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Florida Department of Education
May 02
No Child Left Behind
The “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001” (NCLB)
reauthorizes ESEA and incorporates major education
reforms. It requires states to implement statewide
accountability systems covering all public schools and
their students. It respects state and local control while
ensuring strong accountability for results.
The Act focuses on disaggregated data empowering
educators at the state, district and school levels to
examine equity issues relating to student performance,
access to a rigorous curriculum and access to high
quality instruction.
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) determinations are
required at the state, district, and school levels and apply
to all schools. The state defines the standards and must
set specific performance goals and indicators. Goals
and indicators will be established for each subgroup.
Students in each subgroup in all schools must be
proficient by the end of 12 years.
Corrective action is required in law when Title I schools
fail to make AYP. States will identify rewards and
sanctions for non-Title I schools that exceed or fail to
meet AYP standards.
Report cards at the state, district and school levels will
be published in 2002-03. Achievement data must be
disaggregated (race, ethnicity, gender, disability,
migrant, limited English proficiency, economically
disadvantaged). The report card will include percentages
of students not tested and high school graduation rates
disaggregated for each subgroup.
For more information, fact sheets and data, visit
http://www.NoChildLeftBehind.gov
http://info.firn.edu/dscgi/ds.py/View/Collection-262
Paperless Communications
Bulk mail communication from all units of the Florida
Department of Education will cease July 1.
This means Equity News will no longer be mailed
to you.
As of July 1, 2002, electronic communication will
replace all bulk communication. The information
distributed in this manner is archived and searchable
by keyword. You will be able to access the archive
anytime.
To receive Equity News and other Department of
Education publications in the future, you must do the
following:
1. Go to the DOE Home Page
http://www.firn.edu/doe
2. Select “Official Communications”
3. Select “Sign Up for Email Notices”
4. Follow on-screen instructions
You can sign up for multiple interest groups such as
K-12, postsecondary and workforce development.
Be
sure to include “Equity” among your selections in
each interest area.
DO IT NOW.
EEOP has instituted the
EQUIP (Ensuring Quality and
Unleashing Improved Performance)
series. This series
provides summaries of current data and research to
enhance the decision making and planning processes of
staff working to ensure equal educational opportunity.
EQUIP
will be distributed from time-to-time and will
be available on the EEOP web page at:
http//www.firn.edu/doe/eeop/eeop.html
Three issues of
EQUIP
are attached to this newsletter.
Florida School Code Revision
The Florida Legislature passed the School Code
Revision bill and it has been signed by the Governor.
Beginning January 7, 2003, the Florida Educational
Equity Act will be Section 1000.05, Florida Statutes.
The major provisions of the Equity Act have been
updated but the standards remain the same.
School Connectedness
A number of research studies have shown that school
connectedness is associated with improved student
learning and serves as a protective factor for unhealthy
behaviors like drug abuse, violence and early sexual
activity. A recent study by Robert Blum, et. al.,
University of Minnesota, examined factors that promote
school connectedness.
The study,
Improving the Odds: The Untapped Power
of Schools to Improve the Health of Teens
, revealed that
social relations with other students are crucial to school
connectedness. The teens most connected to school have
the most friends and have friends from lots of different
social groups.
Included in the study findings is that school
connectedness is higher for all students when friendship
groups are integrated by race and gender. The existence
of an integrated school is insufficient to ensure
integrated friendship groups. School management
practices such as the extent to which minority students
are disproportionately assigned to low track classes can
impact the racial composition of friendship groups. The
study concludes that “school policies can unintentionally
exacerbate the segregation of friendship groups.”
The full study can be viewed at
http://www.allaboutkids.umn.edu
Supreme Court
In a 5-4 decision, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that an
employer does not need to override its seniority system
to accommodate the needs of a disabled employee under
the ADA. The Court held that an employer’s showing
that an accommodation conflicts with seniority rules is
ordinarily enough to show that the “accommodation” is
not “reasonable”. The employee still remains free to
present evidence of special circumstances that makes a
seniority rule exception reasonable in a particular case.
One circumstance cited in the decision is an employer
who reserves the right to unilaterally modify the
seniority system and exercises that right frequently. The
full text of
U. S. Airways v. Barnett
may be viewed at
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-1250.ZS.html
Boy Scouts
No Child Left Behind included the “Boy Scouts of
America Equal Access Act”. Under the Act, no school,
LEA or SEA that provides opportunities to youth or
community groups to meet in school facilities can deny
equal access to meet, or discriminate against, the Boy
Scouts. The law does not require any public school to
sponsor such a group. OCR will issue and enforce rules
relating to this Act. The Department of Education will
soon publish a Notice of Intent to proceed with
rulemaking. OCR is currently accepting complaints
alleging violations of the Boy Scouts Act.