Draft state accountability plan includes new ways to measure school progress |
On Board Online • May 29, 2017
By Cathy Woodruff
Senior Writer
A draft state plan for implementing the federal Every Student Succeeds Act would give schools a wide new range of options for demonstrating quality and success.
State education leaders say revisions are ongoing as the draft ESSA plan moves through a series of public hearings and a public comment period that concludes in mid-June. But when the plan is complete, they say, local school districts' performance will be assessed based on measures beyond the current main yardsticks of four-year graduation rates and math and English language arts test scores.
Academic indicators of school performance would expand to include social studies, science and progress toward English proficiency. The system would assess high school students' "civic readiness," in addition to college-and-career readiness. Chronic absenteeism would be among indicators used to assess school climate.
The new approach would give districts credit for the accomplishments of students who receive diplomas with special credentials, such as career and technical education certifications, Regents diplomas with advanced designation, seals of bi-literacy or International Baccalaureate. The new system also would count students who graduate after five or six years in high school or earn a high school equivalency diploma.
The plan’s design also is intended to more strongly recognize students’ academic growth (i.e., improvement), giving it greater weight in combination with academic achievement (i.e., level of mastery demonstrated on an assessment).
Regents seek a less punitive approach
In contrast to the plan New York produced to comply with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), state education officials say the state's draft ESSA plan aims to diminish talk of penalties and "consequences" for low performance. Instead, they said, it is intended to help identify problem areas and support improvement efforts.
"This is a new approach and a new look at education in New York State," Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia told the Regents at the board's May meeting.
Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute at Stanford University and a consultant to SED, said New York's draft plan is "plowing new ground" in multiple ways. In particular, she underscored elements that add weight to students' academic improvement and schools' progress toward long-term goals.
"I think that's a very important new innovation in the system," she said.
New York's 159-page draft plan relies on a host of nuanced strategies and technical calculations to support the more expansive views of school quality and improvement. SED staff and advisors say they continue to work on "modeling" various approaches for handling school and student data to help ensure that proposed technical details will play out as they are intended.
"It's an ambitious plan that makes significant changes to the state's accountability system," said Julie Marlette, NYSSBA's director of governmental relations. "On the plus side, it will move us away from single measures of students' success. What remains to be seen is whether the regulatory framework and state support for schools will make all the goals attainable rather than just aspirational."
The draft plan now is the subject of public hearings taking place around the state, and NYSSBA is encouraging school board members to attend local hearings or review the proposed plan online and discuss how the proposals would affect their districts.
The Regents are scheduled to send a revised draft to Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his review in July. The governor has 30 days to consider it, and the Regents are scheduled to approve a final state plan for submission to the U.S. Department of Education, which may accept the plan or request revisions, in September.
Low-performing schools to be identified
In some states, districts and schools are expected to be assigned overall ratings or rankings, such as letter grades or numerical scores. But that won't be the case in New York.
As required by the federal law, New York would continue to identify the lowest performing 5 percent of schools. But the ESSA draft envisions a process that's less automatic and considers more variables - including academic growth, English language proficiency, graduation rates and chronic absenteeism - than NCLB.
The lowest-performing 5 percent of schools would be tagged for "comprehensive support and improvement" (CSI Schools). Schools with consistently underperforming subgroups, such as minority students or English language learners, could be tagged for "targeted support and improvement" (TSI Schools).
Ensuring that calculations involving test results will treat schools fairly and will accurately identify areas needing improvement, even as the tests evolve, is one place where the process of statistical modeling can help, said Scott Marion, the president of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment. He is working with Darling-Hammond to assist New York with the development of the ESSA plan.
"Algebra is our friend," Marion told the Regents. "We have a ton of experience helping states transition amid assessment changes." And, in the coming months, he added, "we can be doing a lot of modeling of the system so you can see real numbers."
What about opt-outs?
The federal law continues to require 95 percent participation in state math and ELA tests for students in grades 3-8, although many schools in New York fall far short of that benchmark.
New York education officials say the proposed system's design is intended to ensure that schools with strong test scores and other positive indicators won't wind up being identified as CSI Schools or TSI Schools simply because of high opt-out rates.
However, schools with high opt-out rates could be required to develop plans to improve participation, regardless of their level of academic achievement, SED officials said.
For more information, see an SED presentation at goo.gl/zZZeLi .
On May 10, NYSSBA's Governmental Relations Department sent an email to NYSSBA members with information on the plan and a link to the state hearing schedule. It can be found at www.nyssba.org/news/advocacy-alert /.