State board faces deadline, tough decisions on new federal law for improving schools
With only two meetings left before a mid-September deadline, the State Board of Education is feeling the heat to make progress on the state plan for the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Two of the unsettled issues the board will delve into this week are the criteria for choosing the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools needing assistance and a framework for a coherent system of oversight and assistance in a state with nearly 1,000 school districts and more than 10,000 schools.
In lengthy letters, civil rights and advocacy groups in particular criticized the school selection methodology as seriously flawed. They also called for more details on how assistance would work, who’d provide it and for clearer expectations and benchmarks of progress. A lot of changes are needed in the next 60 days, before submission to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, to make a credible plan, they said.
“The draft plan offers far too few details regarding how school improvement will happen in schools identified as needing help,” wrote the Equity Coalition, composed of two dozen statewide and local advocacy organizations, in an analysis. “It describes some elements that it ‘may include’ without any firm commitments.”State board faces deadline, tough decisions on new federal law for improving schools | EdSource: