A new process for evaluating Minnesota schools will be similar to the old one, but the people who put it together are hoping it will be easier for parents to understand.
Minnesota Department of Education leaders gave state lawmakers a peek at the new process Wednesday during a joint House and Senate education policy committee hearing. A provision in the state’s two-year education budget required that state leaders give lawmakers an early look at the plan before submitting it to the U.S. Department of Education in September.
The updates are required under the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, which was passed by Congress in late 2015. ESSA replaces the controversial No Child Left Behind law and is the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provides federal funding and oversight of public schools and was first approved in 1965.
ESSA continues to require that schools measure student performance annually through standardized tests, but it gives states more flexibility in dealing with struggling schools. Under Minnesota’s plan, school performance will be measured in five ways:
Achievement: The number of students who score “proficient” or “partially proficient” on math and reading exams that are given each year in grades three through eight and once in high school.
Growth: How much a student improves academically from year to year, with emphasis on progress toward grade-level proficiency.
Graduation rates: How many students graduate on time and within up to seven years after they enter high school.
English learners: How well students learning English progress towards academic proficiency.
School quality and student success: An evolving indicator that will measure attendance at first, but eventually will include providing a well-rounded education and making sure students are ready for college or a career.
Minnesota’s current Multiple Measurement Ratings, or MMR, use proficiency, academic growth, graduation rates and how well schools are closing achievement gaps to identify high- and low-performing schools.
Both the old and new programs identify struggling schools and provide teachers and administrators help to improve student achievement.
Brenda Cassellius, state education commissioner, noted that Minnesota’s ESSA plan was developed after more than a year of work that included 300 meetings around the state.
“We had a lot of help and feedback from key stakeholders, advocacy groups, teachers and principals,” Cassellius said.
State leaders will open the plan to public comment Aug. 1 and are planning a series of public input meetings before it is submitted to the federal Department of Education.
During the coming school year, state education leaders will develop a new system for reporting school performance to parents. That system will likely include a more nuanced look at how a school does in each of the five indicators, rather than a single grade or designation given in the current MMR.
“We have certainly heard clearly from stakeholders that that is a priority,” Stephanie Graff, chief accountability officer for the education department, said of the need to make the system easy for parents to understand.