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The Friday Report
January 13, 2017
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Forum News
This Weekend on Education Matters: State Board of Education vs NC General Assembly
This week’s episode of Education Matters, the Forum’s weekly television program, focuses on House Bill 17, a bill passed in a surprise special session of the NC General Assembly in December. The bill, signed into law by former Gov. Pat McCrory, strips much of the power from the State Board of Education and gives it to the newly elected Superintendent of Public Instruction, Republican Mark Johnson. The State Board claims the law is unconstitutional and has filed a lawsuit to overturn it.
Host Keith Poston talks with the current chairman of the State Board, Bill Cobey (pictured top), as well as former State Board chair Howard Lee and former NC Supreme Court Associate Justice Willis Whichard (pictured above).
Education Matters airs on Saturday night at 7:30 PM on WRAL-TV in the Raleigh/Durham/Fayetteville market and statewide on UNC-TV’s North Carolina Channel Sundays at 9 AM and Mondays at 3 PM. The North Carolina Channel can be found on Time Warner Cable Channel 1276 or check local listing and other providers here.
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2017 Eggs & Issues Breakfast
SOLD OUT
In less than two weeks the Public School Forum of North Carolina will host its now sold out 3rd Annual Eggs & Issues Breakfast at Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh. This special event at the start of the legislative session will showcase the Forum’s release of its annual Top Ten Education Issues, a unique take on the state’s most pressing issues in education for the year.
The 2017 Eggs & Issues Breakfast will feature a special taping of Education Matters, the Forum’s weekly television show. Special guest will be Governor Roy Cooper, who will sit down for a live one-on-one discussion at the event with Forum President & Executive Director and Education Matters host Keith Poston.
The event is Wednesday, January 25, 2017 from 7:30 AM to 9:30 AM. Breakfast will start at 7:30 AM, followed by the program at 8:00 AM. The Eggs & Issues Breakfast is one of the most anticipated education events each new year and tickets are now sold out!
Presenting Sponsor
Education Pacesetter Sponsor
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Public School Forum Programs
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State News
After Durham School’s ‘Egregious’ Errors, NC Charter Board Considering More Statewide Oversight
After this week’s discovery that a Durham charter school gave unearned diplomas to 40 percent of its graduates, the state Charter Schools Advisory Board said it will consider adding more oversight to all charter high schools in the state.
Board Chairman Alex Quigley said Thursday he’d like the board’s policy committee to examine “charter school oversight, particularly around high schools and graduation requirements” at an upcoming meeting with the full board, likely in February, March or April.
Quigley said he believes the diploma problem discovered at Kestrel Heights School in Durham was “an isolated incident, but it’s important.” He cited the growing number of charter high schools and growing number of charter high school applicants in the state and said the board needs to make sure “there are some potential mechanisms in place” to catch problems.
Kestrel Heights’ diploma problem wasn’t discovered for eight years. The school reported this week that 40 percent of its graduates – 160 of 399 students – received diplomas in the past eight years without earning all of the proper credits.
Charter advisory board members discussed the possibility of having state consultants, who are already visiting the schools, pull records to make sure students are taking the required classes and are eligible to graduate.
To continue reading the complete article, click here.
Excerpt from:
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As Charters and Choice Expand, So Does Segregation
As charter school enrollment has more than doubled across the U.S. over 10 years, demographic data are showing that charter schools are more segregated than traditional public schools. Nationally, 2.5 million students were enrolled in charter schools in 2013 across the U.S. Just 10 years prior, enrollment was less than 1 million. Despite that growth, research has been inconclusive on the question of whether charter schools and school choice in general are effective in improving student outcomes. What is clear is that charter schools are more segregated – 39 percent of charter schools have concentrated poverty compared to 24 percent of traditional public schools.
While the research surrounding academic outcomes of school choice remains unclear, there is evidence that without equity-oriented safeguards – such as access to information, transportation, and equitable admissions criteria – the expansion of school choice, including charter schools, corresponds with increased segregation by race, class, language and ability. This segregation is largely due to parental choice.
Map Credit: Zach Szczepaniak
“School choice” generally refers to parental choice in school selection, either through magnet programs, attending charter schools, private schools, using government-paid vouchers to attend private schools, homeschooling or residential choice. Supporters of public school choice programs (such as charters and vouchers) say they can let parents escape an inadequate public school and that competition can push traditional public schools to improve.
Race and socio-economic status are key predictors for whether parents will exercise choice, with white, affluent families disproportionately more likely to use all forms of school choice. Low-income parents have less access to information about choices as well as financial resources, and are less likely to actively choose schools. During the school choice process, parents generally prioritize proximity and academic achievement. More affluent families typically have greater access to high quality schools close to home. Many parents also seek schools where their children will be part of the racial majority.
Data from communities across the United States indicate that as more parents choose schools, the number of segregated schools has increased. Most importantly, this unrestrained school choice leads to deepening of the existing inequalities of outcome and opportunity among groups of students.
To continue reading the complete article, click here.
Excerpt from:
Hawn Nelson, A. “As charters and choice expand, so does segregation.” UNC Charlotte. 1/5/17.
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What Will a New Accountability System Look Like?
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has been working on a new framework for the state’s schools.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a piece of federal legislation passed in December 2015, gives schools funding and relative flexibility to determine how their systems are run — and held accountable.
North Carolina’s current accountability system, which grades each public school on an A-F scale, doesn’t match ESSA’s requirements.
Right now, a draft of the state’s ESSA plan is online but leaves considerable gaps and questions. The U.S. Department of Education released updated requirements on Nov. 28, which are largely looser than what the department originally laid out.
At the State Board of Education’s December meeting, proposed accountability models were provided online for elementary, middle, and high schools — but weren’t approved. These have been revised by DPI as staff have received feedback from educators across the state. The official accountability models and entire plan have to be submitted no later than September 18, 2017.
Below, you can see charts of the proposed accountability models. On the left, there are performance indicators. These should be designed to reflect student outcomes. There are four main indicators the state is considering so far: test scores, student growth from year to year, English Learners Progress — which is a new ESSA requirement — and graduation rates for high school.
On the right, you’ll find school quality or student success indicators. These should be designed to get at the other things that make schools great, or not so great. Things like school climate and culture, community involvement, and character development. The U.S. Department of Education, in its most recent regulations, said this indicator can be anything that research has shown has a positive impact on student learning.
Let’s take a step back, and look at why a new system is even needed. Here’s what doesn’t match between the state’s A-F system and the new requirements. Below is a chart created by DPI to explain the differences between the two to the State Board.
In all three cases — the systems for elementary, middle and high school — English Learners Progress and at least one indicator of school quality or student success is missing. The asterisks following the school quality or student success indicators indicate an explanation in the document of what the indicators are and that they must, according to ESSA, “meaningfully differentiate” between schools. The document also gives examples of possible school quality or student success indicators, like school climate and safety, student or educator engagement, access to advanced coursework, postsecondary readiness, chronic absenteeism, and dropout rates.
To continue reading the complete article, click here.
Excerpt from:
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Hot Issues, Hot Politics
Below is an article from EducationNC, published earlier this week, outlining likely education bills for the 2017-18 NCGA legislative session
The General Assembly gears up for its long session today. In the coming weeks and months, lawmakers in the House and Senate will put forth a slew of bills and hammer out a budget.
While it’s impossible to say exactly what those bills or that budget will look like, we have some ideas about what we are mostly likely to see come out of this session.
The Budget
The most important bill in any legislative session is almost always the budget: How much money is the General Assembly going to appropriate for K-12 education? Since this is a biennial budget, the legislature will be looking at funding for both the 2017-18 and 2018-19 fiscal years.
Here is how much the legislature has appropriated for K-12, the last five years:
For 2012-13, the revised appropriation was about $7.5 billion.
For 2013-14, it was about $7.8 billion
For 2014-15, it was about $8.1 billion.
For 2015-16, it was about $8.5 billion.
For 2016-17, it was about $8.7 billion.
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