Education Week - February 26, 2014 - 19

Waiver Promises
Place Minnesota
On Rigorous
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
tion rates for black students in 201213
increased at six times the rate of
white students from the previous
school year. More than 70 percent of
Minnesota's lowest-performing "priority"
and "focus" schools have shown
improvement on test scores.
What's more, unlike most other
states, Minnesota has passed federal
waiver monitoring by the Education
Department with flying colors.
"We do really well with overall
achievement, but we have struggled
with achievement disparities among
subgroups," said Brenda Cassellius,
Minnesota's education commissioner.
"We hadn't seen our at-risk kids gain
any traction. Now, we have created a
clear goal around these disparities."
'Lack of Urgency'
Overall, Minnesota is a high-performing
state academically, but it
has some of the highest achievement
gaps in the country between white
minority students, and between lowincome
students and their more affluent
peers. Those gaps have caught
the attention of U.S. Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan, who in a January
2011 speech to the Minnesota
Chamber of Commerce criticized
the state for its "lack of urgency"
and its stalled progress in raising
the achievement of disadvantaged
students.
So when the department offered
waivers under NCLB later that year,
Minnesota jumped at the chance-
and selected as its overarching goal
that achievement gaps be cut in half
by 2017.
The state's school improvement
strategy is more than just a goal,
however.
The new accountability system is
heavy on multiple data points, giving
schools and districts information
on proficiency rates, student growth,
achievement gaps, and graduation
rates for high schools.
"We didn't want to mash it up into
an A-F grade. There was power in
giving every single school an achievement-gap
score," said Ms. Cassellius,
who was appointed commissioner in
January 2011 by Gov. Mark Dayton,
a Democrat.
The state is boosting literacy training
and focusing on state and local
data teams that can help teachers
make sense of the new information.
And perhaps most importantly,
the state has elevated the role of its
regional support centers in helping
the lowest-performing schools. The
state legislature recently gave the department
an additional $2 million to
double the number of these "centers of
excellence" to six.
"We are not taking over schools.
They should find the solutions," Ms.
Cassellius said.
Bay View Elementary School is one
of the state's lowest-performing "priority
schools"-meaning it ranks in
the bottom 5 percent for achievement-and
also a recipient of aid
through the federal School Improve-
0
shelf art. Now, every couple of months
we update our school improvement
plan and submit it to the state. It's
really upped the accountability. And
people are really buying in."
Local buy-in-and stability within
the state's education policy landscape-may
be key to Minnesota's
early success in closing gaps.
Anne Hyslop, a policy analyst for
the Washington-based New America
Foundation who has closely studied
the waivers, said that one other thing
sets Minnesota apart: The state has
adopted the Common Core State
Standards only in English/language
arts, and has stuck with its own tests
versus joining the new federally supported
consortia developing new assessments.

"They haven't had to deal with the
distraction. There's been a lot of stability,"
she said. "It does help when teachers
and principals and district officials
know what's coming."
Separately, state officials point out
that the state hasn't been mired in
legislative battles over teacher hiring
practices, vouchers, or so-called "par-
1
READING
"We have a huge achievement gap,
and there is a sense of urgency," Mr.
Bartholomew said. "There is not a lot
of directed action for schools in the
middle."
Emphasis on Subgroups
One of the most significant deviations
that states made from the
original NCLB Act was in backing
away from the law's emphasis on
disaggregating data for small subgroups
of at-risk students. More
than a dozen states, in their approved
waivers, instead decided to
group students together into one
low-performing supersubgroup.
They argued that this new tactic
would get around issues with subgroups
that don't have enough students
to warrant statistically reliable
achievement data.
But Minnesota stuck with its eight
subgroups, gave them more prominence,
and is now reporting and
holding districts accountable for
how subgroups of students fare in
graduation rates as well. In its new
students are not lost in Minnesota's
accountability system given its student-growth
measure.
"Every kid has a predicted growth
score now," said Ms. Cassellius, noting
that schools earn points for each student's
progress toward the predicted
growth rate. "Every kid matters. Even
if they're proficient."
And as state officials like to say, all
means all. In Minnesota, the achievement
gap is measured by comparing
the growth of a disadvantaged subgroup
against the statewide average
growth of higher-performing peers. So
the growth of students of color at one
school is measured against the statewide
growth average for white students.
Low-income students at an individual
school are compared against
their wealthier peers statewide.
And, white students in a school are
compared against white students
statewide. Now, Ms. Cassellius said,
220 school districts are not meeting
goals for their white students and
are getting flagged-something they
likely avoided under the original NCLB.
"We have really high-performing
tary, a K-4 environmental magnet
school just south of the Twin Cities
that has seen large achievement
gaps among its Hispanic students.
Reading has been a particularly
tough subject for the school.
Working with its regional support
center, the school has revamped its
reading programs-creating assessments
to identify children's reading
levels, focusing on guided reading in
the classroom, and using a literacy
coach. And as a result, the achievement
gaps-particularly among Hispanic
students-closed significantly
in 2013, state data show.
"Under NCLB we were never la-
beled a bad school. We had never
gone through a school improvement
process. So when we got this 'focus'
designation it felt really horrible,"
said Sue Powell, who is in her ninth
year as the principal at the 350-student
school. "But the support we've
got has been phenomenal."
2
ment Grant program. The 550-student
school, in which 43 percent of
pupils are low-income, has struggled
with overall proficiency rates and
student growth, said Principal Diane
Morin, who was brought in as a new
principal two years ago when the
school got its SIG designation.
Although her school's label has
come with a host of interventions and
resources-from an additional 10 minutes
a day of instructional time to a
parent liaison-Ms. Morin said new
instructional coaches and teacher-led
"professional learning communities"
have been the most important. And all
have been coordinated by her school's
designated center for excellence.
"Before, there wasn't a lot of ac-
countability," said Ms. Morin, referring
to the pre-waiver NCLB era. "You'd go
write a plan and it would sit. I called it
TOWARD THE GOAL
Under its No Child Left Behind Act waiver, Minnesota
aims to cut achievement gaps in half
for all eight subgroups of students, including
low-income students, minorities, and
students with disabilities by 2017. About
40 percent of districts are on track to
meet that goal in math and reading for
all eight subgroups.
SOURCE: Minnesota Department of Education
One district has no
subgroups on track.
0
32
11
7
3
2
MATH
43%
0
1
3
2
39%
26
15
9
5
3
4
5
6
SUBGROUPS
ON TRACK
8
7
ent-trigger" laws. Nor has the state
asked for additional flexibility from
federal officials around teacher evaluations
or testing.
Yet the state's waiver, and its new
accountability path, are not without
their critics.
The Minnesota Business Partnership
gives the state credit for highlighting
successful "reward" and
"celebration" schools, and for extra
supports for the lowest-performing
schools. But it doesn't like that the
state's student-growth model compares
students' growth against
other students versus an absolute
proficiency standard, said Jim Bartholomew,
the group's education policy
director. And, the business group
feels there's not a lot of attention
paid to schools that are not among
the lowest performing.
school and district rating system,
three (or four) factors are weighted
equally: student proficiency, growth,
reduction in achievement gaps, and
graduation rates for high schools.
Minnesota earned a nod of praise
from the Education Trust, which has
been highly critical of how federal
officials structured the waivers and
how states have redesigned their
accountability systems in response.
The Washington-based advocacy
group doesn't think most states are
putting enough emphasis on closing
gaps in their new ratings systems.
But Minnesota is one exception, the
group said in a Feb. 2013 report, because
it incorporates achievement
gaps into its new ratings system.
And in defense of the traditional
subgroup categories, Ms. Cassellius,
the Minnesota commissioner, said
white students. You still want them
to grow-every school and every subgroup,"
she said.
Focus on Achievement Gaps
The federal waiver's requirements
forced all states, including Minnesota,
to zero in not just on the
lowest-performing schools, but on
"focus" schools that have the largest
achievement gaps. But these focus
schools have been a particular weak
spot for states as they implement
their waiver plans, as federal officials
find that interventions are not often
linked to the reason achievement
gaps exist in the first place.
This is not a problem in Minne-
sota, according to its federal monitoring
report.
Case in point is Garlough ElemenEDUCATION
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