By RUSTY MARKS
The State Journal
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Gov. Jim Justice is expected to sign off on the state’s plan for compliance with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which he will receive on Monday. Public comment on the compliance plan ended Aug. 30.
Justice has until Sept. 18 to sign off on the plan, said Kristin Anderson, communications director for the state Department of Education.
Anderson said the Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in 2015 during the administration of former President Barack Obama, is the federal legislation that replaced the No Child Left Behind Act. One of the provisions of the act requires all 50 states to submit a plan on how they intend to comply with the legislation.
“A big piece of it is support for struggling schools,” Anderson said. “You have to outline a plan for addressing those schools.”
Anderson said education officials held seven public hearings over the course of the summer to explain the requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act and get input on what should be in the state’s compliance plan. A 30-day public comment period ended Aug. 30.
The 2017 West Virginia Legislature made significant changes in the state’s education system. In addition to passing legislation that would phase out Regional Education Service Agencies and allow local school boards to cooperate to do what RESAs currently do, lawmakers did away with the Smarter Balance standardized test and cut back the number of times students will be tested during their school careers.
Justice and state lawmakers have said they are trying to return more autonomy to local school boards and decentralize control the state’s education system from the Charleston bureaucracy.
The Legislature also did away with A through F grading standards for assessing the state’s schools, and tasked education officials with coming up with another way to evaluate school performance.
Anderson said much of the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act compliance plan deals with how the new accountability plan for individual schools will work.
According to information provided on the state Department of Education’s website about the compliance plan, http://wvde.state.wv.us/essa/, instead of giving individual schools a grade of A through F, schools will instead be judged as distinguished, accomplished, emerging or unsatisfactory. Schools will be assessed on students’ proficiencies in language arts and math, student progress toward college or career readiness, how many students graduate on time, whether students are performing at or above proficiency levels for their grade level and how well students are succeeding based on attendance rates and student behavior.
State school officials believe the new assessment system will allow administrators to look at how well individual schools are doing in each area being assessed and allow those at well-performing schools to help schools that aren’t doing so well.
A video presentation explaining how the school accountability system would work can be seen by visiting www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hxiFvb_wl4&feature=youtu.be.
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