Summary of States' Strategies for ESEA Priority Schools. Solutions. Issue No. 6
Author: Perlman, Carole
Date: 2013-12-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Federal Legislation,Educational Legislation,Elementary Secondary Education,School Effectiveness,Accountability,Educational Strategies,School Turnaround,Identification,Intervention,Criteria

By the end of 2013, 42 states and the District of Columbia have been granted flexibility regarding specific requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) in exchange for rigorous and comprehensive state-developed plans designed to improve educational outcomes for all students, close achievement gaps, increase equity, and improve the quality of instruction. Each state was required to develop a school accountability system that could be used to identify Priority schools (the lowest ranked 5% of schools in the state) and Focus schools (those with the largest achievement gaps). This report was written in response to a request made of the Building State Capacity and Productivity Center (BSCP Center) by a state education agency on how states identify Priority schools, what supports are provided, and criteria for exiting Priority status. Additionally, the state wanted to know whether Focus schools that fail to improve could move to Priority status. The purpose of this report is to summarize states' strategies for dealing with their ESEA Priority schools, based mainly on their responses to parts of Section 2.D (Priority Schools) of their flexibility requests (see http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/esea-flexibility/index.html): (1) 2.D.i--Describe the SEA's methodology for identifying a number of lowest-performing schools equal to at least five percent of the State's Title I schools as priority schools; (2) 2.D.iii--Describe the meaningful interventions aligned with the turnaround principles that an LEA with priority schools will implement; and (3)--2.D.v Provide the criteria the SEA will use to determine when a school that is making significant progress in improving student achievement exits priority status and a justification for the criteria selected. Additional material comes from Sections 2.A (Develop and implement a State-based system of differentiated recognition, accountability and support) and 2.E (Focus Schools). This is a companion report to BSCP's &quot;Summary of States' Strategies and Consequences for ESEA Focus Schools. Solutions. Issue No. 2.&quot; As in that report, the text in the tables in this report comes directly from the states' flexibility requests, although in some instances language in the flexibility requests has been paraphrased or summarized. States vary considerably in the degree of detail provided for their proposed Priority school interventions. The summaries in this document cannot reflect the totality of states' flexibility requests. Further information on the flexibility process is available at the U. S. Department of Education's site, http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/esea-flexibility/index.html. Links to relevant state documents and resources mentioned in the requests have been provided wherever possible. [For &quot;Summary of States' Strategies and Consequences for ESEA Focus Schools. Solutions. Issue No.2,&quot; see ED559667.]