Panel Of Educators Plans For New Federal Standards

A panel of school leaders and state education experts met for the first time on Monday to map Indiana’s path to compliance with the Every Student Succeeds Act. The federal government passed ESSA earlier this year, replacing No Child Left Behind.

ESSA requires states submit their plans to meet the new benchmarks. State Superintendent Glenda Ritz assembled the 15-person panel to create recommendations for this plan.

It includes state goals for various education factors, including English language instruction, graduation rates, and student achievement on state tests.

Monday’s meeting focused on establishing goals for graduation rates and student achievement.

The group agreed on a 90 percent graduation rate. It used a federal calculation to establish a reasonable goal. In 2016, 87 percent of Indiana students graduated with a diploma.

“I consider this work to be honing in on how to have schools improve,” Ritz said. “So this helps us to really focus each school on where they are and where they need to go.”

The panel will decided its student achievement goal after the scores from the 2016 ISTEP+ are released.

It will meet three more times this year, and Ritz wants to submit the plan by March 2017.