It was important to me that in last week’s message I
forward you the
However, taking time during last week’s message to
describe those changes has caused me to be somewhat less than timely on another
important item.
As you know, last week was “Administrative Professionals
Week” across the country. I’m sure many of you use that occasion to give a
special thank you to those APs who keep you organized, working and generally out
of harm’s way.
I want to use this opportunity—albeit a bit late—to
applaud the work of these individuals here at ISBE who work in my office. Alison
Harbour is located in Board Services and works in tandem with Jean Ladage, Board
Services Coordinator, to make sure our nine State Board members have what they
need for successful service, whether it be through accessing information,
planning travel, handling correspondence or answering routine
questions.
Marsha Moffett does primary intake on mail and phone
service for the office—no small task, as you might well imagine. She somehow
manages to do all of this with a smile on her face and a pleasant word, even at
the end of the day (more so than can be said for
me).
Carol Groves works as my personal AP and scheduler, and
I know many of you have had the pleasure of interacting with Carol over the past
months. Besides being a talented gatekeeper (an important role in this job), she
is unflappable and keeps terribly long work hours to ensure that I get where I
need to be at the right time with the right
information.
As is the case in your offices with your own
Administrative Professionals, we would not function without them. Not even
remotely. Alison, Marsha, and Carol are symbolic of the excellence shown by AP
staffers here throughout the agency and I thank all of them for their many
efforts on our collective behalf.
I hope you did something nice for your APs this past
week. Without them, Illinois Education would not
exist!
Have a great week.
Randy Dunn
Also in this week’s
message:
New and revised
Alternate Performance Indicators (APIs) will be available next week to teachers
who administer the Illinois Alternate Assessment (IAA). The APIs accessible at www.isbe.net\assessment\iaa.htm will assist teachers in planning Individualized
Education Programs (IEP) for the upcoming school year.
The APIs are a list
of skills that teachers can use to help students with significant cognitive
disabilities access the Illinois Learning Standards and show progress overtime
on specific tasks or activities.
In the 2005-2006
school year, students in grades, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 will take the IAA in
reading and mathematics; students in grades 4 and 7 will take the IAA in
science; and students in grade 11 will take the IAA in reading, mathematics and
science.
The Illinois Alternate Assessment is designed for
students with severe cognitive disabilities for whom the state's regular
assessments are not
appropriate. For more
information, email or call Marilyn Leveque at mleveque@isbe.net or 217/782-4823.
The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and the
Illinois Parent Teacher Association (PTA) unveiled the draft design of a new
parent-friendly “Illinois School Profile: A Brief Guide for Parents” at a
meeting of the Illinois PTA on Saturday, April 30, during the Illinois PTA
Convention in Lisle,
The State Board and the
Illinois PTA used input from parents and educators through the state to design
the new profile. The primary goal of this initiative is to offer parents a
concise, understandable overview of the information and data from the
Key information included
in the customized Illinois School Profile for each
l
Number of
Students
l
Attendance
Rate
l
Average
Class Size
l
Composite
Student Test Scores
l
Composite
Teacher Information, including education level and average
salary
l
l
Adequate
Yearly Progress
l
School
News
l
Parent and
Family Involvement
Please be advised that a rulemaking item recently
adopted by the State Board of Education is now in effect. This updated set of rules has been
posted on the agency’s web site at www.isbe.net/rules; choose “Rules Currently in Effect” and scroll to the relevant Part
number. (If you print only the
affected Sections, remember to include the table of contents for the Part, which
changes every time the Part is amended.)
Part
375 (Student Records)
P.A. 93-859, effective
·
requires the State Board of Education to establish by
rule a system for tracking transfer students;
·
requires a school or district to count a student who has
withdrawn from that school or district as a dropout for purposes of its annual
dropout calculation if the school or district does not receive documentation
that the student has enrolled in another school within 150 days after the
student withdraws; and
·
allows a request for student records (academic
transcripts or medical records) to be used as documentation of student
enrollment.
Currently, Section 5
of both the Missing Children Records Act [325 ILCS 50/5] and Missing Children
Registration Law [325 ILCS 55/5] requires that within 14 days of enrolling a
transfer student, the school to which that student is transferring must request
a certified copy of the student's records from his or her previous school. This requirement has been in the rules
at Section 375.75(e). Thus a
requirement already existed for all schools to request records of transfer
students enrolling in their schools, thereby providing a mechanism for tracking
transfer students to determine whether they have re-enrolled in another school
or have dropped out.
In order to make
this requirement more prominent, we have moved the language of Section 375.75(e)
to a new subsection (b) and added language from the law pertaining to
documentation of enrollment and determination of a student's dropout
status.
These amendments do not establish additional mandates on
schools and districts. Instead,
they rely on a mandate currently being imposed by the Missing Children Records
Act and the Missing Children Registration Law.
Affected
Section:
375.75
Effective
Date:
During last week’s Student Information System pilot
school districts conference call three issues from the school districts were
brought to the attention of ISBE. The issues and resolutions are listed
below:
Issue 1:
The serving entity does not exist on CDS file.
Resolution:
At this time, the home RCDTS code should also be the serving
RCDTS.
Issue 2:
There are concerns about the display of confidential information on the
ISBE Web Locator System.
Resolution:
District or school personnel assigned the responsibility of enrolling new
students are considered to be “educational officials with a legitimate
educational interest” as described in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy
Act (FERPA) and, therefore, have the right to view this information in
determining the identification of the new student.
Issue 3:
What is the definition of “legal last name?”
Resolution:
The definition of “legal last name” and the methods used to verify it
(birth certificate and other legal documents) are local school districts
prerogatives. In the case of Latino children whose mother’s maiden name
may appear on the birth certificate and whose father’s last name may appear on
other legal documents, we suggest a solution that is encouraged in at least two
other states: Mother’s maiden name followed by a hyphen (-) followed by
the father’s last name.
Starting Monday, May 2, districts will be able to view
and update/correct demographic information for tested students in grades 3-8 on
SchoolHouse http://www.ncsschoolhouse.com/.
Districts will also be able to update/correct first-day-of-testing enrollment
counts for grades three through eight. This first correction window
will be open May 2 through May 13. During a final correction window (open
June 20-August 22), scores of tested students in grades three through eight will
also be available for review. For more information, go to www.isbe.net/assessment or call
Student Assessment at 217-782-4823.
These are the
procedures that ISBE Student Assessment will follow for testing and results for
students in certain situations.
Student Assessment will have these posted and filed for future use by the
division.
1)
Students who are jailed or locked down will not be
tested. These students will NOT be
counted in schools and districts’ enrollments.
2)
Students who are residing or attending facilities out of
state or out of country will not be tested – including
3)
Students who are wards of the state will have their test
scores count to the district and school in which the facility they are residing
or attending is located.
4)
Students’ test scores who reside or attend a facility
outside of their district will count at their home school and
district.
The U.S. Department of Education is seeking nominations
for its second annual American Stars of Teaching project, which recognizes
outstanding teachers who are using innovative strategies to raise student
achievement, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced
today.
Teachers across all grade levels and disciplines will be
honored this fall as 2005 American Stars in Teaching. One teacher, or team of
teachers from a school, will be recognized in every state and the
U.S. Department of Education officials will again visit
the schools of American Star teachers to congratulate them on their success. The
American Stars of Teaching project is part of the Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative,
which offers teacher and principal roundtables, teacher workshops and
conferences, regular e-mail updates, and a free online professional development
tool. Nomination forms for American Stars of Teaching and information on the
Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative are available at www.ed.gov/teacherinitiative.
The notice of final
priority for the general Smaller Learning Communities (SLC) competition was
published in Federal Register on
To assist applicants in
preparing an effective implementation grant application, the Office of
Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) and the Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory are conducting three bidders' conferences as
follows:
·
·
May 4, 2005 - University of San Diego, UC Forum A-B, 5998
Alcala Park, San Diego, CA 92110-2492
·
For more information
about the bidders' conferences, visit:
http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sslc/new/Announcements.html
In August 2005, the
The first three
Basic Training workshops are scheduled as follows:
Workshops will begin at
The weekly news clips are accessible at: http://www.isbe.net/news/2005/newsclips/050429.htm