Education Dive writes that as policymakers and educators review state ESSA plans, “a recent analysis from New America focuses on how states are incorporating indicators related to young children’s learning into their plans.” For example, some states plan to leverage data via the Classroom Assessment Scoring...
In the second part in a series, Charles Barone and Dana Laurens write for Education Reform Now that, while in the first part, they “focused on ED’s [U.S. Education Department] failure to enforce ESSA guardrails that quite sensibly require state accountability system indicators be comparable...
Child Trends has conducted “an initial scan of states’ proposed accountability systems to examine how each approached the fifth indicator,” and although “the vast majority of states selected at least one indicator” to “gauge how schools support students in areas beyond academic performance,” a “handful...
Student academic growth “will carry greater weight in evaluating Virginia schools” under the Commonwealth’s new ESSA plan, which has been submitted for federal approval. Virginia Department of Education officials “say a big change is that Virginia’s plan uses a metric that includes not just test...
Samantha Tran, senior managing director of education policy at Children Now, wrote that “California’s education plan must be more transparent about student performance.” Her three recommended changes include clearly identifying “if gaps in achievement are closing or are stagnant,” setting “assessment standards so that the...
North Carolina’s Board of Education will take a final vote on its draft ESSA plan this week. The state’s Department of Public Instruction “plans to measure improvement in student scores, as it has in the past,” but “it may add a non-academic indicator like school...
Lexington Institute scholars Doug Mesecar and Don Soifer write that turning New Jersey’s ESSA plan into “improved student outcomes,” as well as “narrowing gaps in student achievement,” depends on the state “effectively getting schools the support necessary to accomplish this crucial work, and also monitoring...
In response to federal feedback, the Vermont Agency of Education will provide more detail to the U.S. Dept. of Education about how it will measure student progress under ESSA.
David Griffith, research and policy associate at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, explained the three “accountability mistakes” states are making while drafting ESSA implementation plans. Griffith argued while there are debates on the “best way to evaluate a school’s performance,” there are several key ideas...
Nine Louisiana business and education groups – including Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans and the Southern Poverty Law Center – expressed their concern with the way public school letter grades are calculated in Superintendent White’s draft ESSA...
