Education Week - April 10, 2019 - 25

Holes Cited in State Report Cards
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in hard-to-find corners of their websites, that 10 states hadn't for years
updated test scores and graduation
rates, and that only four states actually
met No Child Left Behind reporting requirements, even though the law was
passed 15 years prior.
ESSA, for advocates, practitioners,
and state department officials alike,
was seen as a reboot. The latest report
looked at one elementary school and
one high school in every state's 201718 ESSA report card to evaluate how
states stacked up on a set of self-selected metrics such as how user-friendly
report cards are and how closely they
align with ESSA's requirements.
The DQC found that more than 31
states now have mobile-friendly report
cards, 35 states offer downloadable
data, and 42 states' report cards now
show up within the first three results
in internet searches.
Kowalski said that states got especially creative with ways to display data.
Rhode Island's department of education, for example, allows principals to
highlight in a 350-word essay on school
report cards what makes their school
unique and share pictures of the school.
Users can then use separate tabs to
compile different data points about
school climate and test scores.
"What I charged my team with is to
make it super clean, think about voice
and audience, and also make it [customizable] like Build-a-Bear," said Ken
Wagner, the commissioner of Rhode Island's department of education.
The state also charts the schools that

SEN. CORY BOOKER
wants to help teachers
retire college debt;
backs more special
education funding.

have mostly poor students but academically perform exceptionally well.
"We wanted to show that there are
real, academically successful high-poverty schools with real principals," Wagner said. "Anyone who tells you poverty
is destiny is lying."

Soft Spots
But DQC staff members were
alarmed at how few data points states
displayed on those user-friendly report
cards, including for vulnerable groups
of students, discipline data, student
growth, and teacher effectiveness.
"This is information that communities
are really hungry for, and we found it
wasn't published anywhere on the report card," Kowalski said.
California in 2017 released a report
card that got so much political backlash
for being confusing and incomplete that
Gov. Jerry Brown in his last budget
proposal set aside more than $300,000
for the state's education department to
redesign it. The state got rid of its pie
charts, included better explainers of how
to navigate the report card, and ditched
more than 80 percent of the pages that
users have to click through to get to
some data points.
"The dashboard is intended to be a
tool that parents, teachers, and school
leaders can use to begin conversation
that we know is important: to improve
all of our schools in California," said
Sara Pietrowski, a policy consultant for
the department.
State departments said that redesigning report cards was especially difficult.
State lawmakers often wanted different

data points highlighted than district officials and teacher groups did, and those
requests sometimes conflicted with
what parents groups wanted.
In some instances, such as with
absenteeism rates and school spending amounts, states had to craft new
definitions and then train district
staff members on how to insert the
data into sometimes-outdated data
systems.
States have also struggled to compile data points from several different
databases.
The office for civil rights at the U.S.
Department of Education, which compiles and reports a large portion of
the data ESSA now requires states to
report, released its data significantly
late last year. States said much of that
federal data was inaccurate and so
they left it off their report cards.
CCSSO officials said the DQC
marked states down for not reporting
some things, such as teacher effectiveness, even though ESSA doesn't require
that data on state report cards.
"I think all states are striving to make
sure that they meet the requirements
in the law and respond to the feedback
they're hearing from parents," McGrath
said. "Some states are going to take longer than other states."
Mississippi's department of education
redesigned its report card several times.
"We're over-the-moon excited about
how much feedback we're getting from
the field," said Kraman, from the Mississippi education department. "We're
continuously driving to meet a variety of
needs across the state. We want to meet
them where they are."

Candidates Pitch
Proposals With
Teacher Appeal
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS
proposes giving every
teacher a raise through
a $315 billion federal
initiative.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR
seeks to fix up K-12
schools as part of
a $1 trillion national
infrastructure project.

SEN. ELIZABETH
WARREN
wants to create a
universal child care
program.

talk more about repairing school infrastructure
or helping districts purchase high-quality curriculum. "We're looking for somebody who wants
to put the money back in our students so that
we have everything they need to be successful."
Tuttle also wants to see candidates talking
about mental-health supports, a huge area of
need in New Hampshire.
But candidates may end up promising things
for schools on the campaign trail that they can't
deliver if they get elected, including higher
teacher pay. The federal government just
doesn't have that much control over education
policy and spending, said Marguerite Roza, a
research professor at Georgetown University.
"If you're a presidential candidate you are
thinking of a federal solution, and public education hasn't been a federal responsibility, it's a
state and local responsibility," she said. "It's sort
of on the margins for the feds."
Even if they don't have a specific proposal in
mind, candidates have rushed to embrace the
#RedforEd movement rhetorically before even
announcing their candidacies. In a speech to
the American Federation of Teachers in July,
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., praised educators
for being part of a "political revolution."
At a recent campaign event, Warren answered a question about her K-12 policy goals

46 STATES do not include information about teacher effectiveness.

SOURCE: Data Quality Campaign

I think all states are striving to make
sure that they meet the requirements
in the law and respond to the feedback
they're hearing from parents. Some
states are going to take longer than
other states."
MELISSA MCGRATH
Council of Chief State School Officers

by highlighting her own background as a special
education teacher. She said it would be "pretty
fabulous" to have a "schoolteacher in the White
House," and pledged to seek more funding for
schools.
And during the Los Angeles teachers' strike
in January, Harris, Sanders, and Warren all
cheered educators on Twitter for standing up for
their students.

Teachers as Allies
It didn't always seem politically smart to
cozy up to teachers, said Jeffrey Henig, the director of the politics and education program at
Teachers College, Columbia University.
"It is different at least from recent election
cycles where there was this concern about being
seen as in the pocket of the teachers' unions.
That's been ameliorated," he said. "Teachers
[are] more sympathetic allies, and that makes it
a little bit easier for candidates to portray teachers as underpaid and underappreciated."
For a long time, many voters assumed teachers were protected from economic downturns
because of their union membership, Henig said.
That's shifted with growing awareness of how
low teachers' salaries are in parts of the country, thanks in large part to last year's protests,
he said.
Candidates are still shopping for the endorsements of the NEA, a 3 million-member union,
and the AFT, a 1.7 million-member union. Such
endorsements bring campaign cash and, more
importantly, volunteer muscle.
Both unions have had a tough time in the endorsement game in recent presidential elections.
Back in 2008, AFT picked then-Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary contest, and NEA

didn't choose a favorite candidate in the primary.
They both watched as then-Sen. Barack Obama
clinched the nomination without their help. He
went on to champion policies they hated, including teacher evaluations linked to test scores and
getting rid of teachers at low-performing schools.
In 2016, the unions tried to head off a rerun
of the Obama years by backing Hillary Clinton
heavily and early. That backfired when many
of their members were outraged that Sanders
didn't receive more consideration.
This time around, the AFT has outlined an
extensive endorsement process that will include candidate questionnaires, focus groups
with members, social media forums, and more.
NEA is still in the early stages of evaluating
candidates. The union hasn't officially outlined
its endorsement process, but it will involve a
questionnaire to candidates, video interviews,
and a lot of outreach to members on what they
want to hear from the candidates, said Carrie
Pugh, the NEA's political director. She said the
union saw "increased activism" in the most recent midterm election. That's on pace to continue in the primary, she added.
Molly Blankenstein, a 2nd grade teacher at
Hayshire Elementary in York, Pa., doesn't have a
long history of political activism, but volunteered
for Clinton's campaign in 2016, in part because
she feared a President Donald Trump.
Two years later, she's determined to make
him a one-term president. She likes a lot of
what she's hearing from Democratic contenders, but she doesn't have a clear favorite yet.
"I don't know who I would go door-to-door
for," Blankenstein said. But once she figures it
out, "I will definitely volunteer, I will definitely
get involved. I feel like what I did last time
wasn't enough."

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