After more than two years of the Delaware Dept. of Education holding an opt out penalty against Delaware schools, the moment of victory for advocates of opting out of the state standardized test came in a big way last night. Not with a bang, but what appeared to be a conciliatory moment for the Delaware DOE.
At the final meeting of the Governor’s ESSA Advisory Committee last evening, the group met for what appears to be the last time before the DOE submits their Consolidated State Plan to the United States Dept. of Education. The DOE acknowledged they have no idea what to expect in regards to approval of their plan by the feds. Deputy Secretary of Education Karen Field Rogers stated they knew what to expect from the feds under the Obama Administration but under new U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos they are in unchartered territory.
For advocates of opt out, an unexpected but meaningful change to the Delaware School Success Framework, the Delaware accountability system, signaled a clear shift in thinking from the Department. Under the former framework, if a school went below 95% participation rate for the Smarter Balanced Assessment or other state assessments, an opt-out penalty would kick in. Schools could have their final accountability rating lowered if the opt out penalty kicked in.
The opt out penalty saga began over two years ago, under former Delaware Secretary of Education Mark Murphy. At that time, the very controversial House Bill 50 was raging through the Delaware legislature. The bill would have codified a parent’s fundamental and constitutional right to opt their child out of the state assessment. The bill passed in both houses of the General Assembly but the corporate education reform leaning Governor Jack Markell vetoed the bill. Shortly after, the Accountability Framework Working Group recommended not going ahead with the opt out penalty in the framework but were overturned by Markell and the new Delaware Secretary of Education Dr. Steven Godowsky. When Delaware began working on the state plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act, the opt out penalty remained. Even though advocates spoke out against it, many did not predict the Department would remove it. But under Governor Carney and current Delaware Secretary of Education Dr. Susan Bunting, there appears to be a change in thinking.
Field Rogers said the penalty is gone and they will be going with the recommendations from the AFWG, whereby a school must submit a letter to the Department on how they will work to get the participation rate back up to 95%. She did mention that if they see the same schools with high opt out rates a few years in a row that they may seek “interventions” for those schools but nothing was specifically named.
To see the final Delaware ESSA plan, please see below. There might be some tweaks here and there based on the final meeting last night, but for the most part, this is it. I’ve heard quiet rumors concerning the Smarter Balanced Assessment in Delaware. We could see a change in that area but nothing official has been announced. We shall see…
The Season Of Myths 
Interventions? Will they hunt parents down and have a peer intervention to pressure them into following the crowd and be part of the team? I’m imagining being in the grocery store and having some of the uninformed parents stealthily come upon me, escort me out and cart me off in a black suburban to the school gym or field house for an “intervention”. Good grief. One of the problems with the public school educrats in any state is that they want parental involvement to check the boxes that we are active in the schools by raising money and organizing sanctioned events. They do not want us to believe for one moment that we actually play a role in directing our children’s education.
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Interventions is a heavy word, but I saw this measure by the Delaware DOE as a big win for parents. If you saw the fights we had with them when they introduced and passed this penalty, you would have never thought they would back down from it.
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