Another new Issue Memo from the Legislative Research Council outlines the five major differences between the new Every Student Succeeds Act and the failed No Child Left Behind Act.
1. Testing Requirements: ESSA requires statewide standardized tests, just like NCLB. However, ESSA allows states to break the tests into “smaller components that can be given throughout the school year.” Great: so now we can have little fits of testing-palooza breaking up the daily schedule many times a year.
2. Academic Standards: We still have to have them, but instead of the one-size-fits-all standards of NCLB, ESSA allows different standards for students with “the most significant cognitive disabilities.” ESSA also prohibits the feds from pushing any specific set of standards. We’ll leave that to the textbook publishing corporations.
3. Accountability: ESSA abandons NCLB’s mandate that every student reach proficiency in reading and math. States can now set different performance goals for different groups of students, include factors like “student or educator engagement or school climate and safety” in measuring schools’ effectiveness, and decide their own consequences (if any) for schools that perform poorly.
4. School Improvement: ESSA eliminates NCLB’s federal intervention in failing schools. ESSA does order underperforming schools to allow students to transfer to other public schools in the district… which has zero impact in South Dakota, which allows open enrollment across districts.
5. Teacher Effectiveness: ESSA strikes the NCLB requirement that teachers in core subject areas have a bachelor’s degree and “demonstrate subject-matter knowledge in the areas they teach.” ESSA defaults back to state certification rules. ESSA also broadens “professional development” from strictly content-oriented learning to “more personalized, ongoing activities that are job-embedded and part of broader school improvement plans.”
If there’s any meaningful good in the switch from NCLB to ESSA, it appears to be a retreat from the federal intrusion into K-12 education that Mike Rounds embraced as Governor.
Meanwhile, over 9,000 K-12 teachers will keep doing what they always do—planning lessons, teaching kids, and grading papers—no matter what letters and logos are stamped on their professional-development binders. Just be ready to turn your schedule upside down a few more times a year for those new mini-tests!
Your comments show a lack of awareness regarding the state’a ESSA plan as well as a lack of knowledge about what had been done for the last 12 years. Students with significant cognitive disabilities have had alternate standards and alternate assessments. Rules regarding accountability around this subgroup.
I think the ESSA is the best reform of education reform that anyone could expect to get. One annual national standardized evaluation on reading and math is appropriate, and breaking up those testing dates actually can improve the usefulness of the test to educators, assuming the results get back in a reasonable amount of time
I worry, though, that ESSA will lead to things like Daugaard’s recent dumbing down of state standards. Throwing some students under the bus is not good reform. When you encourage some kids to skip geometry, as Daugaard did, you are directing that student to a lifetime of minimum wage work. When it comes having a uniform system of education, as required by the SD Constitution, I wonder if these recent changes violate that.
Donald, I don’t believe there is one standard national evaluation: several testing systems are in place, and each state makes its own cut scores. Not like the old days of the Iowa Basic Test, states are never really compared – there is only the creation of a state to pull itself apart by assessing how each district does and asses who are the relative lowest. As a teacher, I also do not fine Smarter Balance (the SD test) to be particularly open as to how it tests standards.
South Dakota has lots of smart kids and adults that don’t know what to do with their knowledge. That’s why Dakota Contrary is inherent. Until teachers stress this factor, nothing will improve. Any kid with a background in this skill is on the road out of the state ASAP. Look at the top ten states and set models. Start kids in first grade and develop unique teaching programs. It’s up to you, teachers!!
https://wallethub.com/edu/most-innovative-states/31890/
Excuse me, Knitter, but I’m reporting what the LRC says in its report. Have I missed something in that report? Did LRC miss something?
Go to http://doe.sd.gov/ESSA/ for the real details regarding the state’s implementation of ESSA which is well underway.
Not surprising that the Council of Legislative Research completely missed the boat again. I wonder how much tax-payer funding went into the production of this paper. Somebody should pass a law bill that makes them put the cost of each paper they write on the bottom of it and then measure how effective or useful the paper was.
“student or educator engagement or school climate and safety”
Isn’t it something that safety is an issue? Prior to school shootings, safety meant free of bullying. Now it’s about returning home in one piece at the end of the day. There is an issue the legislature could easily deal with, but the SDGOP’s owners, Kochs, Pootie and the rest have wagged their fingers and said, “No, no, no! Bad boys!”
The Wallet Hub article Porter linked to has solid, evidence based information about what grows economies. It’s not theoretical. It’s what state economies are revealing.
“Innovation is a principal driver of U.S. economic growth.”
Massachusetts is #1 in innovation. The West Coast is in the top 10. Minnesota is #15. SD is #41, but that’s that’s better than Iowa and Nebraska, which surprised me. Poor old Mississippi is dead last. Check out the article.
So. Can creativity and imagination be taught? Risk taking is the heart of innovation, imo. SD culture abhors such things, as Porter said. When creative, imaginative risk takers can no longer cope with being stifled, they leave the state.
To build a 21st century culture, SD must start with the children in the schools. How? (It would be wonderful if churches got on board too.)
Debbo, you said “There is an issue the legislature could easily deal with…” Are you talking about ending school shootings? What is the easy answer there that everyone is apparently missing?
Also, I’m not exactly sure what you consider to be a “21st century culture” but let me be the first to say you can keep your churches to yourself. Let’s keep churches as far from our schools as possible.
If I invited some lady to come in to a high school and explain to the kids how mermaids create coral reefs through the power of expressive water-dancing, people would look at her (and me) like we were crazy and they would likely ask us to leave. That’s how the rest of us feel about church people and the silly crap they keep pretending to believe.
Exactly, Debbo. In SoDak embarrassment is considered horrible. It’s safer not to even try than to risk failing and become embarrassed and laughed at. Kids should be taught to fail, in school. Give problems that no student can solve and then examine the failures of each attempt by each kid. Then, do it again the next week. A student will learn they are getting closer to success with each failure. They will invent new methods to try and solve problems through trial and error. They will catalog these methods for future problem solving. Innovation is highly rewarding, especially if it takes a long time to solve even part of a problem. If the class Brainiac also fails, failure will soon be accepted as a process to success.
Teach this – “It doesn’t matter what people think about you because they rarely do. 99% of everyone’s thoughts are about themselves. People are thinking about how you are judging them. People aren’t judging you.”
Ryan, this is embarrassing, but I can’t remember what I was referring to. The 2nd part of my first comment is not well written. Sorry.
As for the churches, I didn’t mean that they get involved in the schools, though I can see that it might look like that. I was thinking about various church classes like confirmation and Sunday School encouraging children to ask questions, wonder about what they’re hearing, etc.
I always enjoyed that, but some educators in any setting, feel threatened by questions, especially if they dont know the answers. Their response is to attempt to end questioning or shame the questioner. Either stifles creativity, imagination and innovation.
Yup. Constructive criticism, well done, is a beautiful thing.
BTW, art and music classes are great for fostering creativity, unless they’re taught rigidly.
Harry Chapin sang about how to teach an art class that chokes the life out of innovation:
https://youtu.be/4cVpkzZpDBA
End questioning and shame the questioner? That’s what Mike Rounds did to me on public radio in 2003, when he turned me from a Republican to a Democrat! :-D