 Welcome. This is the Education Committee in the Vermont Health of Representatives on Thursday, March 17. We have invited in Patrick Halliday from the Agency of Education to help us get a background on education quality standards, which is one of the things that has been brought up for consideration in the waiting study report. So, Patrick, thank you so much for joining us today to give us the 101. Yeah, my pleasure. For the record, my name is Patrick Halliday. I'm the Director of the Education Quality Division at the Vermont Agency of Education. Thanks to Chair Webb, Vice Chair Capulli, members of the committee. I have some kind of notes that I'll follow, but please at any point stop it and interrupt me if you have questions, if you want to go into any more detail on any one part of it, and I'll do the best that they can. And just as a little bit of a caveat at the outset, I am not an expert on the waiting study, but I'm happy to talk to issues about EQS, so I probably will pass on some of the questions about the impact on the waiting study. With that said, just kind of a really high level view of the ed quality standards, they were, I think, enacted, first of all, the state board rule. They went through the rulemaking process for the Vermont State Board of Education. They, I think, they were passed in 2013 and then were enacted, I believe, like in May of 2014, so they've been around now for about eight years. A lot of the purpose of them is really to define what good teaching and learning looks like in Vermont, and they replaced previous school quality standards now, the education quality standards. I think one important difference between the school quality that's predated in the education quality standards were these were not, maybe aspirational is a term to use for the ed quality standards. They were not a checklist necessarily of things to see is a school doing exactly this thing or not exactly this thing, but more guidance for schools to understand what good teaching and learning would look like. And they really shaped a lot of the conversation over the course the last eight years since they came into being. And often we'll throw this together with Act 77, the flexible pathways that really kind of ushered in, changed the tone of the conversation about education. And 77, I think, was in 2013. So a few highlights to that this really kind of further defined what personalization means for learning and flexible pathways. They gave a lot of discretion to actually requirement to local school boards to define local graduation requirements, moving away from kind of Carnegie hours, number of hours of students and seats and credits to allow school boards to have multiple different ways to define what those graduation requirements are. It kind of really enacted some rules around professional learning requirements that there needed to be space built into the school day into the school week for educators to engage in professional learning. And then the final thing is there's a requirement for all schools to participate in the continuous improvement planning process, a data driven process to understand that. So getting a little bit more in depth, while the document isn't, the ed quality standards aren't written specifically in this way, the agency after they came into being kind of organized them into five different themes or domains and kind of went through all of the different quality standards and said, which one fits in which specific can we categorize them in some way. And the five different categories that were defined were academic proficiency, personalization, safe, healthy schools, high quality staffing and investment priorities. And then, you know, after those categories were established or, you know, we kind of went and figured out which one of these ed quality standards really fit underneath each one of those. And if at any point stopped me and if I'm not seeing your hand, it's a little small on my screen. So just, you know, yeah, I think I see a hand. Another question is for the committee, we're on the sort of presentation page three. Okay, thank you. Yeah. And actually now moving into page four a little bit to talk about academic proficiency. And, you know, the kind of the big takeaways on for academic proficiency was where curriculum coordination, which has been further expanded under Act 173 to be one of the pillars of Act 173. And one of the curriculum coordination really gives the, the State Board of Education, the authority and the requirement to set specific learning standards for different, for different subject areas. So this is where Common Core Math and Common Core English Language Arts have been the kind of the official curriculum standards. It's not the curriculum, but it's the curriculum standards to be met. And this is where next generation science standards, the shape PD standards, et cetera, have all come in along. Yeah. So this is also a lot of discussion about local assessments. So every school district has to develop in addition to the statewide requirements for assessment, its own local comprehensive assessment system. And this is what's outlined in that. So the idea behind the, you know, the statewide assessment system is really a process of looking at summative assessment at the end of the year, you know, how are students doing, but summative assessment, while important, is only one part of a good assessment system. And this is where kind of a formative local comprehensive assessment system so that you're checking in at all times to see, you know, what's being effective and, you know, understanding, not waiting until, you know, it comes time for an SPAC test, for example, to make those determinations. I mentioned proficiency-based learning. This is written out explicitly in several different parts of the ed quality standards, defining, you know, that that's a requirement to have moved more towards proficiencies as opposed to, which is a demonstration as opposed to just kind of a one-time testing. Graduation requirements were built into this, as I mentioned earlier before. And then in addition to the local comprehensive assessments, this is where schools need to participate in the, or all LEAs, SUs, SDs need to participate in the identified state assessments as well. I don't know a whole lot. Well, actually, let me do one more thing at you before I stop a little bit. Under the graduation requirements, too, are some specific language for students who are eligible for special education or 504 supports. So, you know, to ensure that they receive a regular diploma, not, you know, some of the diploma that would have effectively an asterisk on it, and that those modifications that are required under their individual education plans are reflected in their professional, their personalized learning plans. Pause here to see if anyone has any questions about the academic proficiency portion of that. Representative Austin. Yes. Hi, thank you. I'm wondering how the assessments are calibrated across the state. So if a student from Canaan, from second grade, was going to South Burlington, would they kind of come in with, you know, seamlessly into, let's say, second grade, you know, reading papers? Because they would have the skills and knowledge. Yeah, so there's not, I mean, some states, some schools have kind of pacing guidelines that are, you know, that are constant across the entire state. France has pacing guidelines that are constant across the entire country. And if you go to any second grade classroom and anywhere in France, more or less, they're doing the same thing on the same day. I mean, that's an oversimplification. That level of consistency is not required under this. You know, there's requirement to make sure that these are the standards that are being taught or that are being assessed with some flexibility in that. The way that I think that there, and there are some folks on the student pathways who are probably a little bit, not probably, who are definitely a little bit smarter to talk in more detail about this. But the way that it's really assessed is through the commonality across the state is through the summative assessments. So this would be the SBAC sort of testing and other, you know, common test requirements across the state. There can be some local, you know, the local comprehensive assessment systems are going to have differences because they're local. And each LEA is making the decision as to what system that they're going to do. If you're coming from Canaan and moving to South Burlington, there may be differences in what's being done. There was, you know, gosh, while there's pre-pandemic, that's all I can say. Time is a little bit of a mix up right now. But I know that the agency invested in, I'm just blanking on the name right now, the lexile ability so that all schools could use lexile if they chose to do that as part of their local comprehensive assessment, which would allow that sort of continuity from district to district. Now, I don't think every school has chosen to go that direction, but they have the ability to do that if they want to have that kind of consistency. Thank you. You can keep going. So I'm moving on to the personalization page, which is the fifth page on the presentation that I shared out. And these are the things, I think this is really one of the big distinguishing points for the ed quality standards. And this is really, I think speaking more as a teacher than as, you know, someone from the AOE, this is really, I think the big point of departure, headline making part of the ed quality standards. It really took things like personalized learning plans and made them required for seven, 12 graders. This is where it said that schools need to offer flexible pathways kind of anytime, anywhere, learning. There is also a dual enrollment fits in under that as well. The idea of a full breadth of courses to make sure that someone who is eligible for special education is eligible for special education, but not at the expense of their core education so that this is really going to integrate students more fully into all students more fully into curriculum. And then through the ideas of flexible pathways, personalized learning, giving students a lot of agency in their own education. And this manifests in multiple different ways. This is where CTE centers have had a lot more ability to offer kind of diverse courses. This is where students are, the work-based learning coordinators are overseeing students going out into the communities and internships or externships to really work in their communities and get credit for that work that they're doing. This is where some schools, this may seem relatively small, but schools were more likely to give PE credits for students who were already participating in athletics as opposed to taking additional PE courses, saying that as a flexible pathway, yes, we understand that you're active and engaged in what's going on. Any questions about the personalization or anything further in more detail that you would like to hear about that? Any questions? Yeah, I'm just wondering how it's measured. You know, what kind of data comes out of, I mean, that's input. I'm just wondering how you measure, you know, that the kids are meeting the educational quality standards, you know, using. I know you talked about proficiency-based report cards just before COVID hit. And I assume that was, it was at different levels of implementation across the state. And, you know, I'm just not sure where that is. How's it working? Is it kind of? So that's a great question. And again, the proficiency-based report card, I think is, you know, it's either, you know, this is something I've been working on just out of my own interest as a way to better represent student learning, you know, going back more years now than I would like to admit, you know, 25-plus years in education. And you're trying to understand that, you know, what does a B in fifth grade reading class mean? Like, you know, it doesn't mean, you know, as a teacher, the secret is it doesn't mean anything because you could be a great reader or you could be a struggling reader and both get a B based on, you know, how we would have done things 25 years ago. And so, you know, the idea behind this for proficiency-based report card is to be very specific, is here are the learning standards, here is how this particular student is, you know, is doing and meeting those learning standards and collecting data. I also, to address this, I kind of, you know, I'm looking at page nine of what I sent to you right now, just jumping forward a little bit. Now, I think it's your question, you suggest jumping toward kind of the logic behind the larger system to, you know, to do this, is that we start with the education quality standards. And this is what's defining good teaching and learning at the state level. And I'm only speaking now at the state level that we have our education quality reviews, which are two different ways of measuring how well a school is doing in meeting those education quality standards. So, you know, we have our annual snapshot, which we hope to come out very, very soon for the 2021 school year, which are common measures for every single school in the, in the state. I'll say this, for every single LEA in the state, you know, we don't measure graduation rates in elementary schools, so it's not, there are some differences according to the school level. And those, you know, the different metrics, there are about 18 different metrics in that are organized around the same five. And I've spoken with you guys, I know about this probably more times than you want to hear in the past. But they're organized around the same five themes. But that's only, you know, that's only one part of the state one. The other that's essential are the integrated field reviews. And these take place every three years where we go and we, the agency facilitates this, the agency that facilitates this, but really the important work is done by, you know, peers of the school that's going through the LEA that's going through the integrated field review. Where we go in and we ask a whole bunch of questions and look at what's going on in the classroom. We have a bunch of prompts that are linked again around these, these same five domains. We've had a few changes to the review so that we have about a third of the questions are common to every single school. About a third of the questions are, you know, unique, I should say to every single SUSD. About a third of the questions are unique to that SUSD based on our review of what they've submitted, their continuous improvement plans, etc. And then about a third of the questions are ones that are generated by that SUSD itself to say here are the questions that we're working on and we want you to hold a mirror up to us to see how are we doing in meeting those particular things. And then the data that comes from the annual snapshot of the integrated field review and then from the local, all of the local data kind of gets funneled into the creation of the continuous improvement plan. So going back to something as simple, what seems as simple and unique as proficiency based report card. It's that's helpful for a teacher that's helpful for a parent and student to understand what's going on, but it's also then essential at the district, at the school level to aggregate and see what sort of trends are taking place across those report cards and then at the district level to aggregate to see what sort of trends are taking place across schools, all that funneling into a continuous improvement plan to figure out what the particular needs and challenges of the school are all back with reference to the education quality standards that have defined this at the outset. So I may have gone a little bit off the rails with my answer to that, but so if there's further clarification or follow up questions I'm happy to answer that. I'm sure it's going to generate a lot and just in terms of the continuous improvement plans and your oversight how many are you reviewing in a year? For the continuous improvement plans up until this year every school has had to has well this is actually something that's written into the education quality standards we have it organized under the investment priorities section it's a little in that continuous improvement plans have to be done at least every two years by a school and reviewed annually that has been most schools have been doing those annually all along without getting too far to continuous improvement it's continuous so it's really when something is submitted that's a really a point in time photograph of a moving picture so it's taking us still off of a movie because things are going to be evolving all the time you get additional data but to answer your question it is starting this year we're really pushing schools to only submit every two years so that they really take more time to engage in those continuous improvement efforts that they outline in their plans with the exception of schools that are eligible for comprehensive supports under ESSA the law that passed back in 2015 and those schools that are eligible for comprehensive supports are still submitting their continuous improvement plans annually and that is 15 schools in the state not 15 districts but 15 schools in the state have an additional continuous improvement requirement and what does continuous improvement look like so what it looks like in our office is there is a continuous improvement plan template that needs to be submitted and it identifies what the goals are, what the implementation strategies are going to be, what the source of funds are going to be, what the data is that determined that this is something that is a goal and what the outcomes are that you're going to be using at the local level to measure whether you've been effective or not but that's only what's submitted schools do a whole lot more than that it just doesn't, we don't require it now to be submitted around their comprehensive needs assessment to really dig deeply into their data to understand you know what their strengths and needs are by you know and in fact we've been schools have been participating for the last year in a data literacy series that we just met yesterday for maybe their 7th or 8th meeting that's been hosted by WestEd for helping schools to better understand how to make sense of that data but those continuous comprehensive needs assessments are really an essential part of the plan because that identifies what schools are going to be investing their time and their resources into over the course of the year and really understanding what the needs of the community of the schools of teachers in those schools might be doing. Thank you so much for being here I did have a couple of questions related to the work of the waiting task force but not you know not a deep dive on the waiting study so hopefully these are relevant I was just looking back at our report that we delivered in December and I knew we had a section on the EQS and I wanted to follow up in our report it said that Secretary French recommended that the EQA process be updated and expanded to focus on school districts rather than schools and be formally described in new and revised regulation so it sounds like Secretary French was calling on us to really update and revamp the EQA and he said that at that time the AOE and the State Board were reviewing the education rules and that they were going to be issuing a report later this year so that would have been 2021 I guess so do you do you know where that work stands have AOE and the State Board gotten into the this EQA section yet or where does Secretary French's recommendation to update these stand right now and I have a related follow-up question yeah I'm only going to be marginally helpful with that I really don't know where that conversation with the State Board of Education is sitting right now that's really a question that Chair Olson or Secretary French would be better to address the one thing I am feel comfortable trying to answer is that I think that you've touched on something else that's really important that has come out of the quality standards is really changing the unit of analysis from the school to the LEA the SUSD to really work more systemically to address problems as opposed to or not problems to address education good bad organized but to create systems to understand what's going on as opposed to individual schools or being as the unit of analysis that said where those conversations with the State Board and the Secretary stand right now I really don't have anything that I can add to that. I'm just going to stop for just one second and Amanda let's schedule some time also with the Secretary and with Chair Olson to respond to that question that was raised and perhaps you could Kathleen could you formulate that question? Yes I will Amanda follow up on that. Okay thank you Patrick excuse me I just have a related question I just want to make sure that you know as a committee that we're focusing whatever we do here specifically on the recommendations of the task force like that's kind of our mission so that was the one and the second is that we recommended it looks like the Senate bill the Senate waiting bill recommended two full-time employees be added at AOE to work specifically on the EQA process and I just wondered how your capacity is you know how you would envision using those two folks how they would be helpful and how necessary they are so I'm not I'm not a hundred percent familiar with the specifics of what those where those FDEs would be used what I can say is that we have a team of five people in our division who really work very very closely with all of the SU's STs in support of their continuous improvement process that means that we have one of our education quality coordinators roughly working with 10 different districts and almost this is an analogy this isn't kind of a factual but almost as embedded simultaneously in you know intent of those different districts to do whatever is needed to help them meet their continuous improvement goals that's that's very difficult and it's very difficult to provide a great level of support a comprehensive level of support to each of the districts with that level of staffing especially when that same group of five people the vast majority of all of the ESSER funding review of applications monitoring of that has fallen on that same group of people which is entirely new work to that team so it has certainly been a challenge over the I mean you know what was me everyone's had challenges over the last two years but you know this has really been a challenge on the workload of those of those ed quality coordinators provide high quality support for those districts in their continuous improvement processing and you know if additional support came we would find ways to put them to use on the same topic I think part of the I guess the question for you would be is there some consideration going on now especially with the idea of adding additional staff to modify the integrated field review process and I think that that's partly because you know A under pupil waiting the question came up about well you know how good a job are we doing making sure that the money that we're spending on education is actually doing what we hope it will do but also too I think it's reflective of people in the field and we specifically had testimony from the NEA but also others the integrated field reviews aren't exactly a very strong enforcement mechanism for making sure that schools are meeting their EQS and I guess I'm curious to know if there's broader talk going on about I guess a more robust I hate to use the word enforcement but let's call it enforcement mechanism for making sure all schools are providing what they need to provide it's a great question and I'm really not trying to dodge it when I say this but the integrated field reviews at their design were not intended to be an enforcement mechanism they were really intended to be an opportunity to get specifically into schools find out what's going on and say back to schools here are some things that we noticed here are some things that we notice that you are doing really really well here are some things that you might want to give some attention to and here are some really specific recommendations but they do not have the force of enforcement I think was the word that you used and that was by design because they were meant to be a collaborative process it was really essential part of that if the review was taking place in Essex North the really important part of that review is that folks from Kingdom East were participating in that and they were the ones who were going into and other neighboring districts were going into that to look to learn and to give their expert advice around that I mentioned the integrated field reviews started in 2016 they were on a three year cycle so every school they started in 2016 as pilots going to be reviewed on a three year cycle we were just finishing up the first cycle of those reviews when COVID hit and so we were at the point where we were thinking about we had started to work when COVID hit to really to rethink to read it from a continuous learning perspective a continuous improvement perspective to really say what has worked and what are the things now that we need to be to change the process on that and that's we were in the midst of doing that we were in the midst of doing that design change when we've had to shut down the integrated field reviews over the course of the last two years just starting again next week two weeks to have our first integrated field review again so fingers crossed but that doesn't exactly get your I understand that doesn't exactly get to your question you know from our perspective the integrated field reviews are not intended still not intended to be an enforcement mechanism there was something that was closer to that you know under the school quality standards where it was much more of a checklist but it was really meant to be a collaborative process to say here are some things that you need to be that you might want to be thinking about that said you know the example that we will just often use as a silly example if there are rats running in the cafeteria we can't not see that so that there could be some egregious things that are taking place that when you're on an integrated field review you would have to draw attention to but in general it was not intended to be an enforcement mechanism thank you it was a very interesting topic so you can keep going so a couple of other things just to I know that we're coming up in time and I don't know exactly what your schedule is or I guess maybe even a couple minutes over but a couple of the just quick highlights to draw to that this is where the tiered system of support has come into being we have our MTSS team or VT MTSS team really working and focusing on the social emotional health and physical well-being of students which we think is is really important and kind of codified those supports into rules and a couple of other things that staffing ratios were outlined in this and this is one that is a little bit more of you know a checklist that can be that can be done that the staffing ratios based on the age of the students and for a librarian school librarian school nurses school counselors if a school is unable to meet those staffing needs ratios for whatever point there is a waiver process that they can you know apply to the agency for waiver if they say I don't have the numbers in front of me I think school librarian is at this level under students to every school librarian if they end up with 310 students to every school librarian as school can submit a waiver to you know to say that you know from meeting that requirement that's decided by the by the secretary and then I think the other important thing I just wanted to say is that you know this also supported the idea of the you know to the SLDS that has come forward and passed as a way that schools are required to have a way that they're maintaining their data I think the final thing that I would like to say happy to answer additional questions is that this also drove how we organized a lot of the work that's done in the agency so the different divisions in the agency more or less map on to a lot of these different these five different categories the student pathways division contains largely the the personalization and academic proficiency work although there's some crossover around the assessment side with a data division the finance division as well as the data division really kind of have the investment priorities work the high quality staffing lies largely within within our division the education quality team and then the state health schools lies largely in the student support services division so that was intentional and there was a large reorganization in order to to best meet the needs of schools aligned with the education quality standard questions good morning questions going to revolve around your slide for safe and healthy schools last year's act 72 had a component for require facility managers in the districts and my question is is AOE has there been any follow up on that there really weren't any reporting requirements in the act I guess what my question is does AOE have a database to know that the schools are working with all codes and who I'm assuming that fire prevention does most of the inspections and does AOE keep a record of when if it's off the day I don't know that's a great question I really don't know I'm happy to track that down my guess is that Jill Briggs Campbell would be the one who would know that answer and I'm happy to reach out to her and get back to you thank you that's thank you other questions going to turn to by two members of the waiting task force anything else we have two members who were on the waiting task force anything that you want to add or our question at this point as we move forward in this conversation I think Kat had really the point not really a factor but I just think we should back on the report and the senate bill and make sure we have a clear and tightly defined understanding of what we need to be doing and we'll have State Board of Ed and the Secretary and the Office with any of their thinking Representative Austin this might be Kat and Patrick but in the report it seems like I'm not clear if you came out with a data point in terms of poverty if you decided on whether free and you might have I did read it no that wasn't what I was it wasn't an eyebrow moment sorry Rep Austin I'm looking at the dashboard and I'm saying free and reduced lunch data is that fairly an accurate picture of the poverty in that school so would you look I'm sorry go ahead so actually my question my answer is probably going to be unsatisfactory when you're looking at the dashboard right now that is just a reference based on the poverty based simply on free and reduced lunch there is a larger conversation that you're probably aware of to rethink the way that that's being calculated but any data that's currently being published would be reflected of the free and reduced lunch future data may be taking on a different a different calculation and really Ann Bardinaro is the one who who's in the consolidated federal programs and that's where the school lunch program lives is the one who's kind of overseeing that process but you may have something to add to that just to determine poverty in a school when you look at right now is that somewhat accurate because that has something to do with the data as well the kind of the aspects or as for my when I'm looking at those two things is that I just want to be sure my assumption is correct it's as is it accurate it's as accurate as it is in terms of you know parents and community members filling out their you know and guardians filling out their free and reduced lunch applications getting them back in you know so so do people slip through the cracks because those aren't filled out or the folks don't understand that they need to be filled out or how to fill them out or need support absolutely which is why you know look at one reason to look for for alternate ways of measuring that but it certainly reflects accurately the number of the number of students who are eligible for free and reduced lunch according to the knowledge of that individual's school system great thank you very much your questions okay this is this is a helpful beginning as we look at this and prepare for the study bill to have a better understanding of your problem what is your staff currently sorry what is your staff currently specifically to the ed quality standard side of it we five people who really work specifically with the ed quality work we have a larger staff for the we have a larger staff for the full division but working specifically on ed quality work with the continuous improvement team there are five four and a half people whose time is dedicated to that thank you okay we may want to bring you back as we begin to look at this very much appreciate your testimony happy to come back whenever thank you okay we have a little break Secretary French will be in at 10 o'clock he's going to give us the pandemic recovery update we also have a new report on the inclusion suspension expulsion which Amanda is going to work to get testimony on that it's actually on our website and folks will take a look at that but we will have someone to come in and present that to us to give them a test then after that we will have an opportunity to do a little bit more on education finance as we prepare for that and with that are there any other comments or questions or something we'll take a little break