Changing how Minnesota’s education system is accountable to English Learners

Building on the strengths of two strong education equity advocacy organizations in Minnesota–the Coalition for Asian American Leaders (CAAL) and Minnesota Education Equity Partnership MnEEP) – founded the Minnesota Multilingual Equity Network which launched the MN EL–ESSA Initiative in 2016. This Initiative aims to coordinate major conversations with representatives of multilingual organizations and with multiethnic families and students most impacted by English Language Learner school policies and practices in the state.  We have direct educator and community/family representation from the Latino, Hmong, Karen and Somali communities of Minnesota. Through this culturally responsive community engagement, an EL-ESSA stakeholder advisory group was formed to represent a vital equity agenda for ESSA EL-specific state plan recommendations.

To learn more about our Education work, please contact info@caalmn.org.

In June 2017, we published a policy brief:

ESSA Policy Paper Final Web (PDF)

This Initiative receives financial and technical support from the Migration Policy Institute –funded by The McKnight Foundation and The Joyce Foundation.

What is ESSA?

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is the newly revised version of a federal law first created in 1965: the Elementary & Secondary Education Act. This landmark law had the goal of better serving historically disadvantaged groups of students through funding dollars to States. It has been rewritten several times since 1965. The 2002 version was called No Child Left Behind (NCLB). ESSA became law in 2015 and will be fully implemented in the 2017-2018 school year.

To understand the importance of ESSA, it is helpful to know how the federal government’s approach to school accountability has changed over the years. The key concepts to keep in mind are flexibility in how states and school districts help historically disadvantaged groups of students and how they are held accountable for doing so. Flexibility is also thought of as local control. ESSA now balances both flexibility and accountability when historically one had more weight over the other.

Understanding the origins of racial disparities in education, and ESEA coming from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, ESSA is grounded in civil rights and therefore education provisions must address such disparities. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance. Examples of discrimination covered by Title VI include racial harassment, school segregation, and denial of language services to English learners.

Student outcomes will still comprise a majority of the accountability system, but with more meaningful indicators that include:

• Proficiency in state learning standards still counts, like NCLB.
• Student growth or another academic indicator must be included for elementary students.
• Graduation rates are included for high schools.
• English language proficiency would also be incorporated for English learners.
• At least one more indicator is also required. States get to choose how to define this. It could include things like chronic absenteeism, access to advanced course work, suspension and expulsion data, and freshman-on-track rates.

For more information on the specifics of ESSA, refer to Ed Trust.