ODE is requesting and inviting public comment on proposed amendments to Oregon’s plan to address requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). These amendments address technical changes to the plan in order to comply with the requirements of the law.

Listed below are summaries of the proposed changes to be made as part of the amendment process.

Please review each proposed change and indicate support or dissent for the change. Additionally, you can provide additional comments if desired.

In February, 2022, ODE invited public comment pertaining to a one-year addendum to Oregon’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan that would replace the student growth calculation with a measure that captures the change in average test scores in schools. Support for this change was significant.

The proposed amendment to the plan will make this change permanent.

The plan, as submitted, intended to use two measures of English learner progress: proficiency and growth, as measured by the English Language Proficiency Assessment (ELPA 21).

The growth measure proved to be technically inadequate and was not implemented in the accountability model.

The proposed amendment to the plan formalizes this change.

Oregon’s approved ESSA Plan uses three consecutive years of data for the indicators in the accountability system used to meaningfully differentiate schools for additional support.

The disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced the number of consecutive years available for some data collections.

For accountability determinations for the 2022-23 school year, the proposed amendment to the plan would use the two most recent years of available data for all indicators, except for graduation and completion which will use three years. In future years, additional years of data will be added until we return to uniformly using three years of data for all indicators.

In 2017, the definition of "inexperienced teacher" included in the ESSA plan is not aligned to the current definition held by the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission (TSPC).

The proposed amendment will change the definition of inexperienced teacher from "describes teachers with a preliminary license in the subject area they teach" to "teachers with less than 3 years of experience."

Oregon’s approved ESSA Plan names three distinct frequencies monitoring recipients of Title III funds - annually, biennially and every three years.

The proposed amendment would eliminate the biennial review and would add considerations to what would trigger an every-three-year review including a review of the district evaluation of English Learning (EL) programs as well as the length of time between compliance monitoring.