DESE Update: November 16th, 2018
1. Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to Meet:
The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will meet at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, November 20 in Malden. Agenda items include a vote on the Board’s FY20 budget proposal and a vote to solicit public comment on proposed amendments to Competency Determination regulations on high school science. The meeting will stream live at https://livestream.com/accounts/22459134.
Picture of the Week:
On November 9, Commissioner Riley visited two schools in New Bedford: the James B. Congdon School (pictured above), which is part of New Bedford Public Schools and serves students in kindergarten through grade 5, and Alma del Mar Charter School, which serves students in kindergarten through grade 8. At both, he visited classrooms and spoke to groups of students and faculty. (Photo courtesy of New Bedford Public Schools)
3. Reminder on Creating New English Learner Education Programs and Available Grants:
The Department encourages districts to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the Language Opportunity for Our Kids (LOOK) Act to offer new programs to meet English learners’ linguistic and academic needs. The Department’s Office of Language Acquisition has extended the deadline to submit preliminary proposals to December 21 in order to give districts more time to plan. The office will review preliminary proposals in two business days and will help districts finalize their complete proposals by January 1. More information, including a quick reference guide on “Starting a New English Learner Education Program”, is available at the same link.
Two competitive grants to plan for implementation of new English learner education programs are available for districts that have more than 1,500 English learners and for districts serving Gateway cities.
The Department will hold webinars on at 3:00 p.m. Monday, November 19 and at 11 a.m. Tuesday, December 11 to share information about the proposal process and grants. Any district that is planning to propose a new English learner education program or would like to learn more about the opportunity is encouraged to participate if they did not participate in the earlier webinar. Registration is open online.
4. Edwin is Getting a New Look!
Edwin Analytics, a tool available to district and school leaders on the DESE’s security portal, is an IBM Cognos application and must be upgraded to Cognos version 11. This new version will look different but offers new features that DESE hopes will be useful to districts. Reports will run the same, but it will be easier to find reports that may be of interest, access recently viewed reports, and search reports by keyword.
The change will happen in phases. The new version of Edwin in Cognos 11 will be available on November 19. Visitors to the portal who click on the Application List in the upper left menu will see “Edwin Analytics Beta” in the Edwin section. During the week of December 10, the Edwin Analytics link will switch over to the new Cognos 11 interface. The older version of Edwin will still be available throughout December under the “Edwin Analytics Legacy” link. The Edwin Analytics Legacy version will be retired in January 2019.
For more information about the Edwin upgrade, please download this guide to Using Edwin.
5. Attendance and Suspension Monitoring Report:
There’s a new report in Edwin! The new Attendance and Suspension Monitoring Report includes students’ Early Warning Indicator System (EWIS) risk level, their current attendance, and how many suspensions they have had, all as reported to DESE via the School Interoperability Framework (SIF). The report is available to users who have access to student-level information within a school or district and are in a SIF-enabled district. For access to Edwin or the Monitoring Report, contact the directory administrator for your district.
The Department will hold a webinar about the Attendance and Suspension Monitoring Report at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 29. Additional training materials, videos and other resources are available on the EWIS website, and other webinars are listed online. Contact EWIS@doe.mass.edu for more information.
6. Reminder on Alternative Structured Learning Day Programs:
As was communicated last month, DESE is reviewing the implementation of alternative structured learning day programs in collaboration with the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (MASS) and other stakeholders this year. Districts, schools, and organizations that do not yet have locally-approved alternative structured learning day programs but intend to implement such programs during the 2018-2019 school year are asked to submit a copy of the locally-approved program plan within one week after the date of local approval. All program plans must include the date of approval by the appropriate governing body.
Please email questions and approved program plans to Shay Edmond at sedmond@doe.mass.edu.