Board of Ed: ESSA redux

Sagan: hope you took it constructively
"how we use this as an opportunity to raise standards across the Commonwealth"
"I think we were trying to understand it"
timeline question first
Chester: thought it was a terrific discussion last night
appreciate your opening comments on this
cites Curtin's work on this

much without a data set; new test has not had results yet
elevating attention to high needs students
element built in talks about opportunity not just outcomes
aiming for April 3 submission; which would be a March final review plan at Board of Ed
says that DeVos said she intended to move ahead on ESSA
Sagan: how tied are we to the plan?
Chester: "end up in kind of a negotiation with them"
generally that's a positive interaction
can make revisions, make amendments to the proposal
anticipate places that will lack detail, as we don't yet know how test actually plays out
Peyser: why go first?
Chester: gives state and districts some certainty about what next year looks like
would know by summer what ground rules are for next school year
"think it's very important our districts know with some level of certainty" what is going to happen
Stewart: questions...no? not sure how we just got into Chester talking instead
Chester; want to make sure that the schools that we are concerned about are the schools we should be concerned about
"find it useful to have these larger themes to frame"
Stewart: in terms of arts education
includes many schools in Massachusetts plus using arts as a turnaround strategies
"we need to very bold on arts education"
not "isn't that nice, access to the arts"
what data do we need to be very bold on arts education?
Curtin: access to all publicly funded students in the Commonwealth's course schedules
know what their courses look like, plus their marks
elementary and sometimes middle schools in self-contained classrooms: don't have data always
do know when student goes to a discrete arts class
run into a problem of percentage of entire schedule with a self-contained classroom
would need to expand data collection to break out percentage of time being spent on each individual subject including in self-contained classroom
Noyce: think it's important to learn arts education
do think it's important to distinguish between outcomes and opportunities
"would be uncomfortable requiring specific amounts of time for arts when we don't do that for reading, math, and so forth"
can talk about if there is an arts program in the school
weighing outcome indicators more than opportunities
outcomes based measure with "a narrative" around opportunity
Chester: there's a lot that goes into a school, so we may want to provide a broader picture of what goes on
without it being in the measure
Stewart: think indicators should be things that teachers can really make use of
chronic absenteeism
kids with medically fragile conditions who meet that:maybe a weighting for some of this
"days of missed instruction" more in line what we're looking for
aligning data we do have into something that we do have
Moriarty: powerful useful measure
what you do with that measure: where it begins, not where it ends
many, many uncontrollable factors; how they respond to it is within their control
Stewart: transparency for districts so parents can really really know
Sagan: 9th grade passing
Chester: would having an indicator on grade 9 courses incentivize having schools pass all 9th graders?
we know consequences to students of not passing students the first year they're in high school
some of the checks on this are MCAS in 10th grade
talked about some measure of success at the next level: passing 9th grade at how successful the middle schools are
Noyce asks if it can be replaced with courses on track for on time graduation
McKenna: for too many, flunk English or flunk math, it's over
Curtin: 80% of schools in Level 1 and 2; opportunity to expand upon that
by percentage of performance:
Tier 1: 90-100
Tier 2: 51-89
Tier 3: 25-50
Tier 4: 11-25
Tier 5: 6-10
comprehensive support or underperforming: 1-5 or current level 4
state receivership: on Commissioner's determination