Montpelier
The agency is preparing a response to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, known as ESSA, and will be publishing it for public comment in the coming weeks, according to Deputy Secretary Amy Fowler, who presented draft plans to the State Board of Education meeting in Barre, Vt., earlier this month.
Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe told the board that the agency wants to hold schools accountable but do it in a way that will change the outcome for schools and students.
“We want to make sure we aren’t punishing schools for things that are outside of their control. Some of the most fantastic teaching in the state happens in low-scoring schools,” she said, referring to statewide tests. “That is why we want a growth model.”
The Every Student Succeeds Act, like its predecessor, the No Child Left Behind law, requires states to use student performance to identify the bottom 5 percent of schools that are eligible for federally funded improvements.
But where No Child Left Behind outlined specific steps that had to be taken to turn poor performing schools around, ESSA has given states flexibility to come up with their own plans as long as they are based on evidence.
That means using practices that have been proven to work in other places to fix problems.
Vermont has a different philosophy than the federal government when it comes to school accountability, which has put the two at odds in the past.
Vermont would like to aim for continuous improvement for all schools instead of just raising the bar for the poorest performing schools.
The Agency of Education proposes using a part of the state’s Education Quality Standards and Review system for federal accountability requirements in an effort to preserve state and local education values while making the best use of federal dollars.
Fowler, the deputy secretary, says the federal government wants the state to identify the lowest scoring 5 percent of schools and “any schools with large equity gaps.”
These schools would be targeted for support.
The agency recently put in place Education Quality Reviews, a statewide system that evaluates schools by measuring five dimensions of quality: academic achievement, personalized learning, safe school climate, high-quality staffing and financial efficiencies.
The state conducts a quantitative analysis of those five aspects of education quality, but the Education Quality Review has another component that is more qualitative — the integrated field review.
The field review happens once every three years and is carried out by teams of educators, students and agency staff.
It was important to educators that this part of the review system be maintained as is and not be tied to the federal system.
“What is most powerful about the field review is its qualitative, ground-up nature,” Fowler said. “To create a scoring system would undermine what makes the field review valuable, and we are not going to do it.”
AOE zeroed in on the snapshot and looked for things that could also count as federal accountability requirements.
“What we can do is take one bucket, academic proficiency — everything in it is an outcome. Everything can be disaggregated and will meet the technical criteria for assessment (under ESSA),” Fowler said.
There are eight measures in academic proficiency that can be used as indicators to determine if a school’s students are meeting ESSA’s demands.
They will use student performance — including growth — on the English and Math Smarter Balanced test as an indicator.
They also will consider how well English learners are doing. And whether students are staying in school until they graduate will be another indicator.
Currently, Vermont tests 11th-graders on the SBAC to meet the ESSA requirement, but the state would like to change it to grade nine, which would allow struggling students a chance to show growth as well as lessen the testing burden on high school juniors.
AOE also will make a pitch to use graduation rates within a six-year window instead of four years.
The agency is planning to add indicators that are not required under ESSA to school accountability profiles, such as performance on the science exam in grades five, eight and 11; how students are doing in physical education; whether test scores indicate high school seniors are ready for career or college; and whether graduates are pursuing a career or college within 18 months of graduating.
Schools that are identified for federal money won’t be rank ordered by AOE. It will also identify schools for targeted support if they have large equity gaps.
The agency also has suggested using the field reviews to help the lowest-performing schools develop improvement strategies.
The public will be able to comment on the draft plan beginning on Jan. 1.
The agency hopes to publish its current thinking on this issue in early December.