EdWatch 2015: 10 issues to watch
Alison Yin for EdSource Today
2015 promises to be a pivotal year for several major reforms in public education, including the standing rollout of the Common Core State Standards, the implementation of the land's new school financing and accountability system, and the administration of the online Smarter Balanced assessments to millions of students this spring. There will be other issues to watch. Hither's our list of the top ten. Let us know what you would have added.
Primal decisions on accountability
For more than a decade, the federal No Child Left Backside Police and the statewide Bookish Performance Alphabetize set measures of school and student performance. The era of NCLB and API is ending; decisions this year in Sacramento and possibly in Washington will determine what volition have their place.
NCLB may limp along for another year, although Republicans in charge of education policy in Congress are eager to pass a replacement. Whether to require all students to exist tested annually in math and English language language arts – a tenet of NCLB – is one of the flashpoints.
There volition be action in Sacramento. Karen Stapf Walters, executive director of the State Board of Didactics, said recently that the Local Control and Accountability Plans, with viii priorities for measuring school and student improvement, not the API, volition form the basis for a new accountability system. By October, the country lath must determine what the combination of metrics, or "rubrics," will look like. A new state agency, the California Collaborative for Teaching Excellence, will use them to decide which schools and districts require exterior intervention.
Big funding increases
In 2010 Jerry Brown was elected to his third term every bit governor as the country faced a $26 billion deficit. Afterwards winning re-election in November, the challenge in his fourth term is managing surging revenue from Proffer 98, the formula that determines land education funding.
The Legislative Annotator's Function is projecting that K-12 schools and community colleges will get $2.3 billion more in revenue for the year ending June 30 than Gov. Jerry Chocolate-brown congenital into the state budget. After Brown pays off the concluding $ane billion in late payments to schools, that will exit $one.iii billion. One option is to put that toward implementing the new Mutual Cadre standards or other i-fourth dimension purposes.
Brown will denote his proposed budget for 2015-16 on Friday. The LAO is predicting potentially as much as $six.4 billion in new money for G-12 schools and community colleges – most a 10 per centum increase – in a higher place the current level of districts' operating revenue. Brown's options may include expediting the timetable to fully fund the Local Control Funding Formula, expanding transitional kindergarten or choosing one-time expenditures rather than ongoing programs.
Standardized tests go online
This twelvemonth Californians will finally get a sense of the extent to which students take mastered the Mutual Core State Standards, which the state adopted in 2010. Last yr, over 3 million students participated in "field tests" of the Smarter Balanced assessments. But this jump most of the land's 3rd through 8th and 11th-form students will have the full bombardment of the online assessments in math and English linguistic communication arts standards. In addition, for the get-go time the assessments will be "figurer adaptive," significant that depending on how a student answers a question, they will be asked to answer more hard or easier questions to more accurately assess a student'southward level of proficiency.
Information technology has been difficult to guess how well students are grasping Mutual Core concepts since the land has begun implementing its new Local Control Funding Formula, which emphasizes increased local command for school districts. Nether local control, districts and lease schools are making more of their own decisions about teacher training, textbooks and applied science.
State officials are tempering expectations about how well students volition practice on the new assessments, stating it volition accept students – and teachers – years to adapt to the rigor of the new standards. The State Board of Education has not notwithstanding decided whether to use this year's scores to evaluate school performance. Thus far, California has not seen the major resistance to the standards that has roiled politics in another states.
Regulating local accountability plans
The State Lath of Education spent a smashing bargain of time in 2022 revising regulations for districts' Local Command and Accountability Plans, the school comeback, student accomplishment and spending plans that school districts wrote for the first time final spring. But nonprofit advocacy groups like Education Trust-West, which recently released an analysis of LCAPs, and Public Advocates say the board didn't arrive enough in forcing districts to document how they volition spend the extra dollars that the state's new school funding system provides for low-income students, foster children and English language learners.
Gov. Jerry Brownish has made it clear he doesn't want lawmakers tinkering with the regulations until in that location's prove based on several years' experience to justify major changes. But the advocates may get to the Legislature anyhow. First end may be Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, the new chairwoman of the Associates Budget Committee. In testimony last year, she warned the state lath to exist more demanding of districts, and now she has leverage as a key lawmaker in determining whether Brown gets his spending priorities through the Legislature. "This is a burning result for me and I don't program to permit it go," she said in an interview.
2015 will also reveal the extent to which district accountability plans approved by July 1 last year volition exist inverse for the coming schoolhouse year. The plans are supposed to be in place for three years, but must be updated annually.
Focus turns to special pedagogy
In 2022 the U.S. Department of Instruction alleged that California was one of three states whose special education programs needed intervention considering of the lack of significant academic progress for students with special needs. The 1-year intervention calls for the country to improve the performance of students with disabilities on achievement tests.
In February, the Statewide Special Education Job Force is to release its recommendations for overhauling the arrangement. I potentially controversial recommendation is expected to call for more than grooming for regular teachers in the needs of special education students and more extensive training in academic subjects for special education teachers, then that both groups of teachers can amend piece of work together. In calling for academic improvements in special education, U.S. Secretarial assistant of Educational activity Arne Duncan said, "I want to stress that the vast majority of students with disabilities do non have pregnant cerebral disabilities." In California, about 65 percent of students in special education take learning disabilities or speech impairments, such as dyslexia or stuttering. Ten percentage are classified as autistic and half-dozen per centum as intellectually disabled.
What next for Vergara 5. California?
In a state ruling with national repercussions, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu in June declared that state laws determining teacher tenure, dismissal and layoffs based on seniority are unconstitutional. Vergara v. The Land of California became a major issue in the November race for country superintendent of public education. Incumbent State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, who was re-elected, is a accused in the lawsuit.
Briefs are expected to be filed in the twond Commune Court of Entreatment early this year, just the court has no deadline on deciding when to hear the instance. Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff, who has unsuccessfully sponsored legislation to extend the time it takes for teachers to earn tenure, said he "may grit off" past bills and try again. "The guess has given a blueprint to look at. We've gotten nowhere for a long fourth dimension," he said.
Students Matter, the nonprofit that filed the lawsuit, issued a statement alarm lawmakers not to adopt "superficial and brief … legislation that falls short of what Vergara demands." But Democrats, who dominate the Legislature, may wait for the Court of Appeal's decision before seriously because changes to the laws.
Pressures to repeal law on commune budget reserves
A new law forcing districts to reduce budget reserves they keep for emergencies won't take result for years. Merely the California Schools Boards Association says its top priority for 2022 is to see the law repealed immediately, "earlier schoolhouse districts are led downwardly the road to financial crisis," association President Josephine Lucey said in a commentary.
The association says smaller district reserves could result in bankruptcies, increased borrowing at higher interest rates and a downgrading of bond ratings.
The Legislature and Gov. Brown inserted the reserves cap into this year's state budget. Under a complicated formula, the cap requires districts to lower their reserves any yr that the state puts money in a new country reserve fund for education that voters passed in November equally part of Proposition 2. Information technology will exist years before any coin flows into the fund, but that hasn't diminished the association's eagerness to change the law.
Renewed push button for early teaching
The effort to expand preschool programs is probable to pick upwards more than speed adjacent yr. California Early Caput Start and other kid care programs for infants and young children will receive a piece of the $500 1000000 in federal funds designated for states' early educational activity programs, plus some of the $330 one thousand thousand that private corporations and foundations have pledged to expand early learning nationwide.
The Legislature has allocated $273 meg for early on education, which amidst other programs will expand all-day preschool slots to xi,500 depression-income 4-year-olds. The Legislature will also exist considering Assembly Bill 47, introduced by incoming Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, which would make California'south full-day preschool program bachelor to all eligible low-income children.
"Whether through legislation or through the upkeep, the governor and Legislature did make a delivery that all low-income kids have admission to preschool," said Ted Lempert, president of Children At present, an Oakland-based advancement organization. Supporters of universal preschool will be pushing to brand sure legislators go on that commitment, Lempert said.
Measuring career readiness
Ensuring that schools are preparing students for college and careers is a major goal of current reform efforts, yet specific standards outlining how schools should reach that goal have been elusive. Await much of that to change in 2015. The informational committee that has been working to develop useable measures of college and career readiness, the Public School Accountability Act Committee, volition move from theory to action in coming months as information technology develops recommendations for holding schools accountable every bit they ready students for life after high school graduation. Much of the discussion will likely center on how to measure career readiness skills, which have been less clearly divers than higher readiness.
Lawsuit challenges local control
With the creation of the new state education finance system, the Local Control Funding Formula, California has given school districts the authority to spend funds every bit they see fit. But does local control absolve the California Section of Teaching of its responsibility under the country Constitution to ensure equal educational opportunity?
Rulings this year in the class action lawsuit Cruz v. California will address what the country is required, or not required, to do well-nigh disruptive conditions in eight high-poverty schools where students allegedly are beingness denied meaning amounts of mandated instructional time. State Board of Education President Michael Kirst, an architect of the new funding formula, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson have indicated that the state volition fight the lawsuit.
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Source: https://edsource.org/2015/edwatch-2015-10-issues-to-watch/72145
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