Other States Get To Comment On Their State Education Plan – Missourians Do Not

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The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was meant to return local control of public schools to the states, but it didn’t really do that because it still requires states to submit a Consolidated Education Plan to the USDED Secretary for review and “acceptance.” The law is very specific about what states must do in the development of this plan to ensure that it is representative of what the stakeholders in each state want in their schools. This includes gathering input from an enumerated list of such stakeholders which includes parents. Ohio and Michigan got the message. Missouri – not so much.

That says that THE PLAN must be developed in consultation with those stakeholders. It does not say that there should be public listening sessions, conducted in traditional delphi manner to solicit answers only to the questions you want to consider,  about what people want in a great wish list for public schools. What ends up in the PLAN is what the stakeholders care about. Michigan and Ohio posted their draft plans on their state education websites for public comment. A search of the MO DESE website only revealed a PPt of their work plan to develop a plan. If the Plan itself is there, it is difficult to find and another sign that the Department is incompetent when it comes to making their website user friendly.

The federal law also states that Governors shall consult in the development of the Plan and have the opportunity to review it 30 days prior to submission. Since DESE has stated their intent to file by the first statutory deadline of April 3, 2017, we are in that 30 day window for gubernatorial consultation.

This week a letter, co-signed by Missouri Coalition Against Common Core, Missouri Eagle Forum and Concerned Women For America, was hand delivered to Governor Greitens’ office to request that he be proactive in reviewing and, if necessary, postponing DESE’s submission of Missouri’s Consolidated State Plan for application of Title I dollars under ESSA.

Confounding the issue is the fact that the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) was attempting to direct this process and had developed their own template for these plans that state’s were encouraged to use. When the new Secretary DeVos issued a streamlined consolidated State plan template that would “require only descriptions, information, assurances and other materials that were ‘absolutely necessary’ for consideration of such a plan, consistent with ESEA section 8302(b)(3)”  this put the work of CCSSO in jeopardy. The Secretary has now allowed states to use CCSSO’s alternative template. (DeVos letter to SEAs.) This makes an unaccountable NGO, one which received $25 million from the Common Core fanatical Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last year, very influential in the nature of state education plans.

That word “assurances” makes us nervous, however, since it was the four assurances, promised by the governors in relative secret back in 2009 in exchange for the millions/billions of State Fiscal Stabilization Funds that brought us Common Core and the expanded State Longitudinal Databases. These unnamed assurances are why it is so critical for the public and all the stakeholders to be able to see the proposed PLAN prior to its submission.

If Michigan and Ohio can do it, why can’t Missouri?

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