After more than a year of preparation, Arkansas' proposed plan for complying with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act is nearly ready for its Sept. 18 submission to the U.S. Department of Education.
The plan, if approved, is one that Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key said he expects to be a sea change for public education -- a welcomed one -- once people adapt.
"The biggest change is the shift of responsibility," Key said about the proposal. "When it came to accountability and the old No Child Left Behind Act, there was a lot of top-down direction: 'This is what you have to do for school improvement. This is what you have to do based on your test scores.' It started out very prescriptive."
In contrast, the new federal school accountability law, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in late 2015, is less about schools and districts complying with state and federal government mandates and more about collaboration, Key said.
"We will still take the data, we will still run the data and .... we will still notify the schools and the districts of their performance," Key said last week about required annual testing of students. "But this puts the responsibility of responding to that performance back at the local level."
School and district leaders must talk with teachers, parents and community members.
"It's a cycle of inquiry," Key said. "It's presenting the results -- which now go beyond just a single test score -- and identifying the areas where we need to improve and deciding how do we allocate resources to see that improvement."
Deborah Coffman, the Education Department's assistant commissioner for accountability, called the proposed Arkansas Educational Support and Accountability System "a plan to succeed and not a wait-to-fail model."
The federal law and the state's proposed compliance plan will do away with the No Child Left Behind Act's call for 100 percent of students to score at their grade level on state math and literacy tests within a set number of years. And there will no longer be annual achievement levels for schools to meet to avoid labels and penalties.
Arkansas' response to the new federal law calls for 80 percent of students to score at "ready" or "exceeding" ready levels on state exams -- the ACT Aspire tests in grades three through 10 -- within 12 years.
The plan also proposes a system of three-year "checkpoints" by which schools can measure their progress toward achievement, high school graduation and other goals.
"By providing three-year checkpoints, the [Arkansas Department of Education] is signaling to schools that year-to-year variation is expected," the state plan says, "and the overall improvement trend may take a longer time period than just one year.
"It is the [Education Department's] intent that checkpoints ... encourage schools to focus on what matters most for learning by acknowledging that deeper, sustained learning of more rigorous standards may take more time to be reflected in the achievement levels of greater proportions of students."
In addition to the achievement levels on state exams, the state's proposed accountability system will take into account academic growth. Schools will get credit for students who show improvement but remain below the "ready" level on state tests and also for students who are above at "ready" level on state tests but continue to improve.
Schools will be checked on the progress made by their English-language learners, according to the provisions of the state plan for complying with the federal law.
And high schools will be measured on their efforts to get to at least a 94 percent graduation rate or 97 percent for those who stick with high school for an extra fifth year.
A fifth indicator of school performance in the state plan centers on school quality/student success. Schools will be eligible for credit for parts of their operation that have not always been recognized in past accountability plans. That can be high student attendance, science achievement, ACT college entrance exam scores, community service, grade-point averages, or participation in Advanced Placement, concurrent credit and computer science courses.
To calculate a school's overall performance rating -- which will be an A to F letter grade -- the indicators will be weighted, with the greatest weights given to academic achievement and academic growth.
A school's school quality/student success indicator may not obliterate a poor academic showing but it can reflect the opportunities for students that can positively affect academic achievement and growth, Key said.
"The indicator motivates schools to find the spark that will cause students to want stay in school and want to get better," he said. "Rather than just getting ready for that end-of-the-year assessment, it is something that happens throughout the year. There is something that the students can grab ahold of that spurs them to try harder and gives teachers the opportunity to demonstrate their creativity."
The new federal law, like its predecessor, calls for schools to be held accountable for the success of the overall student body, but also for subgroups of students.
In the Arkansas plan, a subgroup must have a minimum of 15 students, down from 25 students in the past. The potential subgroups in Arkansas schools are white, black, or Hispanic students as well as students who are from low-income families, require special education services or are learning English as a second language.
The new federal school accountability law, like the old one, also calls on states to identify and provide support for schools in the bottom of 5 percent in achievement. That identification will occur again in the fall of 2018.
"Five percent under the current law drove a fear of looking bad," Key said. "We put the names of schools on a list and took it to the state Board of Education and said 'We want you to approve this list of priority and focus schools.' Those conversations now need to happen at the local school board meetings. The local boards need to ask, 'Why are we in the lowest 5 percent?'
"There will always be a lowest 5 percent," Key added. "Our goal is to have everyone moving higher in their performance. We want it to generate some positive conversations, not just create a fear that the state is going to come in and label a district and create negative feelings in the communities."
Key said the state's role will be -- more so than in the past -- to direct its support to the school district, which will in turn work to improve any low-performing campuses. The state won't tell the districts and schools what to do as much as help them think differently about what they are doing.
He also maintains that the new compliance plan moves away from labeling schools, although the plan does call for different levels of support for a school such as "targeted" and "comprehensive" support.
Arkansas is among 34 states expected to submit their proposed compliance plans to the U.S. Department of Education this month for review by the federal agency within 120 days.
Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey and New Mexico are states that submitted their plans earlier this year and have recently had them approved, according to Education Week, a national newspaper on elementary and secondary education.
Key said people want to compare and rank the state plans, but the models are so different because states differ in their laws, public education structures, student tests and data management systems.
"This is what we think is right for Arkansas based on the feedback we have gotten from superintendents, parents, teachers, students and community leaders," Key said. " We have really pulled together a lot of data to help guide us in writing this."
Karen Walters, superintendent of the Bryant School District, is among the superintendents continuing to study the proposed plan.
"I like that districts will be able to decide what the needs of a school might be rather than that coming directly from the state unless a school is at the very lowest level," Walters said last week. "I like that it seems there is more flexibility and more local control."
Bryan Duffie, superintendent of the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District district, also cited the flexibility that will be available for dealing with school improvement, "rather than just putting the hammer down," he said. "That's encouraging.
"For us though, we have to take a serious look at our own progress," he added. "We can't just keep doing the same thing. We must home in on what our kids need and what our teachers need in terms of training so we can provide that so we can progress on a quicker path. We want our achievement scores to be better than what they are now. We've got to have that sense of urgency to get that right."
Cathy Koehler, president of the Arkansas Education Association teacher and support staff union, said the new federal law and state compliance plan moves decision-making away from the federal and state levels and lets the people who know their students and their communities be involved -- have a voice -- in deciding what is best for their students.
"That is a huge move forward," said Koehler, who also praised provisions in the law to ensure that students have equitable access to effective teachers.
In response to that, the state is developing a system in which new teachers can be supported with mentors for three years, and experienced teachers can advance professionally without having to give up their work with students in classrooms, she said.
"It is such a relief to be out from the No Child Left Behind Act," Koehler said.
Ouida Newton, a retired teacher and now a member of the state Board of Education, said the new accountability system will enable teachers and students to take a "deeper dive" into the lessons and not have to rush to get material covered before the end-of-the-year tests. "It's going to relieve a lot of the pressure," she said about trying to get students who are behind academically to the proficient level on a test in just one year.
Key said the Every Student Succeeds Act is a big undertaking for the state Education Department and the school systems.
"We're going to have a lot of communication knowing that this is a change in some respects for a generation of educators who have started since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. That may be all they know," he said. "We are going to be as understanding as possible.
"We've not committed to the feds that we are going to have hard and fast sanctions or interventions. We want to help develop the capacity of our school leaders ... to think differently about how they deliver educational opportunities. We know there must be a lot of conversation and there is going to have to be a lot of training, a lot of professional development."
Metro on 09/05/2017