Education Week - April 10, 2019 - 21

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
State ESSA Report Cards Fall Short,
Asserts Data-Transparency Group
Data Quality Campaign cites soft spots in annual school report cards
By Daarel Burnette II
Dozens of states are falling short in
giving the public a clear window into
the school data they're required to collect and report under the Every Student
Succeeds Act, an advocacy group says,
including a breakout of test score data,
achievement, and discipline disparities
among vulnerable groups of students,
and teacher quality information.
That verdict comes in a report issued April 3 by the Data Quality
Campaign, which pushes for more
transparent use of school and student
data, and which looked at state school
report cards for the 2017-18 school
year, the most recent available.
"An alarmingly high number of parents have never looked at [states' school]
report cards, and it's not because they
don't want that information," said Paige
Kowalski, the vice president of policy
and advocacy for the organization. "It's
because they don't know how to get it,
and they're not able to read it."
The architects of ESSA sought to
provide the public a much more comprehensive understanding of how
America's public schools perform by
requiring states to include in their annual school report cards both inputs-
such as how much states and districts
spend on individual schools-and outputs like achievement gaps among a
multitude of student subgroups.
But, the DQC's "Show Me The Data"
report says many states still aren't
complying with large swaths of ESSA's reporting requirements. Beyond

that, the report says, many report
cards are especially hard to navigate
and understand.
Among the report's findings, as of
the 2017-18 school year report cards:
* Forty-two states failed to disaggregate achievement data for at least
one federally required subgroup, such
as racial groups, English-learners,
those with disabilities, or militaryconnected students, which is required
on the report cards.
* Half of states don't include suspension and expulsion data, even
though the law requires them to post
that information.
* All but four states don't include
how many effective teachers work in
schools, data they must collect but
don't have to post on their report cards.
* Ten states that hold schools accountable for student test score growth
don't include that data on their report
card, a federal requirement.
* Only five states fully complied
with a new requirement to break out
school-by-school spending.
But the Council of Chief State
School Officers said several conclusions in the report were outdated, inaccurate, and misleading.
"This year's report we don't believe
accurately captures what's happening
in states and with their report cards,"
said Melissa McGrath, CCSSO's chief
of staff. "It's a snapshot in time."
State education departments have
said retrieving so much data and displaying it in a way that's "easily accessible and user-friendly"-as the law

requires-is expensive, technically
complicated, and politically delicate.
In addition, state departments have
had to navigate data-privacy laws
that can curtail what states are allowed to display on their report cards.
Many state officials say they are
gathering feedback and working to
improve their report cards for the
next rollout this fall.
"A lot of things that we had to punt
[weren't] just because it's hard and
we don't want to do it, but because it
takes time and resources," said John
Kraman, chief information officer for
Mississippi's department of education.
Because ESSA's regulations were
scrapped in 2017 by the Trump administration, states are not beholden to a
deadline for when to comply with the
report card portion of the law. The DQC
also points out that several states have
placed some data points on a separate
report card used mostly by researchers
and practitioners rather than the public, though that defeats the purpose of
the law, they said.
The group is urging state lawmakers to set aside more funding for
states to collect better data and redesign their school report cards.

DATA REPORTING
States have released redesigned school report cards that for the
first time detail how districts are performing according to new
metrics under the Every Student Succeeds Act. The Data Quality
Campaign, an advocacy group, reviewed all 50 state report cards
to determine what they're reporting and not reporting, and how
digestible the data is for the general public. Among the findings:

12 STATES do not include student-growth data. Of these, 10 states
are holding schools accountable for student growth but not including
growth data in their school report cards.

26 STATES do not include discipline data such as suspensions and
expulsions.

Hard to Find
In its first "Show Me the Data" report
in 2016, which looked at state report
cards when NCLB was in place, DQC
found that more than a third of state
departments buried their report cards
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SOURCE: Data Quality Campaign

Democrats Seeking White House Make Teacher-Friendly Pitches
By Alyson Klein
California Sen. Kamala Harris' first major
policy proposal in her bid for the Democratic
presidential nomination: Giving every teacher
a raise.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., pitched a
universal child care program just weeks after
officially declaring her candidacy for president.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., another
White House hopeful, envisions a $1 trillion
infrastructure package that would include new
resources to fix up K-12 schools.
Those proposals seem tailor-made to appeal
to teachers. And it's not hard to figure out why.
Reaching out to this energized demographic could harness the firepower of the
#RedForEd movement, a grassroots, teacherdriven movement, which helped boost
teacher pay in Arizona, Oklahoma, and West
Virginia-and gave a leg-up to some Democratic candidates for state office.
And it could help White House contenders
rise above the cacophony of the Democratic
field, which includes more than a dozen candi-

dates and counting.
"I think seeing what's been going on across the
country, in Kentucky, in Colorado, in West Virginia, in Oklahoma ... that's who we are. They
should be courting us," said Megan Tuttle, an
8th grade social studies teacher who is serving
a three-year term as president of the National
Education Association's New Hampshire affiliate. "I hope they come after us because we've
been ignored and we're finally standing up and
saying, 'This is who we are, and we're professionals and we want to be treated as such.'
"And we vote. That's the thing, we can get
out the vote."

Early Pitch
Harris' proposal is perhaps the splashiest
pitch so far to cope with the teacher pay gap.
Teachers make some $13,500 less than similarly educated professionals, according to Harris' campaign. Harris, a freshman senator and
former state attorney general, is promising
to fix that by the end of her first term in the
White House through a $315 billion initiative

that would include some state matching funds.
Harris' decision to come out with a big proposal on teacher pay right out of the gate is a
signal that teachers are going to be targeted
for special outreach, said Lisette Partelow, the
senior director of K-12 strategic initiatives at
the Center for American Progress Action fund,
which works on behalf of progressive candidates.
"I think the fact that some of these proposals
are coming out so early in the campaign shows
that they are a very high priority for candidates," said Partelow, who provided background
information to the Harris campaign on teacher
pay and would do so for other candidates interested in the issue. "And the proposals are really big markers for what progressives should
stand for when they say they support increases
in teacher pay and bigger investments in K-12
education. It's pretty exciting."
Harris isn't the only candidate thinking
about teacher pay. At a recent event in Iowa,
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey called for
helping teachers by retiring their college debt,
investing more in special education, and reworking the tax system so that teachers owe

less, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Lesser-known Democratic presidential candidates have also highlighted the issue on
their websites.
Andrew Yang, a businessman who helped
found start-ups, says he wants to work with
states to raise teachers' salaries. Marianne
Williamson, an author, promises new investments in teacher training, early-childhood
education, and more.
And former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland
touts his support for expanding prekindergarten.

Beyond School
While such proposals are welcome, educators
want more from candidates, teachers say.
"One of the major things that we are looking for
is someone who understands it's not just about
our teacher pay," said Kelley Fisher, a kindergarten teacher in Arizona's Deer Valley school
district, who has been active in her state's #RedForEd movement. She'd love to see the candidates
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Education Week - April 10, 2019

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