Restart of school accountability system, changes in labeling sought by Regents |
On Board Online • October 10, 2022
By Christopher Carola
Special Correspondent
The Board of Regents has approved a proposal to resume the State Education Department's school accountability system that was put on hold two years ago because of the pandemic. The system would restart for the current school year as a one-year model relying on the results from the 2021-22 school year.
The proposed changes to state education regulations, presented at the board's October meeting this week, also would alter the way struggling schools are labeled.
Last month, federal education officials approved the state's modified accountability plan after rejecting SED's request for an assessments waiver for this school year.
"Our accountability system builds on our work to improve academic achievement, provide equitable support systems, and enhance customer service," Chancellor Lester Young Jr. said in a statement.
SED's plan calls for suspending several indicators and modifying others as well as making changes to the nomenclature for schools in good standing to "schools identified for Local Support and Improvement," or LSI. Struggling schools, currently labeled as Comprehensive Support and Improvement schools, or CSI, will be known as "schools identified for Comprehensive Support and Improvement."
Regent Aramina Vega Ferrer said it's important to ensure that SED's self-described "shifting narrative" for school accountability measures is clearly conveyed to parents as well as educators.
"We're talking about continuous school improvement," she said. "It's not about shaming schools. It's about shared responsibility."
SED Commissioner Betty Rosa said it's important to "zoom in" on what a school improvement focus looks like rather than getting into labels such as "good" or "bad."
"Don't focus on what the picture looks like when you just use one label," she said. "Rather really, truly focus on what does the data tell us about the totality of that school."
The Oct. 4 Regents meeting included a staff presentation of a framework for a state aid proposal and legislative initiatives ahead of the 2023 session of the New York Legislature that begins in January.
The three main policy goals outlined by SED staff included the P-20 continuum, equity and customer service.
P-20 initiatives involve grades from pre-kindergarten through graduate school. Goals include providing universally available pre-kindergarten programs, promoting regional technical high schools, expanding access to advanced coursework and supporting access to arts, libraries and cultural education institutions.
The themes of the equity initiatives include:
- Advancing culturally responsive sustaining education.
- Expanding access to career and technical education.
- Ensuring equity in funding for students with disabilities.
- Preventing hunger from impeding learning.
- Responding to the impact of the pandemic.
- Promoting transparency through accountability.
Customer service goals include boosting SED's staffing and modernizing its information technology systems; supporting multilingual students and their families; creating a data and information management system to support fact-based decision making; and providing mandate relief to school districts as well as SED.
State aid proposals for the 2023-24 fiscal year include completing the 100% phase-in of funding foundation aid per formula under current law. The three-year phase-in approved by the Legislature and begun in 2021-22 fiscal year includes $1.45 billion in funding for the current fiscal year. Estimates of the funding for the final phase-in will be available in mid-November, according to SED staff.
The Regents will also seek to update the foundation aid formula through research into poverty counts, free and reduced-price lunch counts, pupil counts and elimination of reliance on needs resource categories from 2003.
The Regents will push for fully funding expense-based aids, including building, transportation and BOCES aid.
Another component of the equity effort will focus on expanding access to career and technical education (CTE) by enhancing BOCES and special services aids and creating a new enhanced funding stream to support CTE placements.