This video provides a quick overview of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and
how it affects Wisconsin.
My name is Jennifer Kammerud and I'm a Policy Initiatives Advisory at the Wisconsin Department
of Public Instruction.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act is also known as the Every Student Succeeds
Act.
The original legislation was signed into law in 1968 by President Johnson as a civil rights
piece of legislation.
Most recently it was reauthorized as ESSA or the Every Student Succeeds Act.
So what's in ESSA?
ESSA has a number of Titles.
The Titles that tend to get the most attention are Title I, which is intended to provide
all children with the opportunity to receive a fair, equitable and high quality education,
and to close educational achievement gaps.
Title II is meant to provide additional grants to focus on improving the number, quality,
and effectiveness of educators.
And Title III covers English language instruction.
Title IV is meant to improve student academic achievement by providing some basic grants
and funding for community learning centers.
The law contains a number of provisions that states are required to do and local districts
required to implement.
The top ten things that states are required to do in terms of things we get asked about
and things that people tend to pay a lot of attention to in the law are as follows.
One, states must have challenging academic standards.
Two they must test all students in grades three through eight in English language arts
and math and once in high school in those same subject.
Three, they have to test students once in elementary, middle, and high school in science.
Four, we have to identify the lowest performing schools and schools with low performing subgroups
of students.
Five, approve school improvement plans for the lowest performing schools.
Six, disaggregate student performance data by subgroups.
Seven, provide supports to students who are English learners, migratory, homeless, and
delinquent, neglected or at risk.
Eight, report school level financial data.
Nine, look at the distribution of teachers in front of different student populations.
And ten, submit a state plan, which we have done, identifying state goals and a timeline
for improving education.
So what is in our state plan?
In terms of accountability, our long-term goal is to cut achievement gaps in half within
six years.
In particular, we're focused as required under the law, on English language arts, math, and
graduation rates.
And we've set goals by subgroups.
So we're looking at race, disability, English learner status, economic status - seeing where
people are today and then setting a target goal for each subgroup so we can accomplish
that long-term goal.
In terms of what we're looking at in accountability, we have a number of performance indicators
that are required under the law.
And we've addressed all of those in our state plan.
So we're looking at academic achievement, in other words how you do on the state tests
related to English language arts and math.
Progress towards English language proficiency.
Graduation rates and chronic absenteeism.
In terms of school improvement, we look at identifying schools based on those performance
indicators.
So we have two sets of schools required to be identified under federal law.
Targeted support schools and comprehensive support schools.
Targeted support schools are those with the consistently under-performing subgroups.
And those schools, if you have that designation, have six years to improve and close that gap.
Schools that have that designation are required to locally develop an improvement plan.
That plan is then approved and monitored by the local school district.
Comprehensive support schools on the other hand are the lowest performing Title I schools.
They are high schools that have less than 67 percent of their students graduating.
And they are targeted support schools that have not been able to exit that status in
six years.
Any school with that comprehensive support school designation has to put together an
improvement plan that is approved by the state.
Now ESSA has a number of reporting requirements.
We've talked a bit about the accountability metrics; there's also all these reporting
requirements that we're required to post and have available for the public to view.
One example of a renewed reporting requirement is cross tabulation, where you can look at
data from a number of perspectives.
So you can see relationships based on multiple factors.
So for example, if you want to see graduation rates by race and income status.
So what's next?
We have sent our state plan in to be approved by the US Department of Education.
Once we get notification that that plan is approved we will be asking local school districts
to also submit to us a plan, a local plan, for approval sometime in the spring of 2018.
Local districts will be asked to provide assurances that they're going to be meeting the requirements
in the law as part of that plan as well as answering specific questions required in law.
I also want to note that in developing their local plan, local educational agencies, or
school districts, are required to meaningfully consult with a number a stakeholders.
We have a link, as you can see, for a full list of those stakeholders that are required
to be consulted with under the law.
Local education agencies will need to assure to us that they have met these consultation
requirements.
Finally, there is a lot more to the state plan than these few pieces that I have discussed
here today.
There's a lot more detail around each of these pieces and there's more in regards to educator
development and student supports that you may want to learn about.
So if you're looking for a complete review of our state plan, it's available on our website
at www.dpi.wi.gov/esea.