Friday Report – March 24, 2017

Last week, the current NC Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP) cohort met with members of the NC General Assembly as part of their annual Legislative Day. Over the course of the year, fellows researched various topics in education policy and presented proposals on their specific topics to NCGA members. Fellows met with Senator Chad Barefoot, Representative Kevin Corbin (pictured with fellows, top), Representative Edward Hanes, Representative Craig Horn (pictured with fellows, middle), Representative Linda Johnson (pictured with fellows, bottom), and Senator Jerry Tillman, along with staff from the office of the Lt. Governor and the office of Senator Phil Berger. 

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

For further reading, see StarNews article “Schools scramble to meet N.C.’s new class-size rule.”

Excerpt from:

Hui, T. “Groups lobby to save NC art, music, PE, foreign language teachers.” The News & Observer. 3/23/17.

Some North Carolina legislators are advancing a bill that would eliminate more standardized exams for public school students, many of them in high school.

A House education committee voted Tuesday to get rid of state-created final exams for a host of subjects, leaving it to teachers to create final tests for their students next fall. The measure would leave in place end-of-grade and certain end-of-course tests that federal law requires.

North Wilkesboro Rep. Rick Elmore told his colleagues last week that teachers will still be evaluated on several other measures, which include the remaining standardized tests. Elmore also suggested test scores on the statewide final exams being considered for elimination are not being used well to set statewide policy.

The measure next goes to the full House.

Reprinted from:

Associated Press. “More North Carolina Standardized Final Exams Would Go Away in House Bill.” 3/21/17.

Leaders at Kestrel Heights charter school in Durham are getting one last chance to try to convince state officials to keep their high school open.

The State Board of Education voted unanimously earlier this month to close the high school this summer as punishment for giving unearned diplomas to 40 percent of its students in the past eight years.

Kestrel Heights appealed the decision, forcing the state to take another look. A state board review panel will hold a public meeting April 4 at 9:30 a.m. in Raleigh to hear from the school.

Leaders from Kestrel Heights, as well as officials with the state’s Office of Charter Schools, will each get 45 minutes to make presentations to the review panel. The panel will go into closed session and then make a recommendation about the school’s future.

The full State Board of Education will consider the recommendation and take a final vote at its meetings on April 5 and 6.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Hinchcliffe, K. “Facing closure, Durham charter school’s appeal to be heard in April.” WRAL. 3/21/17.

You may have seen headlines lately about how U.S. lawmakers have voted to ease school accountability reporting requirements for states by nixing the Obama administration’s regulations that were written to help states comply with the federal law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

But if you thought that meant North Carolina’s A-F school grading system in its current form wouldn’t have to be amended after all in order to be federally compliant—well, you’re wrong, according to the NC Department of Public Instruction’s director for federal policy, Lou Fabrizio. “We will have to either amend the A-F school grades legislation or have two separate accountability systems,” in order to comply with federal law as set forth last year in ESSA.

In addition to Congress’ vote earlier this month to rescind the accountability reporting rules, Education Week reports that the U.S. Department of Education also “reduced what states must report to the federal government about their plans for holding schools accountable.”

These two actions mean that states will have an easier time putting together the plans they must submit to the federal government demonstrating what they will do to ensure schools are compliant with federal law when it comes to accountability.

But Fabrizio says none of what has transpired at the federal level actually changes the provisions in the law that require a state accountability system to meet certain standards—and North Carolina’s current accountability model, the controversial A-F school grading system, doesn’t meet those federal standards.

Here’s what’s missing:

• a measure of progress in terms of how schools are helping English language learners achieve proficiency in English; and
• a measure of school quality and student success (examples include student and educator engagement, access and completion of advanced coursework, postsecondary readiness, school climate and safety).

To continue reading the complete article click here.

For more background on NC’s A-F School Grades and ESSA, view Lindsay Wagner’s December 2016 article here.

Excerpt from:
Wagner, L. “Despite vote to rescind federal school accountability reporting requirements, NC’s A-F school grades still won’t be federally aligned without legislative changes.” The A.J. Fletcher Foundation. 3/21/17.

Darren Geraci speaks with a kindergarten class in the computer lab at Apex Elementary in Apex, N.C. on Sept. 16, 2015. Wake County school administrators said moving Apex Elementary’s start time from 8:30 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. would help with bus service for other Apex area schools. Photo Credit: Chuck Liddy, News & Observer.

Amid passionate pleas from parents, the Wake County school board postponed Tuesday plans to change the calendars for eight schools and the school start times at five other schools.

Families at all 13 schools had opposed the changes on the school district’s discussion forum with several speakers coming to the board meeting. School board members responded Tuesday by delaying the vote on the bell schedule changes to April 4 and sending the calendar changes back to a board committee.

“Several board members had unresolved questions,” said school board Chairwoman Monika Johnson-Hostler. “They didn’t want to vote until the questions were resolved.”

Administrators had proposed that East Wake and North Garner middle schools and Carver, Lockhart, Rand Road and Vance elementary schools convert to a traditional calendar in the 2018-19 school year. Lake Myra and Timber Drive elementary schools were proposed to switch to a multi-track year-round calendar.

Administrators said the changes are designed to make sure schools are efficiently balanced to reduce the number of overcrowded and under-utilized schools.

Some Rand Road parents argued against the proposal, citing the benefits of the periodic three-week breaks in the year-round schedule. “Please, please listen to our voices and keep Rand Road on a track 4 schedule,” said Colleen Roby, a Rand Road parent.

Now the issue will be reviewed again by the school board’s student achievement committee. 

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Hui, T. “Wake County holds off on changes to school calendars, start times.” The News & Observer. 3/21/17.

Cumberland County Schools’ plan seeking money to bring magnet schools to the area is rooted in more than just expanding educational opportunities for children. It’s about keeping students, too.

The school district is applying for a Magnet Schools Assistance grant through the U.S. Department of Education with hopes of turning four campuses into magnet schools: E.E. Miller, William H. Owen and Montclair elementary schools, and Anne Chesnutt Middle School. Magnet schools, formed out of a 1960s protest to promote school integration and improve the quality of the nation’s educational system, offer diverse, specialized curriculum for students.

Today, there are roughly 4,340 magnet schools nationwide featuring specialized theme-based curriculum in areas such as science, technology, engineering and math, commonly known as STEM; fine and performing arts; and International Studies, according to Magnet Schools of America’s website.

Cumberland County doesn’t have a magnet school program. E.E. Miller, William H. Owen and Anne Chesnutt were chosen as potential sites because they offer “Choice Programs,” a variety of special interests such as arts, languages and math taught throughout all subjects. Montclair is not part of the Choice Program but will join them when it begins offering Spanish dual-language immersion in kindergarten in 2017-18. Grades will be added to the program with each following school year.

Cumberland County Schools has noticed parents opting out of sending their children to schools within the district. Instead, they are choosing private schools — with the help of vouchers to pay for tuition — and charter schools. “We’ve been impacted by the vouchers for about three years,” Superintendent Frank Till Jr. said of his roughly 51,000 students. “We’re maintaining enrollment, but we haven’t grown. They’re going to religious schools on the vouchers.”

This academic year, 682 students within the school system were approved for voucher scholarships, said Clyde Locklear, the associate superintendent for business operations.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Banks, A. “Magnet schools in Cumberland County could provide options, retain students.” The Fayetteville Observer. 3/20/17.

For more than a decade, standardized-test scores have been the dominant metric for measuring what public-school students know and are able to do. No Child Left Behind, the sweeping federal education law enacted in 2002, ushered in a new era of student testing and school compliance. And in the years that followed—to meet targets and avoid sanctions—education leaders at the local and state levels have sought a variety of ways to boost students’ performance on tests, including extending the school day and giving bonus pay to teachers based on students’ test scores. Even less conventional methods, such as banning cell phones and offering yoga-like exercises, emerged as school administrators pursued the holy grail of high standardized-test scores.

But according to a new study, there’s one option that may have been overlooked: the ubiquitous school lunch. As detailed in a recent paper, economists set out to determine whether healthier school lunches affect student achievement as measured by test scores. The intense policy interest in improving the nutritional content of public-school meals—in addition to vendors’ efforts to market their school meals as good for the body and the mind—sparked the researchers’ curiosity and led to an unexpected discovery: Students at schools that contract with a healthier school-lunch vendor perform somewhat better on state tests—and this option appears highly cost-effective compared to policy interventions that typically are more expensive, like class-size reduction.

“When school boards are going out and contracting with these vendors, what they’re thinking is that they’re going to improve the health of the students, that they’ll get them to eat healthier. I don’t think they’re thinking of it as a tool to actually improve academic performance [but] we found that it is,” said Michael L. Anderson, an associate professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the study’s co-authors. “Something that is basically cheap, that is going to improve student health, and that has test-score gains seems like it would be very attractive [to] policymakers.”

According to Anderson, who spoke as school meals received renewed attention due to President Trump’s proposed budget, this is the first large-scale study to examine how the overall nutritional quality of school meals affects student test-score achievement. In 2010, as part of a push to combat childhood obesity, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was passed, resulting in more rigorous nutrition standards for school cafeterias. There is a body of recent literature that suggested a link between school meals and student test scores, but that research focused on improving access rather than the meals’ nutritional value.

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund has opened its application for the 2017 Student Science Enrichment Program (SSEP) grant awards. SSEP supports diverse programs with a common goal: to enable primary and secondary students to participate in creative, hands-on scientific activities for K-12 students and pursue inquiry-based exploration in BWF’s home state of North Carolina. These awards provide up to $60,000 per year for three years. The application deadline is April 18, 2017.

For more information or to access the application, visit https://www.bwfund.org/grant-programs/science-education/student-science-enrichment-program.