WEIC – Funding Student Success Committee Update

I really appreciate all the discussion going on during the Funding Student Success Committee, I have attended every meeting including the working group meetings. I am very concerned about the timeline that has been assigned to this committee and to the overall commission with regards to developing a total plan. The State Board is receiving an update at their October 15 meeting on the plan, (where are we)  including the Funding Student Success plan, the plan is nowhere near done.  The Funding Student Success committee has only met three times. I know everyone involved has wonderful intentions and believe in what they are doing, I just do not think there is enough time to get what they want and need done before the final recommendations/plan are due to the State Board.

Things Might Be Different for 11th Graders Next Year When It Comes to Our State Assessment

The 11th grade state assessment may not be Smarter Balanced Assessment; it looks like the state may be going with the SAT reported at the Accountability Framework Working Group meeting on Monday. I thought our Delaware colleges agreed to using Smarter Balanced as a way to measure college readiness and would be accepting it in lieu of a separate placement test.

Accountability Framework Working Group Update Interesting Meeting

I attended the AFWG Meeting Number 16 yesterday. There were 10 committee members present and 3 members of the public in attendance. Secretary Godowsky popped in and sat in the meeting for a while and thanked everyone for participating. It was really nice seeing the Secretary of Education at this meeting, this was the second time I have seen the Secretary popping into a meeting.

The next steps: share the recommendations with DESS Advisory Committee (stakeholder group), which happened today, State Board will review and hopefully accept recommendations as presented (State Board representative indicated the board may not accept the recommendations as presented), and then the approved recommendations from the State Board are sent to US DOE.

The members stated again to DOE, what supports are going to be provided to the schools once a school is labeled? We label the schools but there are really no supports in place.

A school can become a Focus, Focus Plus, Priority, Action, Watch, Reward, Recognition, or a Blue Ribbon School.

• DOE reported they must add a consequence for not meeting participation rate. The group decided on the following:
  • School must write a plan for how they will address low participation rates.
  • Cannot be a reward school if the participation rates is less than 95% using NEAP.
• DOE did state the Governor recommended and would prefer the multiplier for schools that are below 95% only, as the consequence the participation rate, but members stated they did not agree with that choice.
• The group decided on using a 0 to 500 point system.

The group was made up of district and charter administrators, a PTA, a DSEA, and a State Board representative. Most of them really did not like labeling the schools especially with no permanent supports in place. I really appreciated the conversation of the group. The group made it clear over and over that they did not like the system but knew most of it was being driven by the feds.

During the conversation, I got the impression that the Governor wanted certain things to come out of this group and I got the same impression from the State Board representative. Why do you put these committees/groups in place and waste their valuable time away from their schools if we are not going to listen to them, they are the experts. I hope the Governor and the State Board will respect the opinion of the experts and keep the final recommendations from the Accountability Framework Working Group as is. It will be interesting to see what the State Board does at their October 15th meeting.

Race to the Top and How the State Continues to Fund the Expired Grant

Once again Delaware’s Governor has chosen to add to the ever burgeoning Department of education bureaucracy in Dover. In this instance there has been a particular concerning manipulation of the General Assembly’s intentions and authority. When the Governor’s budget was originally presented it included $7.5 million to continue Race to the Top (RTTT) initiatives funded by expiring federal funding. In that $7.5 million was a proposal to create and fund ten positions created under RTTT and place the funding burden on Delaware’s taxpayers. I, and others, had consistently and persistently warned that it would be unacceptable for the taxpayers to assume the costs of continuing the failed policies of the federal education reform movement known as RTTT. When the full $7.5 million was challenged and halved, I and other GA members were assured that the remaining $3.75 million added to the budget would not be used to fund those positions and that essentially those temporary employees would not be continuing once the RTTT federal funding expired. In what has become a commonplace practice under this Administration there has been a deliberate effort to manipulate and circumvent the intentions and will of the General Assembly. This Governor has stated time and again that his efforts to shrink government involved freezing vacant positions and the funding for those positions as part of his austerity plan to balance the budget. It therefore becomes even more striking that the Governor and DOE have continued their expansion of the Department of Ed bureaucracy, which has grown over 10% in recent years, with the addition of these ten positions to the budget despite assurances that these jobs would not be funded except by RTTT monies. I only discovered this secretive maneuver by happenstance when I requested a full and specific accounting of the use of the budget approved $3.75 million from the Controller General’s office. The email chain that follows shows the specifics of that budget addition and is accompanied by the rather shocking revelation that the ten temporary RTTT positions were being added to the DOE bureaucracy funded by Delaware taxpayer money.

 Representative John Kowalko (25th District)