Congress recently passed a new education law called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). ESSA requires DC to come up with a new plan for how to ensure our schools are doing their job, and how to support schools that are struggling. The DC State Board of Education (SBOE) and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) want to hear about what you think should be included in that plan.
ESSA requires us to include a few things in the way we measure how good each school is:
• How many students take state assessments (such as PARCC)
• How many students earn proficient scores on those assessments
• How much growth students show on those assessments
• How many students speak fluent English
• Each high school's graduation rate
• At least one other indicator of school quality or student success to see how a school is doing (such as attendance rates, school safety, number of AP classes, etc.)
Our plan also has to show how we'll support schools that don't measure up to those standards. It also has to show how we'll provide support to schools with low graduation rates, and students from groups we know need extra help, like students learning English, students with disabilities, students from low-income families, and minority students.
This survey is a first step in the SBOE and OSSE's efforts to figure out what people in DC find important as we create our new plan.