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

2. More Children in Poverty

3. Majority of Public School Children are Low-Income

4. 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’

5. 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 ; Passed the Senate 85-12
Bill signed into law December 10, 2015

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

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

12. Federal Fiscal Year 2017

15. NDD Spending Caps

16. 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

17. Rapid Fire Round

18. 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.

19. 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

20. 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

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

22. Questions? Comments? Stay Engaged!
AASA Policy Blog:
AASA Advocacy on Twitter
Weekly & Monthly Updates
AASA Advocacy Conference July 12-14
AASA State Policy Network

23. AASA Policy & Advocacy Team
Noelle Ellerson
.org
@Noellerson
Sasha Pudelski
@Spudelski
Leslie Finnan
@LeslieFinnan