Plan Emphasizes Fostering Equity in Education for All Students and Expands Measures for School Accountability & Student Success
Final Approval of the State’s ESSA Plan is Expected Early in 2018
September 11, 2017 — The Board of Regents today approved the New York Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan, which will be submitted to the United States Education Department (USDE) on September 18 for review and approval. It is anticipated that USDE will provide feedback to the Department in December 2017. Final approval of the state’s ESSA plan is expected early next year.
“Our ESSA plan is an action plan,” Board of Regents Chancellor Betty A. Rosa said. “The Regents and I are committed to ensuring that all students, regardless of background, zip code, first language or disability, get the help they need to succeed and thrive in school. Developing this plan has been an opportunity to incorporate the voices of communities, teachers and parents as we rethink how we look at accountability, equity and serving the whole child.”
“The ESSA plan we will now submit to USDE is responsive to the needs of students,” Commissioner MaryEllen Elia said. “This plan is the culmination of more than a year of collaboration with hundreds of stakeholders and members of the public who helped shape the plan throughout the process. And we’re not done. We will continue to engage with stakeholders to ensure everyone is given the opportunity to adjust to and feel comfortable with the new system as it’s implemented.”
The plan emphasizes fostering equity in education for New York’s students; expands measures for school support and accountability and student success; and requires school-level improvement plans for the lowest performing schools overall as well as schools with the lowest performance for certain student populations. The plan also includes strategies for supporting the professional growth of educators and ensuring that all students, including English language learners/Multilingual learners, immigrant students, migratory youth, homeless youth, and neglected and delinquent youth, have access to a well-rounded, culturally responsive education that supports their academic and social-emotional development.
The Department detailed highlights of the plan to the Board of Regents at its September meeting. Further, NYSED is developing summary documents for parents and teachers to explain the final ESSA plan, which is posted in full on the Department’s ESSA webpage.
Stakeholder Engagement
For the past year, NYSED has engaged diverse groups of stakeholders to solicit recommendations on how to craft an ESSA plan that best meets the needs of the state’s students, schools and communities. In support of these efforts, NYSED established an ESSA Think Tank with representatives from more than 100 organizations, including district leaders, teachers, parents, and community members. The Department also consulted with national education experts regarding ESSA, including Linda Darling-Hammond (Learning Policy Institute) and Scott F. Marion (National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment).
In addition, NYSED held more than 120 fall and winter regional in-person meetings across the state in coordination with the state’s 37 Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) and the superintendents of the state’s five largest City School Districts, which were attended by more than 4,000 students, parents, teachers, school and district leaders, school board members, and other stakeholders.
The Department received more than 800 written comments and 270 verbal comments at the meetings during public comment period. In addition to hosting 13 public hearings on the plan from May 11 through June 16, NYSED also held more than 120 stakeholder and public meetings between October 2016 and May 2017 to gather input to help inform the development of the draft plan.
Last month, NYSED released three ESSA waiver requests for public comment. The waivers, which will be submitted simultaneously with the draft ESSA plan, have been previously discussed with the Board of Regents and stakeholders. If approved these waivers will give New York additional flexibility in terms of the assessment of selected groups of middle level students who participate in Regents examinations, newly arrived ELLs/MLLs, and a small group of students with significant cognitive disabilities.
Next Steps
It is anticipated that USDE will provide feedback to the Department in December 2017. Final approval of the state’s ESSA plan is expected early next year. After the plan is approved by the USDE, the Department will work with BOCES District superintendents, superintendents, the ESSA Think Tank and other stakeholder groups to develop and provide guidance on implementing the ESSA plan.
NY AMSTERDAM NEWS — In the months since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, activists and scholars have converged, condemning his violent and divisive racial rhetoric. In response to Trump’s rhetoric, leaders are working to build a resistance against an agenda that not only divides the country but also sets precedence for violent and discriminatory policies and actions.
The New School, known for its innovative work in areas of social change, has launched “Race in the U.S.,” a free and public lecture series on race relations in America. It features a dynamic lineup of conversations with community activists, scholars and policy changers.
As if it were planned for such a tense moment in our country, the lecture series was originally inspired by New School students’ desires to connect on the topic of race.
Michelle DePass, dean of the Milano School of International Affairs and one of the course organizers, said students were inspired by the work of the Black Lives Matter movement years ago and started galvanizing around race politics then. Now, with the launch of the lecture series, there is an opportunity to build a new program that integrates both an academic class of advocates and activists in the area of race.
“As we follow and work with our student body, we find that our students are very intersectional, and we realized that after this election, we cannot be in our silos anymore,” DePass said. “What this course is really doing is intersecting race with so many different aspects and elements of our society and lifting up the cover and saying that you really think you exist in this safe zone or this zone where the issues of the system have not touched you, but they actually have.”
What do we do in the toxic climate we have today? That is the question for which the lecture series hopes to stir up an answer. The New School social justice masterminds and scholars DePass, Maya Wiley and Darrick Hamilton joined forces to create this platform for impactful conversations with activists, organizers and scholars such as Shanelle Matthews of Black Lives Matter and Linda Saursour, a Muslim rights advocate and Women’s March organizer.
Wiley, fairly new to the New School staff, serves as the VP for social justice at the university. She previously served as a counsel to New York Mayor de Blasio, advising on legal matters. Now she is
working with the school to integrate social justice actions from the school community level to engaging students on social justice matters through curriculum.
This course, she says, is about engaging various groups within the community of social change both in academia and on the grass roots level.
“One of the things that we’ve always had at the New School is academics who are not just researching areas of injustice and inequalities, but are also thinking about how they get solved,” Wiley said. “So part of the ‘new’ in the New School is forms of pedagogy that work on and engage in real world solutions.”
Hamilton, who oversees the Ph.D. students within the Milano School and is an associate professor of economics and urban policy, is anticipating that the course will be a training ground for an “army of social justice warriors.”
Through public lectures like those offered in “Race in the U.S.,” students will be challenged by ideas and equipped with the tools they need to enact social change in strategic ways.
The organizers of the course believe that without properly understanding how to read and interpret data, activists cannot serve their causes, and it is in this way the worlds of academia and grass roots organizing converge.
“This course would have existed whether or not Donald Trump was president because we were talking about it well before the election was concluded,” Wiley stated. “But I do think it’s elevated the critical nature of the time we are in, that the discourse of what happened during the campaign has become the national discourse. I think about our students that are both active and horrified at the world they are inheriting and having some space not only about what it means, but how they can do something.”
The course will be held Mondays through Dec. 11, 2017 at the New School. It will also be available on Livestream. It is free and available to the public. For more information, visit https://courses.newschool.edu/courses/UTNS2000?sec=7497.
BEACON – The Howland Public Library is all a buzz with excitement. The library’s teen Battle of the Books team, The Beacon Buzzers, took home first place in the Mid-Hudson Library System’s 2nd Annual High School Battle of the Books. The regional literary contest took place at Poughkeepsie Day School, on August 19th. Congratulations to Beekman Public Library’s team “Where’s Ralph” second place winners and Kingston Public Library’s “Hardcore Hardcovers T2” who came in third.
This year, eleven public libraries in the Mid-Hudson Library System’s five counties (Putnam, Dutchess, Columbia, Ulster and Greene) competed in this nationally recognized literature contest in which teens answer trivia questions based on books they all read this summer.
Individual library teams worked all summer with their coaches to prepare for this final regional battle. Mini-battles were played throughout the summer to practice for the big event. Over 60 students in grades 9-12 participated as coaches, family, and friends cheered on. The teams all proved to be winners when it came to knowledge, team spirit, and good sportsmanship.
A big thank you to the host venue, Poughkeepsie Day School, all of the volunteers and families who came out to support the teams, and the coaches and librarians who worked so hard throughout the year to make this special event possible. Much appreciated sponsors include The Allstate Foundation through the Sorrentino Agency in the Town of Newburgh and donations from many library Friends Groups. The Howland Public Library team would like to give a special shout out to the The Friends of the Howland Public Library who generously sponsor the Beacon team every year and Pleasant Ridge Pizza for keeping the team’s hungry minds fed all summer. The Howland Public Library is all a buzz with excitement. The library’s teen Battle of the Books team, The Beacon Buzzers, took home first place in the Mid-Hudson Library System’s 2nd Annual High School Battle of the Books. The regional literary contest took place at Poughkeepsie Day School, on August 19th. Congratulations to Beekman Public Library’s team “Where’s Ralph” second place winners and Kingston Public Library’s “Hardcore Hardcovers T2” who came in third.
This year, eleven public libraries in the Mid-Hudson Library System’s five counties (Putnam, Dutchess, Columbia, Ulster and Greene) competed in this nationally recognized literature contest in which teens answer trivia questions based on books they all read this summer.
Individual library teams worked all summer with their coaches to prepare for this final regional battle. Mini-battles were played throughout the summer to practice for the big event. Over 60 students in grades 9-12 participated as coaches, family, and friends cheered on. The teams all proved to be winners when it came to knowledge, team spirit, and good sportsmanship.
A big thank you to the host venue, Poughkeepsie Day School, all of the volunteers and families who came out to support the teams, and the coaches.
(CNN Money) — Florence Yu can’t believe her luck. She’s starting college the same year New York made tuition free for middle-class students like her.
New York’s Excelsior Scholarship is the first of its kind. It covers the cost of tuition for qualifying students who are enrolled in a two- or four-year degree program at any of the state’s 88 public colleges and university campuses.
Plans for the scholarship were announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo in January. At first, students planning to attend college this fall didn’t know whether it would become reality in time. It was officially approved by the legislature in April.
“I called my Dad at work, and I’m like ‘oh my God, Dad, I could get free tuition.’ It was so exciting and I remember it so vividly because it was so life changing,” Yu said.
She’s now a freshman at Stony Brook University double majoring in business and health science.
Like other students, Yu had to apply for the scholarship and didn’t find out until August whether she qualified. The good news finally came, just before it was time to pay the bill. Her parents, immigrants from Myanmar, always wanted her and her brother to go to college, but were worried about finances.
“I’ve never seen my Dad so happy. He knows I really wanted to go to Stony Brook and he was really stressed about paying. Now he’s able to, so it really changed a lot,” Yu said.
A ‘life changing’ option
When Governor Cuomo announced the program he said that college, like high school, “should always be an option even if you can’t afford it.”
While similar programs in other states have made tuition free for community college students, the Excelsior Scholarship is the first to include those pursuing a four-year degree.
The scholarship could save students as much as $27,000 over four years by cutting out tuition costs. The award doesn’t cover fees charged by the school, or room and board. Students must also agree to live in state after college for the same number of years they received the scholarship, or it will be converted to a loan.
Bonnie Tang, another Stony Brook freshman, is commuting from her home in Brooklyn, saving her about $13,000 in room and board costs. She’ll have to buy a monthly train pass. And she’ll still pay about $2,560 in fees this year. But everything else is free.
“My tuition is paid for and that saves me a lot of money,” she said.
Tyler Mendoza, also a freshman at Stony Brook, and James Martello, a freshman at the University at Albany, both say they probably would have gone to a community college instead if they hadn’t received the Excelsior Scholarship.
Gianluca Russo transferred to the University at Albany this year after finishing his associate’s degree from Schenectady County Community College. The scholarship, he said, convinced him to stay in state to pursue a bachelor’s in journalism.
Many won’t qualify
An estimated 75,000 people applied for the scholarship this year, but an initial projection from the governor’s office said only about 23,000 would receive it. An official number has yet to be released as summer course credits are counted and community college students continue to enroll for the fall semester.
Officials from several schools said the biggest reason why students were disqualified was because they receive other need-based grants that already cover the full cost of tuition. The Excelsior Scholarship doesn’t offer additional funds to help with other expenses.
Other students are disqualified because their family income is too high. This year, the scholarship is offered to those who earn up to $100,000 a year. The limit will rise to $110,000 next year, and then up to $125,000 for the 2019-20 school year and thereafter.
Some critics say the Excelsior Scholarship may spend too many taxpayer dollars subsidizing the cost of tuition for students who would be enrolling anyway, and still leaves students from the lowest-income families behind. The program is expected to cost $87 million this year, and $163 million annually once fully implemented.
The scholarship is designed to help those students whose families previously earned a little too much to qualify for financial aid.
“While many students with the greatest financial aid have always attended CUNY tuition-free, far too many families just above the income eligibility — which means most middle class families — received little or no state or federal aid,” said CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken in a statement emailed to CNNMoney.
The Excelsior Scholarship will “help remedy this problem,” he said.
Income isn’t the only eligibility requirement. Students must be a state resident and they must maintain a full time schedule. That disqualifies many community college students going to school while working. It also makes it tough for adults wanting to return to school to finish a degree they started years ago.
Ahmad James, 35, is one of those students. He has stopped and started college twice. Once because two deaths in the family required him to help out at home, and once because of Hurricane Sandy, which forced him out of his apartment. He found a new place in Long Island, but it extended his commute to work and didn’t leave time for class.
But after he applied for the Excelsior Scholarship, he was told he was ineligible because he “did not earn a sufficient number of credits in each year” he was previously enrolled. The program requires you to take an average of 30 credits a year.
He’s working on finding other ways to help pay for college so he can advance his career in social services.
“I have the experience, but I need the piece of paper to do exactly what I want to do with my life,” James said.
A ‘positive buzz’ on campus
It’s too early to tell the impact the scholarship will have on New York’s college campuses.
Many incoming freshmen had to enroll before officially being awarded the scholarship. Transfer students, though, were more likely to find out about the scholarship before making their decision. The University at Albany saw an 11% jump in applications from transfer students this year, which officials attribute at least in part to the Excelsior Scholarship.
More students are certainly expected to receive the scholarship in the future, as the income cap rises and awareness grows.
“It’s creating a very positive buzz about public higher ed,” said Stony Brook President Samuel Stanley.
“If you go around the country the story has generally been states pulling back on support of higher education, putting more of the burden on students and their families. So this is really changing that narrative in a very dramatic way,” he said.
“Discipline yourself so you never get mad you get smart.” -Andrew Young
The Upward Bound students of Buffalo State College were treated to life lessons by former United Nations ambassador and civil rights activist Andrew Young at its summer program awards banquet.
Young, who served as the UN ambassador during the Carter administration, received the 2017 Hal D. Payne Educational Opportunity Lifetime Service Award during the banquet. He also served as the event’s keynote speaker. The former mayor of Atlanta, brought a message that gave both a history tutorial and a guide to navigate through today’s political turbulent time. It was also a navigation through the rough waters of life. “You should never turn your back on any human being,” Young stated. “It doesn’t matter what color, or age, or what culture, in each and every human being is the same thing that is in you.
That is the spirit of the living God” Don Patterson, the director of the Upward Bound program at Buffalo State, believed that having one of the foremost civil rights and global leaders as the keynote speaker at the event was invaluable for his students. “His message to the students was extremely timely,” Patterson said. “When he told them to believe in yourselves, don’t be afraid to make mistakes and grow from those mistakes.” “He emphasized history and the knowledge of it. He wanted the young people to realize that you must know your history during this turbulent time. His message was one of growth for these young minds.”
During the banquet, the students were treated to a video retrospective of Young’s multitude of service. The video showed the former congressman’s early life as a television personality in the 50’s, a civil rights leader next to Martin Luther King in the 60’s, the UN ambassador in the 70’s, and Mayor of Atlanta in the 80’s. His life was a road map for community service. He related his early life as a civil rights activist. He spoke of Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young Deltas To Host Jabberwock Info Session Addresses Buffalo State Upward Bound Students how he marched shoulder to shoulder with Dr. King in an attempt to gain equality for all races, colors and creeds.
Upward Bound students, like high school freshman Jhayla Chinn, were unaware of Young’s life experience. “His speech was very powerful,” Chinn said. “I had not heard of Mr. Young but after he spoke I wanted to learn more about him.” “I don’t know if I could do some of the things he did with Martin Luther King,” Chinn continued. “It was very brave and I learned a lot.” Ambassador Young also gave some insight to the current political climate. He made a compelling argument on why the presidential election turned out in favor of Donald Trump. “Many Americans in rural and poorer parts of the country wanted a simple answer for their plight,” Young explained. “The world is very complex and the answers are not very simple but people want plain answers.”
“Donald Trump gave a simple answer to many Americans that are feeling pain economically,” he continued. quiries. The President of DST Buffalo Alumnae Chapter is Dr. Mattie L. Rhodes, and the Jabberwock Chairpersons are Trina Burruss and JoAnna Johnson. “He spoke in a way that made sense to many of those people. Unfortunately, the country and the world does not work that way.”
Patterson gave an impassioned soliloquy, during the banquet, on why he wanted Ambassador Young to speak to his students. “We are moving towards the right thing. We are moving towards good. We are moving towards positive outcomes. (Everyone) Keep pushing. Everyone here is a part of it,” Patterson exclaimed. “ His (Young’s) life is an example of it. His life is an example of what you can do if all of us, not just one person, moving in one direction can achieve.”
After the event, Young took time to take pictures with many of the young people. He also continued to drop pearls of wisdom to the Upward Bound participants. Young also sat and had a discussion with long time local politician and community leader Arthur O. Eve. The meeting was a chance for the students to witness over a century of community service experience in one place.
While students are gearing up for the new school year, education leaders across the country have been hunkering down all summer to finish up their state education plans as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Sixteen states and the District of Columbia submitted their state plans to the U.S. Department of Education back in April, while the remaining 34 states will submit next month.
Among those states in the throes of ESSA planning, New York stands out for the size and diversity of its student population: The state has more than 2.6 million public school students, half of whom are students of color. New York also has been a national leader in engaging educators, parents and communities in improving education. In recent years, the state has done laudable work to refine its state standards and annual assessments improving education for all students—and notably, New York has excelled in involving stakeholders in that process. Recently, as state leaders have been developing their ESSA plan, they have put real effort into gathering input from communities—from Buffalo to Brooklyn—on what they want for their public schools.
With this strong educational groundwork laid, New York released its draft ESSA plan on July 31, about six weeks before the final plan is due to the U.S. Department of Education. This six-week window offers an opportunity for both the public and experts to offer feedback and guidance on ways New York—and states everywhere—can design the best plan to support student success.
With this in mind, Bellwether Education Partners and the Collaborative for Student Success brought together a panel of independent peer reviewers—myself included—to conduct an interim evaluation of New York’s draft ESSA plan. This panel is an extension of Check State Plans, a larger effort to provide an independent review of all states’ ESSA plans. In the spirit of supporting states as they strengthen their education systems, Bellwether and the Collaborative will conduct a full review of the 34 state plans that are submitted in September, including a final review of New York’s plan.
Our goal for the interim review is to identify both strengths and areas for improvement in New York’s plan and offer constructive recommendations for ways the state could refine its planned approach for supporting public schools and students before submitting to the U.S. Department of Education. Our panel has found both bright spots and areas of recommendation for New York’s draft ESSA plan.
On the positive side, the plan reflects New York’s prioritization of student progress and supports for schools.
Incentivizing Academic Progress. We are encouraged that New York’s performance index—which gives schools credit for student performance at four different levels—places a strong incentive on students meeting grade-level standards. However, the state’s approach to monitoring student growth compares students to their peers rather than an overall standard of mastery and thus doesn’t do enough to ensure that students are on track for graduation.
Supporting Schools. New York’s plan outlines a system that provides differentiated supports to schools based on their needs, as well as a process to support school improvement efforts by requiring schools to complete a comprehensive, diagnostic needs assessment. While this approach is commendable, it could benefit from more detail on how parents, educators and other stakeholders will be engaged in the school improvement process.
Our review panel has also identified four opportunities for New York to provide greater clarity and detail about how the state will reach its goals of supporting all schools and students.
Ensuring that All Students Receive a High-quality Education. The plan could be stronger in detailing how historically underserved students (i.e., students of color, low-income students, English learners, students with disabilities, and Native students), referred to in ESSA as “subgroups,” will be supported — both in terms of how they fit into the state accountability index and how schools with consistently underperforming subgroups will be identified for support. Additionally, the state plans to use n-sizes that would omit many students. We recommend New York reconsider these choices.
Setting Ambitious Goals. Related to supporting all students, New York has set a goal of reducing achievement and graduation rate gaps by 20 percent within five years. On the face of it, this goal seems ambitious, but the plan lacks data to confirm that this is the case—or that the goal is attainable. We recommend incorporating more evidence to back up this goal and clarifying whether this and other goals are to be acted on or are part of the state’s longer-term vision.
Identifying Schools in Need of Support. We appreciate that New York’s accountability system has a simple list of indicators, but its process for using those indicators to determine which schools are low-performing is very complicated. Moreover, the plan neglects to mention what will happen to schools that don’t fall into the very low-performing category. We encourage the state to consider simplifying its accountability calculations and provide more information on how the accountability system will impact the 95 percent of schools that are not among the lowest performing.
Moving Schools to Improved Status. Because several of New York’s accountability indicators aren’t tied to objective goals, low-performing schools may not know what they would need to accomplish to show sufficient progress. Our panel recommends that the state create more rigorous criteria for how these schools can demonstrate sustained improvement over time.
We applaud New York’s leadership in engaging all of its stakeholders to improve its public education system, and we believe that this spirit of collaboration and shared commitment to progress can drive New York officials to continue to refine its draft ESSA plan before submitting the final plan in mid-September.
Other states are sure to look to New York’s draft as they design their own plans, and we hope that they will look for ways to model the way in which New York monitors the academic progress of students across the performance spectrum while continuing to emphasize the importance of meeting grade-level standards. We also hope that our independent review will inspire New York officials to take a second look at key parts of their plan—and at best practices from other states, such as those identified in the Alliance for Excellent Education equity analysis—to ensure that their plan truly will support the best outcomes for every student in their state.
Phillip Lovell is vice president of policy development and government relations at the Alliance for Excellent Education
Remember the Every Student Succeeds Act’s brand new program aimed at helping states try out new forms of testing?
If not, you’re in good company. We hardly hear anything about ESSA’s “innovative assessment pilot” anymore, including from the U.S. Department of Education. That could change, however. The agency is considering next steps to open the pilot in the 2018-19 school year, a spokesman said.
When ESSA passed back in December 2015, the pilotâwhich would initially allow up to seven states to try out new forms of testing in a handful of districts for federal accountability purposesâwas one of the most eye-catching pieces of the new law. State officials crammed conference rooms and jumped on webinars to figure out how to apply. Two big states, New York and California, expressed at least some interest. And Colorado even passed a law requiring the state education agency to seek the flexibility…
ALBANY – The state Education Department has released a revised schools accountability proposal that’s slated to be considered for adoption in September.
The latest version of the plan, released Monday, includes proposals to use out-of-school suspensions as a measure of school quality and student success beginning in 2018-19; to cut down math and English language arts testing requirements for third through eighth graders from three days to two (something the Board of Regents already has voted on); and to revise benchmarks for schools educating English language learners.
In a noteworthy sign of the political times, the plan was revised to more explicitly highlight concerns about the implementation of a new state law to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18, and its impact on educational services as minors transition out of county jails and take courses in secure and non-secure detention facilities and other voluntary placement agencies. That law, which raises the age from 16 years old, was approved as part of the state budget in April.
The federal Every Student Succeeds Act serves as a guiding document for accountability statewide. States were authorized to come up with such accountability systems under eponymous congressional legislation approved last year to replace the No Child Left Behind Act.
The state Education Department produced the initial draft in May. The plan includes proposals to rate schools based on student performance science and social studies in addition to English and math; on five- and six-year graduation rates instead of just on four-year numbers; and on students’ “civic readiness,” in addition to existing college- or career-readiness benchmarks.
The standards would be used to score schools and identify those that require state intervention and improvement plans.
The draft plan now goes to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has 30 days to review it, make suggestions for inclusion in the final plan, and choose to sign or not sign it.
A Cuomo spokesman said the executive will review the draft.
he Board of Regents is set to take action on the plan in September. With that, education officials can send it on to the U.S. Department of Education for final approval, with implementation to follow.
“Through ESSA, New York is poised to take a more holistic approach to accountability that looks at multiple measures of school and student success,” Board of Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa said in a statement. “This approach allows us to continually evolve and adapt so we can ensure that our systems are culturally responsive and place an emphasis on educating the whole child.”
The revisions to the plan follow a public comment period that drew more than 800 written comments and 270 verbal responses.
A full breakdown of changes to the plan can be found here. The full plan is here.
Draft Plan Emphasizes Fostering Equity in Education for All Students
Expands Measures for School Accountability & Student Success
Requires School-Level Improvement Plans for Lowest-Performing Schools Overall and Among Certain Student Populations
Public Comment Accepted Through June 16
The New York State Education Department today presented to the Board of Regents and released for public review and comment the draft Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan (summary available here), Commissioner MaryEllen Elia announced today. The draft plan emphasizes fostering equity in education for New York’s students; expands measures for school support and accountability, and student success; and requires school-level improvement plans for the lowest performing schools overall as well as schools with the lowest performance for certain student populations. The plan also includes strategies for supporting the professional growth of educators and ensuring that all students, including English language learners/Multilingual learners, immigrant students, migratory youth, homeless youth, and neglected and delinquent youth have access to a well-rounded education that supports their academic and social-emotional development.
“We must seize this opportunity to reimagine the role accountability plays in improving teaching and learning in our schools,” Board of Regents Chancellor Betty A. Rosa said. “ESSA gives us the chance to shift to a more holistic approach to accountability – an approach that looks at multiple measures of school and student success that will evolve over time. It allows us to look at critical, but often overlooked, indicators of success, like children’s social and emotional growth and development. This is about educating the whole child.”
“Over the past year and half, we have taken a deliberative, transparent and inclusive approach to develop New York’s ESSA plan,” Commissioner Elia said. “Our goal is straightforward – we will submit to the U.S. Department of Education a plan that supports the development of highly effective schools, so our children will be equipped to lead successful lives. I cannot emphasize enough that this plan is a draft – that means it’s not yet done and we want feedback on it. We will make changes to strengthen it based on those comments.”
NYSED held more than 120 stakeholder and public meetings to gather input to help inform the development of the draft plan. The Department is also hosting 13 public hearings on the plan from May 11 through June 16 and is accepting public comment on the plan through June 16.
The full draft plan and a summary are posted on the Department’s ESSA webpage. The summary document outlines the Department’s stakeholder engagement process and highlights key proposals from the full plan.
Highlights of the Draft Plan
Fostering Equity in Education
In addition to meeting ESSA requirements, New York’s draft ESSA plan supports the Board of Regents’ goal of increasing equity in educational opportunities for all students across the state. To that end, New York explicitly designed the State accountability system to require schools and districts to:
reduce gaps in performance among certain populations for students;
incentivize districtsto provideopportunities foradvanced coursework to all high school students;
continue to support studentswho need more than four years to meet graduation requirements; and
work with students who have left school so that they can earn a high school equivalency diploma.
Further, under the draft plan, the state will:
publish annual reports on per-pupil spending and equitable access to effective teachers per district;
identify inequities in resources available to schools and require districts to address these inequities in their improvement plans;
use Title I School Improvement Funds to increase diversity and reduce socio-economic and racial/ethnic isolation in schools;
develop state and local policies and procedures to ensure homeless youth are provided equal access to appropriate educational supports, services and opportunities;
create uniform transition plans for students exiting juvenile justice facilities; and
leverage the creation of P-20 partnershipsto improve the quality and diversity of the educator workforce.
School Accountability Methodologies and Measurements
New York strives for an accountability system that supports all students, is transparent, prioritizes the measures that New York’s educators and families value, recognizes the good work that schools are doing, and accurately identifies schools that need the most help. The proposed revisions to New York’s school accountability and support system will improve teaching and learning and increase educational equity.
The Board of Regents is committed to evolving the state’s accountability and support system over time to add additional measures of school quality and student success. To achieve this, the Regents will form a workgroup to make recommendations on further measures to be added in the future.
School accountability strategies New York will implement in the draft ESSA plan include to:
expand accountability measures beyond English language arts and mathematics to also include science, social studies, acquisition of English proficiency by English language learners/Multilingual learners, and chronic absenteeism.
expand access to advanced coursework, particularly for students in less-affluent school districts, through the creation of a College, Career and Civic Readiness index;
add additional measures of school quality and student success over time. These could include such measures as students access to specific learning opportunities such as in the arts, science or technology courses; high school readiness for middle level students; postsecondary success of high school graduates; school climate and supports for students’ social, emotional and academic learning, as measured by student surveys and suspension rates; student access to highly qualified teachers; student access to diverse learning environments; and measure of student civic engagement;
establish five-year, long-term goals for closing achievement gaps; and
ensure a continued focus on students who need extra time to meet graduation requirements by including five- and six -year graduation rates in the accountability system.
Supports and Improvement for Schools and Districts
Under the draft ESSA plan, every three years the State will identify Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) schools based on the performance of all students and Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) schools based on the performance of subgroups of students. CSI and TSI schools will be required to develop school-level improvement plans in partnership with stakeholders. The State will also annually recognize schools that are high performing or rapidly improving. In addition, the State will identify school districts for targeted support that have one or more CSI or TSI school or, as a district, has certain populations of students who performs at a CSI or TSI level.
The draft plan outlines the supportive role that the State will take in working with identified schools and districts and establishes a system that promotes best practices while also allowing schools to identify the most appropriate solutions to the barriers they face, rather than prescribing an abundance of one-size-fits-all requirements. The State will approach school improvement as a set of stages to be in done in partnership with identified schools and districts, as opposed to approaching school improvement as a set of stages to be imposed on schools and districts. As part of this partnership, the State will provide multiple supports and opportunities for technical assistance to help schools identify and implement the specific solutions they need to address their specific challenges.
Requirements for identified TSI and CSI schools include to:
undergo a Comprehensive Diagnostic Needs Assessment that examines school quality, school data and resource allocation;
develop an annual improvement plan based on the Needs Assessment;
provide professional development connected to the improvement plan; and
determine the effectiveness of their improvement efforts through an annual review and parent, teacher and student surveys.
The State will provide a robust system of supports to identified schools and districts to assist them throughout each of these stages. Additionally, after the initial year of identification, the State will prioritize its support each year to any CSI school not making gains. While this differentiated approach is intended to provide the most support to the schools that need the most assistance, should a CSI school be re-identified as a CSI school, the school will be placed in receivership whereby the district superintendent or an independent receiver will have enhanced authority to manage the school. Schools that are currently “Priority Schools” will immediately be placed under receivership if they are identified as CSI.
Supporting Excellent Educators
The Department’s efforts to improve all students’ access to effective educators includes work with preparation programs, higher education providers, districts, BOCES and educators. To support educators and improve the quality of teaching and learning, the Department will:
leverage partnerships among institutions of higher education, other preparatory programs and public schools to create additional opportunities for candidates in teacher and school building leader preparation programs to have robust, field-based experiences that allow them to apply what they learn in the classroom and demonstrate that they have acquired the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities to provide effective instruction and effective leadership earlier in their careers.
examine existing pathways to certification for both teachers and school leaders to ensure that existing structures are not creating unintended barriers for promising candidates to enter the profession.
assist school districts in creating comprehensive systems of professional learning, support and advancement for all educators – including those who are new to the field – along the entire continuum of their careers.
Supporting English Language Learners/Multilingual Learners
Of New York’s 2.6 million public school students, 8.8 percent are English language learners/Multilingual learners. New York will seek to improve teaching and learning as well as educator effectiveness by setting challenging, but attainable, goals for the state’s ELLs/MLLs. The draft ESSA Plan will enable ELLs/MLLs to develop English language proficiency, as well as access the state’s Next Generation Learning Standards, through the provision of high-quality instruction and support. The Department proposes to:
exempt recently arrived ELLs/MLLs in their first year of enrollment from the ELA exam. In addition, New York will propose to use such students’ ELA scores in the second year of enrollment only to set a baseline for future growth and achievement in the third year. In past practice, ELLs/MLLs’ ELA scores in the second year were used to measure achievement, rather than to set a baseline;
use a Transition Matrix Table for incorporating ELLs/MLLs’ growth toward attainment of English language proficiency into state accountability determinations; and
determine each district’s effectiveness in providing ELLs/MLLs with academic instruction that meets their needs through a self-evaluation tool.
Supporting All Students
New York believes that the highest levels of learning can occur when students and educators learn and teach in environments that are safe, supportive, and welcoming to all. To support this belief, New York will:
support districts to reduce bullying, harassment and the overuse of punitive and exclusionary responses to student misbehavior while promoting positive disciplinary practices, improving school climate and providing students with social-emotional supports;
work with districts to build positive school climates based on inclusive, equitable school cultures that recognize student diversity;
promote strategies to effectively engage parents and family members in their child’s education at the state, district and school levels; and
require schools and districts to collaborate with relevant community partners when conducting a comprehensive needs assessment and creating improvement plans based on such assessments.
Challenging Academic Standards and Assessments
New York is completing a two-year collaborative process with educators to revise the Next Generation English Language Arts and Mathematics Learning Standards to ensure that they continue to be rigorous and challenge New York’s students. In December 2016 New York adopted new science standards that have a focus on experiential learning; those standards become effective in 2017-18.
Once the application is released by the U.S. Department of Education, New York will apply to participate in the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority that will provide states the opportunity to work with selected school districts to pilot new approaches to assessment. During the pilot period these assessments can be used to meet federal participation and accountability requirements.
Stakeholder Engagement
For the past year, NYSED has coordinated and engaged diverse groups of stakeholders to solicit recommendations on how to craft an ESSA plan that best meets the needs of the state’s students, schools and communities. In these efforts NYSED established an ESSA Think Tank with representatives from more than 100 organizations, including district leaders, teachers, parents, community members and students and consulted with national education experts regarding ESSA, including Linda Darling-Hammond (Learning Policy Institute), Scott F. Marion (National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment), and Michael Cohen (Achieve).
In addition, NYSED held more than 120 fall and winter regional in-person meetings across the state in coordination with the state’s 37 Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) and the superintendents of the state’s five largest City School Districts, which were attended by more than 4,000 students, parents, teachers, school and district leaders, school board members, and other stakeholders.
Next Steps & Process for Submitting Public Comment
NYSED is accepting public comment on the draft plan through June 16 in writing and at 13 public hearings. Department staff will provide a summary and response to the comments received to the Board of Regents at the July meeting. It is expected the Board will vote on adopting a final version of the ESSA State plan in September.
Once the Board approves the ESSA plan, the State Education Department will submit the plan to the USDE for review and approval on September 18, 2017. After the plan is approved by the USDE, the Department will work with BOCES District superintendents, superintendents, the ESSA Think Tank and other stakeholder groups to develop and provide guidance on implementing the ESSA plan.
Comments can be submitted via email to ESSAComments@nysed.gov(link sends e-mail) with “ESSA Comments from (sender/organization name)” in the subject line. Comments submitted via mail should be sent to the attention of Dr. Lisa Long, New York State Education Department, Office of Accountability, 4th Floor, 55 Hanson Place, Brooklyn, New York 11217. Comments will be accepted through June 16.
Fanny Sosenke started the after-school club Girls Who Math because she wants girls to have a safe space to take risks.
The 6th and 8th grade math teacher at Avenues: The World School in New York City, says all too often she sees girls call themselves “stupid” and be quick to ask for help when they struggle to solve a problem. She says boys, on the other hand, chalk it up to simply not knowing the answer and will, instead, keep trying.
Fanny hopes Girls Who Math can ease girls’ anxiety by showing them that math can be cool and fun.
“When girls are by themselves, they’re not afraid to be silly and make mistakes,” Fanny says. “It increases their confidence.”
In Girls Who Math, Fanny tries to make it comfortable for girls through making light of her own mistakes, and by encouraging them to replace “I can’t” with “I’ll try,” and “I don’t know how” with “It will take time, but I can find out how.” Games such as SET, which uses cards to explore puzzle-solving, and the dice-rolling game Tenzi also help create a collaborative learning environment.
Fanny also tries to introduce her students to other creative applications of math. Recently, her girls started developing a math and social justice book to explore how data and social issues intersect. One pair of girls demonstrated the gender wage gap with a detailed graph of how much money a woman can potentially lose over the course of her career.
“It’s another way to make girls interested in math, and show them math can be used in a way to talk about something they care about,” Fanny says.
With Girls Who Math only in its first year, Fanny says she’s already heard from many parents that their kids are more excited about doing math, often sticking with harder problems at home until they get the answer. In her classroom, she’s seen girls from the club be more assertive when raising their hands.
Ultimately, Fanny wants girls to be undeterred from pursuing careers where math is used. She also believes that by giving girls the ability to use math in their day-to-day lives, whether measuring ingredients in recipes or interpreting data in the news, they’ll benefit in the long term.
“I believe in equality,” Fanny says. “If you have strong quantitative skills, you have a big advantage in today’s world.”
NY AMSTERDAM NEWS — In the months since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, activists and scholars have converged, condemning his violent and divisive racial rhetoric. In response to Trump’s rhetoric, leaders are working to build a resistance against an agenda that not only divides the country but also sets precedence for violent and discriminatory policies and actions.
BEACON – The Howland Public Library is all a buzz with excitement. The library’s teen Battle of the Books team, The Beacon Buzzers, took home first place in the Mid-Hudson Library System’s 2nd Annual High School Battle of the Books. The regional literary contest took place at Poughkeepsie Day School, on August 19th. Congratulations to Beekman Public Library’s team “Where’s Ralph” second place winners and Kingston Public Library’s “Hardcore Hardcovers T2” who came in third.
“Discipline yourself so you never get mad you get smart.” -Andrew Young
Draft Plan Emphasizes Fostering Equity in Education for All Students