Utah’s State School Board’s internal auditors are planning to conduct an audit to “determine why growing numbers of Utah schoolchildren have opted out of standardized testing in recent years,” Marjorie Cortez writes for KSL news. The state’s opt-out rate was a “sticking point” in winning...
According to Benjamin Wood in the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah schools are “poised to take a hit from parents who excuse their children from year-end tests.” After several requests for flexibility under ESSA’s participation rate provisions, the Utah Board of Education has “agreed to count...
California and Utah are the latest states to gain federal approval on their state education plans.
Marjorie Cortez reports for the Deseret News that, after the U.S. Department of Education rejected Utah’s request to receive a waiver regarding testing requirements, the state will ask the department “for a one-year reprieve from a federal requirement that 95 percent of students participate in...
According to the Deseret News, Utah Governor Gary Herbert and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Sydnee Dickson recently met with Secretary DeVos to “discuss Utah’s proposed waiver from some student testing requirements of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.”
In this exploration of how states “will have to figure out how to sustain implementation of curriculum and instruction changes needed to meet the original ambitious ESSA performance goals” even as they face reduced resources and leadership changes, former New York State Deputy Commissioner of...
According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, the Utah Board of Education has voted to request a waiver to for ESSA’s requirement that public-school students take part in annual assessments. But some board members went even farther, arguing that the state should “intentionally reject those...
Sec. DeVos issued additional feedback for three state ESSA plans. Alyson Klein notes that it is “unclear” if states need to revise plans based on feedback, and that some states in the spring “got the federal seal of approval even if they didn’t change things the...
The Utah Board of Education has approved the state’s ESSA plan, which “includes the state strategic plan, Education Elevated, as well the public school accountability plan outlined in SB220 passed by the Utah Legislature earlier this year.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s primers include individual state by state accountability system fact sheets, which detail each state’s current accountability system, what could change under ESSA, and what to be asking state leaders. See details about your state here.
