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发帖数: 19398 | 1 State education agencies—often dismissed as poorly organized and thinly
staffed clearinghouses—are about to get a big infusion of responsibility
and authority with the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
But it remains to be seen if those departments, most of which were hollowed
out by staff and budget cuts during the recession, are up to the job.
Under ESSA, the long-delayed revision of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, state departments will be charged with more of the hands-on
work in a variety of policy areas where the federal government increasingly
called the shots in recent years. Some of the most important areas are
holding schools accountable for overall quality, coming up with a way to
evaluate teachers, and improving student outcomes.
"It's like the dog that chases the car," said Patrick Murphy, a senior
fellow and director of research at the Public Policy Institute of California
, a nonpartisan think tank, who has studied state education departments. "
This is what the state agencies wanted, to figure it out for themselves. ...
If they drop the ball," he said, "somebody has to come and make them do it
right again."
During the height of the recession, between 2007 and 2009, more than half
the country's state education agencies, according to the Center on Education
Policy, underwent downsizing of some degree, while still being asked to
follow NCLB mandates and collect data and test scores for millions of
students, intervene in low-performing schools, and roll out teacher-
evaluation systems. The results, in some cases, included data breaches,
sparse professional development, and inadequate communication about changes
that confused parents.
The agencies' work was complicated over the past decade or so by policies
initiated under the No Child Left Behind Act, the previous version of the
ESEA. By 2006, at least 42 state commissioners said they were ill-prepared
to administer the law.
Many attribute the backlash to the NCLB law and the Common Core State
Standards to the clumsy rollout of the initiatives by state departments.
"What we've learned is that federal policy only goes as far as states are
able to implement it," said Massachusetts Commissioner of Education Mitchell
D. Chester.
Now, state education departments are looking to shift their roles from being
primarily compliance officers to taking greater initiative on innovation,
while at the same time providing technical and strategic support. Minnesota
is restructuring its department, the schools chief of Kentucky is convening
statewide task forces to build consensus, and advocacy organizations are
ramping up training.
Under ESSA, which goes into full effect in the 2017-18 school year, states
will need to come up with accountability plans and submit them to the
federal Education Department. And they'll still have to test students in
grades 3 through 8 and once in high school.
But state departments will be given wide latitude in how they test students,
and how they use the results of those tests, and other indicators, to hold
schools and teachers accountable and how they work to close achievement gaps
between student groups.
Many school district leaders and their advocates also are pushing for state
agency leaders to be more closely vetted and want them to listen more to
local voices.
"Sometimes, they forget about what it's like to be in the classroom," said
Gregory Hutchings, the superintendent of Ohio's Shaker Heights City School
District, who has organized a task force to help that state's department of
education shape policy. "They make decisions that make administrators' jobs
harder, rather than serving in a more supportive role."
State education agencies vary both in size and in approach to policy in key
areas. Tennessee's department of education, for example, has taken over
chronically underperforming schools, while California's leaves school
turnarounds up to districts. Some state chiefs have come up with catchy
themes and taken bold stances on initiatives such as allowing for more
school choice or closing achievement gaps.
As their jobs have become more political, the average tenure of state chiefs
, many of whom make just half what urban superintendents make, is just 3.2
years.
"That's been a hindrance to implementation," said Kathy Cox, who served as
the state schools superintendent in Georgia between 2003 and 2010 and now
helps state departments implement policy as the CEO of the Delivery
Institute.
"It's really hard work, and it hurts when there's that constant churn of
leaders," Cox said. "You get into inertia. It gives people a sense of, 'Let'
s just not do anything. We don't know what direction we're going to be
pointed in next.' "
Staffing Squeeze
Several state superintendents said their staffing levels have not changed
since the recession, despite budget surpluses. On average, more than half
their agency budgets still comes from federal coffers, experts observe.
That will create problems as state legislatures begin enacting their own
programs prompted by ESSA to improve schools and attract teachers.
"It's the shift back to, yes, you're in the driver's seat," Cox said. "But
you're the one paying for the gas. You've got to fill the tank."
Brenda Cassellius, the Minnesota education commissioner, said while that
state expects a budget surplus of $1.9 billion this year, the education
department's staffing level will likely remain at 500 employees, about half
of whom are tasked with monitoring federal programs.
"That leaves less than 200 employees to do the work for 1 million kids, 200
school districts, and 165 charter schools," she said. "I have one math
specialist and one reading specialist and one person working on standards.
There's not been a huge push or political appetite for a larger state
government."
Cassellius has invested in regional centers to help educators exchange ideas
and resources.
"I've tried to support schools and work alongside them, rather than take a
more top-down approach," she said.
ESSA provides for state education departments to use up to 7 percent of
their federal Title I money for administrative fees, but most of that money
will be geared to oversight of programs for students with special needs and
poor students.
Murphy, the researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, said
the cuts in recent years have led to agency staff members working on
initiatives in which they have little experience.
Andy Baxter, the vice president for education effectiveness for the Southern
Regional Education Board who has studied the rollout of teacher-evaluation
systems, said agency leaders have faced challenges in building consensus. "
Departments struggled to create systems that teachers and principals feel
like they own and believe in," Baxter said. "The people at the states want
to be collaborative, but they are on incredibly tight timelines. ... You've
got thousands of teachers scattered across 500 different districts across a
state. How do you create something collaboratively? It's really hard to do."
Vision vs. Implementation
In interviews, state schools chiefs and those who work closely with them
described weeks-long road trips across their states attempting to both get
input from parents, teachers, and principals on education policy, and to
better understand problems and hurdles that came up during waivers from the
NCLB law.
"No education reform has ever failed in vision," said Stephen L. Pruitt,
Kentucky's commissioner of education. "It fails in implementation. If you
have vision in where you want to go, but don't have people to share that
vision, the implementation fails."
As states' roles change, the federal Education Department will be pressured
to shift to be more supportive.
When Deborah S. Delisle worked there as the assistant secretary for
elementary and secondary education, from 2012 to 2015, she quickly realized
that states needed a different type of help than they were getting. She
developed an office of state support that helped state department officials
navigate the federal bureaucracy.
Delisle, who now heads the education organization ASCD, said state agencies
vary widely in size, resources, and the amount of state funding they receive
. "We wanted to work strategically to make sure they understand the rules
and regulations," she said.
The federal Education Department in recent weeks has put out guidance to
help state departments better understand the new law, specifically in the
areas of school improvement and assessments, said Dorie Nolt, a department
spokeswoman.
Carissa Moffat Miller, a deputy executive director of the Council of Chief
State School Officers, said state agencies' biggest challenge this year will
be to pace themselves.
"There's a real sense of urgency for immediate change," Miller said. "They
can't let that override the need for long-term meaningful change."
Coverage of policy, government and politics, and systems leadership is
supported in part by a grant from by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this
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