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7-8-14 Education Issues in the News
NJ Spotlight - Agenda: State BOE Takes Up Standards Renewal, Special Ed Regs...Regulations for special education back for a second try, along with teacher effectiveness, charter schools, and a new president

Education Week - Arne Duncan Unveils 50-State Teacher-Equity Strategy

NJ Spotlight - Hespe Helps Take Hearsay Out of Newark 'Working Group'...In one of his first public statements, acting commissioner details plans and purpose for working group, comments on Anderson's annual review

NJ Spotlight - Agenda: State BOE Takes Up Standards Renewal, Special Ed Regs

John Mooney | July 8, 2014

Regulations for special education back for a second try, along with teacher effectiveness, charter schools, and a new president

 

Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Time: 10 a.m.

Where: New Jersey Department of Education, 1st floor conference room, 100 River View Plaza, Trenton

What they are doing: The board gets back to work under a new president, Mark Biedron, with some important matters before them: renewing the state’s achievement standards and also a new proposal for special education regulations. The first version of the regulations last year were loudly protested by parent advocates on a number of fronts and subsequently withdrawn. The board will also hear public testimony on amendments to teacher evaluation code and also charter schools.

New president: The meeting will begin with the election of new officers, and Biedron, appointed in 2011 by Gov. Chris Christie, is expected to be named the board’s new president, replacing Arcelio Aponte. A Tewskbury resident, Biedron is founder of the Willow School, a private school in Gladstone, and also a homebuilder in “green” construction with Solid Wood Construction LLC. Aponte steps down after three years as president.

Special ed redux: The Christie administration comes back before the board with one of the most contentious pieces of the state’s administrative code, that for special education services in and outside schools. The administration had put forward new code last year in an attempt to streamline the process and reduce some of the red tape for schools. But the proposal faced fierce protest from advocates who contended it gave too much authority to districts and weakened that for families. The latest iteration leaves out some of those earlier proposals, focusing more on technical adjustments to bring the code in line with federal rules, officials said.

The “other” standards: While the national Common Core State Standards for language arts and math have gotten all the attention -- and debate -- the state board is expected to easily renew New Jersey’s remaining standards for social studies, science, health-physical education, and the arts. The board held several hearings on the standards, including some significant changes in the sciences, and drew mostly small crowds.

Public testimony: The state board also has on its agenda a couple of major pieces of code for teacher effectiveness and charter schools, although they provide few big changes from previous code. That doesn’t mean they won’t draw a lot of comment, though, since the New Jersey Education Association has implored its members to testify on the teacher evaluation code as part of a "lobby day." The public testimony starts at 2 p.m.

Education Week -  Arne Duncan Unveils 50-State Teacher-Equity Strategy

By Alyson Klein on July 7, 2014 6:00 AM

UPDATED

The U.S. Department of Education Monday detailed its long-awaited "50-state" strategy for putting some teeth into a requirement of the 12-year-old No Child Left Behind Act that has gone largely unenforced up until now: ensuring that poor and minority students get access to as many great teachers as their more advantaged peers.

States will be required to submit new plans to address teacher distribution by April of 2015, or just a few months before the department likely will begin to consider states' requests to renew their waivers from the NCLB law. (Read a letter the department sent to state chiefs outlining the plan here.)

This isn't the first time that the feds have asked states to outline their plans on teacher distribution, but the results so far haven't exactly been a stunning success.

Under NCLB, which was signed into law in 2002, states were required to ensure that poor and minority students were not being taught by unqualified teachers at a higher rate than other students. But fewer than half of states have separate teacher-equity plans on file with the department. Most of those plans are at least several years old, and the Education Trust, a Washington-based organization that advocates for poor and minority kids, found them to be seriously lacking in this 2006 report.

Meanwhile, a national survey of teachers found that core classes in high-poverty schools are twice as likely to be taught by out-of-field teachers as similar classes at schools serving more advantaged students, according to the Education Trust.

But addressing that problem won't be easy. States have a limited authority and capacity to ensure that districts distribute teachers fairly, since decisions like hiring and transfers tend to be made at the local level. Plus, states are currently knee-deep in developing new teacher-evaluation systems that take student outcomes into account.

"All students deserve excellent educators, and all educators deserve our full support," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told reporters during a White House press briefing Monday. "To reach these goals, there are no magic bullets or quick fixes and the best ideas, quite frankly, won't come from any of us here in Washington. ... Our department won't require any particular approach." But, he added, some promising practices include giving strong teachers access to effective principals and colleagues, and paying them fairly, as well as giving teachers time to collaborate and learn from each other.

To highlight the initiative, Duncan and President Barack Obama had lunch with a group of teachers at the White House Monday.

So will this new batch of plans actually bring about change? That remains to be seen. To help states move forward, the Obama administration plans to develop a $4.2 million new "technical assistance" network—called the Educator Equity Support Network—to help states develop their plans and put them in place. The network will come up with model plans to guide states' work, and give educators a space to swap information about how they have approached the teacher-equity problem. (It's worth noting that $4.2 million is a pretty small amount in federal budget terms. It's less money, for example, than the administration would allocate to just three individual foundering schools under the School Improvement Grant program, and this money would be spread through out the entire country.)

The administration is also planning to publish "Educator Equity" profiles in the fall, to help states get a sense of where their gaps are when it comes to equitable distribution of teachers. The profiles could include information comparing teacher experience levels, attendance rates, and qualifications at high and low poverty schools.

And the department will share states' data files from the Civil Rights Data Collection, to help inform their analysis of where they currently stand when it comes to teacher distribution. (It's worth noting that much of the data in the CRDC analysis already come from districts within the states themselves.)

But big questions loom, including just how—and whether—these state-equity plans will figure into waiver renewal. Will the Obama administration decide not to renew a state's waiver if it doesn't develop a sufficiently ambitious teacher-equity plan?

Duncan didn't get into specifics on that question during the White House briefing Monday, saying only that the department would look at the equity plans as "a piece of many things we're considering." And at a separate press briefing at the Education Department on Monday he described the process as a collaboration with states.

"This could be a very adversarial process between states and the federal government," he said, but that's not something the administration is looking for. Instead, the feds want states to design teacher equity plans that fit their unique needs. "This isn't about playing gotcha," he said.

Duncan declined to spell out a contigency plan for states that choose not to comply with the administration's request.

Tying state action on teacher equity to waiver renewal was on the table last year. In August of 2013, the Education Department said it planned to require states to look at where they are falling short on teacher equity in order to renew their NCLB waivers.

Then, a few months later, the Obama administration backed off that proposal in favor of a much more streamlined waiver "extension" process. The feds promised to take a more rigorous look at the teacher-equity issue through a 50-state strategy that would apply to all states, not just the 40-plus with waivers. The administration had initially hoped to unveil that plan in January, but didn't release anything until Monday.

It's also unclear whether the feds will expect states to consider whether disadvantaged kids have access to as many highly qualified teachers (those with proper certification and subject knowledge) or as many "effective" teachers (those that actually move the needle on student achievement.) The original NCLB law stressed "highly qualified" teachers. But the waivers have nudged states closer to effectiveness, although, as Duncan noted Monday, states are in different places when it comes to being able to measure a teachers' impact on student achievement.

Political landscape: The equity proposal comes several months after civil rights organizations—and their congressional allies—turned up the pressure on the Obama administration to make teacher distribution a condition of waiver renewal.

Members of the three caucuses in Congress representing minority-group lawmakers: the Congressional Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, and the Asian Pacific Caucus, sent a letter to Duncan back in February blasting the impact of the waivers on the poor and minority students the NCLB law was initially designed to help, and imploring the Obama administration to look closely at whether states are taking teacher-equity issues seriously before deciding whether to extend their waivers.

Who likes the plan? Even though details are still sketchy, the administration's initial proposal is getting good reviews from the field, including both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT, even showed up at a press conference at the U.S. Department of Education to lend her support.

So did Wade Henderson, president and CEO of Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. He said that states and districts must be given the resources to bolster equity, in areas beyond just teacher distribution.

Also on hand: Chris Minnich, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. Minnich has made it clear in the past that while states can provide leadership when it comes to teacher equity, they don't have a lot of say over areas such as hiring and placement. Instead, he said Monday, states can provide clear data on the scope of the teacher distribution problem, spark discussion between district leaders, unions and educators, and bolster teacher preparation. CCSSO will be releasing recommendations on the state role in teacher equity soon, Minnich said.

"Any federal efforts in this area must allow the states to lead the way," he added.

And Deborah Veney Robinson, the vice president for government affairs at The Education Trust, which has been one of the loudest voices when it comes to teacher equity, said the organization is  "encouraged by today's announcement by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan of his intention to focus new energy on the problem of unequal access to quality teachers."

Photo by Associated Press.

 

NJ Spotlight - Hespe Helps Take Hearsay Out of Newark 'Working Group'

John Mooney | July 8, 2014

In one of his first public statements, acting commissioner details plans and purpose for working group, comments on Anderson's annual review

The state-appointed “working group” that will serve as a community sounding board for embattled Newark superintendent Cami Anderson will have as many as 18 people and start its work in the next couple of weeks, said acting state Education Commissioner David Hespe yesterday.

 

In some of his first public comments since the renewal of Anderson’s contract, Hespe said in an interview that the group would be made up of people who both live and work in Newark and would be a critical measure for Anderson going forward.

 

“In order to maximize the benefit of the group, it will have to rely on those engaged in Newark, active in Newark, and residing in Newark,” he said.

 

Hespe was out of the country when the controversial announcement was made that Anderson would be renewed to lead the state-controlled district -- but with some conditions. These included a yearly review of her performance and the appointment of the working group to serve as community feedback on her policies.

 

Hespe yesterday said the renewal was a vote of confidence for Anderson, who Christie first appointed in 2011.

“We do have confidence in Cami, and think she’s the best person to open schools in September,” Hespe said.

 

But he said that the working group was intended to respond to criticism that Anderson has been too removed from -- if not dismissive of -- community concerns.

For much of her tenure, Anderson has faced loud protests to her plans for the district, especially through her "One Newark," plan, which creates a single enrollment system for both district and charter schools. In the face of protests, Anderson stopped attending local advisory board meetings.

 

“The working group will be a crucial way to get the community engagement we are looking for,” Hespe said.

When asked specifically why the contract included provisions for year-to-year review, as opposed to the previous three-year term outright, Hespe said it was similar to Anderson’s own policies through the district’s teacher contract to review performance each year.

 

“This is a natural outflow of what she herself is doing with the teachers’ union,” Hespe said. “Everyone, including the superintendent, should be on a performance-based contract.”

He said the administration this week was reaching out to potential candidates of the new group, and was seeking recommendations from others. “We have a healthy number of names being recommended to us,” he said.

 

The group would ultimately be between 10 and 18 members, Hespe said, with all members having a direct connection to Newark schools. The group would be led by Hespe, Anderson, and former education commissioner Rochelle Hendricks.

 

Hespe said he hoped to have the group announced in the next two weeks, and holding its first meeting soon after. One of its main tasks would be monitoring the One Newark reorganization, which is already well underway with enrollment choices completed.

 

But Hespe said the One Newark implementation would be a multiyear process, and added that he hoped the community group would provide feedback for years to come.

“Part of this will start in September, but the transformation is a five- or six-year plan from beginning to end,” he said