Education law offers new opportunities

The Sentinel-Record/Mara Kuhn SCHOOL RESOURCE: Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, detailed aspects of the Every Student Succeeds Act Tuesday in Horner Hall as the keynote speaker for the Arkansas Public School Resource Center's 2016 Fall Conference at the Hot Springs Convention Center. ESSA will be fully implemented across the country for the 2017-18 school year.
The Sentinel-Record/Mara Kuhn SCHOOL RESOURCE: Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, detailed aspects of the Every Student Succeeds Act Tuesday in Horner Hall as the keynote speaker for the Arkansas Public School Resource Center's 2016 Fall Conference at the Hot Springs Convention Center. ESSA will be fully implemented across the country for the 2017-18 school year.

The new federal education law offers a chance to continue positive trends and establish best practices for the foreseeable future, a national education leader said Tuesday at a statewide conference in Hot Springs.

Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, was introduced by Rex Nelson as the keynote speaker for the Arkansas Public School Resource Center's 2016 Fall Conference in Horner Hall at the Hot Springs Convention Center. Minnich first joined the CCSSO in 2008 and was appointed executive director in December 2012.

Minnich said Arkansas Department of Education Commissioner Johnny Key is a leader within the CCSSO. Key spoke Tuesday morning during the conference's opening session, along with Nelson, the former president of Arkansas' Independent Colleges and Universities, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, Sheila Boyington, co-founder and president of Thinking Media, and Balaji Ganapathy, North America head of workforce effectiveness for Tata Consultancy Services Limited.

The 50 state education commissioners and education heads in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. territories make up the 58 members of the CCSSO, which worked with states and their governors to develop the Common Core State Standards. The group also supported the Every Student Succeeds Act, which was signed into law Dec. 10, 2015, by President Barack Obama. The law reauthorized the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act and replaced No Child Left Behind.

"We led the charge to change this law," Minnich said. "We felt like states had, for too long, been focused on single metrics, a single test score, as many of you probably would agree. Now, the hard part is the states got it and now we have to make decisions about what do we do to make sure every kid is successful when they leave our education system."

His personal experiences with his children and a student he and his wife mentored have influenced his views on education. Minnich spoke about Javier, who they were paired with for a mentoring program when Javier was a junior in high school.

Javier made good grades in high school, but struggled early in college. He has since graduated from college, but Minnich said schools should better prepare students as they move from middle school to high school to college or a career.

"We, as educators, need to lead by example in Arkansas and across the country," Minnich said. "We've got to figure out how to support through those transitions."

Minnich grew up in Baltimore before his family moved to Salem, Ore. He said he struggled in math soon after the move. Minnich was the valedictorian of his high school, but he struggled again at the University of Washington in writing. He said educators have the responsibility to challenge students and prepare them for life after school.

"In implementing this law, we need to stop talking about what we can't do because of either federal or state regulations and start talking about what we can do for these kids in Arkansas and across the country," Minnich said.

Minnich commended Arkansas for moves taken to improve the college and career readiness of high school graduates and to give students more decisions in their education.

"I think you are going in the right direction here," Minnich said. "I think this could be a model for the country."

Minnich said No Child Left Behind produced new standards and data for accountability, but did not provide time or resources to improve poor performance. He said ESSA offers more potential to help low-performing schools.

"I think the biggest strength was that we now know how our schools were doing," Minnich said. "We knew how they were doing, generally, but now we have data to show us, even by subgroup, how they are doing. We were leaving kids out."

Minnich said ESSA made major changes in accountability, assessments, English language learning, federal funding streams, innovative assessment pilots, and teacher and leader quality, but he emphasized changes in school improvement supports. Funds are available for states to access to help districts serve all of their students.

"If we continue to just talk about low-performing schools, I don't think we are doing our job as educators and leaders," Minnich said. "I'm going to try to talk about what is the opportunity for us to get these schools to better serve kids."

States must still administer "high-quality" assessments for English language arts and math annually in grades 3-8 and once in high school, as well as once in each of three grade spans for science. ESSA requires states to assess 95 percent of all students and subgroups.

ESSA has increased flexibility and options for states to administer one summative assessment or multiple interim assessments, use available funding to audit state and local assessments and alter the time devoted to assessment administration for each grade. Arkansas is among 39 states and D.C. addressing the need to reduce unnecessary tests. Minnich said standardized tests must increase in value and relevance to students and schools.

"If it's just because the state said so, I think you need to have a conversation with your state," Minnich said.

Minnich also said he feels multiple choice tests inhibit students and do not fully access their knowledge, critical thinking or creativity. He said schools face challenges with technology to adequately administer tests and the increased difficulty of the "high-quality" tests. He said feedback from teachers indicates the new tests better represent what they teach in class.

"The hard part of that is we spent a lot of money and time trying to get to a better set of assessments and I'm not clear that we have a plan in place for continuing to innovate around making sure the testing time gets shorter, that we only use the tests for what we need to use them for," Minnich said.

"I think that's the ESSA opportunity. Thinking about what testing looks like five years from now may be very different than what it looks like right now."

Arkansas was again lauded for its avenues for educators and the general public to provide feedback about education and ESSA. Regional education service cooperatives have hosted community listening forums to gain more feedback. Melissa Bratton, English as a second language coordinator for the Hot Springs School District, is part of the 12-member committee charged with helping to develop the state's new accountability system.

Minnich said the flexibility and changes made by ESSA can reinspire today's educators.

"I just hope that you'll find it in one of the kids in your school district," Minnich said. "I found it in Javier and my two kids. These are the reasons why I think -- I want to leave our nation a better place for these kids. I think you guys are the key to that happening."

ESSA requires each state to define an accountability system. States will submit their proposals to the U.S. Department of Education next year before ESSA is fully implemented for the 2017-18 school year.

"I think we are at a moment in education, if we don't get this right, we are going to be stuck with it for another 15 years," Minnich said. "The decisions we are making right now about how we set up our systems for the next 10-12 years, we will look back on that like we look back on the quote from George W. Bush.

"This is a moment where you can make change and if we don't take it, we will continue to do the same things we've been doing. We will continue to give these tests. We will continue to focus most of our accountability on the test scores. If we don't change it now, I think we'll be stuck with it."

Local on 10/19/2016

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