NYS plan to restart school accountability system
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10)-- The U.S. Department of Education approved New York State's plan to restart the school accountability system.
Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states are required to put together a system of accountability.
"Ultimately that’s part of the work we are doing right now is around restarting that after that system be temporarily turned off during the course of the pandemic for the last few years," stated Jason Harmon, NYSED Deputy Commissioner P-12 Operational Support Office.
Harmon explained what accountability means for public school districts.
"It’s not specific to individual students, it’s really looking at performance at the school and the district level," said Harmon.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Education approved the state education department’s plan to restart the school accountability system, based off of 2021-2022 school year results.
"With the disruption of testing because of the pandemic we didn’t have results from 2020 and the test from 2021 to only one day, ordinarily they are two days, so you couldn’t compare results from that year," explained Robert Lowry, Deputy Director of NYS Council of School Superintendents. "So we couldn’t use these measures that looked at changes in student or school performance over time."
Changes to New York’s accountability plan were approved by the federal government. One modification would be to the state’s methodology for determining which schools are performing well and which are not.
"Those changes will now go out for a 60 day public comment period where folks can weigh in and provide feedback on the details of that plan," said Harmon.
The New York State Education Department will look at the comments to determine if any adjustments need to be made.