STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING REPORT- FEBRUARY 2010

By: Stuart Bennett | February 12, 2010, 4:12 pm

The February meeting of the Georgia State Board of Education had a very light but somewhat controversial agenda as a much anticipated decision was brought forward by the board’s charter committee. Before we get to that meeting, let’s review the work of the rules and the budget committees.  In the Rules Committee, while there were no action items with regard to rules this month, there were quite a few waivers for local school systems. The following waivers were moved to the consent agenda: waivers to the scheduling for instruction (160-4-8-1.20) and alternative school (160-4-2-1.60 rule for Pelham City Schools; class size (160-5-1.08) waivers for nine additional schools systems, bringing the grand total to 90 systems that have been granted these waivers by the board; waiver to the Direct Instruction (65%) (160-5-1.29) for seven districts (no discussion); a waiver for the English Language Learners program (160-4-5.02) requirements for Murray and Paulding Counties; additional waivers for the state board rule governing Guidance Counselors ( 160-4-8.05) for Murray and Spaulding Counties; A system waiver was granted for Instructional Extension Requirements (160-4-2.140) for six districts; finally, a waiver to the Personnel Required (160-5-1-220 rule for McIntosh County to allow them to eliminate the curriculum director’s position form the central office staff.

The Rules Committee had a brief discussion reviewing the unusually large agenda for the Public hearings as there were several rules Initiated last month for the complete information click here! Deputy Superintendent Clara Keith discussed the request to the USED for this year’s application for additional amendments to the NCLB Workbook. They expect to hear a response for the US Department later this year. The Budget Committee had a very light agenda recommending a handful of items to the consent agenda. It seems the GADOE doesn’t have any money either.

With standing room only, the Charter Committee agenda contained items for discussion, board items for action and discussion, and future charter applications.  Under items for discussion, the possible impact on the Warren County System Charter and loss of SACS accreditation was reviewed.  Approximately 124 letters of intent to submit charter applications have been received.  Based on past actions, the DOE anticipates that 60+ applications will be submitted from the 124 letters of intent with approximately 30 applications being submitted to the BOE and 30 to the Charter Commission.

Charter School Implementation Grants were recommended to be on the Consent Agenda.   The petitions for the SBOE to review the decisions of the Charter Commission were the “Hot” topic.  Numerous individuals supporting and opposing the Commission’s decisions signed up to address the committee.  In the end, the Charter Committee recommended to the Committee of the Whole to up-hold the Charter Committee’s decisions.  The question remains “if you deny a denial” is it an approval or simply an additional step in the process of re-submitting the application.  Stay tuned this process is far from being clear.

It seems this month that the state board meeting drew more attention than usual from the media, the general public, and now possibly the legislature, largely as a result of a report they received from The Governor’s office of Student Achievement. GOSA Executive Director, Kathleen Mathers presented findings from a review conducted by CRCT developer CTB McGraw-Hill of the number of erasures on answer sheets form last spring’s administration of the CRCT. In her report, Mathers indicated that the analysis was conducted for grades 1-8, in Reading, Language Arts and Math and was designed to identify whether answers were changed from wrong to right more frequently in any classrooms compared to the rest of the state test population in each grade and subject.

Using a professional grade scanner, CTB scanned the answer documents erasures and the total number of wrong-to-right (WTR) changes on each answer document. CTB then aggregated those results at the classroom level. Any classroom in which the number of WTR changes was 3 standard deviations (SD) or more (adjusted for class size) above the state average for that particular grade and subject was “flagged” as having an unusually high number of WTR changes. CTB aggregated these results at the school level. GOSA placed schools into four categories based on the percentage of classrooms within each school flagged according to CTB’s results: Clear of concern; Minimal concern; Moderate concern; and severe concern.  She went on to report that 80% of Georgia’s elementary and middle schools fell into the “Clear” category, 10% fell into “Minimal concern,” 6% fell into “Moderate concern,” and 4% fell into the “Severe concern” category.

Ms. Mathers informed the board that the systems that had schools in the “Severe Concern” category had been notified, in some cases by the Governor, of this concern and that each of those identified system’s Superintendent would have to lead an investigation and report their results to GOSA.  In addition to contacting these school systems of this concern, the Governor and his staff also notified select members of the press and the House Education Committee as they were all present for this presentation to the state board.  The state board took this up in their meeting on Thursday and voted to support these findings and the subsequent investigations. Members wanted to make it clear that they supported the actions to ensure that the integrity of the CRCT, testing procedures, and student results is maintained.  Superintendent Cox stated the she will work with OSA to implement the recommended corrective actions in specific schools to monitor and ensure that testing protocol is followed.

The Superintendent’s Report began with a comparison of the SBOE submitted Supplemental Budget and the budget receiving a “do pass” by the House Appropriation Committee and passed by the House today. It includes cuts and more cuts—even before the release of the decline in revenues for January—are there more cuts on the way?  An update on the ongoing development of a state longitudinal Data System (LDS) was given by deputy State Superintendent, Bob Swigham who indicated that he anticipated implementation by the end of this school year.  Deputy Superintendent, Diane Bradford presented information on a school improvement grants that could provide 123 million federal dollars to 22 of the lowest performing systems if they met specific restructuring guidelines.  The department will be making these new requirements available later this week.  In closing her report, the Fine Arts Georgia Performance Standards and Health Standards were presented to the board for their approval.  Both sets of standards were approved.