(SitNews) - The State Board of Education & Early Development, meeting June 6 and 7 in Soldotna, adopted a new accountability system for Alaska’s public schools. The board’s action will allow Alaska to implement its waiver from major provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, beginning in the upcoming school year.

Under the new accountability system, students will continue to take state assessments in reading, writing and math. Parents and educators will use the assessment results to help understand how well each student meets state academic standards. The public also will have access to state assessment results for schools and districts in the aggregate, including a breakdown by student subgroups such as income, disability and ethnicity.

Each school and district will have its own annual goal for improvement, based on reducing its percentage of non-proficient students by half in six years, including in each subgroup of students. Results will be reported each year, as will high school graduation rates.

The new accountability system will rank schools on a 100-point scale, based on student growth as well as proficiency in state assessments, attendance, high school graduation, and student performance on work-ready and college entrance exams. Based on the 100-point scale, schools will receive a rating of one star to five stars.

Districts will be required to implement improvement plans in one-star and two-star schools and in any school with substantial achievement gaps among student subgroups. The state will recognize high-performing and high-improving schools; require the lowest-performing 5 percent of Title I schools (recipients of federal anti-poverty funds) to implement a significant program of improvement; and require the next 10 percent of low-performing Title I schools to implement interventions to address their specific deficiencies.

The State Board also adopted regulations to require districts to assess early literacy in kindergarten, first grade and second grade, and for certain third-graders; and it adopted regulations to formalize the Alaska State Museum’s policies and procedures for the acquisition and deaccession of artifacts.

The State Board approved a 10-year renewal of the charter for Highland Tech Charter School in Anchorage, and it approved a University of Alaska Anchorage advanced endorsement program in English language learners for elementary school teachers.

The State Board re-elected Jim Merriner as chair, Esther Cox as first vice-chair, and Janel Keplinger as second vice-chair. The State Board chose its meeting schedule for the upcoming fiscal year: Sept. 23-25, 2013, in Nome; Oct. 28, 2013, by video/teleconference; Dec. 5-6, 2013, in Anchorage; Jan. 27, 2014, by video/teleconference; March 13-14, 2014, in Juneau; and June 5-6, 2014, in Fairbanks.

On the Web:

The new regulations are at http://education.alaska.gov/State_Board/pdf/13_june_packet.pdf under Item 9C

Information about Alaska’s No Child Left Behind waiver is at http://education.alaska.gov/nclb/esea.html

Source of News: 

Alaska State Board of Education

 

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