.
Some states, such as Ohio, have chosen to provide such justification, however, suggesting that in some cases states are committing to a more rigorous standard.
Ohio is moving from an N-size of 30 down to 15 by the 2019-2020 school year, which means that more schools will potentially be subject to accountability measures. After the change, 86 percent of the state’s schools will have to report on the progress of the special education subgroup, compared to 58 percent that are required to do so now.
Melissa Turner, the senior manager for state policy for the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said her organization is also examining the state plans, with an eye to strong accountability for student subgroups, clearly defined policies that explain how states will help struggling groups of students, and greater use of accommodations and the appropriate use of “alternate assessments.”
ESSA places a 1 percent cap on the percentage of all students who can take alternate assessments. That equates to about 10 percent of students with disabilities. Such alternate assessments are intended for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. Some groups, such as NCLD, have been concerned that schools have steered students to the alternate assessments in the past, instead of providing the teaching and support that would allow students to take the same tests as their peers in general education.
Positive Implications
Turner mentioned some plans that stand out as potentially positive for students with disabilities. Iowa, for example, has organized its ESSA accountability blueprint around “multitiered systems of support,” which are intended to provide research-backed instruction for all students in academics and in social-emotional development.
Turner also singled out New Hampshire for its plans for personalized learning. “That’s something that we applaud. We think that’s a strong opportunity for states to meet the needs of all kids,” she said.
The organization is concerned, as other groups are, about different goals for different student subgroups. If the overall graduation rate goal is 95 percent, it should be the same for students with disabilities, she said.
“We’re really hoping to see that gap narrow in the long-term goals,” she said.
By 
By Ramona Edelin Special to the AFRO
Most states are not planning to do enough to prevent low-income students and students of color from being disproportionately taught by ineffective or inexperienced teachers, 
By Lynette Monroe (Program Assistant, NNPA ESSA Media Campaign)