Parents of K-12 children are encouraged to learn about the new Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA), which is offering $1.6 billion in funding and more flexibility to individual states and school districts in how students learn and are evaluated.
Atlanta NAACP Education Committee member Patrice Barlow speaks as a panel member during a parents’ town hall for the Every Student Succeeds Act, at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Oct. 23.
The federal education act was passed into law with bipartisan support in December 2015 under the administration of President Barack Obama. Its specific aim is to close the achievement gap for minority students.
[/media-credit] Parents, teachers, school board members and social workers attended the parents’ town hall on the Every Student Succeeds Act at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Oct. 23.
It replaces the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
Georgia Department of Education Deputy Superintendent Deborah Gay speaks as a panelist at a parents’ town hall on the Every Student Succeeds Act, alongside DeKalb County School District Director of Research, Assessments and Grants Dr. Knox Phillips, at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Oct. 23.
ESSA reduces federal mandates over education, and gives states and school districts the power to design and implement systems catering to the needs of specific communities, schools, classrooms and students.
ESSA is partway through being implemented and brings with it the power for parents and caregivers to help shape their children’s education, which is what Georgia officials want to see happening throughout metro Atlanta including in DeKalb County.
[/media-credit] Dr. Benjamin Chavis, President of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, speaks during a parents’ town hall on the Every Student Succeeds Act, alongside panelists Tyler Barr, Georgia PTA President; Deborah Gay, Georgia Department of Education Deputy Superintendent; Dr. Knox Phillips, DeKalb County School District Director of Research, Assessments and Grants; and Patrice Barlow, Atlanta NAACP Education Committee member, at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Oct. 23
“ESSA is a true opportunity and we cannot miss this critical opportunity to make sure our voices and concerns are heard. If we don’t, the doors will close and the opportunity, the choices and decisions will pass,” said Patrice Barlow, a member of the Atlanta NAACP Education Committee.
Barlow was one of four panelists at an Oct. 23 parents’ town hall on ESSA, convened by the National Newspaper Publishers Association – “The Black Press” – at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
The panelists – Barlow, Georgia PTA President Tyler Barr, Georgia Department of Education Deputy Superintendent Deborah Gay, and Dr. Knox Phillips, DeKalb County School District Director of Research, Assessments and Grants – said it is crucial for parents to be involved in how ESSA is implemented in their children’s schools.
“ESSA creates the opportunity for every community, every school to design a plan for improvement that is unique. There’s not a prescriptive template anymore,” Gay said.
Community input encouraged
The 50-plus people present included parents, teachers, school board members and social workers from throughout metro Atlanta, who asked questions about the new law and Georgia’s plan, and voiced concerns about the current state of local education, saying there needs to be more teachers, smaller class sizes, more help for disabled students and their families, more culturally relevant teaching material, more teacher training and greater accountability for principals under pressure to make schools and students look good on paper.
One former teacher of 22 years, who asked not to be named, said he left the profession last year after a principal made him alter test scores.
Georgia’s Department of Education spent over a year consulting stakeholders, including parents, and drafting its 111-page ESSA plan, which it submitted to the U.S. Department of Education on Sept. 18 for review within 100 days.
“ESSA creates the opportunity for every community, every school to design a plan for improvement that is unique. There’s not a prescriptive template anymore.” Deborah Gay, Georgia Department of Education
Once Georgia’s plan has been finalized and approved, each school district in the state will create its own plan. That’s where parents, caregivers, community leaders, church groups and nonprofits can really make a difference, by reading up on ESSA, attending town halls, joining school boards and committees, lobbying policy makers and holding officials to account.
Panelists said this is the time for parents to voice concerns about their children’s education, make suggestions for improvement, volunteer in school programs, email elected officials and be proactive in general.
“The ESSA plan, if it communicates nothing else, is that this is a collective activity for all of us to engage together, work together and maybe start to realize the dream of that 1965 legislation in a way we couldn’t before,” Gay said.
“School districts have more flexibility now under ESSA than they have in many years, but the success of it will depend on the strong engagement of stakeholders being knowledgeable, understanding the needs of their community and bringing those into the schools,” she said.
Emphasis on improvement
To comply with ESSA and fulfill its ideals, the Georgia Department of Education is grouping achievement indicators in five categories – content mastery, progress, closing gaps, readiness and graduation rate – applied according to grade bands.
Students will still primarily be assessed on statewide test scores for English, math, science and social studies, with other data recorded such as how well a student is progressing compared to academically similar peers, how well schools are progressing towards improvement targets, whether schools offer alternative classes, and what access exists to support services and resources.
Annual targets will be set for every school, so the Georgia Department of Education can reach its long-term goal of closing the achievement gap by 45 percent over 15 years. It will also establish an assessment task force, comprising stakeholders and experts, to explore assessment methods and how they can be scaled statewide.
Dr. Elizabeth Primas, program manager for NNPA’s ESSA initiative, said there will be less high-stakes testing for students.
Students will still have to take standardized reading and math tests in grades three through eight and once in high school, but states can choose their own standards and accountability systems as long as they align with ESSA.
“States can now write their own standards. It’s taking the federal government a little bit out of public education, that’s public and charter, and putting it back into the hands of the community where they serve,” Primas said, adding that Georgia’s ESSA plan is a living document to be revised and amended to suit specific needs within the state.
ESSA comes with $1.6 billion in federal funding that is not only available to schools, but also to nonprofit organizations able to provide support services, resources and programs to help schools and students achieve ESSA goals and standards.
The holistic community approach in educating children is a key theme of Georgia’s new education state plan, which also aims to teach and assess children in a more holistic way than before.
“Georgia is going to get more education money,” said NNPA President Dr. Benjamin Chavis.
“The question is what is Georgia going to do with that money and how is that money going to impact and make quality education more accessible?” he said. “We want to arouse awareness among our parents about what is happening in the education sector, and we have to be focused on where the resources are going and how local school boards and state departments of education are allocating those resources.”
NNPA is holding ESSA town halls throughout the country.
The Georgia PTA sees ESSA as an improvement and a step in the right direction.
“Finding innovative and flexible ways to assess academic achievement is an essential extension of Georgia’s current policies,” Barr said. “One test cannot accurately reflect a student’s knowledge, and by extension, that same single test cannot accurately evaluate a school.”
As a School Ambassador Fellow with the U.S. Department of Education, I had the opportunity to help plan and coordinate a visit for First Lady Melania Trump and Secretary Betsy DeVos to Orchard Lake Middle School in West Bloomfield, MI. The school was selected because they had pledged their commitment to anti-bullying initiatives promoting inclusion and acceptance. Orchard Lake Middle School prides itself on diversity and anti-bullying programs, so the principal and staff knew that they would be a good fit for FLOTUS’s bullying prevention platform.
Breaking Bully Stereotypes
I have spent the last decade focusing on breaking bully stereotypes and shifting the conversation around such a critical topic, so I jumped at the chance to be part of this work at a national level. Most of the bullying I faced as a student occurred in middle school, so I was shocked to see it happen with my third graders. The most surprising part, however, was when I realized which students were doing the bullying. Some of my sweetest, smartest, and most seemingly innocent kids were often the ones doing the most harm. I see the same trends and patterns with every class.
One thing these kids all have in common is that they do not see themselves as bullies since they do not resemble the exaggerated characters in TV and movies. No one is a bully all the time, and this misconception makes it hard for kids to accept their actions as bullying behavior. This problem can be perpetuated in any school lunchroom when kids are left feeling isolated and excluded, while the classmates doing the excluding don’t understand the harm they cause. Effective anti-bullying initiatives can really help change those dynamics, and having the First Lady and Secretary share that message really helps kids pay attention.
Students Realize the Magnitude of the Event
I was able to be at the school for most of the day, hours before the special guests arrived. I could feel the energy in the building as students buzzed with anticipation. It was fascinating to watch all that happened behind the scenes and the planning and manpower it took to execute a one-hour visit. But the students reminded me why this event was so important. While the adults were scurrying around making sure things were running smoothly, the middle schoolers were enjoying the moment, recognizing the magnitude of what was happening. They knew their school was being highlighted and it meant they were doing something right, and that is an empowering feeling.
Sharing a message with kids about the importance of compassion and kindness is something that everyone should stand behind, and that day, everyone did. It is a big deal to have the First Lady and Education Secretary of the United States at their school, and this is something that these kids will remember for the rest of their lives. I am quite sure they will also remember that no one should eat alone either.
Melody Arabo is a 2017-18 Washington School Ambassador Fellow.
Photo at the top: A student takes a selfie with First Lady Melania Trump. (Melody: “They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but the picture at the top is worth a million smiles. It perfectly captures the joy that was felt in the room by students who realized they were experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime moment.”)
According to a recent report by Education Week, states have largely ignored a critical mandate of the Every Student Succeeds Act that calls for schools to measure the social and emotional competencies of their students.
“Not a single state’s plan to comply with the federal education law—and its broader vision for judging school performance—calls for inclusion of such measures in its school accountability system,” according to Education Week.
However, advocates for measuring social-emotional learning have said that the current tools need more refinement, before the U.S. Department of Education weighs in.
“Existing measures of social and emotional development, which largely rely on students’ responses to surveys about their own character traits, are not sophisticated and consistent enough to be used for such purposes, they have long argued,” the Education Week article said.
Even as school districts in Anchorage, Alaska; Austin, Texas; Chicago, Ill.; Nashville, Tenn.; Oakland, Calif.; and Sacramento, Calif., are actively engaged in incorporating social and emotional learning into their curriculums, civil rights leaders continue to encourage Black parents to get involved with the implementation of ESSA.
“We have noticed that, under the Trump administration, there has been a shift in priorities concerning the implementation of some practices of ESSA, since its inception in 2015,” said Elizabeth Olsson, a senior policy associate for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “However, state and district officials still have to comply with the law.”
Olsson continued: “The U.S. Department of Education needs to make sure that it continues to scrutinize state programs to ensure that states are recruiting effective educational strategies, reducing practices that push students of color out of school systems, and identifying support programs, including professional teacher development and funding for alternative classes, like restorative justice.”
Olsson said that restorative justice programs really help get to the root of student behavior.
Liz King, the senior policy analyst and director of Education Policy for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that there are still a lot of open questions about how Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is going to implement ESSA.
Earlier this year, after a hearing with a House Appropriations subcommittee, DeVos was roundly criticized by the civil rights community, when she seemed to endorse a state’s right to discriminate against children.
During the hearing, when Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) asked DeVos, if her Education Department would require states, like Indiana, to end the practice of funding schools that openly discriminate against LGBTQ students and families, “DeVos didn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” Slate.com reported. “She just smiled and stuck to the generations-old cover for violent oppression in America. ‘The states set up the rules,’ she said. ‘I believe states continue to have flexibility in putting together programs.’”
King called those comments “deeply concerning.”
King continued: “What we need to hear from the president and the secretary of education is a commitment to the law, the Constitution, and the rights of all children in the United States, focusing particularly on historically marginalized students.”
King said that the biggest difference between the way that ESSA was handled during President Obama’s administration versus the way the law is being handled now is the commitment to protect the civil rights, dignity, safety and respect for all children in this country. King added that children feel less safe and feel like their rights are being taken away, under the Trump Administration.
In a letter to Senator Patty Murray (D-Was.), DeVos claimed that the way that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) handled “individual complaints as evidence of systematic institutional violations,” under the Obama Administration, “harmed students.” DeVos also promised to return OCR to a “neutral, impartial investigative agency.”
The Education Department has approved ESSA state plans from Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont.
As minorities continue to enroll in schools across the country at higher rates than their White peers, King said that parents and community members need to act now to make sure that the myriad needs of students of color are fully addressed in ESSA state plans, that includes access to advanced English and math courses and addressing the disparities that exist between how Black students are disciplined compared to White students.
“We have to address the issue of ESSA now, because decisions that are being made will have consequences for years to come,” King said. “One thing that is important to remember is that the implementation of ESSA does not happen in a vacuum.”
King continued: “ESSA is the opportunity for parents to work together with various coalitions, the press and grassroots organizations to shape the way the educational system will look for their children and for their futures in their own states.”
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.
Anyone who has worked in high poverty schools knows that poor kids are more likely than their wealthy peers to switch schools several times during their academic careers. That’s why civil rights advocates are worried about the way Arizona’s plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act handles transient students.
For instance, at a middle school, an eighth grader who has been enrolled for three years would “count” more towards the school’s overall grade than a sixth grader, who had just gotten there. And an eighth grader whose been at the school for all three years of their middle school career would factor more heavily into the school’s rating than a classmate who spent sixth and seventh grade someplace else…
Set your DVR: President Donald Trump will be speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s “President’s Club” meeting Tuesday night. There’s no way to know whether, or how much, education will play in the speech. Supposedly, taxes are the big focus.
Presidents don’t address think tanks often, though, so this speech is a signal of Heritage’s influence in Trump’s Washington. And that matters for education because Heritage’s lobbying armâthe Heritage Action Fundâhas been an active player on K-12 policy in recent years.
Generally, the think tank has pushed for a much a smaller role for the feds in schools. Heritage has even opposed some Republican ideas for expanding school choiceâlike a federal tax credit scholarship programâbecause they’re worried about growing the federal footprint on K-12…
President Donald Trump has finally, finally started to nominate people to fill the top political ranks at the U.S. Department of Education. Recently, for example, the White House announced its pick for deputy secretary (former South Carolina state chief Mick Zais) and for assistant secretary for career, technical, and adult education (Michigan state Rep. Tim Kelly.)
But the Trump team is still really behind the eight-ball when it comes to staffing 400 Maryland Ave.
How far behind? We went back and looked to see when the Obama administration named its picks for some of the agency’s top players. In just about every instance, it was months ahead of the Trump crew…
Two studies published by Education Next (EdNext) … conclude that parents seem to be happier with their children’s schools when they are able to choose them.
The first study was an analysis of data from the 2012 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) survey, which was given to a representative sample of 17,166 households. In the survey, the US Department of Education asked parents about their satisfaction with their child’s school. While the data was collected in 2012, it had never been published until the EdNext analysis.
The data showed that the percentage of parents who were “very satisfied” with their children’s schools was higher for parents with students in schools of choice—including charter schools (63 percent), district schools of choice (61 percent), and private schools (81 percent)—than for parents with students assigned to a specific district school (56 percent).
The second study reported on the results of a first-of-its-kind parent satisfaction poll that EdNext conducted last summer, with a representative sample of 1,500 parents. Across all surveyed categories, except “location of school”, the data showed that more chartered school parents were “very satisfied” or “satisfied” than district parents. Similarly, private school parents were more satisfied across all categories than district parents.
The two studies support the hypothesis posed that, “to maintain and enlarge their market share, all schools of choice must satisfy the families who make use of them.” And the consistency between the two is important, according to Paul Peterson, an author on both studies, because “even though [the two surveys] had somewhat different methodologies our findings are surprisingly consistent.”
The findings of these two studies are also consistent with overall national American attitudes towards choice and chartering. Last year’s PDK/Gallup Poll showed nearly two-thirds of Americans are in favor of charter schools, and of permitting parents to select any public school in their district.
Education Evolving
Originally Published, January 4, 2017
For the past five months, we have followed the development of Minnesota’s state accountability plan as mandated by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). While the US Department of Education (USDE) has defined what must be included in four of the plans’ required indicators, states have the freedom to choose which measures they will include in their fifth indicator, of school quality/student success (SQ/SS).
As we’ve previously written, because of the lack of available data, chronic absenteeism was identified by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) as the only SQ/SS measure that’s currently feasible for Minnesota. However, on November 29th, USDE extended ESSA implementation by one year, giving MDE’s Advisory Committee additional time to create a well-rounded SQ/SS indicator that would, ideally, include more than chronic absenteeism.
While most states have not released their ESSA draft plans, thirteen have—Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington. Arizona, Idaho, Montana, and North Carolina, however, do not define what possible SQ/SS measures their state will use.
All of the other states, except South Carolina, indicated that they intend to use chronic absenteeism as one of their SQ/SS measures; with Delaware, Maryland, Tennessee, and Washington using it only for elementary and middle schools.
Two SQ/SS measures were prominent throughout the state’s draft plans—Career and College Readiness and 9th Grade On-Track. Below are descriptions of the measures.
College and Career Readiness Measure
Seven states—Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington—have some form of a College and Career Readiness measure that calculates a school’s performance on or access to Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), SAT, ACT, Career and Technical Education (CTE), and Dual Enrollment.
South Carolina’s measure is more complex, with high schools earning points based on the percentage of students who meet the College Ready/Career Ready benchmark, which is comprised of several different metrics, such as earning a 3 or higher on an AP exam or meeting ACT benchmarks in mathematics (22) and English (18).
Similarly, Tennessee’s measure, Ready Graduate, is calculated by multiplying the graduation rate and the highest percentage of students who do one of the following:
Score a 21+ on the ACT OR
Complete 4 Early Postsecondary Opportunities (EPSOs) OR
Complete 2 EPSOs and earn an industry certification
Washington’s measure is more prescriptive. It only has a metric for dual credit participation, which is measured by the percent of students who participate in a dual credit educational program.
Delaware is the only state whose measure includes a metric for elementary and middle schools. Specifically, Delaware uses a “growth to proficiency” metric, which measures the percentage of students on track to be at grade level in a given content area within three years.
Minnesota initially considered including a College and Career Readiness measure, but due to insufficient and misaligned data systems, the Technical Committee decided at the October 25th meeting to delay its inclusion.
9th Grade On-Track Measure
Three states—Illinois, Oregon, and Washington—indicated in their draft plans that they intended to use 9th-grade on track as a measure, which is the percent of first-time 9th grade students in a high school who do not fail a course.
Other SQ/SS Measures
Illinois: Early childhood education, which would be measured by kindergarten transition, pre-literacy activities, and academic gains. Unfortunately, the draft plan did not flesh out what “kindergarten transition” would measure, but it did indicate that it might not be ready for the 2017-18 academic year.
Illinois’ plan indicated that they may also use a school climate survey. Currently, Illinois uses the 5Essentials survey, which was developed at the University of Chicago and measures a school’s effectiveness in the following five areas:
Effective Leaders
Collaborative Teachers
Involved Families
Supportive Environments
Ambitious Instruction
Louisiana: Their ESSA Framework included a comprehensive list of SQ/SS measures that were divided into four categories:
Mastery of Fundamental Skills
Serving Historically Disadvantaged Students
Fair and Equitable Access to Enriching Experiences
Celebrating and Strengthening the Teaching Profession
Louisiana’s entire list of SQ/SS measures can be found here.
South Carolina: An “Effective Learning Environment Student Survey”, which would be administered every January to students in grades 4-12 and would include 29 items that measure topics on equitable learning, high expectations, supportive learning, active learning, progress monitoring and feedback, digital learning, and well-managed learning.
We will continue to report on ESSA updates in Minnesota and the country. MDE’s next ESSA Accountability meeting is scheduled for Thursday, January 5th from 5:30-8:00 PM. For more information about MDE’s ESSA implementation plan, visit their website.
Washington – When the Every Student Succeeds Act passed in 2015, there was widespread worry that states would walk away from making sure that particular groups of students, English-language learners, students in special education, and racial minorities, mattered in their school accountability systems.
Now that pretty much every state has filed its plan to implement the law have those fears become the reality?
States are working to make sure that’s not the case, said several state chiefs who spoke on a panel here moderated by Chris Minnich, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. (Some advocates are skeptical more…
I have spent the last decade focusing on breaking bully stereotypes and shifting the conversation around such a critical topic, so I jumped at the chance to be part of this work at a national level. Most of the bullying I faced as a student occurred in middle school, so I was shocked to see it happen with my third graders. The most surprising part, however, was when I realized which students were doing the bullying. Some of my sweetest, smartest, and most seemingly innocent kids were often the ones doing the most harm. I see the same trends and patterns with every class.
