Every Student Succeeds Act Resolution – Washington State Board of Education

WHEREAS, the Washington Legislature assigned the State Board of Education responsibility and oversight for creating an accountability framework that provides a unified system of support for challenged schools, increases the level of support based upon the magnitude of need, and uses data for decisions; and

WHEREAS, in July of 2012, the State Board of Education adopted a resolution identifying the persistent achievement and opportunity gaps among English Language Learners, students of color, students with disabilities, and students in poverty in our system, and identified the need to strengthen the state’s system of accountability and supports to apply to all struggling schools; and

WHEREAS, in April of 2013, the Washington Legislature passed, with the State Board of Education’s support, Chapter 159, Laws of 2013 (Senate Bill 5329), establishing a unified state system of accountability, and support for struggling schools, and assigning responsibility to the Superintendent of Public Instruction to intervene in persistently lowest-achieving schools that have not improved over time; and

WHEREAS, in May of 2014, the State Board of Education adopted an initial accountability framework in rule to guide the implementation of the state system, including a revised Washington Achievement Index that places significant weight on student growth and the performance of traditionally underserved populations of students; and

WHEREAS, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act presents the opportunity to build upon Washington State’s existing accountability framework in important ways, including the replacement of adequate yearly progress (AYP) metrics which identified nearly 100% of Washington’s schools as failing;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the State Board of Education, in collaboration with the Superintendent of Public Instruction and other partners, will begin the process of revising the performance improvement goals contained in Chapter 180-105, toward the goal of creating a more meaningful framework for performance improvement goals-setting that maintains comparability across schools, but sets realistic targets and incorporates multiple measures of success; and

FURTHER, BE IT RESOLVED that the State Board of Education establishes a goal of adopting revised performance improvement goals for implementation during the 2017-18 school year