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# UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

> THE UNDER SECRETARY

July 15, 2003

The Honorable Roger Sampson

Commissioner of Education

Alaska Department of Education and Early Development

801 West 10^th^ Street

Juneau, Alaska 99801-1894

Dear Commissioner Sampson:

I am writing to follow up on Secretary Paige's letter of June 10, 2003
in which he approved the basic elements of Alaska'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 Alaska's commitment to holding
schools and districts accountable for the achievement of *all* students.

I appreciate Alaska's efforts to meet the Title I requirements and your
responsiveness to making changes as a result of the external peer review
of Alaska's accountability plan. The purpose of this letter is to
document those aspects of Alaska's plan for which final action is still
needed. Specifically, Alaska must finalize its regulatory policies, as
outlined in the enclosure of this letter, to reflect how adequate yearly
progress (AYP) will be implemented. The Alaska Department of Education
and Early Development indicated in its workbook that these policies
would be submitted to the Alaska State Board of Education and Early
Development for approval in August 2003.

When these regulations become final, please notify:

Darla Marburger

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy

Office of Elementary and Secondary Education

U.S. Department of Education

> 400 Maryland Avenue, S.W.

Washington, D.C. 20202

Provided the final regulations accurately reflect the policies Alaska
has presented in its accountability plan, subject to the Department's
review and consideration, we will fully approve that plan.

With regard to several issues in Alaska'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.

-   Alaska 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, Alaska 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 Alaska'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.

-   Beginning in 2003-04, Alaska will no longer consider students
    receiving a Certificate of Achievement to be a graduate and will add
    that number to the denominator of their proposed graduation rate.
    Only a student receiving a standard secondary school diploma will be
    counted as a graduate. Students who receive non-standard diplomas,
    certificates or GEDs are not included as graduates when calculating
    graduation rate. In Alaska's graduation rate definition, these
    students are considered Grade 12 retentions. The State Board of
    Education and Early Development has proposed revisions to regulation
    4 AAC 06.170 (g)(4) establishing the definition above for
    determining the graduation rate to be adopted in August 2003.

Alaska has been operating under a timeline waiver under the IASA that
impacts Alaska's accountability plan. Please note that approval of
Alaska's accountability plan is not also approval of the standards and
assessment system that Alaska has developed under its timeline waiver. A
peer review of that system has been scheduled for the week of July 21,
2003. Zollie Stevenson, Jr., your state contact for standards and
assessments, will contact you shortly to discuss the upcoming peer
review of Alaska's standards and assessment system.

As required by section 1111(b)(2) of Title I, Alaska 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,
Alaska makes changes to the accountability plan that you have presented,
you must submit information about those changes to the Department for
approval, as required by section 1111(f)(2) of Title I. Further, as
Alaska makes changes in its standards and assessments to meet NCLB
requirements, Alaska must likewise submit information about those
changes to the Department for peer review through the standards and
assessment process.

Please be aware that approval of Alaska'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 Alaska 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 W. Hickok

cc: Governor Frank Murkowski

**Enclosure**

In its accountability workbook, Alaska indicated that the following
policies needed final state action. Final approval of Alaska's
accountability plan is contingent upon these policies being adopted as
described in the plan.

-   Procedures for including all schools in the accountability system
    and holding them accountable using the same criteria (Elements 1.1
    and 1.2)

-   Providing AYP determinations and decisions about school and district
    identification for improvement before the beginning of the next
    school year (Element 1.4)

-   Publishing state report cards that include all the required data
    elements (Element 1.5)

-   System of rewards and sanctions (Element 1.6)

-   Policies for including all students in the accountability system and
    defining full academic year (Elements 2.1 -- 2.3)

-   AYP definition, including starting point, intermediate goals, and
    annual measurable objectives (Elements 3.1 -- 3.2c)

-   Annual decisions about AYP, as well as separate decisions about
    reading/language arts and mathematics (Elements 4.1 and 8.1)

-   Subgroup accountability, including procedures for including students
    with disabilities and LEP students, and minimum group size (Elements
    5.1 -- 5.5)

-   Accountability system based primarily on academic assessments
    (Element 6.1)

-   Definition of graduation rate and other academic indicator and their
    use in AYP decisions for schools and districts (Elements 7.1 -- 7.3)

-   Methods for ensuring the accountability system is valid and reliable
    (Elements 9.1 -- 9.3)

-   Means for calculating the rate of participation in the statewide
    assessment and for applying the 95% assessment criteria to all
    subgroups and for small schools (Elements 10.1 -- 10.2)