*UPDATE: California’s ESSA plan was approved on July 12, the day after it was submitted.

After nearly a year of discussion and three rounds of revisions, California’s Board of Education on Wednesday approved its final version of its state accountability plan known as ESSA, to comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.

Here are five things to know about the last leg in California’s journey to win approval — and the roughly $2.6 billion in federal dollars it means for the state each year.

1. A federal thumbs up is now virtually guaranteed. In a letter to the state late last month, a top Department of Education official wrote that he expected the department to approve the plan if California agreed to the feds’ latest round of changes. The state board on Wednesday unanimously approved the last details. The state will now resubmit its plan and expects to hear back within 30 days whether U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will at last sign off.

2. The plan prioritizes tracking of suspensions. Each state had to choose a way of evaluating schools that didn’t revolve around academics. Most states — three-quarters of them — chose chronic absenteeism as their “school quality or student success” measure, but California chose to use that as part of its academic measurements. So the state is going with suspension rates for elementary and middle schools. For high schools, the state will use suspension rates as well as the college and career indicator, which is based on completion of college-preparatory courses or career tech courses, or high scores on certain tests.

3. How California will work to boost struggling schools: The last sticking point for California was how and when to identify the lowest-performing schools and those that are struggling to serve student groups. The law requires each state to list its bottom 5 percent of schools so they can receive help. That’s around 300 schools in California.

California first ran afoul of the feds because its new accountability measurement tool, the California State Dashboard, didn’t clearly identify those bottom 300. Then the latest snag was that California wanted to take longer to identify those schools that are low-performing for specific student groups. The feds won, and California has now agreed to move up its timeline. Schools will now be eligible for support after two years of low performance.

4. Only one state now has not won final approval from the feds: Florida. Utah and California were approved this week.

5. What took so long? California was basically being California, an education advocate said Wednesday. “I think it stems from California wanting to do things California’s way,” said Carrie Hahnel, deputy director of research and policy at The Education Trust — West. “California has treated the ESSA plan as a compliance document as opposed to a plan to guarantee students’ civil rights. The state was working on its own accountability system before ESSA, and they’ve essentially taken their plan and tried to wedge it into the ESSA template.”

*This article has been updated with federal approval of California and Utah.

Vicenta Martinez, whose daughter attends Union Avenue Elementary in Los Angeles’s Westlake neighborhood, was part of a group of Parent Revolution parents who addressed the school board last Tuesday asking “What’s the plan?” for underperforming schools.

There’s been a lot of talk but little action from Los Angeles and California education officials when it comes to supporting the lowest-performing schools.

Last week state board members again voted to put off revisions to California’s education plan, which are required in order for the plan to be approved by the federal Department of Education under the Every Student Succeeds Act. In January, California’s plan to improve its schools received some of the toughest criticism in the nation from the Department of Education, which came as no surprise to parents and education advocates. In postponing the revisions last week, some board members said they might sooner apply for waivers than compromise.

“Anyone who worries about our state’s most struggling students should be discouraged by the State Board of Education’s actions” last week, said Bill Lucia, president of EdVoice. “The board continues to resist identifying the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools in the state, despite the fact that federal guidelines signed by President Obama call for every state to do just that.”

Lucia added, “Districts across the state, some of which are doing a decent job overall, are hiding schools that are performing egregiously and denying their students the high-quality education they need and deserve. Most of these significantly struggling schools overwhelmingly serve students of color and low-income students. Right now, Sacramento is unwilling to take the simple steps needed to get these kids – and their teachers – the extra resources they need.”

EdVoice is part of a coalition of seven advocacy organizations that called this month for the state Board of Education to make crucial fixes to California’s plan to comply with ESSA, which requires that states identify the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools in order to get them targeted support.

“Rather than looking at the lowest-performing schools overall, California continues to attempt to identify the lowest-performing schools if they’re in the lowest-performing LEAs,” or school districts, the coalition stated. “In addition to violating ESSA, this will leave tens of thousands of low-income, minority, and English learner students at low-performing schools without any help at all, simply because their district didn’t get enough reds on the so-called dashboard.”

The LA Unified school board held a special meeting last month to discuss how to support its lowest-performing schools. Nearly every board meeting includes emotional pleas from parents who want to see the board talk less and do more.

LA Unified doesn’t keep an official list of its lowest-performers, though board members say everyone knows which ones they are. A district spokeswoman said LA Unified will wait until the state comes up with its list, but it’s not clear when or even if the state will do that.

The state also hasn’t listed its lowest-performing schools, only the 228 lowest-performing districts.

“They’ve done some data runs, but they’ve never published the names of those schools,” said Carrie Hahnel, deputy director of research and policy for The Education Trust — West, one of the seven advocacy organizations in the coalition. “I think that’s fair,” she said, since the state won’t be required to identify the schools until next year and will do so off next year’s data. But that doesn’t mean school districts can’t be doing that themselves.

“Even if not required to by federal law, that’s really what should be happening,” Hahnel said. “I think it would be helpful for districts to tell people which schools they think need support. There’s enough in place with the dashboard to make some decisions on it,” she said, referencing the California School Dashboard, the state’s new accountability system that evaluates schools based on student progress on test scores, suspension and graduation rates, English learners’ progress toward fluency, and high school students’ college and career readiness.

The state board members agreed to hold another meeting within a month on the issue, but Hahnel said after last week’s board discussion, “It felt like they were kind of landing at a place that they intend to submit something that they don’t intend to implement. They do agree they have to identify the bottom 5 percent, and I think they will, but they might seek waivers from the targeted support schools, which are the ones that have equity issues.”

She added, “Our biggest concern is that we might not get the resources and support to the school sites that need them.”

To improve struggling schools in Los Angeles, “The solution is two parts, and both parts are totally within LAUSD’s power,” said Seth Litt, executive director of Parent Revolution, a coalition member. “First, do better than the California Dashboard and create a system of clear school ratings that are useful to families, educators, and policymakers. Second, identify the lowest-performing schools and develop plans with timelines for measurable progress — developed with family and school site input — for how resources, teacher support and quality, instructional support, and curriculum will transform these schools.”

• Read more: Parent Revolution’s Seth Litt: Much more, much better is possible right now

New data released this month by Parent Revolution show that 234 LA Unified schools fell in the bottom two levels — orange or red — for both English and math on the dashboard. Last year there were 155,779 students enrolled in those 234 schools. LA Unified has 34 schools that are red in both English and math. Last year they enrolled 26,400 students.

Five percent of LA Unified’s enrollment of about 590,000 is roughly 30,000 students.

The group also posted maps of where the schools with the lowest math and English test scores are located in Los Angeles, along with charts broken down by school board district.

It also released a report with guidance for the state to be able to translate the state dashboard data into an overall quality rating for each school. The report was created with Teach Plus California and the Center for American Progress.

A list of underperforming schools in Los Angeles that need the most targeted support could be generated by LA Unified’s revised Student Equity Need Index, which is being presented at Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting. School board members will hear a presentation on what’s being called the 2.0 version of the index, which was first created in 2014 to help direct state funds to the district’s neediest schools. The goal is to rank schools to show which should be prioritized for additional funding, and for the first time academic indicators will be used in that ranking.

Board members in recent meetings have also offered various ideas on how to help LA’s low-performing schools. They include creating a separate school district for them, closing or combining some of them, or creating smaller learning communities within a school. Other ideas are setting up a system of evaluating district schools in a similar way independent charter schools are assessed by the district, or changing the whole curriculum for low-performing schools so that every subject, such as social studies and art, includes a math and English component.

“It is great to hear that most members of the school board now want to focus on these schools, but parents are tired of waiting and are demanding to know what the path forward is,” Litt said. “The board knows that the same schools have been low-performing for a long time, and I think there can be a collaborative process that will be good for LAUSD.”

Vicenta Martinez, whose daughter attends Union Avenue Elementary in Los Angeles’s Westlake neighborhood, was part of a group of Parent Revolution parents who addressed the school board last Tuesday asking “What’s the plan?” for underperforming schools.

“It’s unacceptable that our children have to attend schools that everyone knows are underperforming and nobody cares to change that. It’s urgent that the district presents a plan to improve those schools like the one my daughter attends,” she said in Spanish outside the boardroom. “I have been forced to take my other two children to schools two hours away from home, and I don’t want to do the same again with my little one. Someone needs to do something for our kids to have access to high-quality schools now.”

Esmeralda Fabián Romero contributed to this report.

California’s parents aren’t getting two key pieces of information they need to evaluate schools, says a new independent review of states’ accountability plans.

California ranked at the bottom, along with Idaho and Texas, receiving the lowest scores in two categories out of nine in a review of 34 state plans on complying with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

California got the bottom score — a 1 out of a possible 5 — for failing to identify the 5 percent of lowest-performing schools, including high schools where more than a third of students aren’t graduating, and for not measuring whether individual students are actually learning more. Reviewers also called the state’s new dashboard that tracks school performance complicated and incomplete.

But California received the highest score — a 5 — on its state tests that students take in the spring because of their rigorous standards. The reviewers also lauded California for accommodating English language learners in those tests, particularly Spanish-speaking students and students that need individualized plans. The state was also praised for including suspension rates in its accountability system.

The review, released Tuesday by the Collaborative for Student Success and Bellwether Education Partners, is based on independent reviewers who rated 34 state ESSA plans submitted in September to the U.S. Department of Education.

• Read more from The 74: Opportunity Wasted: Second-Round ESSA Plans Get Largely Lackluster Reviews From Independent Experts

“Our goal was to provide constructive, straightforward information to state education agencies and advocates in an effort to strengthen state plans and to inform parents so that they could engage with their state policymakers,” said Jim Cowen, executive director of the Collaborative for Student Success.

Here’s what the reviewers said:

The good: standards and assessments:

• California uses rigorous college- and career-ready standards in mathematics and English language arts, using the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) system.
• The state is making progress toward new tests in science and Spanish biliteracy.
• In spring 2017, the state piloted its California Science Tests (CAST), which are aligned with the California Next Generation Science Standards.
• The state provides a detailed description of its accommodations for English language learners, as well as an alternate assessment with accommodations based on a student’s individualized education program. 

Where the plan can improve: academic progress and identifying schools:

• California’s plan does not include an individual student-level growth measure to show whether students are improving. Instead, it only tracks year-over-year changes at the school level.
• For schools already performing above the state’s goals, there is little incentive to strive for higher achievement levels.
• California is considering adopting an individual growth model by 2018-19, but it could do it quicker and shift to a measure that tracks student-level progress over time.
• California has not finalized its methodology for identifying the lowest-performing schools.
• California would take considerably longer than other states to identify failing high schools that need extra support.

California was one of the 34 states that got extra time to work on the ESSA plans, filing them in September — 17 others submitted their plans in the spring —  but the reviewers dinged the state for not strengthening its metrics.

“We hoped that with extra time and resources given to the 34 states that submitted in the fall, plans would incorporate more best practices and innovative ideas. Unfortunately, many states like California failed to use this extra time and information to strengthen their plans,” Cowen said.

Despite the additional time to get input, only Indiana received a 5 in two categories; nine states got a 5 in at least one category, the reviewers found.

The nine categories reviewed were: goals, standards and assessments, indicators, academic progress, all students, identifying schools, supporting schools, exiting improvement status (improving enough to no longer need state interventions), and continuous improvement (learning from implementation and modifying the plan going forward).

HopSkipDrive is an LA-based ride-sharing company specializes in transporting children. It operates in LA County, Orange County, and the San Francisco Bay Area. (Courtesy: HopSkipDrive)

(This article first appeared in The Chronicle of Social Change.)

HopSkipDrive, a child-focused ride-sharing company, announced Tuesday a partnership with Los Angeles County’s Office of Education (LACOE) to transport foster youth to school.

Moving at what one official called a “fast and furious” pace to rectify its failure to comply with foster care mandates enshrined in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), LACOE has contracted with the L.A.-based tech company to give foster kids rides to their so-called “school of origin” through the end of the school year.

The plan, according to HopSkipDrive CEO Joanna McFarland, also includes Los Angeles Unified School District and the Department of Children and Family Services, which oversees the county’s foster care system.

The ride-sharing service will be paid $400,000 through the end of June, according to a LACOE spokesman. Three coordinators with the agency’s Foster Youth Services Program will be responsible for scheduling rides, and HopSkipDrive’s drivers and staff will receive trauma training.

If a success, the pilot could affect not just the roughly 12,000 school-aged foster youth in L.A. County, but hundreds of thousands more across the U.S.

“We are excited to work with local agencies throughout California, and beyond that throughout the country, really to help them comply with ESSA,” McFarland, said.

The announcement also referenced a $7.4 million investment from Student Transport Inc., a publicly traded New Jersey company that maintains a fleet of 35,000 vehicles. This is a significant infusion of cash for the company, which has raised roughly $22 million since its official launch in 2015.

With STI’s presence in school districts across the country, McFarland sees the partnership as crucial in giving HopSkipDrive the scale it needs to serve foster youth outside of the company’s current markets: L.A. County, Orange County, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The company has even created a unit dubbed “the justice league” to take ESSA compliance on.

The law, signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, established a clear December 2016 deadline for education agencies like LACOE and Los Angeles Unified School District to work with the foster care system to transport these especially vulnerable students to the school they were attending when they entered foster care, if in their best interest.

“Students in foster care face multiple and sometimes ongoing trauma, including removal from their homes,” said Rachelle Touzard, who runs the foster care program within LACOE, in a press release. “Keeping them in their school with familiar teachers and friends can help minimize that secondary trauma and dramatically increase their potential for academic success.”

Research has shown that more than one-third of all foster youth will experience five or more school moves by the time they turn 18. And each move can cost four to six months of academic process.

Despite the obvious need and a federal mandate, in January The Chronicle of Social Change revealed that key agencies within Los Angeles County – including LACOE – had failed to come up with a plan to transport students in foster care.

By May, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors authorized a $500,000 stopgap plan to start transporting foster students through the end of 2017. And in July, the California Department of Education, which had failed to ensure that the state’s 1,000-plus school districts had complied with ESSA, replaced the official who had botched implementation with a well-regarded advocate for the educational rights of foster youth.

That same advocate, Jackie Wong, now leads the state’s Foster Youth Services Coordinating Program. Ensuring ESSA compliance is a key part of her work there.

“I am excited to see what the model will look like with LACOE stepping up to coordinate,” she said. “The structure makes a lot of good sense.”

While Wong said that she needs to do “her due diligence” given the sensitivity of transporting children who are in foster care, she sees the pilot being pursued in L.A. County as something that could be spread throughout the state and beyond.

“If you can figure it out here in a clear way, it can absolutely be a model for other places,” Wong said.

HopSkipDrive runs all of its drivers through a 15-point eligibility test that includes fingerprint scans, driving histories and documentation of five years of childcare experience.

Outside of the counties where HopSkipDrive currently operates, there are many more states that need help with ESSA implementation. In August, The Chronicle queried 17 states and the District of Columbia to determine how many had complied with the law’s foster care mandates.

In addition to California, Illinois and Colorado’s state education agencies either confirmed they had not complied or submitted a response suggesting they had not.

While seven states were in compliance, another eight submitted responses that were insufficient to determine if they were complying fully, partially or not at all.

There are still 33 states for which compliance is not known. All this means a huge potential market for HopSkipDrive and other ride-sharing companies that specialize in child transportation.

December 10 of this year will mark the one-year anniversary of the deadline for school systems to transport foster youth to school.

HopSkipDrive is apparently in the driver’s seat with a possible solution.

Daniel Heimpel is the president of Fostering Media Connections and publisher of The Chronicle of Social Change, a national news outlet that covers issues affecting vulnerable children, youth, and their families. Sign up for their newsletter or follow The Chronicle of Social Change on Facebook or Twitter.

Barbara Murchison, California Department of Education’s ESSA state lead, addresses the board Wednesday.

The California State Board of Education voted Wednesday to approve its plan to comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, culminating a year and a half of work with dozens of public meetings and comment periods.

Whether it will be accepted, however, is far from clear.

The plan is required under the new federal law enacted by the Obama Administration to explain how the state will spend money on and improve outcomes for low-income students and English learners. During its meeting Wednesday, the state board made a few changes to its draft plan that was released in August. Most of the changes were technical, but a one-word tweak to the definition of an “ineffective teacher” essentially widened the pool of teachers who would be deemed effective.

Two board members voted against the state plan. California is required to submit its plan by Sept. 18, as will 30 other states. Several states submitted their plans earlier this year.

Board President Michael Kirst began the discussion by outlining the work that is left to be done after the state plan is submitted to the federal government. One aspect is developing applications for districts to apply for federal funds. The state also has to submit how it will identify the bottom 5 percent of the state’s lowest-performing schools. It plans to submit a follow-up document to the state plan in January.

“It bothers me that a lot of critics, including people from outside the state, look at only our state plan and they don’t look at all of this context, some of which is very important as well,” Kirst said.

Bellwether Education Partners was one group that released a critical report of California’s plan saying it wouldn’t meet the minimum federal requirements. Education advocacy organization Children Now was also critical of the state’s plan and predicted parts of it would not gain federal approval. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ department has rejected some plans that did not set ambitious enough goals.

State Board of Education President Michael Kirst on Wednesday.

But Kirst and other state officials contended that the plan will meet federal guidelines.

California education officials have viewed its ESSA plan as a compliance document with the federal government, calling it essentially a grant application.The plan is needed in order to receive federal funds. California receives about $8.1 billion in federal funds, out of a total $92 billion state education budget. Of the federal money, $2.5 billion is covered by ESSA.

Board member Feliza Ortiz-Licon, who voted against approval of the plan, appeared frustrated that she couldn’t convince her colleagues to put in stronger language around how achievement gaps would be narrowed.

“One of the things that has been a bit of a heartbreak for me is that we haven’t addressed, not even in a minimum way for a grant, the notion of narrowing achievement gaps, the notion of setting interim growth targets, the notion of how will we accelerate the growth of those subgroups lagging furthest behind.”

Ortiz-Licon noted the plan would likely outlive the board members because the federal education law may not be reauthorized for 10 to 15 years.

“Our good intentions, because I know we all have them, won’t matter if it’s not documented somewhere that we committed to narrowing achievement gaps in California for California students …,” she said. “I really apologize to folks who looked to me to help move this along. I wasn’t able to.”

‘INEFFECTIVE TEACHER’ DEFINITION

One of the changes from the August draft plan involved the definition of an ineffective teacher. The federal law requires that states report whether low-income students are disproportionately taught by uncredentialed, misassigned, and ineffective teachers. The board voted to remove the word “full” from the definition that a teacher must have a full credential to be considered effective. Under that definition, intern teachers would not have been considered effective. The state received lots of feedback from stakeholders on this topic, including from Teach for America, whose corps members are intern teachers.

Board member Patricia A. Rucker, who also voted against the plan, said she had hoped to address the distribution of ineffective teachers and how districts would be held accountable for having an unequal proportion of unqualified teachers at low-performing schools. She said she hoped the conversation would happen after the plan was submitted as districts are developing their LCAP spending plans.

“The fact is interns tend to be collectively placed at some of the lowest-performing schools, at some of the hardest to staff schools, and some of the hardest to teach subjects with students who would be considered our priority students,” Rucker said.

Some groups, like The Education Trust-West, didn’t think the definition of an ineffective teacher was strong enough because it doesn’t take into account a teacher’s ability to affect student outcomes.

The California Teachers Association opposed removing the word “full.” A spokesman told the board he believed the decision to change the definition was “rushed” and “ill-conceived.”

Brian Rivas, director of policy and government relations for Ed Trust-West, said he believes the state’s ESSA plan was a way to pursue civil rights for low-income students and students of color.

“We’re disappointed. We think this is a missed opportunity to weave together all of the disparate parts … to move the needle for students who need the most help,” Rivas said.

The CDE received 368 letters, many of them form letters, from organizations and individuals about the August draft plan. Most of the comments had to do with including visual and performing arts curriculum references in the state plan.

Most of the public comments the board heard Wednesday were about the definition of an ineffective teacher.

Another change to the plan that was approved was a technical change that made clear that lowest-performing schools would be identified by high schools that had a graduation rate of 67 percent or less in addition to schools that have all red indicators on the state Dashboard or one orange and the rest red.

It will likely be several months before the state hears back from the federal government about its plan.

After the state submits its plan by Sept. 18, California and U.S. education officials will have a two-hour closed-door meeting to discuss the plan and any issues the federal peer reviewers had. Then the feds will provide formal feedback to the state.

If the state sticks to its guns about some of the aspects of the plan, there could be a drawn-out battle between state officials and the federal government.

Haena Shin

By Haena Shin

Teachers can tell when they are effective. In my first year as a special education teacher in a pre-kindergarten setting, the signs were small but profound — a nonverbal student who started to greet me in the mornings, a student who didn’t know how to hold a pencil properly who learned to write full sentences about books he read, a student who memorized over 100 sight words, and a student who didn’t know his numbers who began to start adding and subtracting.

My principal also noted this growth, and his vote of confidence helped me earn a Rookie of the Year award at Los Angeles Unified School District while I was teaching on an intern credential.

It’s this experience that makes me seriously doubt the California State Board of Education’s new plan to label thousands of teachers as “ineffective” based solely on the credential they bring to the classroom, not their or their students’ performance. In fact, many of the fellow intern credentialed teachers that I have taught with have not only shown mastery of classroom management and instruction but also exceeded the expectations of their administrators and were recognized at their school sites.

By September 18, every state must submit a school quality plan to the U.S. Department of Education under the Every Student Succeeds Act or ESSA. One component of the plan addresses teacher quality, in an effort to inform parents and taxpayers if schools are providing strong teachers to all of our students.

Earlier this month, the board of education proposed that all teachers who complete a traditional teacher training program and hold a “full” license would be considered effective, regardless of how they or their students are performing. All teachers enrolled in a nontraditional, intern credential pathway – like the one I was in my first two years – would be considered ineffective.

Born and raised in Koreatown, I was aware that not all students were getting the same quality of education. As a student in LAUSD, I noticed this disparity when I saw friends in more affluent communities receive funding for summer abroad trips to Europe and engineering programs. Respectively, I would hear stories of students in less fortunate communities who had to sit on the floor during the first month of school and share textbooks due to a shortage in school supplies.

As I approached graduation from UCLA, I wanted to address that inequity by becoming a teacher. I looked at graduate school programs but realized I would need to work for a couple of years before I could afford to take the traditional path. That’s when I discovered a nontraditional program that would allow me to work as a salaried teacher for up to two years, under the supervision of instructional coaches, while I earned my full credential. It offered an AmeriCorps grant to help offset my education expenses if I worked in a high-poverty school, exactly where I felt I could make the most difference. And I was surrounded by a network of experienced and resourceful educators who offered their knowledge and expertise in the classroom.

My experience is not unique. Thousands of teachers of color and individuals who, due to family obligations, need a salary while going to school enter the teaching profession on one of California’s 77 accredited intern pathways each year. In fact, the intern pathway is California’s most diverse pipeline – nearly half of intern credentialed teachers identify as people of color, compared to 34 percent of the teaching workforce and 76 percent of students.

This fall, I start my third year in the classroom. All of my students are diagnosed with Autism, varying on the spectrum. Each has an individual learning plan tailored to their needs and abilities. I will meet with my school administrators and parents regularly to chart their growth. It strikes me disingenuous for the state to claim I was ineffective my first year but will be effective this year and every year going forward without ever looking at any benchmarks.

I urge the state board to adopt a definition of teacher effectiveness that considers students’ learning and growth. It is imperative that the state board continues to validate teachers based on the growth of their whole students academically, mentally, and emotionally. Especially in high-need communities where teacher shortages continue to remain a problem, we must empower and support the teachers who strive to make a difference.

Haena Shin was a 2015 Rookie of the Year at LAUSD, earned her master’s degree in urban education from Loyola Marymount University, and served in the 2015 Teach For America-Los Angeles corps. 

Sixth-grade student from South LA Semaias Muralles speaking at an ESSA hearing in Sacramento before the state Board of Education.

California’s plan to comply with federal education law comes up short in nine key areas and is destined to have portions rejected, according to the influential California advocacy organization Children Now.

Based on federal feedback to states that have already submitted their plans, the Oakland-based nonprofit, nonpartisan education advocacy organization has sent letters to the state Board of Education showing areas where California’s draft 100-page plan doesn’t meet the requirements of the federal law or falls short in supporting California’s most vulnerable children. The Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, was enacted by President Barack Obama to give states more local control and move away from a singular emphasis on test scores.

California must submit its plan to the U.S. Department of Education on Sept. 18.

Bellwether Education Partners released its evaluation of California’s ESSA plan last week. It has conducted a peer review of the state’s draft plan and issued low grades for how California proposes to measure student proficiency and growth and to identify schools and students most in need of support.

• Read more: ESSA reviewers call out California’s plan as weak on identifying low-performing students and schools

In addition, Children Now has highlighted specific areas where they are concerned California won’t adhere to the federal law, including an inability to determine whether achievement gaps are closing, to measure individual student growth, and to fully identify low-performing schools.

“Our broad take is that inherently this plan does not focus on providing assurances for at-risk populations and doesn’t focus on close measuring, reporting on, or monitoring whether there’s closures in achievement gaps,” said Robert Manwaring, an education policy and fiscal adviser at Children Now. “We think that’s really problematic.”

One of the problems is the approach the state is using with its new California School Dashboard that measures several indicators of how well a school is doing. “In order to identify low-performing schools, the state has to combine these indicators that weren’t set up so that they could be effectively combined,” Manwaring said. Much to the chagrin of some advocacy groups, the state Board of Education opted not to rank schools by a single number or a grade, as some other states do and as was done in the past through California’s Academic Performance Index.

The state board has taken a bare-bones approach to its ESSA plan, viewing it as a compliance document, Manwaring said. But Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ department has surprised some states by taking a hardline approach and sending back some plans for not being ambitious enough.

But just because something is not included in the plan, it doesn’t mean the state isn’t doing it, state education officials have countered.

So what happens if the feds reject California’s plan? In short, needy kids won’t be getting the help they need anytime soon.

After the state submits its plan by Sept. 18, California and U.S. education officials will have a two-hour closed door meeting to discuss the plan and any issues the federal peer reviewers had. Then the feds will provide formal feedback to the state.

Then, if California decides to stick to their guns about their plan, there could be many years of back and forth between the feds and the state, which has battled with federal officials before over science tests, Manwaring said.

The result could be a delay in an authentic accountability system and getting resources to schools that need it most, he said.

Here is a breakdown of the key areas where Children Now says California’s ESSA plan falls short or does not meet federal requirements:

1 — Are achievement gaps closing?

“The biggest issue that this plan faces is it’s just simply not measuring achievement gaps very well,” Manwaring said.

The state says low-performing schools will have seven years to improve and meet goals, but the state is leaving it up to local districts to determine whether they’re making progress and how they will report progress is being made. For example, the state has set a goal of a 90 percent graduation rate, but the plan does not identify how the state will track this goal for sub groups like Latinos or African-Americans and how schools are progressing toward the goal. Children Now says federal law requires that states look at achievement gaps among sub groups and requires faster improvement for groups and schools farthest behind.

Closing achievement gaps is a goal of the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, which gives more money to districts for English learners, foster youth, and low-income students. But it is unclear if districts are actually spending the money on programs for these targeted groups, and three years in, achievement gaps have not decreased, Manwaring said.

2 — It doesn’t measure student growth, unlike 17 plans submitted so far.

So far, California’s plan does not measure individual student growth over time. Instead, it measures school growth year-to-year, which is based on different cohorts. Third-grade test scores at a school could improve from one year to the next because a particular class of students is more advanced than the previous year’s third-graders. State Board of Education President Michael Kirst told the LA Times that a student-level growth metric is not required by the law. Seventeen states that have submitted their plans measure individual student growth, according to Children Now.

3 — It doesn’t identify the bottom 5 percent of schools.

Under the federal law, states are required to identify the bottom 5 percent of schools and explain how they will provide additional resources, called interventions, to help these schools improve. In its plan, California will identify these schools based on its California School Dashboard, which gives schools a color in different indicators, red being the lowest and blue being the highest. California will consider schools that have all reds or reds and one orange as low-performing schools, but that will not be enough to identify the entire bottom 5 percent. The state Board of Education has said it will submit a supplemental document to the federal government that will include how it will identify the entire bottom 5 percent.

“That’s a key element of this new plan, and they simply said we won’t even try it until January,” Manwaring said.

4 — What does it take to improve, and how much progress do you have to make to graduate from intervention?

The answer, in this plan, is none, Manwaring said. To fall into the bottom 5 percent of schools, a school has to be declining. To move out of the bottom 5 percent, all a school will likely have to do is stop declining, Manwaring said, even if that school still has horrible outcomes.

“It’s an exceedingly low bar for what our expectations for school turnaround are,” Manwaring said.

5 — What do you do if you’re a small school?

There are many small elementary schools that will have only one color score — for their suspension rates — because standardized tests aren’t taken until third grade, according to Children Now. Some charter and rural schools with odd grade configurations will not have enough students to record results. They need 30 students to report a group.

6 — Some kids are just dropped out altogether.

Students who attend alternative high schools won’t count in the accountability system. Alternative high schools are independent study programs for students who are at risk of dropping out or short of credits. Alternative schools are not part of the state accountability system and are not included in districts’ graduation and dropout rates.

“You’ve taken the most at-risk kids and said they don’t count,” Manwaring said, something he believes the federal government will flag.

7 — It doesn’t assess 11th-graders’ proficiency.

Instead of high schools being accountable for 11th-grade assessments (the only year the tests are taken in high school), as required by the federal law, California will substitute its college and career readiness indicator that it is developing as part of its dashboard, which combines 11th-grade test scores with AP test scores, whether students are on track to meet A-G requirements that make them eligible for the state’s public universities, and career technical course completion.

Measuring college and career readiness is a good idea, but how California opted to do this didn’t take into account the requirements of federal law, Manwaring said.

8 — It lacks a standard definition of English learner reclassification.

Long-term English learners, who are English learners who have not mastered the language after six years, are considered to be making progress even if they don’t have improved scores on the CELDT (California English Language Development Test), a test that determines English proficiency.

“It is as though California is saying, ‘It’s OK for these kids not to make progress, to stagnant there and not get reclassified,’” Manwaring said. He said the California plan writes around federal requirements for a transparent reclassification process.

9 — The bar for test scores is too low.

The standards that the state sets for English and math tests are too low and should not be tolerated, Manwaring said.

Manwaring said an issue with using the colors in the dashboard is there is a “massive range” in the colors. Two schools could receive a yellow — the middle grade — for test scores, but students at one school could be performing above grade level while students at the other school are performing three years behind grade level. The shared color suggests that schools are similar, but they might not be, Manwaring said.

“Yellow gets a pass in this accountability system. Maintained low performance is tolerated.”

By Seth Litt

On July 12, the California Board of Education met to discuss the state’s plan to comply with the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which must be approved and submitted by September. Board President Michael Kirst opened the conversation with a defense of the draft plan, which offers no commitment on how the state will improve its lowest-performing schools and little urgency for when these improvements might happen.

Kirst said, “Why cede control over an evolving state accountability system to the federal government? The state plan is essentially a contract with the federal government.”

This was a telling explanation of California’s education status quo.

He was right that the plan is essentially a contract. A contract, after all, is an enforceable commitment, something that binds people to one another. And, since contracts are enforceable, it’s clear that people at the highest levels of California’s education leadership hope to duck accountability by drafting a plan light on specifics and mute on any commitment to close the racial and economic opportunity gaps that plague our education system.

This is being done in the hope that California will retain maximum freedom to do things as it sees fit — or, as Sacramento has dubbed it, The California Way. However, it is becoming evident that a core tenet of The California Way is avoiding any obligations to the children who attend the state’s lowest-performing schools, lest anyone in power be held responsible for ensuring that our schools improve and all students have effective teachers.

Despite Sacramento’s bad faith, the families in the Parent Power Network, who come from California’s historically underserved communities, have a different perspective. Families don’t see California’s ESSA plan as a heavy-handed contract between the state and the federal government. They see the plan as the opportunity for a contract between California and our state’s children.

Experience tells them such a contract is essential. They know firsthand what it’s like to wait for schools to improve and see no changes. Some have seen children across decades being failed by the same underperforming school. Along the way, they’ve received plenty of promises and plans. But public school families have learned the hard way that unless they get an enforceable commitment from a principal, a superintendent, or even the governor, the only guarantee they have is that nothing will improve.

These families have also learned that even when the state government affirms a commitment to make schools better, the forces of the status quo will line up to stand in their way. In 2010, California passed the Parent Empowerment Act, a law that gave families the right to take collective action to improve the lowest-performing schools in the state. When families throughout Southern California attempted to use the law, districts tried every trick they could think of to block change, grasping unsuccessfully for cynical and technical reasons to deny families their rights.

In Anaheim, families sued the school district and won. The district appealed, and in a sweeping and binding ruling, the appellate court ruled that families have a right to use the law. When California’s Supreme Court declined to hear the district’s appeal this month, the right of parents to improve California’s lowest-performing schools was, once and for all, affirmed.

In Los Angeles, the new school board has taken an important step by committing to an agenda that puts kids first. Whether or not local and state boards step up to do the same, parents will continue to use the rights provided by California law and affirmed by the courts to ensure that their children get the education they deserve.

Our state Constitution, the contract between Californians and their government, promises a free and equal education to all students. Every day, hundreds of thousands of teachers from Eureka to El Centro show up to shape the future of children, and every day parents entrust their children to teachers because they trust the commitment of educators to students. The promise of a free and equal public education represents the best of us, our social contract at work.

This year, there have been lots of reasons to be proud to be a Californian. The reckless actions of the Trump administration have sparked fierce resistance in our state, and California’s elected officials have doubled down on their commitments by protecting the rights of immigrants, caring for the environment, and standing up for affordable health care.

How embarrassing that vulnerable children stuck in our worst schools somehow don’t figure into this shared compact, as our education leaders will commit to nothing.

Seth Litt is executive director of Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles nonprofit organization that supports public school families to make change with their choices and voices.

Ryan Smith is the executive director of The Education Trust- West. (Courtesy photo)

At an event filled with 500 Los Angeles education leaders, Ryan Smith, executive director of The Education Trust -West, highlighted the urgent need to ensure that low-income students of color get the best education possible — and how to do it with what he calls “The California Way.”

Smith is director of the research and advocacy organization focused on educational justice and high academic achievement for all California students, particularly those of color and living in poverty. The educators gathered last Thursday at the 2017 Student Achievement Symposium presented by Los Angeles County Office of Education to discuss current issues including the California school dashboard, the California accountability model, policy and strategies to support English learners, and how to create family and community engagement.

In an interview with LA School Report, Smith, who previously directed the education programs and policy efforts for United Way of Greater Los Angeles and worked for former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, talked about what he believes are the crucial next steps in education in California, including the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Plan, and why it is crucial for educators to understand “The California Way.”

What did you find out at the event was the educators’ main interest or concern?

There was a real commitment and focus among educators on what does equity look like, what’s the definition of equity, how do we realize equity day to day in our classrooms and communities. For example, in communities like Compton, schools perform really below the state average, so how do we ensure that low-income students and students of color get the best education possible.

What kind of data was highlighted in your presentation?

I was able to share data like the amount of Latinos and black students that don’t graduate with their cohort in four years could fill the Staples Center more than three times. At the current rate of growth for English learners in the state as far as the math standards, all English learners won’t meet those standards until the year 2103.

What is the California Way on education?

It is an approach with the idea that in the age of local control and the redesign of our new accountability system we need to do more to provide teacher support, and to provide opportunities for schools and districts to improve as well as to make sure that we’re trusting our educators. It’s supposed to swing away from the No Child Left Behind era.

I would say the California way must focus its attention on equity. One out of five students is an English learner, three out of five are black or Latino, three out of five are low income, so the California way has to be centered on equity. And I think we need to ensure that communities trust schools in districts. We need to ask districts to partner with parents and community members in order to ensure that all students have the opportunity to have college or a rewarding career.

What is your position on the state ESSA plan presented to the California Board of Education last week?

I would say the current draft of the plan should go further on being explicit about equity. We hope that as the state continues to work on the state plan that there’s real intention on improving the contents so it’s supportive of low-income students and students of color.

I would encourage the state board of education to continue to improve the ESSA state plan.

What do the people of California need to know about the state of education right now?

I would just say that if ever there was a time for the general public to be engaged in education in California, now is that time. With the move toward Local Control (LCFF) and the federal ESSA law passing, a lot is changing and we need to get as much input from the community as possible. We need as much parent and community involvement as possible too.

Teacher advocacy groups are concerned that California’s definition of an ineffective teacher is too loose and won’t be bolstered before the state has to turn in its federal accountability plan in two months.

Each state must submit its plan to comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act by Sept. 18, and one accountability measure is ensuring that low-income and minority students are not disproportionately taught by inexperienced or incompetent teachers.

But this week, the state Board of Education approved a vague definition that observers say is not as robust as some of the states that have already turned in their plans to the federal government. California is one of 34 states yet to submit their plan.

“We are very disappointed in the way it is so far,” said Daniel Weisberg, the CEO of TNTP, an education nonprofit that helps school systems across the country end educational inequality. “California’s loose definition of an ineffective teacher is not good for teachers overall.”

In the California ESSA plan, the definition of an ineffective teacher is someone who lacks their full credentials or is assigned to teach the wrong grade level or class. It does not measure teacher performance.

• Exclusive interactive map shows states’ progress in finalizing ESSA plans

• Read more: Accountability and school improvement are top concerns as Angelenos give input on California’s ESSA plan

Weisberg pointed out that especially after the Vergara v. California case, the state Board of Education should be more vigorous about setting standards.

“Vergara showed robust and undisputed evidence that there are still major issues of ineffective teachers throughout the state, regardless of the outcome of the litigation,” Weisberg said. “To not address that inequity will harm millions of kids.”

The Vergara case challenged teacher tenure laws and held that students had a right to be taught by an effective teacher. The California Supreme Court declined to review the case last year, and the battle now moves to the California Legislature.

The National Council on Teacher Quality is closely monitoring and reviewing the states’ ESSA plans and their report noted  that Tennessee and New Mexico have good definitions of ineffective teachers.

“New Mexico and Tennessee have multiple objective measures and incorporate a growth percentile, they are very specific,” Weisberg said. “It can be done.”

The definition of an ineffective teacher is one of the most contentious parts of developing an ESSA plan, Weisberg said. “California is not alone with this loose definition.”

Ryan Smith, executive director of The Education Trust – West, wrote a letter to the state board stating, “We are very concerned that the state proposed to define ineffective teachers as those that are miss-assigned or teaching without a full credential. The mark of an effective teacher should be their ability to help students learn.”

EdTrust suggested that the plan include something other than a student’s standardized test scores, such as absentee rates and employment turnover as possible measures.

The Association of California School Administrators wrote that teachers with preliminary credentials or on short-term permits should not be considered ineffective or compared to “a teacher who is fully credentialed but ineffective in instructional practices.”

“We have surveyed and talked to thousands of teachers, and we found out that they are more satisfied working in a place where there is a clear picture of excellence,” Weisberg said. “This will help all teachers.”

The state board’s president, Michael Kirst, said at this week’s meeting that having a loose definition could keep the federal government from meddling with schools in California. The state can amend the plan with more details in the future.

One of the board members, Ting Sun, summed up the discussion up with, “The whole ineffective teacher definition gives me heartburn.”

Sixth-grade student Semaias Muralles from South LA addresses the state board’s ESSA meeting on Wednesday in Sacramento.

Los Angeles parents traveled to Sacramento Wednesday in hopes of making sure their children’s interests will be reflected in the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan, which must be finalized and submitted to the federal government by Sept. 18.

A mother from Compton, Esther Covarrubias, was one of a handful of parents who are members of the Parent Power Network in LA who addressed the state Board of Education. “The state needs to design a plan that truly improves the lowest-performing schools such as the ones I attended when I was 12 years old and I was an ESL student who failed because of the old system,” she said during public comment.

She also urged the board to ensure that the plan can improve schools in poor and minority areas such as South and East LA and Compton — not in three or five years, but now.

“I agree with the plan, but I still feel that they are not presenting improvement plans as urgent, particularly in the lowest-performing schools. There’s no timeline for accountability as well as a plan to assign more funds to those schools,” Covarrubias said.

The California Department of Education at Wednesday’s meeting presented its revisions to the state’s plan based on feedback received from more than 450 survey responses and 700 pages of comments from Californians who participated in the 14 meetings held for the public across the state, in webinars, and in web polls.

• Read more: Accountability and school improvement are top concerns as Angelenos give input on California’s ESSA plan

Some of the revisions were made to include more explicit language on how to have a single integrated accountability system for all school districts, what would be the purpose of assessments, and whether students would take both the California Standardized and Smarter Balanced assessments to measure their level of learning.

Another revision brought to the board concerned the identification of the lowest-performing 5 percent of Title I schools, which are schools with a majority of students coming from low-income families.

“298 schools is what makes up currently of Title I. Now, this will change slightly next year when we release the new dashboard in the fall. By then we’ll have a new count,” said an administrator from the CDE, who also explained that California will get 10 percent to 13 percent of the $400 million of federal funding to be distributed nationally for Title I in fiscal year 2017.

“We want to make sure the state stops making promises of helping our schools and not doing any of what is written on paper. We haven’t seen any improvements with previous plans, so this time we want to see those changes,” said Fidelia Muralles, one of the parents who spoke to the board.

Her son, Semaias Muralles, a sixth-grade student at a charter school in South LA, also spoke at the meeting to ask the board members to put themselves “in his shoes.”

“There needs to be a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C to make sure schools get better. Too many students like me are doing their part. Now we need you to do your part and help us,” he said. He previously attended 20th Street Elementary, an LA Unified school where parents used the state’s “parent trigger” law under the Parent Empowerment Act to demand improvements. As a result, this year it was integrated into the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.

California has to submit its ESSA plan to the U.S. Department of Education in order to receive about $80 billion in federal funding. Some states have already submitted their plans. The deadline for all states is Sept. 18.

• Exclusive: New interactive map shows state progress in finalizing ESSA plans

“Most Californians have approved this plan. We heard feedback from stakeholders, and this plan reflects that,” said Barbara Murchison, who has been collecting the ESSA input from throughout the state since April.

The California State Board members submitted two motions for additional revisions in the Title I and accountability sections and to allow more feedback from stakeholders when a memorandum of the final plan is released in August.

Barbara Murchison is collecting ESSA data for the state.

Only eight people showed up at one of the last chances for parents and educators to give input on the state’s overall school plan that they need to submit in order to get about $80 billion from the federal government.

Their top concerns for the state as it formulates its Every Student Succeeds Act plan were accountability and school improvement.

A teacher, a union rep, a school board member from Azusa, a charter representative, a parent from a private school, and some PTA members attended the 2.5-hour meeting Wednesday evening at the Los Angeles County of Education’s department office in Downey to offer feedback on the state’s ESSA plan.

California needs to submit its plan to the federal Department of Education by Sept. 18 in order to get federal funding. That’s the deadline for 16 other states as well.

“These last meetings may have a low turnout but we are getting robust, fully thought-out ideas and feedback, so that is good,” said Barbara Murchison, who has collected the ESSA input from throughout the state for the last month. It’s been quality, not quantity in the responses, but Murchison has been getting the word out about the ESSA plan for the last year and a half. The latest rendition was available for the past month.

• Read more: Report card time for schools: California Dashboard goes live, but some find it impossible to navigate

The state Board of Education fine-tuned their presentation by dividing up the plan into 11 sections, with each including an explanatory video and also translated into Spanish.

The 11 parts include the education of migratory children, academic achievement grants, homeless assistance, intervention for at-risk youth, and other education issues that the state must provide plans for to the federal government.

“Right now, most groups coming to these meetings are interested in the sections involving accountability and school improvement, and that is the same throughout the state,” Murchison said.

The accountability includes how a school will be graded in conjunction with the new color-coded state report cards. One of the questions for the public is if the non-academic assessment of suspension rates should be graded at the same percentage as English or math test scores.

Many of those attending thought that the assessments, including English learner improvements and chronic absenteeism, should all be weighed the same. But, during the discussion, some of the educators were concerned that some of the non-test criteria could be more easily manipulated.

Some attendees were concerned that schools would be penalized if parents allow their children to opt out of the tests. Suggestions ranged from forbidding students from opting out to offering support for schools where large numbers of students are opting out.

Part of the law involves improving the lowest-performing 5 percent of a state’s schools, and California is trying to figure out how to identify those schools with certain indicators. The state requires assessments for every school, including private and independent charter schools, that receive Title 1 money for low-income populations.

Murchison said the state board asked that the ESSA plan specifically include more language involving equity.

Murchison and Joy Kessel, a consultant involved in the statewide hearings, are collecting the public’s feedback to present to the board and at their next meeting, July 12 and 13. One more very short opportunity for the public to offer input is expected after a final ESSA plan is sent in September.

“This is important because we will be living with this for a long time,” Murchison said. “We are glad to have any and all input, and there are few more chances available.”

Remaining chances for input to the ESSA plan are:

Saturday, June 17, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Bobby Duke Middle School
85-358 Bagdad Street
Coachella, CA 92236

Wednesday, June 21, 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Webinar

Saturday, June 24, 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Webinar
To be part of either webinar, email ESSA@cde.ca.gov.

June 28, 2016, 1–4 p.m.
Los Angeles County Office of Education
9300 Imperial Hwy – EC 281
Downey, CA 90242

State education officials have solicited meetings all month to work out a plan to let the federal education department know how they will help low-achieving students. Some community education leaders said they think the state still has a long way to go.

Two meetings will be held this week in Los Angeles, and two more will be held in online webinars open for everyone to have a say on California’s Every Student Succeeds Act State Plan.

The 30-day public comment period began in Sacramento last month and the California Board of Education decided to hold meetings throughout the state, with flyers explaining the meetings in English and Spanish.

The public comment period ends June 30. The two online webinars are planned for June 21 and 24.

At the earlier public hearings, some of the state board members said they wanted to see a stronger commitment to help the state’s lowest-performing schools, many of them in LA Unified. The draft document will be updated before being presented to the federal government for the $2 billion in Title I funding for low-income students.

About a dozen parent-based groups have already offered testimony, such as Parent Revolution. “The craziest thing about the current plan is that it still has no serious plan at all for what to do about the lowest-performing schools in the state, which is disheartening and something we will continue to speak out about,” said Gabe Rose of Parent Revolution.

ESSA is different from the Local Control Funding Formula money that goes to low-income schools, which also helps many LA Unified schools. Also, Gov. Jerry Brown recently revised the budget to include more money for LCFF, which specifically helps English-language learners, low-income, and foster youth.

LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer and Superintendent Michelle King issued a statement thanking the governor “for his continued focus on fulfilling the commitment to grow K-12 education funding. We are especially grateful for the governor’s efforts to balance fiscal prudence with the needs of all Californians.”

Some of the outreach involves an ESSA toolkit, which includes:

•  A complete draft of the education plan as it stands now that it is split into sections,

•  Explanatory videos detailing the contents of each part of the plan,

•  How to make public comments on the plan,

•  Spanish translations of section summaries,

•  Details showing support for English learners, migrant children, effective instruction, accountability, and assessments.

From the state’s ESSA report.

Seth Litt, the executive director of Parent Revolution, pointed out that as it stands now, the ESSA plan “does not even have a definition of what an ‘ineffective teacher’ is.” Litt also said he was concerned about the vague language in the interventions to help low-achieving schools.

“There are two simple questions that the state’s ESSA plan should answer for families whose children are trapped in the state’s lowest-performing schools, who are largely children of color from historically underserved communities; ‘What will you do to improve my child’s education?’ and ‘How quickly will this happen?'” Litt said. “California’s current ESSA plan makes no credible attempt to answer either question, contains no goals for schools, reflects no sense of urgency for the students that California has failed for generations and is yet another example of California’s education leadership choosing the bureaucracy over children and families.”

The Los Angeles-area meetings take place on Wednesday, June 14, and Thursday, June 15, at the Los Angeles County Board of Education Office, and additional meetings continue to be added throughout the state. The remaining Southern California meetings are at:  

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (Photo by Getty Images)

The Senate voted Wednesday to block Obama administration accountability rules governing how states rate and improve schools under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

The move, which precludes the U.S. Education Department and newly confirmed Secretary Betsy DeVos from issuing any substantially similar regulations, will send even more power back to the states, already retaking the lead in education policy after ESSA’s bipartisan passage in 2015.

In contrast, Thursday’s 50-49 vote to block the regulations using the Congressional Review Act fell almost entirely along party lines, with the exception of Sen. Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, who voted with all the Democrats to keep the accountability rules. Portman said they were needed to protect students “who have too often been marginalized and forgotten.”

That ESSA vote was also a change from Wednesday, when eight Democrats voted with the Republican majority to use the Congressional Review Act to vacate another Obama-era education rule governing teacher preparation programs.

(The 74: Senate Blocks Teacher Preparation Rules, Ending ESSA Accountability Rules on Deck)

Debate over the Obama accountability regulations broadly pitted Democrats, arguing that the rules are necessary to maintain ESSA’s civil rights protections for vulnerable student groups, against Republicans, who said the rules were an overreach that violated the letter and the spirit of the law, whose intent was to send authority for K-12 education back to the states.

Democrats also argued that wielding the Congressional Review Act was too blunt. Once used only rarely, Republicans have taken to the process with gusto, so far using it to block seven Obama administration regulations on everything from mining to guns to federal contracting. Before this Congress, it had only been used successfully once.

Much of what’s included in the regulations is broadly accepted, said Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, and any provisions Republicans don’t like should be fixed through the regular rulemaking process, not by totally banning future regulations.

“This isn’t like these other CRA [resolutions] where Republicans didn’t like any part of it, where Republicans didn’t see any need for the regulation going forward. This is different,” Murphy said Wednesday evening. “We agree on 80 percent of this one, but the 80 percent is likely gone by passing this.”

Sen. James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, said Democrats’ arguments amounted to asking DeVos to fix the mistakes made by the Obama administration by going back and issuing new rules.

Using the Congressional Review Act lets Congress “settle this forever,” Lankford said.

“As long as this law is in place, [the Education Department] can re-promulgate a rule and turn right back around and say Washington, D.C., is going to control teacher evaluation, student success evaluation and school evaluation,” he said. “This ends that forever.”

Civil rights leaders want Washington, D.C. to have strong oversight of those areas. They have been particularly vocal about the need to uphold the ESSA regulations, arguing that a quality education is an equal rights issue that shouldn’t be left up to states’ discretion.

Catherine Lhamon, former assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department, told The 74 the rules were the best judgement of many experts, written through a public process to follow ESSA as laid out by Congress.

“Students in school every day deserve that expertise, and I think blocking that expertise is a serious mistake,” said Lhamon, now the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

State leaders, meanwhile, have emphasized that they’re ready to take the lead on education and the disruption brought by the Congressional Review Act won’t be that great.

Permanently blocking the ESSA rules — already on temporary hold as part of a broader Trump administration freeze on all pending regulations — shouldn’t have a big impact on the states set to submit their plans in early April, said Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Twenty states have said they will submit their plans April 3, according to a list on the Education Department’s website.

Instead, the law banning the Obama-era rules, and whatever guidance DeVos issues in the interim, will have a bigger impact on states submitting on the second, Sept. 18 deadline.

“There will be things that will be confusing, but I think the biggest thing is to not overstate that there will be too much confusion in the states,” Minnich said.

The department should issue guidance — not official regulations, which carry the weight of law and are prohibited by the passage of the Congressional Review Act resolution — in a few discrete areas, Minnich said.

He’d like, for example, some clarity for states on how to incorporate the performance of English language learners into school accountability plans, and how much weight to give academic measures in school accountability systems. The law just says they must have “much greater” weight than non-academic measures, like school climate surveys or access to advanced coursework.

Minnich also said states might need guidance on how they should include the mandate that 95 percent of students participate in standardized tests into school accountability systems, given that the law also protects students who opt out of the exams.

“The law does give states the clarity they need, and there may be a need for additional backing on certain areas, but we think states are the ones that are going to be leading the conversation as we implement this law,” he added.

Kirsten Baesler, superintendent of public instruction in North Dakota, echoed that idea, saying her state is well on its way.

North Dakota state leaders convened a group of stakeholders that met monthly starting in May of last year, and officials have a public plan that they’ll take to the governor for his OK next week, she said.

“The regulations really had no significant impact on those primary commitments that we had,” she said.

North Dakota never received a waiver from the No Child Left Behind standards, so has been operating under its restrictions for 15 years, and leaders are eager to begin a new system, Baesler said.

At this point, her only question is on the specific format the Education Department wants the plans to follow, she said.

DeVos pledged to get states more information on state plan requirements by March 13, ahead of the first April 3 submission deadline.

In that letter, she said her rules would require only information “absolutely necessary” for the consideration of state plans.

“One of my main priorities as secretary is to ensure that states and local school districts have clarity during the early implementation of the law. Additionally, I want to ensure that regulations comply with the requirements of the law, provide the state and local flexibility that Congress intended, and do not impose unnecessary burdens,” she wrote.

The Education Department did not respond to questions on what issues DeVos’s new guidance may or may not touch, which groups are being consulted as that guidance is being drafted, or what, if any, feedback the department has received about the issue generally.

A department spokesperson in an email to The 74 last week emphasized that states should continue moving forward with their plans, and that the regulatory delay [created first by the broader freeze and now the Congressional Review Act measure] should not adversely affect or delay progress in implementing ESSA.

By Misti D. Kemmer

Just last Thursday, I experienced one of those especially emotional days at work.

I got a call that the mother of one of my fourth-grade students had passed away. Not five minutes later, another student went to the back of the room, sat down in a chair and began to cry. I asked him what was wrong, if he’d been hurt, if something happened at home. No response. He just sat there as tears streamed down his face. Since he wouldn’t respond to me, I followed school protocol and called for the school counselor or psychologist to come help him — and me.

But our school hasn’t funded these positions for Thursdays.

There is no one trained to deal with grief counseling, no one to help with a non-responsive child sitting in the back of the room. Even the nurse is only district-funded for one day a week. The school pays for the other four out of our budget.

I work in a 100 percent Title I school in South Los Angeles. This means 100 percent of our student population lives in poverty. As I forced a smile for the rest of the faces looking up at me, my mind couldn’t help but wander to the recent headlines about the “supplement, not supplant” regulations being removed from the new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA.  

Did I just have a foreshadowing day of future days to come? In schools like mine, we need staff and resources beyond a typical school. We have students living in extreme poverty, many students who live in foster care or are homeless, students in abusive homes and students with parents in jail. We need counselors, a psychologist, attendance counselors and intervention teachers to help our students succeed.

With this change in the law, I am very concerned that next school year will be much like what I saw last Thursday. I am worried that a student will witness something in the neighborhood and need a counselor, and we won’t have one because the budget didn’t allow for it. Will we be able to fund a full-time nurse? Will we have to choose between a nurse or a counselor, weighing the options between physical and mental health for children as young as 4?

My heart breaks at the decision made to remove the supplement not supplant regulation, and I sincerely hope that it will not be a vision of days to come. I urge lawmakers, Mrs. DeVos, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, and anyone else involved in education decisions for our country to remember our neediest students. Please remember our students, who by virtue of ZIP code are the educational “have nots.” Think about our students living in trauma, poverty and gang-ridden neighborhoods when you decide what comes next for this law. Please don’t forget how much they need more than students in affluent or even middle-class neighborhoods.  

Today, I may face another motherless child and may have to get to the bottom of another crying friend at the back of the room. I just hope the counselor is funded for Fridays.

Misti D. Kemmer is a fourth-grade teacher at Russell Elementary School and a member of Educators 4 Excellence-Los Angeles.

This is the last in a three-part series examining California’s approach to education data and school accountability. Part One surveyed how the state’s skepticism of test-based accountability starts at the top with Gov. Jerry Brown, who successfully took on the federal government; Part Two explored how the elimination of certain data systems has limited educational research in one of the country’s most consequential states.

California is hoping to redefine school accountability in the “California Way.”

While state officials are hard at work designing a system in line with the oversights demanded by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the new federal K-12 education law, they also want to remain true to the state’s ethos of de-emphasizing test scores and focusing on helping — rather than “punishing” — struggling schools.

“We have had now basically three years without a functioning accountability system and we’re approaching the moment when we actually have to put something in place,” said David Plank, a Stanford professor and executive director of the research group Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE).

A report released in May by a task force convened by the state superintendent lays out a series of metrics — beyond standardized test scores — for judging schools, but says little about what happens to the ones that persistently score poorly.

The system will also be crucial to the future of the state’s public schools, which grapple with limited funding and poor data systems that make it difficult to track areas where improvement is needed. California students post some of the lowest test scores in the country on federal exams and while, fairly wealthy, the state spends among the least on K-12 education.

As other states face similar tensions, California’s approach may point to the future of accountability across the country as one of ESSA’s pillars is devolving power from the federal government. The state appears on the verge of designing a system that moves beyond a narrow focus on math and reading test scores while including measures of equity, such as suspensions and expulsions, which fall disproportionately on special education students and those of color.

At the same time, it’s not clear that there’s the political will to give accountability any teeth — to intervene, and even, in some cases, sanction schools that are low-performing year after year by, for instance, labeling them as failing or dismissing staff.

Accountability but then what

The state must balance an array of competing interests in creating a new system for evaluating schools. California has to meet still-to-be-finalized federal guidelines under ESSA, while creating coherence between those new rules and its already-planned system for district-focused accountability.

Many want the state to continue to avoid a focus on test scores and accountability that imposes strict fixes; yet a number of advocates say California needs to intervene in schools that flounder year after year.

The plan is for school-based accountability to be underway in the 2017-18 school year — but many details need to be worked out before then.

Last month, the “accountability and continuous improvement” advisory task force, convened by state Superintendent Tom Torlakson, put out a list of metrics for judging schools, many of which were backed by the state Board of Education. The group was co-chaired by Eric Heins, head of the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, and Wes Smith, executive director of the Association of California School Administrators.

In interviews, several task force members praised the group’s recommendations and collaborative approach.

Samantha Tran, of the nonprofit Children Now, was one of them. She described the task force’s two main camps: the “traditional education community” and a “number of equity advocates.” In the former, she included administrators groups, teachers unions and school board associations, among others, and in the latter, she included herself and others concerned with ensuring measures of equality were included.

“We really pushed on each other in terms of (our) bottom line — what were key things that people wanted to make sure were reflected in the report, so at the end of the day, we could all sign on to it,” Tran said.

The task force agreed that schools should be judged on a variety of measures, including tests scores, rates of suspension/expulsion, chronic absenteeism, college and career readiness, and high school graduation rates.

But the report was much less clear on what interventions look like when schools are deemed low-performing. The task force’s explanatory graphic speaks to the complex nature of the undertaking and in some cases a lack of clarity.

“The idea that large proportions of schools would be held accountable was taken off the table pretty quickly,” said University of Southern California professor Morgan Polikoff, also a task force member. Polikoff said the focus was largely based on what measures to use, “not what would happen based on those measures.”

“In the first meeting…I said, ‘There’s a quite robust (research) literature that suggests that consequential accountability improves outcomes for kids,’ and that comment was not well received,” Polikoff said, referring to studies showing that No Child Left Behind and state accountability systems have had positive impacts on student achievement.

There is little discussion about what, if anything, will happen to struggling schools in the state report. It promises to “ensure significant, sustained, evidence-based interventions in priority … schools” through “mandatory … (technical assistance) and supports that build (local educational agency)/school capacity to sustain improvement over time” for schools “that need more comprehensive and intensive supports to make major improvements in performance and/or growth.”

What, precisely, a “significant, sustained, and evidence-based intervention” is remains unstated. There has been much talk of reducing “punitive” sanctions against schools — but one person’s interventions may be another’s punishment.

“The ‘what happens’ question has not been answered,” said Peter Birdsall, task force member and the executive director of the California County Superintendents.

ESSA requires intervention in certain schools — those in the bottom 5 percent statewide; high schools where fewer than two-in-three students graduate — and specifically that those steps be “evidence-based.” But it largely leaves it up to the states, like California, to decide what the steps are.

But in echoes of recent history, California’s vision of accountability may in some cases run headlong into Washington, D.C.’s approach. Proposed federal guidelines for ESSA say that schools must be assigned a single, summative performance rating. California’s task force recommendations — released prior to the federal rules — suggests a “dashboard” approach that gives schools scores across multiple dimensions but avoids assigning them an aggregate rating.

California’s lack of robust state data systems may also make implementing the accountability system challenging since it will rely on a variety of new measures that must be accurately collected and reported.

“That came up repeatedly in conversations, where folks were in essence saying, ‘We don’t really have the capacity or systems to do this now,’” said Polikoff, who hopes that putting multiple measures into the rating system will force the state to create the necessary data infrastructure.

Accountability applied with nuance

Even those pushing for state oversight and accountability with consequences say they don’t want to return to what some see as an overemphasis on test scores, which led to inflexible sanctions imposed on poorly performing schools.

“There’s a desire … to think about a continuum that really does start with support,” said Tran of Children Now. “Education is a human endeavor. The construct of we’re going to fire the principal and half the teachers — that may make sense in a certain school, but what if you just hired this phenomenal principal and things are starting to turn around, but there’s another dynamic that’s at play?

“You almost need a little bit more judgment to go in and still apply that pressure because that pressure is important,” she added, “but have a more nuanced response based on the context of the school and the district.”

John Affeldt, of the nonprofit law firm Public Advocates, has been critical of accountability aspects that are too focused on test scores and said the measures being discussed now in California move in the right direction. However, he said, “I’m not supportive of no accountability and no consequences. … If we’re going to do support and assistance, then let’s make sure it’s working.”

Putting in place any sort of sanctions for struggling schools may still face an uphill political battle, considering the long-standing opposition of Gov. Jerry Brown and politically powerful state teachers unions.

“I’m concerned. We are seeing progress in the conversation around creating a more meaningful accountability system. However, we need to know clearly what supports and interventions our students are going to receive,” said Ryan Smith of Education Trust – West, which advocates for the achievement of students of color and those living in poverty.

Others argue that sanctions for low-performing schools do more harm than good.

“I do think that schools that are so-called ‘low performing’ should get the carrot rather than stick approach,” said Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers, the smaller of the two statewide teachers unions. “I taught at an inner-city high school in Los Angeles for many, many years … and people at that school worked their tails off. … We needed additional resources; we didn’t need to be sanctioned.”

A California Teachers Association spokesperson said in an email that the union was “providing input” on accountability but declined to comment beyond that.

“It’s more important to get it right, than to do it fast,” Heins, the CTA president and task force co-chair, wrote in a letter to the state Board of Education.

Brown’s spokesperson directed a request for comment to the state school board, whose spokesperson then pointed back to Brown’s budget message this year, which said the state plans “to establish an accountability system that provides a more accurate picture of school performance and progress than the past system.”

Meanwhile, a bill laying out metrics for accountability recently passed the state Assembly and is now in the Senate. Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, the bill’s sponsor, said her proposal shares significant overlap with the task force recommendations, which Weber said relied partially on her bill. But both are needed, she said, suggesting that task force recommendations don’t always translate into real action.

“We feel very strongly that our bill still needs to exist, because we know how task forces go,” she said.

Even Weber’s bill though does not specify interventions for struggling schools.

Rewards vs. sanctions

Many in California believe that past accountability and intervention systems have not worked. Research on California school interventions is limited — perhaps because the data needed to study the state’s education system is hard to come by — but there is some evidence from which to draw.

It shows that intervention and accountability systems can make a difference — often for good, but sometimes for ill.

A specific assistance and intervention program for certain low-performing districts — led by California and mandated by No Child Left Behind — showed positive results as measured by math test scores; so did a 2009 federal school turnaround grant that awarded up to $2 million each to some of California’s lowest-performing schools. The initiative was particularly successful in schools that dismissed their principal and half the teaching staff.

A 2013 paper, though, found that achievement decreased in California schools that were sanctioned for not hitting targets for certain disadvantaged groups, such as students of color or low-income students.

But a national study found that racial achievement gaps shrunk in states like Mississippi and Oklahoma when more stringent accountability pressure was based on the performance of vulnerable student groups. In general, No Child Left Behind — and its state-level precursors — produced gains in student achievement but also led to unintended consequences, like cheating and teaching to the test.

One of the most thorough studies of accountability examined the impact of Texas’ approach, which sanctioned persistently struggling schools while rewarding high-performing ones. The research found students in schools facing pressure to avoid a low rating scored higher on standardized tests, and, most importantly, graduated college more frequently and earned more money as adults. However, in high-performing schools eligible for extra recognition, struggling students were less likely to graduate college and made less money at age 25.

Despite questions of its effectiveness, California’s task force recommendations seem to place a greater emphasis on rewarding and recognizing high-achieving schools rather than putting pressure on low-performing ones to improve.

“Every single draft (of the recommendations) that came out … I kept copying and pasting the same thing, which was, ‘I don’t know why we’re spending so much space on awards; I know of virtually no evidence that those help kids,’” said Polikoff.

A leap of faith

California is known for a lot of things: vibrant and beautiful cities, an innovative economy and a top-notch state university system.

But when it comes to its K-12 public schools, California has far less to brag about. Its students score among the worst in the country on federal fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading tests. Across states, California ranked 46th, only slightly better than Alabama and a bit worse than Mississippi, according to one careful analysis that adjusted for demographic differences, like student poverty and English proficiency.

The reasons are complex and difficult to pin down, but a 2007 report by some of the state’s top researchers identified three major issues: a complex, inequitable and inadequate school funding system; the difficulty in firing ineffective teachers, and a lack of infrastructure to collect and use data. A 2012 follow-up report said that many of these problems remained.

Since then, there has been significant progress on school funding equity: Gov. Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula is designed to drive more money to schools serving disadvantaged students, while also enhancing local flexibility to use that money. The amount of money though remains an issue, and there are numerous concerns that the new funding is not reaching the students it’s meant to help.

By all estimates, California had for years spent among the least per pupil of any state in the country: $7,348 in 2013 vs. New York’s $16,726, according to the most recent comparable data. Voters passed a tax increase raising billions to better fund education in 2012, which appears to have helped significantly but still has not completely closed the gap between California and other states. In April, a state appeals court rejected a lawsuit backed by the nonprofit law firm Public Advocates arguing the state was inadequately funding schools; an appeal was filed to the state Supreme Court earlier this month.

In other respects, the state has seemingly made less progress. The weak data infrastructure remains, though a renewed push to improve it has cropped up. The well-known Vergara lawsuit claiming it’s all but impossible to fire an ineffective tenured teacher has been appealed to the state Supreme Court, after being thrown out by the Court of Appeal in April.

Political transitions also loom. By 2019, term limits guarantee that a new governor and state superintendent will take office — considering how fundamentally Brown’s philosophy of local control and distaste for data has shaped California’s education policy, the next governor may make a big difference.

This comes amid the backdrop of the state’s efforts to redesign the accountability system, which still has numerous unanswered questions. What will happen to struggling schools? How will the state merge its district-focused accountability system with ESSA’s school-focused one? How aggressive a role will the federal government play? Will the state legislature step in?

For now, at least, California continues to tread its own path — one other states, newly empowered by the end of No Child Left Behind and the dawning of ESSA, may follow.

“There’s a quite radical move away from ‘test-and-punish’ to creating a culture of ‘continuous improvement’ and that is a leap of faith,” said Plank of the research group PACE. “We have no idea whether we can make this work or not.”

This article was published in partnership with The 74.

It’s early days to know how ESSA — and decisions based on these ongoing conversations — will affect America’s dual language learners (DLLs). But we might be able to get a sense of the new law’s strengths and weaknesses by looking to California’s “Local Control Accountability Plans” (LCAPs), which some see as a conceptual model for ESSA’s decentralized approach. Like ESSA, California’s LCAPs maintain centralized sources of funding, but push decisionmaking and accountability attached to those dollars as locally as possible. (Note: the funding side of LCAPs is knowns as the LCFF — the Local Control Funding Formula.)

So: how’s California’s new model going?

Last month, Californians Together, Public Advocates, and The Education Trust-West put out reports that suggest that the local plans are not working well for dual language learners. (For EdSource’s deeper coverage of the three reports, click here) The policy’s basic idea is something like this: California provides increased “supplemental” funding for supporting underserved students — including DLLs — and allows districts considerable latitude to decide how to serve those students. The funds are still intended for serving these particular students, but districts have control over how they’ll use them. That is, instead of prescribing that all funds for DLLs be used to fund one of a handful state-specified school activities, the LCAP system requires districts to work with educators and members of the community to develop strategies suited to their students’ needs.

Yet Californians Together’s report found that “the vast majority of LCAPs lack specific attention to strengthening or providing coherent programs, services, and supports for [DLLs], and fail to address issues of access to program and curriculum.” This appears to be a problem beyond just dual language learners. Education Trust-West concluded that “it is impossible in most cases to trace whether supplemental/concentration funds followed the high-need students who generated them.”

We’ll see how the regulations play out, but if states have an appetite (or even just tolerance) for a little confrontation, they can almost assuredly get away with maximal flexibility. Think about that: is ED really going to pull Title I dollars over whether a state wants to weight DLLs’ academic achievement scores against their English language proficiency levels? I bet they won’t.

The School Quality Improvement Index, which was developed by the California Office to Reform Education (CORE), is a significant jump away from the Academic Performance Index (API), which was discontinued after 2013 as the state transitioned to the Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced tests, which debuted last year.

To understand CORE more, LA School Report recently calculated the scores of all 714 LA Unified schools entered into the system and ranked them. (Charter schools are not included in the CORE data, but there are other ways to measure their performance.) Sixty percent of a school’s CORE score is based on academic performance, which includes performance on the Smarter Balanced tests as well as the graduation rate for high schools and high school readiness for middle schools. Forty percent is based on “socio-emotional/culture-climate” factors like suspension and absenteeism.

Every category that CORE takes into account gets a value of 1 through 10 or 1 through 30, and these different values add up to an overall score of 1 through 100, with 100 being the top score. The average score of all 714 LA Unified schools entered into CORE was 60. But the CORE scores aren’t a direct calculation of a school’s overall score in the smaller categories; they employ a complicated formula that also considers how high-needs students performed.

These high-needs students are broken into four subgroups: the lowest performing racial/ethnic subgroup, English learners, students with disabilities and socio-economically disadvantaged students. Giving true weight to how these students perform, and rewarding schools that excel in educating them, is a far cry from API, in which a school with few high-needs students was ranked on an equal plane against those with many high-needs students.

• Read LA School Report’s analysis of CORE data for LAUSD schools.

• Read more on why the CORE system was developed and why it is only temporary.

The state of California is currently developing its own system that will also move beyond just test scores and likely take into consideration high-needs students and other data like suspension rates.

The new federal education law passed last year, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), calls on states to develop accountability systems with criteria like this in mind. California’s own Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) law, signed in 2013, requires school districts to provide extra funding for high-needs students.

California’s eventual accountability system may use a different formula and lack a simple numerical ranking system in favor of a more “dashboard” approach with multiple rankings, but it must be in alignment with ESSA and will end up using much of the same criteria that CORE looks at, making CORE the first view of what such a system might look like, or at least how this new data can impact a school’s performance.

When Gov. Jerry Brown was pitching the LCFF to lawmakers in 2013, he said, “Growing up in Compton or Richmond is not like it is to grow up in Los Gatos or Beverly Hills or Piedmont. It is controversial, but it is right, and it’s fair.”

Brown could have just as easily been talking about the CORE system, as for the first time it is an accountability system that takes into consideration the extra challenges high-needs students face while rewarding schools that are able to overcome these challenges. As a result, a school with the highest test scores is not necessarily the highest scoring school on the CORE index.

Former LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines, who stepped down in January, voiced his support for CORE’s approach, saying in December, “We have known for a long time that academic performance is one of many factors that make a great school, but CORE districts are now serving as a model for how we can actually measure these factors and look more holistically at school outcomes.”

Coming this week: A look at the top and bottom elementary, middle and high schools in LA Unified.

Education Secretary John King (Photo credit: Getty Images)

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

In implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act, the nation’s new education law, the odds were high that the U.S. Department of Education would issue a regulation meant to protect the rights of poor children (for instance), that congressional Republicans would interpret as the department’s effort to chew through the short leash that restrains it under ESSA.

“Already we’re seeing disturbing evidence that the Department of Education is ignoring the law,” Sen. Lamar Alexander said at an education committee hearing last week.
The educational era of good feelings that started with ESSA’s passage may be over, shattered by a department proposal for how districts would show they are funding low-income and non-low-income schools equally — a proposal that reignited debate over whether teacher salaries should be included in those calculations.

“I’m not interested today in debating whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea…The plain fact is the law says the department on its own cannot do it,” Alexander said at the start of an animated hearing.

The department released updated language late last week that responds to some of the criticism of the rule proposal. But what’s the dispute actually about? Let’s take a deeper look at the sausage-making that goes into education policy. It turns out to be pretty important.

Here are seven things to know as a rulemaking committee considers the contentious issue again this week:

1. What is Title I?

It’s among the largest streams of federal spending on K-12 education. The program was created in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s poverty-fighting Great Society program.

The federal government this year sent about $15 billion to states to assist in the education of low-income children. Schools where 40 percent or more of the student body is disadvantaged can use the money for “school-wide” programs that benefit the entire student body as opposed to individual children.

2. What is “negotiated rulemaking”?

In most cases, when the education department – or other branches of the federal government – wants to write a regulation on how to implement laws passed by Congress, they’ll issue a notice of proposed rulemaking. The rule is written by the agency and published for public comment.

After a set period for comment, the department will issue a final regulation, sometimes incorporating public comment. Congress can override major agency regulations within 60 days, though doing so requires the president to sign the bill overturning the regulation. Groups or individuals that would be adversely affected by the regulation also can sue to stop implementation.

“Negotiated rulemaking” is different. An agency will issue a call for nominees from constituencies affected by the regulation to meet and hash out the specifics. If that group can reach “consensus” on a regulation, the agency will put their proposal in legal language and use that for the notice of proposed rulemaking.

There’s a catch, though. An agency representative sits on any committee discussing a proposal from that agency, and “consensus,” according to an education department notice, “generally means there is no dissent by a member of the negotiating committee.”

So, in effect, the education department has veto power over whatever the committee writes. If the committee can’t achieve consensus, the department writes its own regulations, which have to go to relevant congressional committees for their comments before going for public comment through the traditional rulemaking process.

The negotiated rulemaking committee working on ESSA has met for two sessions, each lasting two days, to work on regulations regarding a variety of issues on assessments, plus what’s known as “supplement not supplant.” They’re set to meet again April 18-19. The current committee has 24 members, some non-voting, representing state education secretaries, superintendents, tribal leaders, parents, principals, teachers, other school leaders, paraprofessionals, civil rights groups, and the business community.

3. What is supplement not supplant?

At its most basic, the supplement not supplant regulation requires states and districts receiving Title I dollars to prove that they’re using the federal money in addition to, rather than instead of, state and local dollars meant for the same purpose.

The regulation stemmed from a landmark 1969 report by the NAACP that found widespread misuse of Title I funds. Investigators with the civil rights group found that Title I money wasn’t reaching eligible kids, that it was being used to fund programs previously paid for by state and local funds, and that it was going to inappropriate projects.

Before ESSA, states proved that they were in compliance by demonstrating that what they purchased with Title I funds were things above and beyond what students would normally receive. That resulted in burdensome record-keeping requirements and, sometimes, districts making purchases that didn’t help students.

Under ESSA, the rules changed. Districts are no longer required to specify that individual costs or services are supplemental. Districts still need to supplement rather than supplant, but the law gives more flexibility to states and districts to prove they’re meeting the requirements. Congressional authors left it to the education department — through the negotiated rulemaking process — to hash out the details.

The department’s authority remains limited, however. The law says, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize or permit the Secretary to prescribe the specific methodology a local educational agency uses to allocate State and local funds to each school receiving assistance.”

4. Comparability is key.

Comparability language also stemmed from the NAACP report. Comparability means that districts have to use state and local funds to provide services to Title I schools that are comparable to those offered to non-Title I schools in order to get federal funding.

“Comparable” might not mean what it appears to, though. Under the law, which didn’t change with ESSA, districts don’t have to count their teachers’ salaries measuring comparability. Because new teachers, who are paid less – and by some measures are less effective than their more senior counterparts – tend to be placed at lower-income schools, critics say that shortchanges Title I schools. That’s sometimes called the “comparability loophole.”

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, found in a study last year that more than 4.5 million students attend inequitably funded schools, which receive about $1,200 less per pupil than other schools in their districts. The education department performed a similar analysis in 2011.

Lawmakers considered – but did not include in the final bill – a provision that would require the use of actual teacher salaries in comparability calculations, in effect closing the “comparability loophole.”

Separately, a provision in the law requires districts to report, on a school-by-school basis, how federal, state, and local dollars are being spent on a per-pupil basis. Those numbers have to include actual teacher salaries, but the data are used for public information only.

5. So what’s the fight about?

Stay with us: the education department, in a proposal to the negotiated rulemaking committee, offered “supplement not supplant” language that would allow districts to choose their methodology for distributing funds so long as the per-pupil funding at Title I schools was equal to or greater than the average per-pupil funding at non-Title I schools.

The proposal would require districts to use the school-by-school per-pupil numbers used for public information — the ones that include teachers salaries — rather the numbers used for comparability, which don’t include specific salaries.

Those opposed to the department’s proposal say it’s a backdoor attempt to rewrite the comparability guidelines via the supplement-not-supplant rule. Including actual teacher salaries could potentially upend the school finance system or force the reassignment of teachers, critics say. And they argue that that the proposal flouts congressional intent for these regulations.

Education Secretary John King said at the hearing last week that the proposal adheres to ESSA provisions and drew a distinction between defining a methodology – which he said the proposal doesn’t do – and the criteria used to evaluate that methodology.

“Those are criteria by which to evaluate a methodology that would be determined by a district that would ensure that the Title I dollars are in fact supplemental,” King said.
Alexander didn’t buy it: “Dr. King, do you know how ridiculous that statement is you just made? If I read you plain English, if I say it’s A, B, C and you say it’s D, E, F, how can that be?”

In the face of criticism from members of rulemaking panel and members of Congress, department officials released new language late last week that provided rescue lines to districts that couldn’t meet the new requirement.

Districts wouldn’t be found out of compliance unless they also couldn’t meet requirements in one of the three previous years. Additionally, they would be safe if they could show that a non-Title I school had a large population of students (specifically, English language learners or students with disabilities) whose education is more expensive, throwing off the average per-pupil cost calculations. The new language also allows for weighted student-funding formulas that provide additional dollars for underserved students.

6. What do the states think?

A coalition of groups representing governors, state legislators, state school chiefs, school boards, superintendents, principals, and teachers’ unions, warned the department about overstepping in an April 4 letter.

“Regulations and accompanying guidance should clarify how supplement, not supplant is separate and distinct from maintenance of effort and comparability, and steer clear of anything that would change or modify any of those provisions beyond the statutory changes already signed into law,” the groups wrote.
Unions are afraid the regulation would require the redistribution of teachers, an idea that could conflict with tenure- and seniority-based placements.

Civil rights groups have been more supportive of stricter funding regulations, and Democrats at the hearing last week backed King.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, for example, said that she – and many others, she said, including President Obama – supported the law because it included language ensuring that federal dollars intended to improve kids’ education actually do so.

“Democrats have spent years fighting to make sure that this reauthorization is about additional dollars to make sure that they support all of our teacher and all of our kids so they get a decent education,” she said.

7. Can Congress stop the Department of Education?

In the short term, Alexander can’t do a lot besides use his bully pulpit and call King to task at hearings.

As Congress negotiates annual spending bills, the Tennessee Republican, who also sits on the Appropriations Committee, could push for language in next year’s law that would block implementation of the rule. Education riders haven’t usually been included in final spending bills in recent years; Republicans have saved their political capital for broad GOP priorities like blocking banking or environmental regulations.

Members also could pass a law to block the regulations, but that would require the approval of President Obama. Alexander also said at the hearing that he might encourage a district affected by the law to file a lawsuit.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org

These conclusions were made following an LA School Report analysis of LA Unified schools evaluated by the California Office to Reform Education (CORE). While the accountability system was unveiled in February, CORE and LA Unified did not provide any analysis, but now you can see the average score for the district, the top and bottom schools and compare schools of similar types or similar sizes. The chart shows whether the school is elementary, middle or high school; the school’s CORE score, starting with the lowest scores; the population of the school, and the link to the school’s complete CORE assessment.

Without this analysis, all that could previously be learned was a school’s individual score without any perspective. Is Van Nuys High‘s score of 76 good, bad or average? Turns out it is good, or at least above average, since the average score was 60.17. The system works on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the best.

A total of 714 LA Unified schools were entered into the CORE system. Independent charter schools were not included, nor were special education centers, early education centers, adult education centers and continuation schools, which are small schools that serve struggling students.

(MORE: 6 things to know about LAUSD’s new school accountability system)

Two schools — Balboa Gifted/High Ability Magnet Elementary and  Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy — scored a perfect 100, and three schools — Solano Avenue Elementary, Clover Avenue Elementary and Porter Ranch Community — scored a 99. (Click on the school to see its CORE report.)

On the bottom end of the scale, LA Unified’s lowest scoring school was Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary, which scored a 15. The other poorest performers were One Hundred Seventh Street Elementary (16), Hillcrest Drive Elementary (16), Century Park Elementary (17), Annalee Avenue Elementary (19), Barton Hill Elementary (19) and Cabrillo Avenue Elementary (19).

CORE takes a multilayered approach to ranking and evaluating schools. The new system is not just based off standardized test scores, like the old Academic Performance Index (API), but also incorporates new data like graduation rates, attendance rates, suspension rates and the performance of certain subgroups like English learners. The API system was discontinued after 2013 while the state converted to the Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced tests, which began statewide in 2015.

California is in the process of developing a new accountability system that will satisfy the requirements of the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Some experts believe the state will use some of the same data used in the CORE system but not provide a single number to rank schools, instead using a “dashboard” of multiple results that would include numerical rankings. Under ESSA, the state must identify the bottom five percent of its schools for intervention, but it is unclear how the state will do so without a numerical ranking system.

Eliminating numerical rankings has been criticized by some groups who believe such rankings are key to improving the state’s schools. The California Charter Schools Association, for one, is not in favor the dashboard approach.

“CORE’s system of measuring multiple aspects of a school’s performance and student outcomes, which are then tabulated to create a single index, is thoughtful and comprehensive,” CCSA said in statement to LA School Report. “Unfortunately the state is moving toward a different system — a complex dashboard that allows a whole series of standards to be interpreted at the local level. This would create a climate of unequal treatment and uncertainty, instead of the clear, accessible, statewide standards that California public schools need. Families need these standards to understand how the schools in their communities are performing.

“To keep politics and personalities to a minimum, California needs accessible, consistent, transparent statewide academic standards that define how well we expect our schools to perform.”

The CORE index was developed by LA Unified and five other districts as part of a deal with the federal government. The districts banded together for the purpose of getting a much-desired waiver in 2013 from the stringent mandates of the No Child Left Behind law, and part of the waiver required them to develop a comprehensive way of evaluating and ranking schools. CORE became the first non-state to get a waiver.

As to why no district-wide analysis is being released, LA Unified provided the following statement: “Like CORE itself, LA Unified is not analyzing final results of the 2015 School Quality Improvement Index as this was the baseline year and we are still learning about the metrics and their implications. There is no district average, but individual schools may use their results to guide planning for next year. Because the index aligns with the district’s goals and is intended to support action, we believe this is an appropriate use of the numbers. In addition, with the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we do not anticipate having scores next year.”

Opening up a school’s report reveals the inner workings of how the score was compiled. The overall score is based on a formula where 60 percent is for academic performance and 40 percent is for socio-emotional/culture climate factors. Individual categories are given a score of 1 through 10, which are then added up for an overall 1 through 100 score.

For Florence Griffith Joyner, the poor score was the result of criteria like high absenteeism over the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years, which was 21 percent and 25 percent, respectively. CORE ranks these percentages as a 1 out of 10. The school’s suspension rate of 2.33 percent and 4.67 percent over the two years earned it a 3 out of 10.

For performance on the 2015 Smarter Balanced standardized test scores, only 11 percent of Florence Griffith Joyner’s students met or exceeded English Language arts standards, and only 12 percent met or exceeded the math standards. These results were far below the district-wide average of 33 percent for English and 25 percent for math.

For Harbor Teacher Prep Academy, the perfect score was the result of factors like a 1 percent chronic absenteeism rate over the two years and a zero percent suspension rate. On the Smarter Balanced test scores, 83 percent of students met or exceeded the English standards and 81 percent met or exceeded the math standards.

One limitation to CORE’s data is that it did not separate out span schools, which include students from more than just elementary school, middle school or high school. A span school may have students from grades 6-12, but CORE only list schools as either an elementary school, middle school or high school. So a span school that includes middle school students and high school students is listed twice on the CORE list, but with the same scores and same student population, so the scores from the two age groups only count as one score. This would skew the overall average for all schools, as well as impact the individual score for a school listed twice.

Other noteworthy facts about the list include:

• The five lowest performing high schools are David Starr Jordan Senior High (22),  Early College Academy-LA Trade Tech College (23), Leadership in Entertainment and Media Arts (LEMA) (34), Dr. Maya Angelou Community High (37) and Augustus F. Hawkins High A Critical Design and Gaming (37).
• After Harbor Teacher Prep, the four top performing high schools are all magnet schools: Math, Science, & Technology Magnet Academy at Roosevelt High (98), Downtown Business High (97), Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High (96) and King/Drew Medical Magnet High (96).
• After Balboa, Solano, Clover and Porter Ranch, the fifth-best ranking for elementary schools is a five-way tie with Wonderland Avenue Elementary (97), Welby Way Elementary Charter (97), Roscomare Road Elementary (97), Clifford Street Elementary (97) and Canyon Charter Elementary (97).
• The bottom five middle schools are Edwin Markham Middle (23), Loren Miller Elementary (26), Samuel Gompers Middle (27), Horace Mann Junior High (28) and  Thomas A. Edison Middle School (28).
• The top five middle schools are Alfred B. Nobel Charter Middle (91), Hesby Oaks Leadership Charter (90), Robert Frost Middle (89), Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (88) and Paul Revere Charter Middle (87).