Overview of the Every Student Succeeds
Act (ESSA) and Implications for WY
Scott Marion & Chris Domaleski, Center for Assessment
Jillian Balow, State Superintendent, WDE
Wyoming Select Committee on Education Accountability
May 9, 2016
Plan for this Session
• Overview of ESSA
• A plan for moving forward in Wyoming
• Discussion and direction from the Committee
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Transition
• “Orderly transition”
• Waivers will expire in the summer of 2016
• Accountability transition will occur during 20162017 and go live in 2017-2018
• Standards and assessment peer review will be
required during early 2016
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The Basic Framework: The State Plan
• The required state plan (goes to the federal
government) establishes the basic framework for:
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State standards
Academic assessments
The statewide accountability and reporting system
The approach to school improvement and support
How the state will support evidence-based district
program strategies and fiscal flexibility and transparency
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The Basic Framework: The District Plan
• The required district plan (which goes to the state)
specifies how districts will use the federal funds to
ensure that all children receive a high-quality education
and close student achievement gaps.
• Each district must describe at least 13 aspects of its work
such as monitoring student progress, implementing
effective parent and family engagement, coordinating its
services with early childhood education programs,
integrating career and technical education content,
facilitating effective transitions from middle grades to
high school and from high school to postsecondary
education, and more.
• Many of the conditions are administrative in nature.
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Some other noteworthy provisions
• Prohibits any federal official from mandating or incentivizing
states to adopt or maintain any particular set of standards,
including the Common Core (named explicitly)
– But rigorous academic standards are still required
• No requirements related to highly qualified teachers or
teacher evaluation
• More opportunities for fiscal flexibility, allowing Title I money
to be used for many innovative initiatives
• Does not noticeably change student data privacy matters
• Repeals 49 programs and creates a new $1.7 billion dollar
Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grant (a pseudoblock grant)
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More on educator quality
• While not required, ESSA authorizes states to use funding to
implement teacher and leader evaluation systems, reform
teacher and school leader certification systems, improve
equitable access to effective teachers and leaders for all
students, and develop mechanisms for effectively recruiting and
retaining teachers (related to our Phase II discussions)
• States are still required to disclose the steps they’re taking to
evaluate and publicly report on the inequitable distribution of
teachers and the qualifications of their teachers and school
leaders, spelled out by high- and low- income schools and schools
with high and low concentrations of students of color.
• ESSA enshrines into law Teacher and School Leader Incentive Fund
Grants ( “TIF”), with the goal of expanding performance-based
compensation systems and human capital management systems
for both teachers and principals.
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Assessment Requirements and
Accountability Implications
Assessment Requirements
• Almost the same assessment requirements as
NCLB
– ELA and math in grade 3-8 and once in high school
– Science once each in elementary, middle, and high school
• Allows for the use of a “college-readiness”
assessment for the high school assessments
• Potential for allowing “interim” (aka “throughcourse) to be used as long as the results can be
aggregated to an annual determination
– Much more complicated than it sounds
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Accountability Implications
• Two main components:
– Reporting requirements
• States must continue to report by all required
subgroups specified under NCLB.
– School accountability determinations
• Based on state determined goals and methodology
with some constraints, which we’ll discuss
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Goal Setting
• NCLB required 100% proficiency by 2014 (or
alternate approaches under waiver).
• Under ESSA states determine:
– Status and improvement goals for:
• Academic achievement
• Graduation rate
• Sub-groups that are behind
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Accountability Indicators
• Five indicator types are specified:
1. Academic Achievement (e.g. proficiency)
2. Another valid and reliable academic indicator (e.g. growth,
gap closure)
3. Graduation rate (specifically Adjusted Cohort Grad Rate)
• Extended graduation can be included at state discretion
4. English language proficiency
5. Indicator of school quality or success that meaningfully
differentiates and is valid, reliable, and comparable
• “Much greater” weight must be given to the first 4
– Regulations and guidance will have to provide more specificity
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Identification of Schools
• Use state determined methodology starting in 2017-18
and at least once every three years thereafter to
produce a statewide category of schools for
comprehensive support and improvement for schools in
the following categories:
– lowest performing 5% of schools
– HS with graduation rate less than 67%
– Schools with low performing subgroups
• State system can produce determinations more
frequently or include more performance categories
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Innovative Assessment and Accountability
• Allows for a pilot for up to seven (7) states (up to 4 can be
part of a consortium) to use competency-based or other
innovative assessment approaches for use in making
accountability determinations
• Initial demonstration period of three (3) years with a two (2)
year extension based on satisfactory report from the director
of Institute for Education Sciences (IES)
• Rigorous assessment, participation, and reporting
requirements
• Subject to a peer review process
• Maybe used with a subset of districts based on strict
“guardrails,” with a plan to move statewide by end of
extension
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Summary
• Maintains many core aspects of NCLB
• Opens up a bit more flexibility on accountability, within
specific parameters
• Required interventions for low-performing schools
• Hands off of teacher evaluation (which was never in
NCLB anyhow!)
• Innovative assessment and accountability pilot
• “Orderly transition”
• Interesting political note: Senator Alexander and
Secretary King have been going at it about regulating or
not-regulating
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The Wyoming Accountability
Process
The Accountability Process
• It is important to get started on this work now, but since
accountability systems are designed to instantiate
stakeholder values, it is critical to avoid shortcutting
opportunities for key stakeholders to provide meaningful
input.
• Accountability systems cannot be designed by hundreds
of people, so what follows is a very high-level sketch of a
process designed to both include all relevant
stakeholders, but to do so efficiently.
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The Process
• Working in close partnership with WDE, the legislature,
SBE and WDE will make critical policy decisions
– In fact, the Center and WDE will be meeting tomorrow to outline
concrete plans
• We think we are clear—but want to check our
understanding here—that we want to build on the
good work of WAEA and not start with a blank slate
– Yes or no?
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The Process—Stakeholder engagement
• We need a stakeholder committee or committees
• The Advisory Committee is the natural choice
following legislative history
– But the Advisory Committee is not fully representative of all
the relevant stakeholder groups
• However, the State Board and WDE have been
working with the Collaborative Council
• We do not want to design incoherence into the
system by having two advisory groups
• We’d like to have a conversation about moving
forward efficiently
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Assuming that we are starting from WAEA…
1. Examine and potentially clarify the goals of the system
2. Consider the strengths of the system upon which we’d like to
build
3. Evaluate the weakness of the current system that we’d like
to improve
4. Evaluate the match of WAEA with the requirements of ESSA
a.
b.
English language proficiency indicator
The “additional indicator of school quality”
5. Consider if we want to use different metrics for existing
components of the system (e.g., using mean scale score
instead of %proficient for achievement)
6. Consider how we role up to an overall determination or not?
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Timeline
• Several meetings throughout this interim to address the
issues reflected on the previous slide
• Report to Select Committee and JEC in July on progress
and to check in on direction
• Draft conceptual model in time for September meeting
• Finalize the conceptual model for the November meeting
• Test potential 5th indicators through 2016-2017
• Make final determinations for the model in the summer
of 2017 (aggregation rules, determinations)
• Communicate, communicate, communicate to the field
and stakeholders of ongoing progress and changes to
WAEA
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