Vermont recently revised the state accountability plan to ensure compliance with federal statute and alignment with the new assessment system. Please see below for background, purpose, a summary of changes, information on public comment, and to view the full state plan.
Background
The US Department of Education requires that all States who receive federal funding for education programs comply with the requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). States specify how they comply with these requirements in a Consolidated State Plan, which States first completed in 2017. Since then, required statewide assessments and the feasibility of carrying out certain non-required state plan activities have changed. As a result, the Agency submitted an amendment to Vermont’s Consolidated State Plan to the U.S. Department of Education in February 2024, which was recently approved.
Purpose
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was passed in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” The Act emphasizes equal access to education and establishes high standards and accountability. The law authorized federally funded education programs that are administered by the states. In 2015, Congress amended ESEA and reauthorized it as the Every Student Succeeds Act.
The purpose of the Act is to provide all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close the achievement gaps between different groups of students. ESSA supports standards-based education based on the belief that setting high standards and goals and public transparency regarding state, LEA, and school progress toward those goals can improve an individual student’s educational achievement.
Summary of Changes
A summary of the changes made to Vermont’s Consolidated State Plan is listed below:
- Reconciliation of currently deployed statewide assessments with those identified in the written plan.
- Removal of (non-required) accountability metrics (e.g., performance on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, employment data) that Vermont was unable to secure without additional federal action.
- Changes to English Language (“EL”) Proficiency exit scores, aligned with a new alternate EL assessment.
- Removal of an elective fifth indicator, Physical Education assessment, given implementation and psychometric challenges identified during the pilot exercise (2018) and one-year implementation (2019).
- Changes to student growth metric calculation to match implementation.
- Updates to the Equity 2 calculation to align implementation with content of the state plan.
- Adoption of an overall “minimum-N” size calculation of 25 for all students and student groups consistently.
- Adjusting methods to ensure all schools (including small schools) are included in the accountability system
- Adjustments to methodology to ensure schools identified for Additional Targeted Support and Improvement move directly into the Comprehensive Support and Improvement status if not exiting after 3years.
- Adjustments to methodology to ensure that exit criteria for schools identified for Additional Targeted Support and Improvement include performance improvement from the point of identification for the identified student sub-groups, in addition to reductions in achievement gaps for these identified sub-groups
- Adjusting the timeline for identification of schools identified for Additional Targeted Support and Improvement to a 3-year cycle
- Revisions to the Title I, part D section to reflect VT’s current eligible and participating agencies and the current technical assistance, grant application and monitoring processes coordinated by VT AOE
- Revisions to Title IV, part A section to reflect current practices in state level funding reservations and uses, including training/technical assistance, monitoring, and statewide activities
Public Comment Period
A draft of the amended Consolidated State Plan was made available to the public on January 12, 2024, and was open for public comment through January 29, 2024. The draft amended plan was accompanied by a memo describing the proposed changes and contained a plain language summary of the changes. In addition, the Agency sent communication, including a direct link to the draft and public comment instructions, to our local educational partners: Vermont State Board of Education, Vermont Superintendent’s Association, Vermont School Boards Association, Vermont Principals Association, and VT-NEA.
During that period the Agency received one (1) comment which was shared with the Interim Secretary, and Agency Directors of Federal Education Support Programs, Assessment and Accountability, and Education Quality, to be considered in the drafting of the final submission. The sole comment suggested the addition of chronic absenteeism as an essential accountability metric and indicator for school quality. Agency leadership unanimously agreed that such an inclusion should be considered in a future, more comprehensive amendment, but that it would not be feasible to make all the necessary adjustments to calculations, weighting, assessments, and contracted services to complete such a change in the timeline required for the current amendment. The amended plan was approved on January 8, 2025.
State Plan Summary Documents
To support Vermont’s educators and the public in their understanding of the Vermont State Plan and its implications for local-level practice, the AOE has developed these one-page summaries of major Plan elements. These resources can be used as a part of staff training, communications with School Board members and parents, or to help grasp State Plan content without having to read the full Plan document.
Some of these summary documents are more technical than others; the degree of complexity of the material in each document is listed below after that document’s description.
- Vermont Education Accountability System: A journey on how Vermont’s education accountability system has evolved from 2002 to present day. Technical Complexity: Low
- ESSA Vermont State Plan: An overview of the goals and major components of the Plan. Technical Complexity: Medium
- Putting The Pieces Together: how the State Plan connects with other prominent Vermont education policies and initiatives, including EQS and the continuous improvement planning process. Technical Complexity: Medium
- Federal Accountability Within a State Plan: How Vermont’s accountability system fulfills federal requirements within a more comprehensive state framework. Technical Complexity: Low
- Annual Snapshot: Multiple Indicators: A list of Vermont’s accountability measures, including the academic measures that meet the requirements of ESSA. Technical Complexity: Medium
- ESSA: All Indicators: a more detailed description of Vermont’s accountability measures, including descriptions of successful performance against each measure. Technical Complexity: High
- Long Term and Interim Goals: How long-term and interim goals were identified, and how the approach to goal setting under ESSA differs from the NCLB approach. Technical Complexity: Low
- Weighting of Indicators: How the academic proficiency performance measures are weighted relative to each other to arrive at an overall rating. Technical Complexity: High
- Annual Snapshot: Report Card: How school performance will be represented publicly, and what how schools and the public can interact with this information. Technical Complexity: Medium
- Student Group N-Size: The rationale behind Vermont’s identification of a minimum number of students needed to make accountability determinations about schools. Technical Complexity: High
- Continuous Improvement Supports: A general overview of the supports that Vermont schools will be eligible to receive, depending on their needs. Technical Complexity: Low