John King, now US Education Secretary, is up to his old tricks and is trying to
eliminate all the flexibility that Congress intended the new law called
ESSA to achieve. He instead wants to require that states punish schools
with high opt out numbers and to impose a single grade on all schools--
which NYC wisely moved away from. Other problems with the proposed
regs are below.
Please
take a minute to leave a comment on the US ED Gov site on these proposed regs
by using the NPE suggestions below -- and click on the link to send a
letter to your members of Congress; if you can, try to edit the letter a
bit so it doesn't register as spam. thanks!
We urge you to take a stand against the proposed regulations drafted
by U.S. Secretary of Education John King for implementing the
accountability provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Although the intent of ESSA was to put an end to the “test and punish”
regime of NCLB and give more flexibility to the states, in some ways the
draft regulations are even more punitive and prescriptive than under
NCLB.
For example, although ESSA permits states to pass laws allowing
parents to opt their children out of taking the state tests, the draft
regulations would require states to harshly punish or label as failing,
schools in which more than 5% of students opt out.
The regulations would also require that every public school in the
country receive a single grade--based primarily on test scores and other
strictly academic factors -- even though the law properly leaves it up
to the states to devise their own grading systems within certain limits.
This would impose simplistic and damaging school grades that have
already been found defective in many states and districts across the
country.
In short, these proposed regulations would micro-manage the ability
of states to create their own accountability systems, and take away the
opportunity for parents and educators to have a real voice in their
school accountability system.
It is imperative that we push back now while there is still time to change course. We need you to do two things as soon as you can:
1. Please cut and paste the comments
below the line into the area for comments on the US Department of Education website, which you will find by clicking
here – or revise them according to your liking.
2. Complete our Action Alert and send a letter to your own
representatives urging them to block these destructive regulations. We
make it easy to do! Just click
here.
It is critically important that you take the time to try to improve these regulations, before it’s too late – and stand up for our public schools and students.
Although the comment period is open until August 1, we ask that you
take action as soon as possible and preferably by Tuesday, June 29
because the Senate is questioning Sec. King on Wednesday. Thanks for
your help!
Carol Burris, Executive Director of NPE
______________________________
_____________________________
Please cut and paste the text below here, or revise if you prefer.
I oppose the following proposed regulations as contrary to the
language and spirit of ESSA and because they will impose damaging and
overly prescriptive mandates on our public schools.
In each case, the US Department of Education is foisting its own
preferences while tying the hands of states, districts, parents, and
educators to devise their own accountability systems, as ESSA was
supposed to encourage. Specifically:
1. Draft regulation 200.15: This would force states to intervene
aggressively and/or fail schools in which more than 5% of students chose
not to take the state tests. This violates the provision in ESSA
recognizing “a State or local law regarding the decision of a parent to
not have the parent’s child participate in the academic assessments”
Recommendation: This regulation should be deleted. States
should be able to exercise their right to determine what measures should
be taken if students opt out, free of federal intrusion.
2. Draft regulation 200.13
The law requires states to create a growth score as an indicator for
elementary and middle schools. Secretary King has inserted “
based on the reading/language arts and mathematics assessments”
into the regulation. This would prevent states from creating their own
measures of student learning across the curriculum, based on factors
other than standardized test scores.
Recommendation: The language “
based on the reading/language arts and mathematics assessments” should be deleted from the regulation so that states have the freedom to devise their own measures of student growth.
3. Draft regulation 200.14
The law requires that there be four accountability
indicators. The fourth is a school quality indicator that is not based
on test scores or graduation rates. States have the freedom to include
school climate data, parent engagement, or other factors related to
school quality. The proposed regulation insists that such measures
prove by research how they are linked to achievement or graduation
rates, therefore restricting what states can include.
Recommendation: This regulation should be amended by allowing
states to encourage improvements in school climate, safety, engagement,
or other factors that may or may not be directly linked to academic
achievement, but are important in their own right.
4. Draft regulation 200.17
Proposed 200.17 would require that the test scores and graduation
rates of any subgroup (such as students with an IEP or disadvantaged
students) of at least 30 students be measured for accountability
purposes. Both NCLB and the ESSA leave the decision of minimum subgroup
size for the states to decide. The regulations argue that group size of
30 is sufficient to provide a fair and reliable rating, but this claim
has no basis in research. It should be noted that with a group size of
30, even 2 absent students will push the school below the 95%
participation requirement.
Recommendation:
The minimum group size should be decided by states, as the law
requires, after consultation with researchers, given the high-stakes
consequences for schools.
5. Draft regulation 200.18
This would require that each school receive a single “summative”
grade or rating, derived from combining at least three of the four
indicators used to assess its performance. Yet imposing a single grade
on schools has been shown in states and districts across the nation to
be overly simplistic, unreliable and unfair, and is nowhere mentioned in
the law. This is why it has been severely criticized in Florida, for
example, and why NYC has moved away from such a system. The proposed
regulations go further and forbid states from boosting a school’s rating
if it has made substantial improvement on the 4
th or non-academic category.
By doing so, the US Department of Education is again undermining the
right of each state to determine its own rating system, and whether it
chooses to provide a full or narrow picture of school performance.
Recommendation: DoE should allow states to retain the
authority given to them by ESSA to create their own rating systems, and
to determine their own weighting of various factors. The federal
government should be prevented from requiring that schools be labelled
with a single grade, just because that happens to be its own policy
preference.
