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i_coessacomm_2016a_2016-12-13t13:07:51z0 Hearing Summary

Date: 12/13/2016



Final

Update from NCSL



INTERIM COMMITTEE TO STUDY THE EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS ACT


Votes: View--> Action Taken:
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01:08 PM -- Update from NCSL



Lee Posey and Michelle Exstrom, representing the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), introduced themselves. They distributed a copy of their presentation (Attachment A). Ms. Posey spoke about the Every Student Succeeds' Act's passage and provisions. She spoke about what can be included in state plans, and the role that legislators can play in the process of formulating the state plan. Ms. Exstrom spoke about stakeholder engagement in Colorado and the participation of the state's legislators in the process of writing the state plan. She spoke about other states' processes and methods for engaging stakeholders. She discussed the drafts being completed in other states, and gave examples from Nevada adding emphasis on career readiness, Idaho creating a new accountability system, and Oklahoma emphasizing project-based learning and teacher training. Ms. Exstrom discussed braided funding and responded to questions from the committee. She continued her discussion with an overview on efforts in Washington relating to opportunity gaps and Louisiana relating to measuring growth. She discussed the use of early indicators and an auditing board composed of subject-area experts in Louisiana. She spoke about NCSL's ESSA website and its college/career readiness website as well: www.ccreslegislation.info.



Attachment A.pdfAttachment A.pdf



Ms. Posey described the federal rule-making process and the final rules that were promulgated by the U.S. Department of Education (ED). She spoke about regulations governing assessment and state plan submission and mentioned that the new deadline for state plans is in September, not April. She spoke about comprehensive support and improvement requirements for the lowest 5 percent of schools and schools with low graduation rates. She also described targeted support and improvement for consistently underperforming subgroups and low-performing subgroups as well as flexibility to look at school performance with multiple indicators and use of a performance index that measures achievement at multiple levels. She described other important elements of the regulations, including the "n" size for disaggregating groups, which is not prescribed but a state must justify proposing an "n" size larger than 30 students. She mentioned that the new measure of academic quality or student success must be supported by research showing high performance or improvement on the measure is likely to improve student learning. Ms. Posey responded to questions from the committee, and described the range of reactions to the regulations. She went over proposed rules on the "supplement, not supplant" (SNS) federal financial requirement. This requires states to use Title I funds only to supplement funds that would be made available from state and local sources. She stated that the methodology for allocating state/local dollars should not take Title I status into account. She described the reaction to proposed rules around SNS. She summarized her presentation and described mechanisms that Congress can use to review the regulations promulgated by ED. Ms. Posey responded to questions from the committee, and Ms. Exstrom spoke about a series of webinars NCSL will be running during the legislative session.


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