Federal Education Policy: ESSA, Appropriations, & More Noelle Ellerson AAEA, May 2016

More Children in Poverty

Majority of Public School Children are Low-Income

Advocacy Your voice matters. Tell your story. It’s a marathon, not a sprint! Utilize those member benefits! Work with your full-time advocates Relationships AND substance, not just ‘stop and drop’

ESSA Warm Up Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) 1965 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) 2001 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) 2015 NCLB reauth started in Aug 2007 and lasted just over 8 years. The 114th Congress-2015 was a year of action! ESSA: Passed the House 359-64; Passed the Senate 85-12 Bill signed into law December 10, 2015

What’s in the Bill? ESSA is a significant improvement over current law. Maintains federal role, but emphasizes role is to support/strengthen, not dictate/prescribe to, schools Returns pendulum of federal overreach and prescription back to state/local control

Framing Principles State and local education agencies are driving education decisions With expanded flexibility and authority comes expanded responsibility Resetting of the baseline, broad room to rethink what one wants to do vs what one can do Audit of waivers, policies, etc… Collaborative approach, including broad stakeholder input and support

What’s in the bill? Standards: States must have high standards Assessments: Maintains annual assessments in Math and ELA, and grade-span testing in science State Assessment Pilot will support selected states in creating/utilizing their own or regionally designed assessment (much like what NH has done) Local high schools can, with permission from their state, use a local assessment in place of the state assessment, and this could include SAT or ACT Accountability: Maintains data disaggregation and graduation rate calculation Outside of broad federal guardrails, significantly whittles back federal overreach and prescription Mandates ID and intervention in bottom 5% and high schools graduating less than 67% States must establish sub-group performance targets, but there is NOT consequence for intervention based on these targets Academic (non academic) factors Collective impact of reducing high-stakes testing environment

What’s in the bill? Title I, Other Portability is OUT; weighted funding pilot is IN No Title I Formula rewrite, but there is a Congressional Study Rural Education: REAP, USED Study, and consolidated grants Titles II (Professional Development) and Title IV (school climate) are block grants Title II formula rewrite, toward deeper concentration of poverty Alternate Assessments

Negotiated Rulemaking Formal (in person) regulation Diverse group of stakeholders (200+ applicants, committee of approx 25) Topics: Assessments (computer adaptive, ELL, alternate assessments, high school flex and 8th grade math) Supplement/Supplant Next: accountability regs and oversight hearings

Timeline & Implementation Signed into law (Dec 2015); regulations in 2016 Current waivers would expire July 31, 2016 New provisions go into effect for 2017-18 school year 2016-17 school year could be ‘soft launch’ of new elements Negotiated Rulemaking has wrapped (consensus on assessments, not on supplement/supplant). Other regulations expected.

Federal Fiscal Year 2017

NDD Spending Caps

FY17 Budget Talking Points Title I: Fund at level to meet state set aside and preserve LEA allocations level funded (consolidates $450 m from SIG into Title I) Coupled with change in hold harmless, results in CUT of $200m in LEA allocations IDEA: Level funding of IDEA puts the federal share at 16%, below the 2005 level, when federal share was 18% Title IV: Fund Title IV at a level that supports local formula allocation Funds Title IV at $500 m (increase from $353, but well below authorized $1.6 b) Comes with rider language to make the program competitive, and allow states to establish priorities

Rapid Fire Round

IDEA: Full Funding, Maintenance of Effort and Reauthorization AASA’s #1 legislative priority is full funding of IDEA IDEA’s MoE requirements are untenable, inequitable, and need to be modified Reauthorization: 2016? Fixing Due Process Rate of due process continues to decrease, but not because system is working Due process drives good teachers away from special education Due process is incredibly costly Under IDEA, both states and districts must maintain 100% fiscal effort for special education and related services from year with a few exceptions, such as the retirement of highly skilled personnel or the graduation or exit of a high-cost student. An SEA may seek an MOE waiver to reduce state funding for special education and related services because of “exceptional or uncontrollable circumstances such as a natural disaster or a precipitous and unforeseen decline in State financial resources.” Districts do not have this option. Consequently, LEAs must maintain the same level of funding each year for special education and related services regardless of how much funding they receive from the state or federal government during the fiscal year. Current IDEA law asserts that when a district fails to maintain effort in a given fiscal year, the district must repay the amount by which the district fell short. AASA rejects penalizing districts for their failure to compensate for shortfalls passed down to them by federal and state governments. AASA believes that more flexibility must be given to districts, so that they can reduce their level of special education funding during these tough economic circumstances without penalty. When a district experiences considerable financial hardship, fairness dictates that all programs and populations share in the burden of cuts, rather than holding a single program exempt from the cuts, displacing the entire burden of the reductions on the remaining program. As districts budgets improve, a 100% MOE requirements creates a disincentive for some districts to increase their special education costs for one-time, high-cost initiatives. For example, a district may be afraid to devote new funding for a one-time teacher training in applied behavioral analysis if the district would be forced to continue spending the same amount of funds in future years after the training was completed. The law does not support districts going beyond required activities under IDEA in years when funding (state, federal and/or local) is more plentiful. The risk of paying back funds for noncompliance is so significant that it may undermine the capacity of districts to meaningfully engage in conversations with parents, teachers and other community members about adding services and supports for students. Many districts have indicated that the 100% MOE requirement has forced them to maintain superficially high levels of special education funding during difficult economic times. When times are tough, districts need to be able to contemplate and employ considerable efficiencies within their staffing, programming and scheduling that in no way impact the provision of services to students with disabilities or the students’ right to receive a free appropriate public education but that reduce their overall IDEA expenditures. For example, a district that wishes to run multiple bus routes for general education students using a special education bus would not disrupt or impact the services provided to special education students. It would, however, affect a district’s MOE, as this bus is now coded as both a special and general education bus and the district would have to make up the special education funds it would no longer be consuming through other means. Similarly, a district that eliminates a planning period for teachers, requiring them to instruct for five class periods instead of four would reduce the number of special education and general education teachers employed by the district, but do so in a way that would not impact services for students with disabilities or their right to receive a free appropriate public education. Schools should be encouraged to "do more with less" in times of economic challenge.

The BOLD Flexibility in IDEA Act 2 page bill with 2 parts Local waiver District applies to state for waiver to reduce MoE if they experience exceptional or uncontrollable circumstances such as a natural disaster or a precipitous and unforeseen decline in the financial resources of the local educational agency Must still comply with supplement/supplant Must not be reducing special-ed disproportionately 2 new exceptions Can reduce if districts finds efficiencies, not impacting services for special-ed students Can reduce if district makes changes to contribution level re pension, healthcare contributions or other employee benefits

Things to Watch: 2016 ESSA implementation Annual appropriations For what areas would guidance and TA be helpful? Annual appropriations Perkins/Career Tech School Nutrition Student Data/Privacy Regulations! EPA, Transportation, FEMA

Other Topics Appropriations E-Rate/Lifeline/EBS Perkins Student Data & Privacy Charters Higher Education Act Affordable Care Act More?

Questions? Comments? Stay Engaged! AASA Policy Blog: www.aasa.org/AASABlog.aspx AASA Advocacy on Twitter Weekly & Monthly Updates AASA Advocacy Conference July 12-14 AASA State Policy Network

AASA Policy & Advocacy Team Noelle Ellerson nellerson@aasa .org @Noellerson Sasha Pudelski spudelski@aasa.org @Spudelski Leslie Finnan lfinnan@aasa.org @LeslieFinnan