The approval process for state plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is well underway after the final submission deadline in September. And just last week there was a senate committee hearing to discuss ESSA, where senators praised the stand-out plans put forth by Tennessee, Louisiana and New Mexico, but were more concerned about the shortcomings in more recently submitted plans from the rest of the country.
Unleashing State Innovation
It was an exciting title for a senate hearing, but the conversation veered away from innovation and focused more on accountability.
Should the two topics be separated though?
The one word that seems to pop up more than any other when talking about ESSA is flexibility. States have more flexibility to set their own targets and execute based on local needs. There has been a lot of excitement around greater flexibility because that opens the door for more innovation.
Senators were quick to point out that flexibility did not mean a lack of accountability. On the contrary, accountability systems are a key element to the plans and the inclusion of a fifth indicator encouraged states to look wider when it came to measuring school success — giving them an opportunity to unleash innovation through accountability.
Last week, we shared this article about innovation in government. It argues that the catalyst for innovation in government many times is crisis, but it can happen outside of a crisis if you create the right conditions. ESSA has created the conditions for innovation.
Where we normally might think of the public sector trying to innovate despite the constraints of accountability, ESSA was set up in a way that invites innovation in how we measure success.
ESSA has created the conditions for innovation.
Opportunities for Innovation — Our ESSA Observations
We read all 51 state plans, curious as to how they each approached the design of their accountability system with the chance to incorporate new indicators of school quality that look beyond academic performance.
We noticed two recurring themes regarding how states chose School Quality/Student Success Indicators for their accountability system.
- Stakeholders believe school climate is a critical indicator of quality. State Departments spent a lot of time collecting feedback from residents about what they wanted to see in their ESSA plan, and there was overwhelming agreement that school climate is important.
- However, the Departments are not yet confident that they can measure new non-academic indicators like school climate in a comparable, valid, reliable and scalable way — necessary to meet federal accountability requirements.
Take these three examples:
Oregon Department of Education
There was strong stakeholder input on the well-rounded reporting category and indicators. Many felt that there needed to be more accountability related to opportunity to learn as well as measures of social emotional learning and school climate/culture…
ODE will continue to work with stakeholders to better define these indicators for accountability and school/district improvement and identify appropriate measures.
Indiana Department of Education
At community meetings and in Technical Assistance Working Groups, there was strong support for climate and culture surveys, either to support struggling schools or for use in accountability purposes…
…while the elements of culture and climate are vital elements to school success, they can be challenging to measure. Based on stakeholder feedback, the IDOE plans to begin a pilot of culture and climate surveys with struggling schools, with the goal of producing a refined survey proposal for statewide implementation.
State of Washington — The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction
Stakeholders expressed interest in considering the use of several measures for school accountability: disproportionate discipline, teacher assignment and equity, and a school climate and engagement survey…
OSPI, the Washington State Board of Education (SBE), and stakeholder workgroups will evaluate those measures for suitability for future inclusion in state accountability, including data quality, validity, and research demonstrating their association with student achievement.
A challenge that will be investigated further in most cases … that’s how a lot of innovation starts, right?
It’s understandable that states were hesitant to jump right in to completely new measures and methods of data collection. It’s a tough spot to be in:
Stakeholders want you to measure school climate.
But if you’re going to measure school climate, you need to be able to analyse the data in this really sophisticated way to meet ESSA requirements, like disaggregating that data by a number of student subgroups.
You’re being asked to make the jump from maybe not doing it at all and not having any data to starting to collect and pay attention to new data and to analyse and compare it in a complex way. It’s a lot all at once.
(Western Cape Government and Education Department were faced with similar challenges … Check out their solution here.)
A couple of states have actually included school climate or engagement surveys as their fifth indicator, for example Illinois and, one of the exemplary hearing participants, New Mexico. These are cases, however, when surveys are an existing data point, giving them a head start to aligning it with ESSA rather than starting from scratch. Makes sense.
Reflecting on all of this we realized how easy it would be to feel torn between trying something new and outside of the box and hesitating because what if you can’t show results in the way that you need to?
But that is the challenge at hand:
Do more and do better when it comes to understanding students on a deeper level, accounting for each and every one of them and paying special attention to underserved groups.
It’s a big challenge… but everyone was excited about flexibility and innovation remember?! So now is not the time to shy away from it. Now is when we get to explore new ideas and solutions.
ESSA is the floor not the ceiling
Just the foundation
Listening to the two-hour senate committee hearing on Tuesday, one comment from New Mexico Secretary of Education Christopher Ruszkowski stood out among the rest: “federal approval is certainly the floor not the ceiling”. He really stressed that in New Mexico, what the law requires with ESSA is the bare minimum. They will comply with the law and then go beyond that to deliver the best they can for students.
Hopefully a mentality every state will adopt in thinking about the future of its education system. You have to start somewhere, and ESSA isn’t a bad place to start. So maybe some measurements aren’t ready yet to be included in federal accountability reporting. That’s fine, but that doesn’t mean we can forget about them… it means we need to get to work on researching and discovering how.
States have more autonomy and flexibility with ESSA and have been pushed to think about school quality in a broader, more student-centered way. The challenge now is to innovate to figure out how to measure what hasn’t been measured before, to expand data collection without an extra burden on teachers or administrators, and to do it all in a way that meets the standards set in the law.
So this is our challenge to states: to be innovative in how you think about accountability.
We wholeheartedly agree with all of the people who stressed the value of school culture and climate and other non-academic indicators that can be better understood by engaging with students, parents and teachers. That’s why we built Edurio — to help education agencies who wanted this kind of data but faced the challenge of complex data analysis requirements and limited technical solutions.
Are you involved in ESSA implementation in your state? We would love to learn more about your plans and your approach to monitoring indicators of school quality and student success.
Get in touch with Liene at liene.putnina@edurio.com to set up a time to talk — share your ideas with us, we’ll offer advice and experience where we can, and maybe we’ll find a way to innovate together.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 SME programme for open and disruptive innovation under grant agreement №733984.
