Highline College Selects Dr. John Mosby As New President

Highline College Selects Dr. John Mosby As New President

During a special meeting today, Highline College’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously on the selection of Dr. John Mosby as the next president of the college.

Mosby currently serves as vice president for student services at Mission College in Santa Clara, California, part of the West Valley Mission Community College District. 

Mosby has more than 23 years of higher education experience and holds a doctorate in leadership/higher education administration from the University of San Diego.

The selection follows a 10-month national search to fill the vacancy left by Dr. Jack Bermingham, who retired in August 2017 after more than a decade as president. 

“Our goal has been to find an open, inspirational leader who embodies and promotes the college’s values of diversity, access, equity and community and is a fit for the unique Highline culture and environment,” said Debrena Jackson Gandy, chair of the five-member board. “We are confident that we found such a leader in Dr. Mosby.”

Dr. Jeff Wagnitz will continue to serve as interim president until Mosby assumes the post, after which he will return full time to his previous role as a vice president. Mosby is slated to join Highline in July 2018. 

Founded in 1961 as the first community college in King County, Highline today serves 17,000 students and is the most diverse higher education institution in the state, with more than 70 percent students of color.

The post Highline College Selects Dr. John Mosby As New President appeared first on The Seattle Medium.

Honoring Black Student Activists

Honoring Black Student Activists

In the summer of 2017, Charleena Lyles, a pregnant 30-year-old black mother was fatally shot by two white Seattle police officers in her home as her three young children looked on. Lyles, who had called the police to report a burglary, reportedly suffered from mental illness. She pulled a knife out of her pocket when the police entered her home, but rather than tasing or subduing her with pepper spray, they shot her seven times.

Days after the shooting, seven black Seattle high school students formed “New Generation,” a school activist group that led a walkout at Garfield High School to raise awareness about the young mother’s death and to organize in their school and community for racial justice.  Uniting students with Charleena Lyles’ family on the one-year anniversary of her death, New Generation held a powerful assembly that launched the hashtag #RememberHerName to make sure that people don’t forget Charleena Lyles and the police violence that led to her death.

The death of Lyles is a symbol of the injustices the group of students has experienced and witnessed in their communities and even within their school. They wanted to take action not just for Charleena Lyles but for all people of color, especially their fellow students.

 

“We’re students of color and we share similar struggles, experience the same disadvantages, and strive to become more than what society has labeled us,” says Chardonnay Beaver, who founded New Generation along with classmates Janelle Gary, Myles Gillespie, Kevon Avery, Israel Presley, and Umoya McKinney.

“We’ve discovered that action is the first step in turning ideas of equality into reality. Because we’re students we have the opportunity to reach our peers directly.”

New Generation was a recipient of the 2018 Black Education Matters Student Activist Awards (BEMSAA), which gives recognition, support, and a $1,000 award to student leaders in the Seattle Public Schools who demonstrate exceptional leadership in struggles against racism—especially with an understanding of the intersections with sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamaphobia, class exploitation and other forms of oppression—within their school or community.

Over the past three years, nine Seattle Public Schools students and one youth organization – New Generation — have been honored with the award.

The program was founded by Jesse Hagopian, an Ethnic Studies teacher and co-adviser to the Black Student Union at Garfield High School in Seattle. Just like New Generation was spurred by violence, the award program was a positive outcome of a clash with police.

.

Read full article click here

Are School Ratings in ESSA Plans Clear for Parents? Check Out One Analysis

Are School Ratings in ESSA Plans Clear for Parents? Check Out One Analysis

Every state has turned in a plan to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. So how do those plans stack up against each other and against No Child Left Behind, the previous version of the law? The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a think tank headed up by Michael Petrili, a former Bush administration aide, is out with a look Tuesday.

Fordham judged the states on whether or not they had assigned annual ratings to schools that parents could understand, whether they encouraged schools to focus on all students or just the lowest performers, and whether the ratings were fair.

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

 

ESSA Fifth “SQ/SS” Indicator: What Are Other States Doing?

ESSA Fifth “SQ/SS” Indicator: What Are Other States Doing?

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.

Read the full article here.

Innovation, Civil Rights, and DeVos Focus of Senate ESSA Hearing

Innovation, Civil Rights, and DeVos Focus of Senate ESSA Hearing

State education chiefs at a Senate hearing Tuesday outlined how they are using the Every Student Succeeds Act to initiate and expand on efforts to improve college- and career-readiness and help low-performing schools. Senators, meanwhile, expressed concerns along partisan lines about the proper balance of power between Washington and the states. 

Congress has been mostly silent this year on public school policy in terms of hearings and other events. But Tuesday’s hearing at the Senate education committee allowed for Candice McQueen of Tennessee, Christopher Ruszkowski of New Mexico, and John White of Louisiana to share their approaches to ESSA and how it was affecting their approach to public school more broadly.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the committee chairman, specifically praised the states represented by the chiefs testifying at the hearing. For example, he highlighted his home state of Tennessee’s work under ESSA to determine whether students are ready for the military or the workforce after high school, not just college. He also gave a thumbs-up to New Mexico for increasing access to services ranging from extra math help to early education through its ESSA plan…

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

 

Rivalries, Political Infighting Marked States’ ESSA Planning – Education Week

Rivalries, Political Infighting Marked States’ ESSA Planning – Education Week

September 18, 2017

The grinding, two-year process of drafting accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act has upended states’ K-12 political landscape and laid bare long-simmering factions among power brokers charged with putting the new federal education law into effect this school year.

The details tucked into dozens of plans being turned in to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos this week were hammered out by a hodgepodge of elected and appointed officials—from governors and legislators to state school board members and local superintendents—during sometimes sparsely attended meetings, caucuses, and task force sessions.

Further complicating matters, 12 governors, half the nation’s state superintendents, and half of legislatures’ education committee chairpersons are new to office since the passing of ESSA in December 2015, when significant policy leeway was handed back to the states from the federal government.

“The problem with devolution and decentralization is that, by definition, you’re going to get a lot of variation … in terms of effort, political will, and the effectiveness of those efforts,” said Patrick McGuinn, a political scientist at Drew University in New Jersey who has studied state and federal policy and followed the implementation of ESSA.

In many cases, politicians, lobbyists, and membership organizations used their political prowess, technical expertise, and longevity to successfully push their agendas in the crafting of 51 state-level ESSA accountability plans.

Friction Points

Hammering out plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act has been a source of tension for rival policymakers in many states.

Governors
Governors in Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, and Wisconsin rejected their states’ ESSA plans after the required 30-day review process. The plans can be submitted without governor approval—indeed, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos approved Louisiana’s plan—but such a thumbs-down indicates to the federal Education Department that there’s not political consensus over details.

State Boards of Education
In states such as Delaware, North Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia, legislatures attempted to strip the powers of their state boards of education over key education policy areas even as the states readied their approaches to ESSA implementation. In North Carolina, the state board sued the legislature over an education law passed during a special session that board members said violated the state’s constitution.

Legislatures
Lawmakers in states such as Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, and West Virginia passed bills that dictated components of states’ ESSA plans regarding school accountability and testing. That left local superintendents and state board members frustrated.

State Chiefs
State superintendents in Alabama, Colorado, and New Mexico resigned in the middle of the ESSA-planning process after high-profile debates over key policies, leaving practitioners in the lurch and states in some instances making last-minute changes.

But the nature of state politics left out other groups, some of which will spend the coming months restructuring their spending and staffing priorities to more effectively lobby in the inevitable battles to come over the new law.

“The politics of federalism is going to dramatically change going forward,” said Sandra Vergari, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Albany who has studied federal education policy. Following all 50 states “is going to be a lot more work for us scholars, policy analyst, and advocates.”

Unlike prior federal versions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESSA required “meaningful stakeholder engagement” in crafting state plans—without defining who a stakeholder is or how much or what type of engagement needs to be conducted.

Many state superintendents said shortly after ESSA was passed that they had a natural incentive to put an end to years of polarizing debates over standards, accountability, and testing. But as the ESSA planning process unfolded, power grabs ensued in a number of states. Those traditionally in charge of education policy sparred with each other and with lawmakers eager to take on a share of the new responsibility.

In North Carolina, for example, the Republican-controlled legislature—just days before Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper took office this winter—decided during a special session that the state board should no longer oversee key accountability and school turnaround decisions, and that those decisions should be left up to the state’s recently appointed Republican state superintendent.

The board sued, and a judge decided last week to delay the law, which has held up the state’s ESSA planning process.

Delaware’s legislature stripped its state board of several powers, and a pending bill in Washington would scrap that state’s board of the ability to oversee portions of its accountability system.

And after years of infighting, Indiana’s legislature decided this year that the state’s elected superintendent should instead be appointed by the governor.

Hot-Button Issues

In other states, crucial policy decisions over testing, state goals, and how to define an ineffective teacher fanned flames between advocacy groups and politicians.

The governors in Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, and Wisconsin all refused to sign off on their states’ plans before sending them to Secretary DeVos. (A plan still can be turned in without the governor’s signature.)

And Michigan Lt. Gov. Brian Calley asked DeVos to send the plan back (something his office is not allowed to do) after he took issue with portions that dealt with special education students. That state’s board-appointed superintendent involved more than 300 people in the development of the plan, a process the lieutenant governor said still left the state’s special education community without a voice.

“What we have in our system is all these interest groups across the political spectrum that have a lot of power and say,” said Calley, who has a child with special needs. “There’s no organized group with PACS and electoral power in our system that represents the parents.”

State superintendents, many with their own political agendas, were left walking a political tightrope in some states. Several didn’t survive.

In a political snub, Hawaii’s since-replaced state Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi wasn’t invited by Democratic Gov. David Ige to sit on the state’s ESSA task force.

New Mexico’s secretary of education, Hanna Skandera, resigned in June shortly after turning in her state’s controversial plan, which upset the state’s teaching force. And just last week, Alabama Superintendent Michael Sentance resigned after a bruising evaluation by the state’s district superintendents who took issue with his leadership style and the ESSA development process.

Advocates Weigh In

National, state, and local advocacy organizations all scrambled throughout ESSA planning to adjust to the fluid situation. A board meeting in California in July, for example, fielded dozens of comments protesting the state’s proposed accountability system.

In other states, advocates skipped state board meetings and went straight to their legislature.

Maryland’s Democratically-controlled legislature, pressured by the state’s teachers’ union, effectively wrote the state’s accountability system into a law called “Protect Our Schools Act.” The bill survived Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto and inflamed state board of education members who accused politicians of trapping students in failing schools.

Ohio’s teachers’ union and parent groups managed to convince the state’s superintendent in the spring to stall the turning in of that state’s plan after they convinced enough people that the plan would ramp up school testing.

And Kentucky’s legislature passed as part of its new ESSA-aligned accountability system a sweeping education bill that mostly scrapped a historic school governance model that had elevated parent voices in the form of school-based-decision-making councils.

The battle pitted Kentucky’s politically weak parent groups against the state’s well-financed superintendents’ association and teachers’ union. It flew in the face of a working relationship the three parties had forged over the years in fighting for more school funding from the legislature as the coal industry collapsed.

“We’ve been together for so long and through so much together,” said a disappointed Lynne Slone, the attorney for the Kentucky Association of School Councils.

In Florida, Rosa Castro-Feinberg, a civil rights activist for minority and English-language-learner students, said she will shift her efforts to the local level if the state’s ESSA plan passes federal muster. Castro-Feinberg launched a petition and letter-writing and media campaign to stop several waiver requests from being attached to that state’s plan, an effort that ultimately failed.

Others, however, see an opportunity for advocates and policymakers to forge ties across state lines in the wake of the sometimes-tense ESSA planning, especially on common issues such as the achievement gap, the effects poverty has on schools, and stagnant student performance.

“For some states that are diving into this more deeply, doing the soul-searching, you’re seeing a lot less partisanship,” said Michelle Exstrom, the Education Program Director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Education shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I think when you have a sense of urgency, you figure out that it’s in everyone’s best interest to improve outcomes, and leaders get motivated to go to the table to fix it.”

WEBINAR: League of Education Voters: Washington’s Plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act

WEBINAR: League of Education Voters: Washington’s Plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act

Published on Aug 25, 2017

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which goes into full effect in the 2018–19 school year, rolled back much of the federal government’s big footprint in education policy, on everything from testing and teacher quality to low-performing schools. And it gave new leeway to states in calling the shots. ESSA’s goal is ensure that every student, regardless of race, income, disability, ethnicity, or proficiency in English, is ready for a fulfilling career, college, and life.

Gayle Pauley, Assistant Superintendent for Special Programs and Accountability at the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), outlines Washington’s ESSA plan and how you can get involved.

Moderated by LEV communications director Arik Korman.

WASHINGTON: Accepting Public Comment on State’s Draft ESSA Plan

WASHINGTON: Accepting Public Comment on State’s Draft ESSA Plan

Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

The Revised ESSA Consolidated Plan is now available! There are four main ways to get involved.

Read the Revised ESSA Consolidated Plan

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on December 10, 2015. It is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESSA will be fully operational in school year 2017-18.

NEW! The ESSA Consolidated Plan Summary is now available!
لعَرَبِيَّة (Arabic) | 한국어 (Korean) | русский (Russian) | Español (Spanish) | Wikang Tagalog (Tagalog) | Українська (Ukrainian) | Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)

Read Superintendent Reykdal’s letter and the Revised ESSA Consolidated Plan.

You can learn about What’s New in ESSA? with our flyers, catch up on the latest on our Medium site, or view other resources like summaries and translations.

You can read about the plan and drafting process on our Consolidated Plan page. Dig deeper into how the plan will affect districts on our District Resources page.

Attend a Webinar

OSPI is holding five webinars throughout August to discuss the plan and changes between the first draft and this draft.

Provide Public Comment

Take a minute to let us know what you think of the plan! You can provide feedback through September 5, and your feedback will be considered as OSPI completes the plan for submission to the U.S. Department of Education.

Tell Your Friends & Colleagues!

Share this page on Facebook, Twitter, through email, wherever! We want to hear from as many Washingtonians as possible about the changes coming to our schools!

Contact Us

Gayle Pauley, gayle.pauley@k12.wa.us or 360-725-6170
Carrie Hert, carrie.hert@k12.wa.us or 360-725-6170

Translation Services
Please let us know if you need an interpreter—at no cost to you. We can answer your questions in your language!

The People Speak: Who Is Primarily Responsible For Our Children’s Success In Education, The Parent Or The Teacher?

The People Speak: Who Is Primarily Responsible For Our Children’s Success In Education, The Parent Or The Teacher?

Alonzo Mitz…

“I think it’s a little bit of both. Kids who come from broken homes  go to school to try and express themselves for the most part but once they get to school and have a teacher, a strong teacher, that will work with them, kind of straightens them out. I think that works, but we don’t have a lot of strong teachers. That’s why I say it’s the parent and the teacher, it depends who the teachers are and what they’re doing at home as well.”

Clarissa Knight…

“I would say its primarily up to the parents as far as children and their education. It’s up to the parents to raise their children to want to be educated and successful outside whatever learning environment that they choose to place their children.”

Jazz…

“I think that it has to be a partnership.  I think the teachers should be working with parents and visa versa. I don’t think that one should wait on the other to reach out.  But I think it’s pretty narrowly the parents responsibility and  if there is something that the parents feel is lacking then they should be reaching out to the teachers as well. But I think that it ultimately falls on the parent.”

Ayana Henley…

“Ultimately, I think the parent has the responsibility, although the parent and teacher need to work hand in hand.  I feel the parent has the ultimate responsibility because education starts at home. We are the ultimate teachers of our children and therefore that should spread out throughout the community. Whatever we’re instilling in our children at home, maybe we can influence our teachers and in that way keep the educational process going.”

Sista Yolanda Theodore…

“It can’t be either/or, it has to be a combination of both due to the fact our children spend up to six to eight hours in school and they are in the households before they even attend school. So, parents are the first primary teachers of children, but once they go to school it will take a combination of the parent and teacher correlating and talking together. If they can do that then that child can stay on track towards graduation or college or whatever their plans may be.”

Brook Riggio…

“I think it is shared between parents and teachers. Both have a key role to play. Teachers  spend so much time out of the day with students that they will influence students immensely no matter what. So there comes a huge responsibility with that as well as trusting your children to teachers for that time period. At the same time, parents have to provide supplementary role models to give them all the other factors that they need to succeed. They need a loving and supporting environment at home to give them the encouragement  they’ll need and the values instilled, especially at the early stages.”

Photos by Aaron Allen

How Will Trump’s Budget Address a Rural Ed. Program With Bipartisan Support?

How Will Trump’s Budget Address a Rural Ed. Program With Bipartisan Support?

There’s been a lot of speculation in the K-12 policy world about how President Donald Trump will handle education issues in rural America, where he won overwhelming support in the 2016 election. One part of the puzzle could be how he decides to deal with the the Secure Rural Schools program.

The program is designed to provide additional support for schools and local governments affected by activities on federal lands and is linked to revenue from timber harvests on those lands. Before 2000, school districts and counties got a fixed percentage of this revenue, but as this timber-related revenue declined, local governments’ share of the money declined accordingly. In 2000, Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act and changed the way these payments were structured.

Secure Rural Schools impacts 4,400 schools and 9 million students in 775 districts. The program is controlled by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The program received $278 million in federal cash in fiscal year 2015, but the funding dropped to $58 million in fiscal 2016. A half-dozen years ago, in fiscal 2011, U.S. Forest Service payments to localities (including districts) topped $300 million. The single biggest state beneficiary of the program, you may not be surprised to hear, has historically been Oregon, with California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington also receiving relatively large payments…

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