The national approach to education is about to change — again — by becoming more of a state-by-state approach.
Most of the participants in this process see this kind of flexibility in federal laws as a good thing, at least in theory. But the final verdict on the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), will depend on how the process plays out.
Among the key questions: How much of a reduction in testing, as is being promised, will there really be? And how will students be assessed — and their teachers be held accountable?
And who ultimately will have the greatest influence over the new system’s final form? Gov. David Ige’s new task force, set up to guide its development so it can take effect in the 2017-18 school year? Top state Department of Education administrators, who are not on that task force?
Or Ige himself, who is involved more deeply in ESSA than many other governors across the country?
Administration officials believe the changes won’t be terribly radical, because, they said, some of the new, more flexible requirements are already in place in Hawaii’s public schools — the school performance system known as Strive HI, encompassing the Smarter Balanced Assessments.
The reason: Hawaii was among the states given a waiver from No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the previous congressional act that created the educational framework ESSA is now replacing. And that gives this state a head start at complying with the law, said Tammi Oyadomari-Chun, assistant superintendent of strategy, innovation and performance.
“We’re not worried about wholesale changes,” said Oyadomari-Chun. “The requirements of the waiver had a lot of the ideas that made it into ESSA.”
By contrast, many teachers are hoping for a big departure from the status quo.
“From a teacher’s perspective, this is an opportunity,” said Amy Perruso, a social studies teacher at Mililani High School, who holds a seat on a governor’s task force set up to guide that process.”This gives power back to the states. What the state chooses to do with that power will be critical.”
Teachers last week were delighted with the turn of events at the state Board of Education, which decided Tuesday to use some of that flexibility. No longer are the feds requiring that teacher evaluations hinge partly on the scores students earn on standardized tests.
The decisions on how new student performance measures will be designed, and how that will factor into teacher job reviews and pay, is just one of the knotty issues to be tackled over the next year (see story above).
The department is in the midst of reviewing its strategic plan in tandem with changing up its routines to comply with ESSA. Staff is fanning out into the community, sponsoring focus groups, Oyadomari-Chun said.
In addition, there’s a Web-based survey (find it on the DOE’s, hiqualityed.tumblr.com); responses are due May 31. The online conversation continues on Twitter and Facebook, where a search for the hashtag #hiqualityed will yield some of that discussion.
Oyadomari-Chun hopes this foray into social media will keep the public awareness high after the first round of discussions conclude at the end of the month. The next round of outreach will begin in the fall, she added, when there should be draft plan materials to discuss.
Nationally, she said, the No-Child waivers produced experimentation with new metrics for school performance: In Hawaii, in addition to test scores, rates of graduation and attendance were additional factors folded in.
Some school districts on the mainland have ventured even farther afield. A large complex in California known as Core Districts was among the entities granted a waiver; it encompasses Fresno, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Sanger and Santa Ana Unified school districts.
This group decided to add what it defined as the “social-emotional learning of students” as a measure for school accountability, Oyadomari-Chun said, meaning “a level of self efficacy, self management, whether students have a growth mindset and social awareness.”
“I’m not sure right now I would consider it a good measure for school accountability, she added, “but it could be used.”
A study published this month by the Center for American Progress, a national policy institute, finds that accountability measures adopted by states now tend to fall into one of seven main categories.
They are, according to the report: “achievement indicators, such as proficiency in reading and mathematics; student growth indicators in multiple academic subjects; English language acquisition indicators; early warning indicators, such as chronic absenteeism; persistence indicators, such as graduation rates; college- and career-ready indicators, such as participation in and performance on college entry exams; and other indicators, such as access to the arts.”
The federal law does make numerous changes to practices schools nationally came to expect under NCLB. Schools were expected to address achievement gaps within certain student groupings.
ESSA adds categories of student populations of concern: homeless students, foster care and students in military families.
Locally, Oyadomari-Chun said, the department has been seeking feedback from principals and others in advance of the task force’s discussion and review about the best model for gauging school success. A diverse range of opinions emerged.
“They definitely want to make sure schools are getting credit for improvement,” she said. “They like that.
“Some would like more weight on achievement, and some of them would like a lot more weight on growth than we currently have. We also have principals asking for other measures that are not so test-score heavy.”
The state has already taken steps to reduce the amount of testing, Oyadomari-Chun said. Current practice maintains testing requirements in reading and math in grades 3-8, and once in high school; yearly science tests in grades 3-5, 6-8 and 10-12; and annual English language proficiency testing.
But, for example, the DOE has made optional three end-of-course subject exams, she said. The ACT Aspire (college- and career-readiness test), once required for grades 8-11 is also now optional for all grades except 11. And even for that junior year, which now gives students more than the federal-required quota of tests, officials are discussing cutting either the ACT Aspire or the Smarter Balanced test for that year, Oyadomari-Chun said.
The objective to reduce the testing burden is captured in the language of ESSA, which Perruso and other teachers find encouraging. Kids are subjected to hours-long standardized tests, and sometimes pre-tests to take a reading on their readiness for the real test to come — and that’s all just too much, she said.
“It’s really problematic for people who’ve made education their life’s work,” Perruso said.
Perruso, who is a public-school parent herself, said she feels energized rather than overwhelmed by the task of producing a plan that the governor ultimately will review himself, all in time for the 2017 school year.
”In the interim, we have a space in which we can examine everything,” she said. “We can think about the way we can design education.
“I think this is a hopeful time for teachers.”
