Education Week - January 18, 2017 - 21

States Seek Balance in Drafting ESSA Plans and Timelines
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state leaders attempt to strike a
balance between rigorous and realistic in setting states' short-term
and long-term academic goals.
"This is probably one of the most
tricky and most difficult thing to
do under the new law," said Kathy
Cox, the former superintendent
of Georgia, who has worked with
states as a consultant in the last
year to develop their ESSA plans.
"You don't want your goal to be so
ambitious that it's unrealistic, but
you don't want it to be so realistic
that the pace is so gradual that
people aren't inspired. It's about
finding a delicate balance."

Planning Ahead
ESSA plans are due no later than
this September and are set to go
into place with the 2017-18 school
year. More than a dozen already
have drafted plans for the public to
consider.
The NCLB law set a 12-year deadline for states to achieve universal
proficiency, with progress measured
by the adequate yearly progress,
or AYP, benchmark, which quickly
wore out its welcome.
In contrast to the NCLB law,
ESSA requires only that states set
"ambitious" academic achievement,
graduation rate, and English-language proficiency goals without setting specific deadlines. It's arguably
the area in which states have the
most flexibility under the new law.
Statewide aspirations can have a
trickle-down effect and impact the
pace at which students are expected
to comprehend lessons, how many

schools are swept up in a state's
intervention system, and what initiatives a state funnels millions of
public dollars toward, according to
state officials.
In a number of states, department officials fear that if they set
their goals too low, teachers and
principals at average-performing
schools will get complacent and
allow for problem areas, such as
long-standing achievement gaps,
to fester.
They also worry that if they set
their goals too high, they can spark
the same cheating scandals at lowperforming schools that landed
scores of teachers in jail during the
NCLB-era.
"Anybody with substantive knowledge about education and assessment knew that the NCLB goal was
unobtainable, but rather than admitting that it was a fantasy, NCLB
encouraged all sorts of gamesmanship and manipulation to give the
appearance of progress when it was
not taking place," said Bob Schaeffer, the public education director of
the National Center for Fair & Open
Testing.

Reset Button
States see ESSA as an opportunity to hit the reset button and
give school and district officials a
road map to meet expectations for
the next generation of students. In
some states, that puts the goal line
at 2030, when next school year's
kindergartners will graduate from
high school.
Civil rights activists fear that
goal-setting is a key area where
states will avert their attention

from poor students, students of
color, and students with special
needs who have historically fallen
short on access to basic services
but got a jolt of attention under
NCLB.
"Too often, when we talk about
the achievement gap, we talk
about outcome for black students
and other students as if it's inevitable and natural and acceptable
and that's just the way things are,"
said Liz King, the senior policy
analyst and director of education
policy for the Leadership Conference Education Fund. "We created
these problems, and we can solve
these problems."
These tensions already are
playing out in the ESSA planning
process.
Maryland's education department
has proposed to reduce the amount
of nonproficient students in the
state by one half by the year 2030
as defined on that state's standardized reading and math tests. And it
wants to halve its achievement gaps
within six years.
Bill Reinhard, the department
spokesman said the goals were
placed in the plan to "spark conversation" and could still be fine-tuned
before being presented to the state
board.
State officials are aware of the
sensitivities in crafting goals.
"What becomes the ultimate question for state leaders is if you say 100
percent is not our goal, that there is
some goal below 100 percent, what
you're saying is someone's child is
incapable of hitting proficiency,"
said Andy Smarick, president of the
Maryland school board. "There are
real boys and girls with real names

and real schools who are going to be
implicated by any number that's less
than 100 percent."

Multiple Yardsticks
In response to testing anxiety,
some states have, in addition to
setting standardized achievement
goals, set NAEP, ACT, and school
climate goals. Tennessee, for example, wants to rank in the top half
of states on NAEP by 2019, raise its
average ACT score from 19 to 21 by
2020, and boost the proportion of
3rd graders reading at grade level
from 43 percent to 75 percent by
2025.
States have plenty more data
on which to base predictions than
they had in 2001 when NCLB was
created. Department officials have
described spending countless hours
in recent months pouring over
spreadsheets to set new benchmarks. Raising statewide averages even a few percentage points,
states have learned, is much
harder than it looks. Adding to
the problem, states like Michigan
have had several sets of standards
and tests in recent years due to the
fallout over the common core.
In developing its ESSA plan,
Michigan's department is in the
process of tying numeric goals to
its "Top 10 in 10" vision plan established in 2015 by state Superintendent Brian Whiston.
"It's more of a motivating statement versus an empirical statement," said Vanessa Keesler, the
state's deputy superintendent.
For other states, trying to be both
lofty and realistic has meant some
difficult conversations about who's

to blame for lagging results and
how to fix them.
Hawaii has long struggled with
chronic absenteeism. Five years ago,
it became one of the first states in
the nation to incorporate absenteeism into its accountability system.
The state set a common definition,
set aside money to reward students
with perfect attendance records,
and aired statewide commercials
during which military generals told
families about the importance of
showing up to class on time.
But state officials soon realized
that the reasons so many students
failed to show up to school were
complicated. Students in isolated
areas of the islands often missed
the school bus and lacked any
other methods of transportation to
get to school, and the state's court
system had a glut of truancy cases
it couldn't afford to streamline.
Today, the lowest absenteeism
rate in the state for a school is 2 percent while the highest is 54 percent.
When coming up with its new
goals under ESSA, the department originally suggested that
its schools reduce absenteeism from
an average of 15 percent to 13 percent,
but a board member said the number
needed to be in the single digits. The
state's goal is now 9 percent.
"We've had some hard conversations about whether or not this is
the best indicator to reflect school
performance," said Tammi Chun,
the state's assistant superintendent
for office of strategy innovation and
performance. "Everyone agrees it's
an important area to focus on but,
going forward, we realize a combination of actions are needed in order
for us to meet these goals."

EYEING THE GOAL
States are all over the field in coming up with the "ambitious
... long-term goals" required in the accountability plans they
must submit to the federal government later this year under
the Every Student Succeeds Act. Here's a sampling, all of
them from draft plans aside from Montana's, which is final.

* Maryland Is "proposing to implement an ambitious and

rigorous long-term goal of reducing nonproficient students
by one-half by the year 2030." The state wants to cut in half
its achievement gap within six years.

* Delaware Proposes to increase its graduation rate from
84 to 92 percent by 2030; also wants to boost the proportion of
students passing its English/language arts exam from 50
percent to 70 percent and raise the proportion of those passing
the math exam from 36 to 70 percent by that same year.

* Montana In its final plan, Montana sets a 2020 target

* Hawaii Has more than 14 goals that include reducing
chronic absenteeism by 6 percent, increasing 3rd grade
literacy by 11 percent, and increasing its graduation rate by
4 percent by 2020.

* Oklahoma Without giving specifics, says it "is a priority

* Illinois Is proposing that 90 percent of its 3rd graders will
read at or above grade level by 2032; that 90 percent of 5th
graders will meet or exceed math expectations by that year;
and that 90 percent of students will graduate from high
school college- or career-ready by then.

SOURCE: Education Week

the statewide exam (up from the 18 score currently required),
and that the majority of the students receive a "mastery" rating
on the state's standardized test rather than "basic."

* Louisiana Proposes to "raise the ambition of its long-term
goals for students to levels exceeding the national average in
every measure." For example, receiving an A on the state report
card, would require that high schools graduate more than 90
percent of their students, that high school students receive at
least a 21 on the ACT college-readiness test, which is used as

date, but no uniform goals for districts. "Local school
districts should take the lead on setting goals for their
community schools. Measurement of quality at the state
level must be rigorous, yet flexible," the plan states.
... that the long-term goals are lofty, but achievable" and
that the state "is committed to providing [local districts],
schools and students the supports necessary to achieve
these goals."
* Tennessee Has proposed, among other things, that the

state will rank in the top half of states on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress by 2019, that
75 percent of its 3rd graders will be proficient in reading
by 2025, and that the average ACT composite score in
Tennessee will be a 21 by 2020.
* Washington Wants to have all of its students "on track"

to meeting statewide standards in 20 years.

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