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# **UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION**

THE UNDER SECRETARY

> June 26, 2003

The Honorable Sandy Garrett\
Superintendent of Public Instruction\
Oklahoma State Department of Education\
Hodge Education Building\
2500 North Lincoln Boulevard\
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma  73105-4599

Dear Superintendent Garrett:

I am writing to follow up on Secretary Paige's letter of May 30, 2003,
in which he approved the basic elements of Oklahoma's state
accountability plan under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
(NCLB). I join Secretary Paige in congratulating you on Oklahoma's
commitment to holding schools and districts accountable for the
achievement of *all* students.

I appreciate Oklahoma's efforts to meet the Title I requirements and
your responsiveness to making changes as a result of the external peer
review of Oklahoma's accountability plan. The purpose of this letter is
to document those aspects of Oklahoma's plan for which final action is
still needed. Specifically, Oklahoma must finalize its statutory and
regulatory policies, as outlined on the last page of this letter, to
reflect how AYP will be implemented. In addition, Oklahoma must issue a
report card that contains all the necessary information as specified in
§1111(h) of Title I.

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Within three weeks of the date of this letter, please submit to the
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education
Oklahoma's anticipated timeline for making the requisite changes and for
releasing your report cards. Please note that, in accordance with
section 1116(b)(1)(B) of Title I, Oklahoma must be able to use its
accountability system to identify schools in need of improvement and
enable school districts to implement section 1116 of Title I, including
arranging for public school choice and supplemental educational
services, prior to the beginning of the 2003-04 school year.

Ms. Darla Marburger

Deputy Assistant Secretary

Office of Elementary and Secondary Education

U.S. Department of Education

400 Maryland Avenue, S.W.

Washington, D.C. 20202

Provided Oklahoma meets the conditions of approval described above, we
will fully approve that plan.

With regard to several issues in Oklahoma's accountability plan, the
Secretary has exercised his authority to permit the orderly transition
from requirements under the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA) to
NCLB.

-   Oklahoma proposed to include students with the most significant
    cognitive disabilities in its accountability system based on their
    performance on an alternate assessment that would hold those
    students to different achievement standards from those all other
    students are expected to meet. All students with disabilities must
    be included in a State's accountability system. Moreover, §200.1 of
    the final Title I regulations requires that all students be held to
    the same grade level achievement standards. In addition,
    §200.6(a)(2)(ii) of those regulations states that "\[a\]lternate
    assessments must yield results for the grade in which the student is
    enrolled."

We have issued new proposed regulations that would permit a State to use
alternate achievement standards to measure the achievement of students
with the most significant cognitive disabilities (refer to the Federal
Register notice of March 20, 2003). For this transition year only, while
these proposed regulations are being finalized, Oklahoma may use
alternate achievement standards for students with the most significant
cognitive disabilities who take an alternate assessment to calculate AYP
for schools and districts. Those alternate achievement standards must be
aligned with Oklahoma's academic content standards and reflect
professional judgment of the highest learning standards possible for
those students. Moreover, the percentage of students held to alternate
achievement standards at district and State levels may not exceed 1.0
percent of all students in the grades assessed

> We note that this transition policy is not intended to preempt the
> rulemaking process or the standards and assessment peer review
> process, and that the final regulations may reflect a different policy
> and/or different percentage.

-   Oklahoma plans, consistent with §200.19 of the Title I regulations,
    to use a definition of graduation rate that follows a cohort of
    students from entry in ninth grade through graduation in four years.
    To do so, however, Oklahoma must have four years of data, which it
    will not have until school year 2004-2005. In the transition,
    Oklahoma may calculate graduation rate under its current system: a
    synthetic graduation rate calculation below, which uses dropout data
    for Grades 9-12 from a given school year.

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-   Oklahoma is changing its system of collecting student enrollment
    information. The current system does not allow Oklahoma to
    accurately or easily distinguish, at a school level, which students
    have been present for a full academic year and which have not. For
    the 2002-03 school year, as the state transitions to a new data
    collection system, Oklahoma may use data from all students for
    calculating school AYP, even if the students were not present in the
    school for a full academic year. Further, a school may appeal an AYP
    decision to a district, if it has a significant number of students
    who were not enrolled at that site for a full academic year prior to
    testing.

As required by section 1111(b)(2) of Title I, Oklahoma must implement
its accountability plan during this school year to identify schools and
school districts in need of improvement and to implement section 1116 of
Title I for the 2003-04 school year, including arranging for public
school choice and supplemental educational services. If, over time,
Oklahoma makes changes to the accountability plan that you have
presented for approval, you must submit information about those changes
to the Department for approval, as required by section 1111(f)(2) of
Title I.

Approval of Oklahoma's accountability plan is not also an approval of
Oklahoma's standards and assessment system. As Oklahoma makes changes in
its standards and assessments to meet NCLB requirements, Oklahoma must
submit information about those changes to the Department for peer review
through the standards and assessment process.

Please also be aware that approval of Oklahoma's accountability plan for
Title I does not indicate that the plan complies with Federal civil
rights requirements, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities
Act, and requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act.

I am confident that Oklahoma will continue to advance its efforts to
hold schools and school districts accountable for the achievement of all
students. I wish you well in your efforts to leave no child behind.

Sincerely,

/s/

Eugene Hickok

cc: Governor Brad Henry

Attachment: Oklahoma

In its final consolidated application workbook plan, Oklahoma indicated
that the following policy needed final state action. This issue was
identified by Oklahoma as "proposed" in its accountability plan. Final
approval of Oklahoma accountability system is contingent upon this
policy being adopted as described in the accountability plan. Once
adopted and put into state board regulations, please submit information
indicating the action has been taken.

-   System of rewards and sanctions (Element 1.6)