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1 Afton, Wyoming, September 24, 2002, 8:30 a.m.
2
3 MS. DEVIN: Let's start. If you would start
4 where you left off.
5 MR. MARION: Thank you. We left off on the
6 page five of the power point, which is actually about
7 more than five pages in, some attachments in between.
8 MR. SCOTT: The question I have we'll have to
9 do this annual testing with the federal law. How
10 difficult is it going to be to track the progress of a
11 student from one year to the next to the next?
12 MR. MARION: One of my favorite topics,
13 trying to track anything in this state for an
14 individual kid is really tough at the state level.
15 MR. SCOTT: You're saying by the state level.
16 Could it be done be the districts individually?
17 MR. MARION: Districts have, many of them
18 now, especially ones going to the electronic data
19 systems, have to have the unique student identifier.
20 If the state would be to use any type of, as we talked
21 about, growth model for incorporating to the AYP model
22 we would need some way of trying, for us to have to
23 deal with 48 districts, you run this calculation, you
24 run this calculation, would be a nightmare. We would
25 get AYP out a year later, if we were lucky. For us to
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1 do any kind of longitudinal approach at the state level
2 we would need a way to track kids so we know that
3 Charlie Scott is 3rd grade and 4th grade and 5th, we
4 could follow the kids along. Otherwise, we would have
5 no -- we would lose a lot of the power of longitudinal
6 data analysis. Then we move into what we call
7 quasi-longitudinal model. And where we don't track
8 individuals, we just say look at the progress of the
9 3rd grade as a whole this year as compared to the 4th
10 grade as a whole next year. And that's certainly more
11 powerful than some other methods, but not nearly as
12 powerful as tracking individual kids.
13 I know that Mike Hamilton and Mark Mathern
14 from your district are co-chairing with the statewide
15 task force on this data issue. I know that there is a
16 facilitated data form that you are running, the LSO is
17 running. But it's those two groups, the group that
18 Mike Hamilton and Mark Mathern are chairing -- I just
19 saw the request for information they put out the other
20 day on helping to get some type of statewide
21 interoperability among data systems. That's a battle
22 we'll face if we have any interest in moving in a
23 longitudinal direction at the state level.
24 MR. SCOTT: I think it's quite important
25 because as you look at the problems of figuring out
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1 what you have with the WyCAS, you hear so much, depends
2 on the incoming materials where you're tracking
3 students, how are the students progressing through the
4 system. You can say, look, these schools incoming
5 material may not have been as academically good to
6 start with. But you can see where the school is adding
7 value and making real progress. You drop out some of
8 those socioeconomic factors that you worry about, you
9 still need the, they have to learn to read no matter
10 the background.
11 MR. MARION: I agree with you whole
12 heartedly. That's where I could use your help and this
13 committee's help in saying we do need to have some type
14 of whether it's uniform student ID, so that every
15 student in Wyoming when they enter kindergarten will
16 have a unique identifier that stays with them through
17 high school.
18 I wasn't intending to talk about the high
19 school education issue, a part of No Child Left Behind
20 requires us to use additional indicators. At high
21 school the additional indicator is graduation,
22 graduation rate. We're required to disaggregate that
23 by all these different subgroups, racial and economic,
24 socioeconomic subgroups. To be able to do that you
25 need to be able to follow kids from 9th to 12th grade.
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1 That again calls for this issue of the unique student
2 identifier. States without that are going to struggle
3 to meet all the requirements under the No Child Left
4 Behind.
5 MR. SCOTT: So we'll need a universal student
6 identifier just to meet federal requirements in an
7 economic and sensible fashion?
8 MR. MARION: The last part of what you said
9 is the truth. We could meet it without that, but it
10 would require us to place some data burdens on
11 districts. And as you've been hearing we're already
12 being successful in placing data burdens on districts.
13 We don't really want to be any more successful with
14 that. We need to find some other way to make it
15 happen. That's something that Mike's group is working
16 on.
17 MS. DEVIN: It's my perception in talking
18 with districts that they are asking for some assistance
19 on this, feel like it's an area they're struggling
20 with. And I see students who move from the district to
21 district if gets a lot more complicated for them.
22 MS. SCOTT: Some kind of authority to try to
23 create a uniform student ID system in the state would
24 be a piece of any legislation we pass in this area we
25 will have the legislation.
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1 MR. MARION: I don't know where the data
2 form, the facilitated data form is moving. They're
3 supposed to bring recommendations to this committee
4 first. I know that Mike's group and Mark -- Mark
5 Mathern as you know is curriculum director of Natrona
6 County. But Mark and Mike Hamilton from our
7 department, data technology director, have been working
8 with this group, and from what I understand they're
9 trying to build a system that allows different software
10 platforms, that you have Power School in your district
11 and somebody else has another common product, to find
12 ways for those systems to talk to each other. That's
13 only part of the battle. The other part is to say when
14 you enter kindergarten you'll have an identifier that
15 stays with that kid if they go from your district to my
16 district with the same identifier. The social security
17 number is ideal, but a lot of people start to get a
18 little nervous if we talk about that. That's obviously
19 the most ideal because we all have one.
20 Senator Scott, you're exactly correct, it's
21 something we'll have to deal with in one way, shape or
22 form.
23 So moving on accountability, which is the
24 nice lead in, we are on the handout page five of the
25 slides, so it says Accountability System on top and
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1 Defining Adequate Yearly Progress is the bottom slide.
2 As I mentioned yesterday assessments are used to
3 collect the data. Accountability is what you do with
4 those data. Adequate yearly progress is a term that
5 came into being in 1994 with the Improving America's
6 Schools Act, last reauthorization of the SEA. It's
7 certainly been strengthened. In the past states were
8 free to develop their own system of measuring adequate
9 yearly progress. We had more of this successive
10 cohort. We looked at each school where they started.
11 Within ten years they would all be 100 percent
12 proficient. We had different trajectories for each
13 school. We didn't have separate trajectories for
14 subgroups, we follow the school.
15 Adequate yearly progress is actually a little
16 bit of a misnomer in the federal law. It should be
17 adequate yearly status. When we talk about measuring
18 school performance we tend to talk about things like
19 status. Status is X percent of the kids will be
20 proficient or advanced. Growth is the school will
21 improve the percent proficient by X percent over this
22 number of years. This model is really based on
23 increasing status. So the way that adequate yearly
24 progress is incredibly well specified in the law. You
25 establish a starting point. You establish a time line,
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1 can't exceed 12 years, can be less than 12 years. I
2 don't know of any state saying we're going to do it in
3 less. You have to set intermediate goals. They could
4 be every year or could be every two years or three
5 years. They can't be any less frequent than every
6 three years. And then we still need annual objectives
7 within those intermediate goals.
8 You see that stair-step graph on top of page
9 six you have a starting point that's based on the past
10 year's data. This accountability system started
11 January 8, 2002. Even though we don't have all the
12 assessments in place nor are we required to have all
13 the assessments for the three grade testing in place,
14 the accountability system started last year. By
15 2013-2014 the goal is to have all students proficient.
16 This graph shows a stair-step approach where you could
17 have a starting point, maintain that same bar for two
18 years, raise it up, you can keep that bar steady for
19 three years, then raise it up and keep it steady.
20 Eventually get to the point you're at l00 percent. You
21 can make that so it goes up equal amounts every year,
22 and the graph would look a little different, but the
23 same starting point and ending point.
24 Different than 1994 where a school could use
25 strong performance in language arts, for instance, to
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1 offset less performance in mathematics. Compensatory
2 model we talk about. In 2001 the law is fully
3 conjunctive so that a school must be above whatever bar
4 we set in math and in language arts and for every
5 subgroup. I'll spend more time talking about subgroups
6 shortly.
7 The way that the school or district makes
8 their AYP, succeeded in making the goal for that year
9 is that each group of students and the school as a
10 whole have set the bar at 30 percent proficient in math
11 and 40 percent proficient in language arts. If they're
12 at 45 percent proficient in language arts and 28
13 proficient in math, they lose. If they're 32 percent
14 in math or 43 percent in language arts, or whatever
15 less than 40, 39 percent, they would not make it. In
16 any of the subgroups in the school don't make either
17 one of those two bars, the school is said to have not
18 made their goal. So it's certainly more challenging.
19 The one thing a lot of other states are
20 struggling with that is nice to have something that we
21 could say it's easy for us in Wyoming is for each group
22 95 percent of the students enrolled must participate in
23 the assessments on which AYP is based. That's really
24 the no brainer for us. We're at 99 plus percent in
25 terms of our participation rate. And the across the
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1 board subgroups, schools, we have no weak areas in the
2 state in terms of participation. It's truly
3 admirable.
4 Flip over to page seven, note the word
5 Approximate in block letters and bold because that is
6 going to change slightly, but not very much. For the
7 elementary schools for starting points, and the way we
8 calculate the starting points is you rank order all the
9 schools based on proficient and count up from the
10 bottom until you get to 20 percent of the kids in the
11 state that took that test. So you rank all the schools
12 the highest scoring schools in terms of percent
13 proficient down to the lowest, count up from the
14 bottom. You get to that 20 percent of the kids
15 enrolled you look at that school and you say in this
16 case in 4th grade, 30 percent of those kids were
17 proficient in language arts. That's the starting point
18 for the whole state. 30 percent for language arts and
19 math is 23 percent for the elementary schools. For the
20 middle schools 35 and 25 percent. And for high school
21 it's 49 percent for language arts and 36 percent for
22 math. Language arts again is the combination of the
23 reading and writing.
24 MR. SCOTT: This is off the WyCAS?
25 MR. MARION: WyCAS is the only thing we could
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1 use as a part of the approved assessment system by the
2 U.S. Department of Education. Now for subgroups it was
3 not clear -- I spend a lot of time dealing with the
4 law, national work groups, about some of these things
5 and trying to interpret draft regulations and
6 communications from the U.S. Department of Education.
7 It looked like every subgroup was going to have to
8 start the same place. Now it looks like there is
9 flexibility that we could set separate starting points
10 by subgroup. We could have a separate starting group
11 for Hispanic students, Native American students, low
12 socioeconomic, limit proficient students, special ed
13 students. Obviously if they start lower they still
14 have to get to the same point 12 years out. So it
15 doesn't buy a whole lot, but it does buy some time
16 early on to get the system working to get people's
17 attention focused they'll have to make much steeper
18 climbs. So we're looking at some of the starting
19 points now. And they will be considerably low for some
20 of these subgroups I mentioned. Again the climb will
21 be steeper.
22 One of the issues that we've been dealing
23 with this is about a paragraph in the law. If you
24 would count the number of hours that state directors of
25 accountability have been spending on this issue of
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1 minimum group size it would be mind-boggling. It's how
2 many kids does it take to constitute a group. In
3 theory two constitutes a group, but we start getting
4 into very shaky issues around reliability from year to
5 year. You say these two kids are a group this year.
6 Next year those kids will be different. And so if
7 you're saying this is characteristic of the school
8 based on two or three kids, it gets to be ridiculous.
9 What we found is the issue of minimum N. N
10 is shorthand for the sample size in statistical
11 language. This issue of minimum N has been really the
12 issue of lots of simulations and lots of analyses. I
13 fooled around with this for Wyoming. It's important to
14 note there top of page eight based on 2001 data only,
15 not on 2002 data. But the analyses still hold. So I
16 said what if we said three was a group? If you have
17 three Hispanic kids or three low socioeconomic status
18 kids, that's a group or five or ten or thirty. What
19 you see is if you say a group is three, the percent
20 meeting the annual goal is about 20 percent, 20.5
21 percent. The percent excluded from the system that
22 wouldn't have enough kids to count is 9.3 percent. So
23 the total path of the year is about 30 percent. If you
24 jump down to the minimum N of 30, if you say a group is
25 30, also know in Wyoming -- this is based on elementary
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1 schools -- in Wyoming 25 percent of our schools have
2 fewer than ten kids in the 4th grade. I'm with people
3 in other states they talk about small schools as having
4 50 or 60 kids, we call that large. So if you say the
5 minimum group size is 30, that's the school or
6 subgroup, you see the percent meeting AYP is a little
7 under 40 percent, but the percent excluded from the
8 system where we have not enough kids to count that year
9 is almost 50 percent. So the total pass for that year,
10 if you will, is 87 percent. So I show this, a lot of
11 people say let's raise the minimum N as high as
12 possible, that seems like a good idea. What you end up
13 doing is being unfair to the large schools. The small
14 schools get a buy. And that's not a fair system. We
15 all know what happens when large schools or small
16 schools, one feels is getting a better deal, just end
17 up in court again. But it really is the case any large
18 high school, middle school, would be penalized unfairly
19 just by the fact they're large.
20 So we had to think of some ways to deal with
21 that with our small population. For instance, what if
22 we said the minimum group size was 30 and you had a
23 school say 25 kids, they're persistently low
24 performing, 5, 10 percent proficient. How much more
25 evidence would you need over time to say we need to do
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1 something and it's unfair to those kids to not pay
2 attention to that school or that subgroup. We have
3 ways to do that. That's where the calculators come
4 in.
5 The notion of standard error. All of us in
6 the political world are aware of political polls and
7 things like that, and people talk about margin of
8 error. Such and such person looks like they'll have 45
9 percent of the vote and we're 95 percent sure that's
10 plus or minus 3 percent. That's based on statistical
11 techniques we could model this error. So for instance,
12 a bottom slide I show performance target, let's say
13 that's 30 percent proficient. Those X's represent
14 school scores. Let's say in the first case the one on
15 the left say that's 24 percent proficient, and the one
16 on the right is 25 percent proficient. If the one on
17 left is a smaller school we'll be less certain that the
18 score is really at 24 percent. It's going to be more
19 wavering in the scores. Whereas, in the other school
20 if it's a much larger school, and we say that is 25
21 percent, we have more certainty. You see how the bar,
22 that's the confidence, that is the margin of error
23 stretches above the performance target for one of
24 those, but not for the other. For the one that it does
25 we say they've met their goal that year or at least we
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1 can't say they haven't meet their goal. On the other
2 case, we could say, well, it doesn't look like they met
3 their goal. We're 95 percent sure they didn't meet
4 their goal.
5 The way to think about standard error is we
6 have this thing P is proportion, whether that's percent
7 proficient or what. And we multiply by one minus P
8 over N. The square root sign. So then to turn into
9 percent we multiply by l00 percent. So if we had a
10 school that had let's say the bar is 40 percent
11 proficient. If we had a school that had 30 percent
12 proficient, so one minus that, actually say .3 the
13 proportion, one minus that is .7. Right? And let's
14 say that school had 25 kids tested. Right? Multiply
15 by l00. Calculators. Actually it should be .3. This
16 is .7. So .3 times .7 divided by 25 equals .0084.
17 Take the square root of that by hitting the little
18 square root button, and multiply by l00. What is the
19 answer? 9.16. That's percent, okay. That is only one
20 standard error. So the way that we know about standard
21 error statistically is that 68 percent of the time we
22 say the true score is somewhere plus or minus. This is
23 our, let's say this is our 30 percent proficient. We
24 say 68 percent of the time truth, if you will, is
25 between plus and minus one standard error. This is
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1 about, let's round up, 21 percent. And this is about
2 39 percent. This is pretty high stake's decision to
3 say to go through these sanctions. Are we confident
4 we're 2/3rds sure? Do we want to be 95 percent sure?
5 So then if we take this out to two standard errors, so
6 we multiply this by 2, really 1.96, say 2 for the sake
7 of argument. It would actually be minus 18, which
8 would be, 12, right. And we would say that we're 95
9 percent sure that the truth, if you will, if we could
10 -- because we only have 25 kids, right. We're trying
11 to characterize the school, trying to characterize the
12 school on the basis of 25 kids. And what if it was a
13 different 25 kids. We're saying that over infinite
14 samples of 25 kids we're 95 percent sure that this
15 score of 30 is really somewhere between 48 and 12. Big
16 spread. Now this 48 stretches higher than that 40. If
17 the cut is here at 40, they scored 30, but their
18 confidence interval is like that, we would say we don't
19 have enough information to say they haven't met their
20 AYP.
21 One of the things we'll be doing is roll
22 together multiple years. So this year they might be
23 okay. Next year if they have another 25 kids and
24 they're still at the same proportion, let's change this
25 to 50, watch what happens. What do we get? Should be
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1 6.5, right, 6.48. I was doing it in my head. So we'll
2 be 95 percent sure it's plus or minus 13 percent. So
3 this would go to 43 and down, we don't really care
4 about down. We see it's still okay you see as a number
5 goes up our certainty closes in on the actual number.
6 Another thing if you look at this, math folks in here,
7 as we approach 50/50 our uncertainty increases to .5
8 times .5 is the highest number you'll get, versus .1
9 times .9. So if a school is persistently low, 10
10 percent proficient, it will be easier to catch that
11 especially over time.
12 What this allows us to do is hold all schools
13 accountable. But recognizing that this is only a
14 sample in time. And the feds have bought this. I was
15 at a peer review on a few of the states who went for
16 early, tried to get early approval on their
17 accountability system. People are setting these
18 minimum N sizes somewhat arbitrarily because you can't
19 really get to -- the language of the law says it has to
20 be statistically reliable and valid. Well, to get
21 there you really need an N size of two hundred to four
22 hundred. That's not going to happen. So people are
23 talking about 30. Well 30, we weren't that far off,
24 just arbitrarily saying if we said a minimum N of 30 if
25 the bar is at 40 percent proficient the school ended up
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1 with 39 percent proficient, we would have to say sorry,
2 come back next year, you didn't make it this year.
3 When we talk about the consequences you'll see why
4 that's the wrong approach. It's a high stake's
5 decision.
6 MR. SCOTT: Even with your small size as the
7 scores come down eventually you get to the point where
8 you say they're not making it?
9 MR. MARION: And Senator Scott, that's the
10 beauty of the system. You can't escape just by virtue
11 of being small.
12 MR. SCOTT: How close is this basically to a
13 Basian approach?
14 MR. MARION: It's not that close because I
15 mean this is -- I could explain. If I had to start
16 explaining Basian statistics I would have to rely on
17 someone to help me out. We're not doing any kind of
18 prior probabilities or anything like that or
19 distributions. It's pretty straightforward descriptive
20 statistics. And this is a rough approximation of
21 standard error for sample sizes of 20 or larger that
22 works very well. We're using a more exact method
23 that's more -- we would need better calculators.
24 Sorry, Annette, to do it with the way we're using it.
25 But it's a little more sophisticated, but it comes out
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1 very close. The schools would be able to use this to
2 get a sense where they'll be each year based on the
3 WyCAS results.
4 That's the reason for going with this type of
5 approach exactly what Senator Scott said allows us to
6 say to small schools just because you're small you're
7 not getting a pass through the system, but we recognize
8 that if you're doing anything decent they're going to
9 be able to, but it does allow us to say everybody,
10 you're accountable. If small schools are doing at
11 least a decent job this will allow them to say there is
12 not enough evidence to say we haven't met AYP. And as
13 we accommodate more data once we add in the 3 through 8
14 assessments right now for elementary schools I'm
15 characterizing on the basis of a 4th grade test. When
16 we have 3 through 8 many of our schools are K-5 and
17 K-6, I'll have a minimum of three years, many cases
18 four years; 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade. Add that
19 together the N size that we're testing goes up
20 dramatically.
21 So putting that together with multiple years
22 we'll be able to tighten the estimates. For now we
23 don't have the data, we shouldn't misidentify schools.
24 The consequence of misidentifying schools is severe.
25 MS. SESSIONS: When are we going to start to
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1 test by grade level?
2 MR. MARION: The plan is as we've talked
3 about yesterday that I'll be collecting this
4 information, presenting some recommendations to you at
5 the November meeting. Hopefully, then we're able to go
6 to the legislature with a recommendation, coming out of
7 the legislature there is enough consensus what the
8 assessment system should look like roughly. Then we'll
9 issue an RFP right after you folks adjourn in March
10 this year or February, beginning of March. Try and
11 hire a contractor by that summer, spend the next year
12 developing the assessments. The following year
13 piloting them. So we would meet the federal time line,
14 be ahead by a year. Allow us to get some pilot data
15 and then we would be fully compliant. But it's still
16 going to take a couple of years. That's a problem with
17 the law.
18 One of the things we'll have to face, and all
19 states will have to face that add new assessments,
20 we'll have to reestablish the baseline because we can't
21 just say I'll throw these others assessments into the
22 mix and not look at where they line up. We won't get
23 to extend our time line by another 12 years except to
24 recalibrate the baselines.
25 MS. SESSIONS: In the mean time will we
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1 continue to give the WyCAS the next two years?
2 MR. MARION: We have extended our contract
3 with measured progress through testing through 2003 and
4 2004 that will bridge us into when the RFP is issued
5 and when we have new assessments established, so we
6 will still be fully compliant with the federal law.
7 MS. DEVIN: It's my observation at least
8 going through the first round of the WyCAS being
9 developed and going out that that pilot year was very
10 valuable. Is that the perception of your department or
11 not? At least I thought we learned a lot of things we
12 didn't want to do and things we needed to do. So one
13 could say we can take an extra year, but then lose the
14 pilot year. I thought we learned a lot in that. What
15 is your perception?
16 MR. MARION: If I actually had to do it over
17 again I would have really focused and called it a pilot
18 and not have set standards that year. I would have
19 waited a year to set standards because we shortened the
20 test considerably and some of that score dip that we
21 had between year one and two was attributable to some
22 of the changes in the test. So this time it's my
23 recommendation we have this pilot year just so people
24 in the 3rd and 5th and 6th could get used to seeing
25 what it's going to be and then set standards the
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1 following year when it counts. Maybe set some rough
2 standards in the first year so people get a sense of
3 how they're doing. But the recommendation that I would
4 bring that if we asked a panel of experts I have no
5 doubt they would bring, most states don't have the
6 luxury of waiting a year to set standards. If we had
7 that luxury I would suggest we take it.
8 MS. DEVIN: Okay. Any questions at this
9 point?
10 MR. MARION: Now we're on to the toughest
11 part of the law, and I will, this is not a department
12 position or editorial position. The law talks a lot
13 about scientific evidence for interventions and reading
14 programs and things like that. This is the one area of
15 the law where it has a major effect and there is very
16 little scientific evidence to back the use of rewards
17 and sanctions to improve student learning.
18 Nevertheless there is a tremendous amount of money at
19 risk for the kids who need it the most in our state if
20 we don't participate. There are ways for us to address
21 this that can hopefully benefit teaching and learning.
22 You have to think about this though, we have
23 two sets of schools we'll be talking about. We have
24 schools that receive Title 1 funding and those that do
25 not. All schools need to participate in a system of
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1 rewards and sanctions. However, the federal government
2 has outlined the system of sanctions for Title 1
3 schools. We could either add to, but we must use those
4 sanctions. So after two consecutive years of not
5 meeting that AYP target, that 40 percent bar the school
6 is deemed to be in need of improvement. Not on the
7 basis of one, but on the basis of two years.
8 We're on the bottom of page ten. If they
9 fall into that category they must do the following
10 things: Develop an improvement plan and receive
11 technical assistance, must dedicate 10 percent of their
12 funding to professional development. That's not a bad
13 thing. Must notify parents of school improvement
14 status. Basically must send home a letter to every
15 parent saying your child is attending a failing
16 school. Then make public school choice available
17 within district and the district has to pay
18 transportation costs. But that's part of the law; the
19 district must have to pay transportation costs. In a
20 case like Natrona where you already have within
21 district choice there would have to be some dedication
22 that the choice goes first to those kids in schools
23 that are low performing and of parents of low
24 socioeconomic means. Then if there was space available
25 other parents could take it. It couldn't be the free
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1 choice that Natrona uses now. So that is an important
2 piece. This is after two years. It gets worse.
3 After three years of not meeting AYP, so it's
4 the second year of school improvement you have to do
5 all the things we mentioned in year two, but then you
6 must offer supplemental services up to the amount of
7 first student ADM, ADM dollars per kid in that school.
8 So if it's $8,000 parents have the right to ask for
9 supplemental services for their child up to that amount
10 of money. And that's prioritized for low performing
11 and lower socioeconomic status kids, but the district
12 must make that offer.
13 The thing that the state has to do, the state
14 has to provide a list or at least approve a list of
15 supplemental service providers. It can't just be that
16 we'll get John from down the road to teach reading.
17 The person has to be approved by the state to be able
18 to participate as a supplemental service provider.
19 In year four of failure, again this is only
20 for Title 1 schools, but that's almost half our
21 schools, 35 percent 40 percent of our schools. The
22 school must take, the district must take corrective
23 action, which means new staff or new curriculum. Year
24 five has to be a plan developed for takeover either by
25 the state, a contractor charter, and has to be new
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1 staff. And year six the takeover plan has to be
2 implemented. That's seven years -- it's six years of
3 not meeting adequately yearly progress. These are
4 pretty harsh sanctions.
5 Now if the school is persistently failing
6 kids, you could say that is important, this is a good
7 thing for the kind of consequences attached to this.
8 That's why we want to be pretty certain when we say the
9 school is failing.
10 Now, one other thing, another reason for
11 choosing this approach to be confident if the school,
12 if this is the target, start here, we have to get to
13 100 percent proficient, if the school missing AYP here
14 they're identified as needing improvement. It takes
15 two years to be classified in need of improvement. It
16 also takes two years to get out of improvement. So the
17 school the next year could be up here. They did a good
18 job, but they're not out. The next year they're up
19 here. They're still in school improvement. They're
20 now in this is the first year of school improvement,
21 second year, third year of school improvement. They
22 would be making substantial progress, but never get out
23 of school improvement. Really is why we want to be
24 that certain when we say the school is identified. I
25 don't think you school folks would disagree with me on
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1 that.
2 MS. SESSIONS: Where do the disabled fall?
3 MR. MARION: Students on IEPs, individual
4 education plans, count as a subgroup. So if the bar is
5 40 percent, students with disabilities must be at 40
6 percent proficient. I think that's a major problem
7 with this law. It's not that I don't think the kids
8 with disabilities could do more than they are doing now
9 in many cases, but limited English proficient kids, the
10 kids with disabilities, are in this categories by
11 definition they're educationally disadvantaged. If
12 you're successful with a kid with a learning
13 disability, special ed, you'll exit that kid out of
14 special ed. They now no longer count to raise up your
15 average, pull up the average. And but the kids you're
16 taking in are in special ed for a reason because
17 they're failing in school. It's like as escalator. The
18 good ones are getting off at the top and can't be used
19 to pull up your average any more. The same thing with
20 limited English proficient students. I honestly
21 believe that the Department and the White House are
22 paying attention to that and are going to recognize
23 that. They don't want this law to come crashing down.
24 I have no problem with saying we should just
25 aggregate by every subgroup we have, and we should
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1 expect as much from our low socioeconomic status kids,
2 any of our ethnic kids as we do for all the kids. That
3 would place them, say you're not educationally
4 disadvantaged because you were born poor, but because
5 if you have a learning disability that makes it a
6 little bit tough and especially the severe. For the
7 most severe kids, the most cognitively disabled kids,
8 they could take the alternate assessment. In the draft
9 regulations right now -- this is a problem and I know
10 there were a lot of comments that went and we'll see
11 what the final ones look like -- no more than half a
12 percent of kids could take the alternate assessment and
13 have their score counted as an alternate assessment
14 score. Basically anything more than a half percent
15 would be counted as the lowest score on the test.
16 Well, for us we hovered around a half percent
17 to .6 percent of the kids taking the alternative. I
18 think we're as strict as they come in terms of who can
19 take the alternate. We did supply those data to the
20 feds and suggest they loosen that up a little bit, but
21 those kids, the most severe kids will take the
22 alternate. How we count those scores, whether we score
23 this on the alternate we call you proficient. It's not
24 a lot of logic behind that piece. The logic is we want
25 to make sure all kids are included in the system. The
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1 illogic is that it doesn't always make sense to think
2 about it as comparable scores.
3 MR. MCOMIE: How much of this is the law and
4 how much of this is the regulations that we're allowed
5 by law? The reason I ask the question is I want to
6 know how quickly could we respond to the regulations
7 and everybody is on board with these problems which may
8 be something new, should probably suggested if the
9 requires legislation.
10 MR. MARION: What I just told you about the
11 sanctions as specified in section 11-16 of the law it's
12 laid out step by step.
13 MS. DEVIN: It's my impression from at least
14 the one national meeting I got to attend there is
15 significant discussion about some of these subgroups.
16 Is subgroup the proper word or special ed? The problem
17 you just described there is a lot of discussion about a
18 manner in which you would be required to show there is
19 progress with these groups but not maybe in the same
20 manner as the broad -- so the sanctions are in the law,
21 but what about the piece you just described, is that
22 regulation?
23 MR. MARION: The piece I just described about
24 counting all kids, that's section 11 (c)(5). Every one
25 of these subgroups is specified in the law. It's not a
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1 regulation. As far as I know there have been no
2 proposals. There has been a technical correction
3 amendment just put forth by Russ Feingold. Jeff Ridge
4 was on there. Not exactly the power brokers in the
5 senate. Right; is that fair to say, Mary Kay? Russ
6 Feingold has a lot of respect. But that doesn't
7 address this issue. That's just about the annual
8 testing pieces. It's not the accountability pieces.
9 We'll have to see if after the election people start
10 recognizing once they see their states.
11 We're in a lot better position than many
12 other states. I know states talking about 80 percent
13 failure right off the bat. And their legislative
14 delegations will be hearing about that on the campaign
15 trails no doubt about it.
16 MS. SESSIONS: I guess I'm not clear about
17 the -- I have a daughter who teaches the severely
18 disabled in Laramie. The three of the children she has
19 this year could not possibly begin to take any type of
20 assessment. And I guess the things I worry about yet
21 their lives are enriched from interaction with the
22 children and the things that they do. She brought them
23 to the capitol, and they went to McDonald's and that
24 type thing. The assessment piece is ludicrous. Are we
25 going to lose those children out of our system that we
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1 have fought so hard to get them out of institutions to
2 try to bring their existence up a little ways? Are we
3 going to lose them again out of our systems in order to
4 protect the scores of everybody else?
5 MR. MARION: No, I don't believe so.
6 Actually the kids that you described probably qualify
7 for what we call the WyCAS alternate assessment. It
8 doesn't look anything like WyCAS. It's essentially a
9 classroom administered assessment. I think it's the
10 best model of assessment in the state. It really looks
11 at the kids over time, collects evidence. And it's
12 based on these expanded standards, so a communication
13 standard might be a kid being able to nod when you say
14 their name, something like that. To call that kid
15 proficient for the purpose of saying that the school,
16 that's something we're wrestling with, and in lot of
17 cases for kids successful on these things we're still
18 deciding upon this, I'm willing to call some of those
19 kids proficient even though we know that they're not
20 really proficient on the standards.
21 The feds have capped that by saying you could
22 do what you want with half a percent, and you could
23 give them this alternate assessment, you can call them
24 all proficient if you want. Anything over the half a
25 percent you'll have to call them novice or lowest. And
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1 so in reality they would be considered the lowest
2 category on our standards. Otherwise, they wouldn't be
3 in that category to begin with.
4 But I don't think you'll lose the kids out of
5 schools. And other kids who are not quite in that
6 category, but who have more mild learning disabilities,
7 function totally fine in the classroom, need some
8 accommodations, the school has to be accountable for
9 those, and I don't think you will see a reversal.
10 Because at the same time as we heard yesterday IDA,
11 Individuals with Disabilities Act, is being
12 reauthorized now. That's due out next year.
13 MR. LOCKHART: One question, you used on the
14 page 11 you said something about third year after two
15 years of non-performance must offer a choice and
16 supplemental services. What I heard there the choice
17 in supplemental services was whatever investment we
18 have per student to the parents of that student is
19 essentially a voucher system. What do they do with the
20 money?
21 MR. MARION: They have to spend it on an
22 approved provider. The district spends the money. The
23 parents can tap into, say it's up to $8,000 a kid per
24 year, the parents could tap into $8,000 for a provider
25 to come and provide reading services for their child or
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1 math services or something like that. But that is --
2 they can't take that money to send their kid to a
3 private school. It has to be a supplemental through
4 the public school. But it's dancing around there,
5 there is no question about it.
6 MS. DEVIN: As a follow-up I understand it
7 could be private tutoring or qualified tutors separate
8 from the public school.
9 MR. MARION: Exactly, could be, actually
10 that's more private tutoring if we had -- we don't have
11 any in Wyoming, but they're springing up in a lot of
12 places. Silvan Learning Centers, if they were on the
13 approved list. The providers will have to submit an
14 approved list. We have this year's, since we don't
15 have any schools in this position right now we are
16 developing, in the process of developing a list of
17 supplemental services around the state. So you just
18 can't go to anyone and say my aunt is a really good
19 reading teacher, I'm going to tap in and get her the
20 money. If she's a really good reading teacher and gets
21 approved, maybe. If not, just can't do that.
22 MR. SCOTT: What do you think of the games
23 people play with this? You get in the third year, and
24 I gather this on a by school basis, get in a large
25 district and say a third of the schools are in this
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1 category, can people who decide their kid ought to have
2 a private tutor transfer from a good to a bad school to
3 get in on this?
4 MR. MARION: That is the first time I heard
5 that suggestion and I thought I knew this law well.
6 I'm going to Washington tomorrow. I will ask that
7 question. I'll get back to you because I have no idea
8 on that.
9 MR. SCOTT: With the system we have in
10 Natrona County where we're developing some schools that
11 are starting to attract kids that are having problems
12 that may have trouble meeting some of these criteria, I
13 could see somebody transferring, for the particular
14 kind of student transferring from some of the schools
15 where for socioeconomic reasons kids do quite well into
16 a school who might not be meeting the standards in part
17 in order to get the extra tutoring for the kid.
18 MR. MARION: Where I could see it -- I don't
19 know if it would be allowed. But where I could see it
20 where it would make sense if a parent -- the school is
21 not really failing as a whole, but one particular
22 subject they're having trouble with and starting to
23 address that, but it's -- still would depend on the
24 parent. The supplemental services are prioritized.
25 It's not necessarily open to everyone in the school.
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1 That might be a way the school can cap it. To be
2 honest I don't know exactly where that cap is yet. We
3 could bring back more information on the specifics of
4 the supplemental services. But I do know that at one
5 of these meetings -- Annette just pointed out to me
6 that if the student is proficient they can't qualify
7 for the services. It's for kids that need it
8 academically and socioeconomically. So if they're
9 proficient you can tell the kid to ditch the WyCAS that
10 year and not be proficient. Just kidding. I don't
11 know we'll be ever -- and you folks know better than I
12 -- we'll ever write a law people can't figure out a
13 way to creatively get around it.
14 MR. SCOTT: Where is the money for these
15 services going to come from? Is it going to be a big
16 hit on our general fund or is it done at the expense of
17 other students in the district? What is the federal
18 scheme? How will that interplay with our court
19 decision?
20 MR. MARION: As far as I know it's all out of
21 federal dollars, money is supposed to come out of
22 federal dollars, which you just hit it right, if in
23 fact it was a large draw you could argue it is coming
24 at the expense of bigger programs for more kids. There
25 is no question -- it sounds like to be honest if this
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1 is a real area, and it is an interesting issue, we
2 should probably have Carol come and talk about this
3 with all the specifics of the money and things like
4 that because I know what some of the general that
5 surrounds it, but some of the things I try to stay out
6 of. This is one of them. So I don't know what the
7 schedule is like for November, but might not be a bad
8 idea to have Carol talk about this.
9 MR. GOODENOUGH: That was the follow-up I was
10 going to talk about. Seems to me that the whole
11 criteria is based on testing scores, and so the test,
12 how difficult the test is is going to determine how the
13 scores are met. So who is in charge of determining the
14 tests for each grade level and how much variation is
15 there going to be from state to state? We have a WyCAS
16 test that I think takes 13 hours for juniors, and I
17 gather that's approved by the Department of Education
18 as a test that will meet their criteria. Are all
19 states going to have 13-hour tests for juniors? It's
20 obvious that how well you do depends on how tough the
21 test is. So it seems that states will want to have the
22 minimum test for the U.S. Department of Education to
23 approve. So who is going to decide all these things?
24 MR. MARION: One complication, WyCAS is about
25 nine hours. The other takes two and a half of those.
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1 Just don't want to stir up any more rumors about that.
2 Senator Goodenough hit on a very important point. In
3 the first few pages of the law it says quite
4 specifically, the secretary page, will not review state
5 standards. The language of the law, must have
6 challenging academic content and challenging
7 achievement, standards performance. But the secretary
8 will not approve those unless you make substantive
9 changes to your standards. And so the difficulty, if
10 you will, of the test is dependent on the
11 challengingness of the standards. If you have low
12 level standards you get away with a low level test. If
13 you have low level standards, you're not meeting the
14 challenging intent. So it's not a question of testing,
15 but what the standards are.
16 The work that the committees did this pass
17 summer at revising and revisiting the standards,
18 believe me, some of that was looked at in terms of
19 figuring what is important and maybe just how good,
20 good enough has to be to say the child is proficient
21 enough -- no pun intended. So that was the first look
22 at that. Now I know that there are several states to
23 be honest monkeying around with what proficient means.
24 That one of the states that I reviewed and another
25 state I didn't review basically said for purposes of No
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1 Child Left Behind we'll combine partially proficient
2 and proficient. They're starting at 80 percent
3 proficient. I actually spoke to a reporter the other
4 day, got a call from the LA Times doing a national
5 story on the stuff, and this is what I said yesterday
6 is that some of the stuff is not going to last for the
7 whole 14, 12 years of this law. And we in the state
8 have spilled a lot of political blood over the notion
9 of proficient and the importance of proficient because
10 we believe it's an important target for kids in school
11 to aim for. So now are we going to come back and say,
12 now the feds are tougher, we were just kidding about
13 the importance of proficient, it's really not that
14 important.
15 I don't know that these states, I know that
16 California brought this issue to their state board last
17 week. I was on a panel from California Department of
18 Education. They have five levels and level four was
19 proficient. They were talking about making level three
20 proficient. I think the state board said look at
21 Stanford, eight years, proficient is level four, now
22 we're going to change and say it's level three because
23 it's convenient. I think people will say we want to be
24 left with our integrity and something educationally
25 sound if this law changes. And so that's an issue.
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1 There is no question it will look different in
2 different states.
3 The only positive spin on all the simulations
4 I've seen, I was just at a meeting in LA about this, a
5 press conference, where they simulate what if you set
6 the proficiency bar at about where we have it, 50
7 percent of kids pass, or you set it where about 70
8 percent of the kids pass, or is it where 90 percent of
9 the kids pass right now. Even when you set it where 90
10 percent of the kids pass with this fully conjunctive
11 law where every subgroup has to be above every bar
12 every year, you still have 75 percent of your schools
13 in failure by year 12, even setting the bar at grade
14 10. Then you set a ridiculous non-credible bar, so why
15 do that. Why not do the right thing and work to change
16 the law where it needs to be changed?
17 MR. GOODENOUGH: I would like to say I think
18 the whole approach is totally ridiculous, the
19 micromanagement coming from Washington which causes the
20 state department to micromanage the district. It's
21 totally the wrong way to go. We have to deal with if
22 we just let teachers teach I bet we'll come out with a
23 lot better results in the end. I can see where there
24 will be this immense amount of pressure on districts
25 and teachers to meet these scores. And so even as
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1 educational professionals left to their own devices
2 they do something different if all this funding is
3 hinging on these numbers, all the pressure is going to
4 be to achieve the numbers. And so people are going to
5 end up doing things they wouldn't do if the pressure
6 wasn't there.
7 So I can see how this is all going to warp
8 the education process because everybody's funding,
9 people's careers are going to depend on these numbers.
10 It seems we had a deal in Cody where there were some
11 test scores falsified at one point already in this
12 state. There are other states where people have
13 falsified test scores because everything depends on the
14 test scores. And I just think that we are going down
15 completely the wrong road to educational excellence. I
16 can see why there is pressure because there is a
17 problem in public education, but I think we're going
18 down a completely wrong road on this with the federal
19 dollars.
20 MR. MARION: There is no question the kind of
21 corruption and narrowing and teaching to the test and
22 doing some funding things to raise test scores could
23 certainly happen. And the literature is quite clear
24 that's happened in many places. That's why in our
25 discussion about assessment yesterday and talking about
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1 what Representative Lockhart mentioned in the June
2 meeting, if we are smart about this and say what are
3 the really, the crucial things we want kids to learn,
4 teachers could still teach out of that, what are the
5 crucial things, big ideas we could have with all kids
6 do and design our assessment system that actually
7 measures those things well in the way that people feel
8 is a good reflection of the curriculum and their good
9 teaching. We could actually improve the education
10 system. I'm not willing to give up hope on that yet.
11 But certainly attention to those kind of negative
12 consequences, we've seen them in many other states and
13 hopefully try and avoid some of those pitfalls. I
14 agree with you, simply an accountability system based
15 on test scores is limited.
16 MS. DEVIN: What do they think the direction
17 that this committee and this legislature has voiced is
18 that focused on quality and improvement and meanwhile
19 we have the option as a committee to identify the
20 problem and work on change. I think we are both
21 lightbulbs are beginning to come on, this is workable.
22 Where we need to go because certainly -- and I did mean
23 to thank you for the national time that you have put
24 in. I know it's been tremendous. But that gives
25 Wyoming a voice. It's starting to raise these
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1 questions, and you can raise additional questions of
2 this committee through that after, and I think we need
3 to do it.
4 The other piece that is even more frightening
5 are the rather extensive studies now that are coming
6 out and actually have tracked and documented children
7 that have been with effective teachers and teach
8 children with non-effective teachers, and a child with
9 three consecutive years of non-effective teachers will
10 never recover from their educational career from that
11 series. Yet the impact of an effective teacher
12 positively is just as dramatic in the other direction,
13 and they're able to identify the characteristics now.
14 So it is significant to children that we don't ignore
15 what is going on.
16 MR. SCOTT: My experience with federal laws,
17 and this is mostly in the health area is they tend to
18 be vaguely worded and contradictory, and I think you
19 see horrendous consequences and then there is something
20 a few pages on that takes that away. And when you get
21 regulations based on part of that law you can often
22 beat them back. Is this law suffering from that set of
23 defects or did they lay it out in black and white such
24 that there isn't the wiggle room?
25 MR. MARION: This law, I don't have the kind
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1 of federal experience you have, but this law is
2 incredibly specific. And I don't know, perhaps Mary
3 Kay could talk about it with relation to other pieces
4 of legislation, but it is incredibly prescriptive of
5 how you even calculate adequate yearly progress, the
6 step-by-step nature of the sanctions, the specific
7 subgroups and how you account them. The regulators in
8 this case have very little wiggle room. And a top
9 assistant last week confided in myself and my colleague
10 that they were even worried about some of the
11 flexibility of secretaries trying to put back in there
12 because they're being watched over their shoulders by
13 congress and the White House to not offer too much
14 flexibility. So I wish it were more vague in places.
15 Unfortunately, it's not.
16 MR. MCOMIE: I would like to -- I don't know
17 whether this is a statement or something that's really
18 bothered me, may be part of an old wives' tale, but I
19 don't think we have any consequence to the students
20 taking the test. I mean blow it off, some parents
21 don't want the kids to take the test. If that is used
22 as a measurement, how do they deal with that? If the
23 tests in the student's mind is something they don't
24 want to do and yet you have all these sanctions that
25 are going to take place this is starting to concern me
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1 considerably. And Senator Scott talked about this when
2 we were trying to draft the last piece of legislation,
3 a way to put some consequences in.
4 MR. MARION: You're not the first person I've
5 heard that from. We've actually tried to deal, we're
6 hesitant at the state level saying a child will be held
7 back or not graduate on the basis of WyCAS. We think
8 that's the wrong reason for the test. I have
9 encouraged locals and have actually sent out a little
10 brochure two years ago and we send it out every year
11 with WyCAS about proper test administration issues, but
12 also about the issue of consequences on kids. For
13 example, one of the suggestions in there, particularly
14 for the llth grade, that's where people point to. The
15 4th graders pretty much do what you tell them to do.
16 The 11th graders and the 8th graders. If you have a
17 kid that scores novice on WyCAS, the lowest category,
18 and they're truly novice in one of these areas,
19 reading, writing or math, then it behooves the school
20 to do something before that kid graduates. Not
21 necessarily deny graduation, but to say that child
22 should be placed in a remedial class for however long
23 that takes to provide evidence that they're not at that
24 level any more.
25 Now you could also say we shouldn't make that
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1 kind of decision for a kid to take a class on the basis
2 of one test. I say fine. For the kids who score
3 novice either provide evidence that you're not novice
4 in that area or take the class and eventually be
5 remediated. But the kids who are not novice I don't
6 know any kid who wants to take an extra class in the
7 senior year of high school as opposed to if you get a
8 job or working. But for the kids who truly need it
9 that is a way to say let's make sure you have some
10 skills before you leave.
11 For the kids who don't need it kids don't
12 know how hard to try to score above novice. And if it
13 means an extra class or not I think they'll try pretty
14 hard. That is a pretty low stakes and to me sort of a
15 win-win way of dealing with that.
16 The other thing we've suggested is to put the
17 score on the transcript. What people are worried about
18 mostly they're worried about their good students not
19 trying on WyCAS. They're not worrying about their poor
20 students not trying because if they're not going to be
21 proficient, they won't be proficient. They're going to
22 worry about their good students. Put a score on the
23 transcript and you know the kid is trying to get into
24 the military or some type of secondary ed and it says
25 novice on three areas of WyCAS no kid will want that on
169
1 a transcript. And guidance counselors will certainly
2 tell them this is not a good thing on the transcript.
3 The danger there is that you are potentially
4 labeling the kid on the basis of one test, so I have
5 concerns about that, but that's why I like the idea of
6 remediation plan for 8th going to 9th or 11th going to
7 12th grade. Other things schools could do is no reason
8 for English class or math class you can't say your
9 score on WyCAS counts X percent of your grade. I know
10 the scores come back a little late, but there is no
11 reason why you can't say in June we'll send out your
12 grade with this factored into it. There are lots of
13 things locals can do if they choose. And there are a
14 lot of locals here, so we should ask them why -- I'm
15 still waiting for someone to tell me why remediation is
16 a dumb idea. I haven't heard it yet. To me it makes
17 so much sense, so it makes me think I'm missing
18 something about it. And the people say, well, the
19 money is not there for the class. If the kid drops out
20 you lose it anyway, so you might as well find a way to
21 keep them in school and get them some skills.
22 MR. MCOMIE: In a follow-up I wrote a note to
23 get federal dollars, but this also then all the extra
24 money then is also incentives to the schools'
25 administration and the school boards to maybe do some
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1 of the things you suggested where there has been no
2 reason to do that in the past.
3 MR. MARION: I think that people will -- the
4 other area I'm frankly concerned is if you look at the
5 accountability provisions and layers in this law,
6 schools feel the brunt of it. Districts feel pretty
7 intense. The state has to make AYP every year.
8 Otherwise, we get some sanctions from us on the feds.
9 Teachers, school boards, everybody except parents,
10 we've been wrestling with that issue. I can't think of
11 a way to hold parents accountable, but one of the
12 things we suggested to district folks is, and I have
13 developed some models of parent report cards out there
14 where you as a parent have to indicate how often you
15 give the child a quiet place to study, how often you
16 ask them about their homework or check their homework.
17 At least if nothing else attend to the behaviors that
18 we know positively relate to achievement.
19 I don't know how much more you can go beyond
20 that. Maybe say if you don't do something you don't
21 benefit from the choice provision. But I don't know
22 how far we can go in that. It's not just the kids;
23 it's the parents and kids. And we're putting it all on
24 the schools, but there's a lot of stuff going on
25 outside of school.
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1 MR. SCOTT: Question on the problem of no
2 stakes for the kids. Is there any prohibition on the
3 school taking the WyCAS scores and publicly posting
4 them in rank order trying to ignite national
5 competitiveness?
6 MR. MARION: I think we would run smack into
7 FERPA on that is my sense, the Family Education Right
8 to Privacy Act. Even when you post scores you do it by
9 ID, not by name. That would be tough.
10 MS. HILL: I would like to have a specific
11 test so you guys know what you have in front of you.
12 Out of Scott's presentation we are in critical need of
13 two things from this committee, whether it's drafting
14 instructions or wait until the next meeting, but we do
15 need a change in statute that authorizes the assessment
16 to be given in grades 3, 5, 6 and 7. And as long as
17 you're there we also are required to roll in science as
18 part of the standards as well as the assessed subject
19 areas. And it doesn't kick in until 2007. But as I
20 say as long as you're rummaging around in there if you
21 could add science, that would be good.
22 The second item would be to establish some
23 kind of framework for the rewards and sanctions program
24 that is in the last set of slides for Scott in his
25 presentation. And what we hope there is that you might
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1 be able to authorize with some parameters, the state
2 board or state department, a design process to come up
3 with a rewards and sanctions plan. It's on the last
4 page. I wanted to be sure that before you wrapped this
5 up we kept our eye on those two items we will need as
6 far as a legislature product in the 2003 session.
7 MS. DEVINE: I'm assuming if we were to go
8 ahead and ask for a draft to authorize an additional
9 grade and we were to do science in the same time I
10 would envision that it would be an efficient and
11 economical way to approach the test development because
12 we could integrate those pieces and integrate them in
13 the time factor so we do not get this longer. We
14 talked about distributing while there is a significant
15 amount tested in 4th grade we may now be able to
16 distribute that testing over the other grades. So we
17 achieve some advantage by doing the science in
18 development costs and planning by doing it at the same
19 time.
20 MR. MARION: I don't know how much we're
21 going to capture on development costs from separate
22 developers, but we might capture some on logistical
23 issues if we have people coming out to the state,
24 things like that. So in terms of I do agree we should
25 authorize it now so we can, at least it would give us
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1 the statutory authorization to begin work on it.
2 MS. DEVINE: The company that does the
3 current test could not also, they or another company
4 could not also do a science component? We have to do a
5 separate?
6 MR. MARION: No, they could do a science
7 component, but it would be if your expertise was in
8 math you couldn't also be writing the science test. We
9 need content experts and different sets of teachers to
10 contribute to the science committees. We have about 60
11 teachers per content per grade level right now serving
12 the content advisory committees per language arts and
13 math. We need to replicate that for science as well.
14 MS. DEVINE: But we could incorporate it in
15 the total plan of when we test and how many hours so we
16 don't expand what we want.
17 MR. MARION: Exactly.
18 MR. SCOTT: One request I would have for the
19 future is we need the delineation of how much federal
20 money is involved here so that -- some of these
21 subsequent year sanctions look like they could do
22 considerable harm. And if they aren't modified as I
23 suspect they may be over time what are the consequences
24 of the state of saying no federal money and getting out
25 from under that way. I think we need to know that.
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1 MR. MARION: In anticipation of that very
2 question we went and looked, we'll receive about 126
3 million dollars in federal money this next fiscal
4 year. That's on top of the 700 million or so general
5 fund budget. Pretty substantial amount of money. Some
6 of that money, a good percentage of that money is
7 earmarked for special education. To be blunt I don't
8 think they will touch that. There is another piece of
9 money earmarked for vocational education, which I
10 suspect won't come under that. There is about 65
11 million dollars among all the different title programs;
12 Title 1, Title 2, Title 3, etcetera, Title 9, that
13 certainly have been threatened at least in the press
14 when Governor Dean from Vermont threatened the same
15 thing about turning down this money.
16 The important thing to think about the 60
17 million dollars it's a little less than 10 percent of
18 our state budget, but who is targeted first. It's
19 targeted toward the kids who need it the most, the kids
20 trying to really bridge the economic gap. And it would
21 be my recommendation we don't even go down that road
22 because even though there are hoops we have to jump
23 through we don't like I think we're better off working
24 on getting the hoops changed and not think about not
25 taking the money for these kids who really are most in
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1 need.
2 I could bring exact figures at the next
3 meeting.
4 MS. DEVIN: We had a bit of discussion
5 before, but it is money for the most part that goes
6 directly to districts. So it is not a part of our
7 ADM. It doesn't propose anything that goes for the
8 state funds. It would be lost to the district for
9 those programs.
10 MR. LOCKHART: I would like to draft
11 legislation. Would you like to do that now or later?
12 MS. DEVIN: I would like to do that now
13 because if the committee is ready, at least give
14 drafting recommendations because I do need a quorum
15 here to do that, and my concern is that we have time to
16 get those drafts back, look at them a couple of times
17 before the session. So I would like to do that.
18 MR. LOCKHART: I would move we direct the LSO
19 to draft legislation to add the additional years of
20 testing and to add science as a component of the
21 testing process. That's probably not perfect language
22 for the motion, but I think it's okay.
23 MS. DEVIN: Is there a second?
24 MR. SCOTT: Second.
25 MS. DEVIN: I have a motion and second that
176
1 we begin the drafting process. Did you have anything
2 to add?
3 MR. MARION: Not for that, for the rewards
4 and sanctions we'll need a separate set of drafting.
5 MS. DEVIN: Is there further discussion of
6 the committee on proceeding? Okay, then I think we can
7 do this as a voice vote. All those in favor? (Voice
8 response) Those opposed? (Voice response) That
9 motion carries. And, Dave and Mary, if you will begin
10 to work on getting -- I guess there are three of you
11 working now. Whomever in your contributions if you
12 could begin to get a piece of it done I appreciate
13 that.
14 Then the second part of this, the authorizing
15 the beginning of the design process for the rewards and
16 sanctions with parameters. You had a comment you
17 wanted to make on that?
18 MR. MARION: Last week we had a state board
19 meeting in Casper. At the work session we talked about
20 the issues of rewards and sanctions. And before I
21 volunteer the state board I will check with them first.
22 We met with them and talked about some of these issues.
23 Kim is here from the state board. This is for the
24 non-Title 1 schools. I'm not clear where we want to go
25 on the Title 1 schools. Specifications in the law are
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1 there. Do we want any kind of statutory authority?
2 I'm going to turn to Mary Kay or Dave to help with this
3 one. I don't know who wants statutory authority, but
4 we need it for the Title 1 sanctions specified by
5 federal law. We certainly need statutory authority to
6 move into the next phase for the non-Title 1 schools.
7 MS. HILL: I think because the rewards and
8 sanctions program for the non-Title 1 schools we have a
9 little bit of time. So what we would need from you is
10 even a session law that would require the state board
11 to pursue this to come back with subsequent reports to
12 you as a committee. And if necessary the state board
13 can give you a legislative package or their rules and
14 regulations could satisfy the intent. But we wouldn't
15 have to for this one we don't have to be as specific as
16 for the assessment provisions.
17 MR. LOCKHART: The reason I didn't pull that
18 one in I think we have time on sanctions and so forth.
19 I don't know what we do other than ask you to by
20 legislative process to go do what I think you're going
21 to do anyway. Why do we need to have a legislative
22 bill drawn to do that? It escapes me at the moment.
23 MS. HILL: We will need some money to do
24 that. There will be a citizen process, needs to be a
25 school process. It is a serious step, one that we
178
1 would want to take. One, you always want statutory
2 cover if you pursue something as serious as a rewards
3 and sanctions program. Secondly, there will need to be
4 funding which would be, it is my impression not
5 specifically provided for through the federal funds.
6 I'm not talking about a ton of money, a 50 thousand
7 dollar appropriation to cover the costs of those
8 meetings and time for the participants and this sort of
9 thing.
10 MS. DEVIN: You're thinking that money would
11 primarily go to citizen involvement.
12 MS. HILL: That is correct.
13 MR. SCOTT: I have some reservation about
14 that process for the state board. I wonder if rewards
15 and sanctions isn't serious enough that the legislature
16 ought to hold that as something that we ought to be
17 responsible for and not try to delegate it to the state
18 board.
19 MS. SESSIONS: I agree with Senator Scott. I
20 think that we could give that -- we need the citizen
21 input and the citizen groups and the recommendations.
22 But I think that ultimately it's our responsibility and
23 every person in the legislature to look at that before
24 it's the specific things we're going to do. And I
25 don't think we -- I think that's our responsibility.
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1 It's not a state agency, nor the state board's
2 responsibility. And so however we pursue that I would
3 like it to be along those lines. But I don't think
4 it's just up to us to design it on our own either. I
5 think that we need the citizen groups to come forward
6 from the communities, and then we need to take
7 responsibility for it.
8 MR. MCOMIE: I agree with Senator Sessions
9 that we need to take that to get the input, and I don't
10 think the legislature is the place to get the input. I
11 think the State Board of Education, the Education
12 Department are the people to do this and make their
13 recommendations to the legislation. But I do agree
14 with Senator Scott, I think probably this needs to be a
15 statute rather than regulations. However, we fall back
16 on my concern then about the federal, put some of these
17 things in regulation and you've overlooked something,
18 then we have to wait for another whole session to try
19 to get an amendment, so you have to wrestle with that
20 part of it too.
21 MS. DEVIN: What we're really asking for here
22 today the statutory authorization to begin the design
23 process. It would not be a decision what we place in
24 the statute at this session probably, but to begin that
25 process. The piece seems to be here where do we place
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1 that responsibility with initiating that process.
2 MR. MARION: On the slide on the bottom of
3 page 11 I agree with Senator Scott that to have
4 something of this nature not at all in statute weakens
5 it and it doesn't have the sort of larger community
6 support. But what Representative McOmie said is
7 important, if we make some mistakes. And this is new
8 to Wyoming. This is new to a lot of states,
9 appropriate rewards and sanctions. I do think if we
10 direct the process, direct the state board just as you
11 did with the accreditation standards and things like
12 that, to have the state board hold those hearings where
13 the meetings are more regular, they can based on
14 certain -- maybe specify the process that the state
15 board will like they did with original WyCAS, or do the
16 facilitated data meetings. Or you have certain
17 constraints on them. You get regular reports from the
18 state board. There are some interesting things we
19 could do with this.
20 One of the states I was just visiting
21 actually had a great idea, they had a set of rewards
22 and sanctions approved by the state, a list, but the
23 local district was the one responsible for picking the
24 appropriate reward or sanction for their particular
25 school. They know the local context better than we
181
1 do. If there was some -- and it couldn't be just
2 anything. We have to say we need to approve these
3 because that's the oversight we have to exercise with
4 the federal law. But that kind of list and things like
5 that could be developed easier through the state board
6 process than through legislative process.
7 MS. DEVIN: One advantage of involving the
8 state board might be that it provides a closer working
9 relationship between the state board and the committee,
10 which is something I think we probably needed to move
11 towards. But there are certainly several options. And
12 in the process of the draft from the first to the
13 second to the third it doesn't have to remain the same.
14 MR. MCOMIE: Taking a page from what the
15 federal thing has done I wondered if we couldn't draft
16 legislation that would allow the state board and the
17 Department of Education to come up with these rules and
18 regulations to be used during the testing period, or
19 whatever they call it, before they really kicked in and
20 see where the problems might be, where they need to be
21 massaged before. Then go to statute with some
22 experience with what's been proposed. And is that
23 possible?
24 MS. DEVIN: I think what we need at this
25 point is a statutory authorization to begin the process
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1 and to have the findings to bring to get the public
2 involved.
3 MR. SCOTT: Part of my reservation about
4 using the state board is I've not been very satisfied
5 with the accreditation process. I'm afraid that's been
6 used as a mechanism to enforce a lot more central
7 control than is appropriate, and I have some
8 reservations about using the state board on these other
9 processes for that reason.
10 MS. ROBINSON: I have some concerns too in
11 regard to the rewards and sanctions that are required
12 by the federal government for the for the Title 1
13 schools. If some of those same things aren't offered
14 to the non-Title 1 schools I could see possibly there
15 would be an opening for litigation. Parents would say
16 the Title 1 kids, the kids going to Title 1 schools
17 have the option of school of choice, which all of
18 Natrona County has and in the other counties they
19 don't, where the non-Title 1 children wouldn't have
20 that same choice offered unless we -- to me it looks
21 like we need to at least try to bring some of the, some
22 of those things into alignment for non-Title 1 schools
23 where Title 1 just to avoid possibilities of litigation
24 because the kids aren't going to be treated equally.
25 Another concern I have about school choice is
183
1 the members of, some of the members at least of the
2 appropriations committee used that against Natrona
3 County is this last session in regards to capital
4 construction because they were looking at school choice
5 as an option for not doing the capital construction
6 that was needed to be done. They said you have not
7 enough students in this school, and you can just start
8 moving students around on that basis. And that
9 concerns me because it's changing school of choice to
10 forced bussing. And I think we need to be very careful
11 that we don't go down a road where that's going to be
12 what the legislature chooses to do because we opened
13 that door for them statewide.
14 MS. DEVIN: We'll have the debate repeatedly
15 on the sanctions and what they are, but right now we
16 have to look at how to get this off the ground. And
17 options I see would be the state board, the state
18 department, it would be this committee, it would be a
19 separately designated design team, it would be a
20 conjunction of any one of those three, the department
21 and the board, the design team as a subcommittee of
22 this, this committee. I don't know if you want to
23 leave that blank at this point and just ask for the
24 drafting of the authorization of a design process and
25 an amount, give it some thought. But what is your
184
1 feeling?
2 MR. MCOMIE: I so move what she just said. I
3 think we need to get started and authorize an amount of
4 money that's necessary to get public involved
5 regardless where it goes after that.
6 MR. SCOTT: I'll say I don't understand
7 Representative McOmie's motion. But the question I had
8 was at what point do we need to put the sanctions into
9 the state law? What point are we likely to have to
10 start assessing?
11 MS. HILL: We were just talking about that.
12 There will be some schools that will be in their second
13 year of --
14 MR. MARION: As of 2003, the spring of the
15 school year. The system started with this last school
16 year. So we will have schools next year by virtue of
17 knowing how the numbers look already, there are schools
18 that will not meet AYP. So I believe that we need to
19 move on it relatively quickly. And I understand when
20 you meet 40 days or 20 days a year it's hard to move on
21 it quickly, but that's --
22 MS. DEVIN: Today will be the end of two
23 consecutive years of not meeting --
24 MR. MARION: If they're Title 1 we know what
25 to do. The federal law certainly tells us what to do.
185
1 MS. DEVIN: You must proceed on that
2 regardless?
3 MR. MARION: Yes.
4 MS. SESSIONS: We have many, many schools in
5 the state that school of choice is not available. What
6 are you going to do then?
7 MR. MARION: This law was not written for
8 rural states to put it bluntly. We had a discussion, a
9 public meeting here last night. That issue came up
10 here, Star Valley High School, not that it anywhere in
11 the near future be a failing school. The next option
12 is to go to Jackson or to Cokeville. It's a long
13 drive. Especially Jackson these days. And brought the
14 superintendent of schools down to one of these public
15 meetings with the feds in Denver, and I don't remember
16 which school it was, but there is a school in Teton
17 County that certain times of the year you have to go
18 through Idaho to get to the central office. People
19 from the U.S. Department of Education, their jaws
20 dropped, they couldn't believe it. So school choice is
21 not -- actually it's not even being taken advantage of
22 in urban sites right now in this first year of the
23 law. But people will starting taking advantage of
24 choice where it's available. In a place like Natrona,
25 Cheyenne, Rock Springs, I think people will, actually
186
1 there was a study, people do take advantage of choice
2 if it's offered and it's tied to some accountability
3 matter. So people will take advantage in certain
4 locales in Wyoming.
5 MS. DEVIN: I think one area it may be
6 practical to expand in the area of, in the subsequent
7 areas, but the supplemental services because there are
8 groups willing to probably develop or come forward to
9 provide special help with some of these areas. That is
10 probably a more feasible practical thing to contract
11 with.
12 MS. SESSIONS: My question with supplemental
13 services do we need in the law, do we need to specify
14 you will if you are failing as an individual within a
15 school will you be required by law, do we have to put
16 it in Wyoming law that you will remediate, you will use
17 supplemental services or are we going to allow -- as an
18 example, we offer summer school with no additional
19 funding in essence and at my school two of the 8th
20 graders signed up, two of them, because the atmosphere,
21 the feeling is I don't have to, I don't have to pass
22 anyway on all of this kind of stuff. So are they going
23 to be required to so we can say to parents you're in
24 violation of a law, you're kid will show up?
25 MS. DEVIN: I think that's something that the
187
1 design team or the designers need to get into that
2 discussion and bring the recommendations to us. We
3 probably need to have it. It needs to be on the list.
4 But we're not asking for those kind of specifics right
5 now, I think. We're just asking for the authorization
6 to move forward and get the public and the interest of
7 parties involved.
8 MR. LOCKHART: On the unseconded motion I
9 think this committee doesn't need any more work. We'll
10 be overwhelmed between now and the legislature. I
11 think we need to move quickly, but I think the
12 Department of Education should be in the responsible
13 organization for the drafting, even without the state
14 board being in there, because again you have volunteers
15 you have to coordinate. I think to have something
16 useful for us to look at we ought to centralize. So if
17 I may on your motion suggest that the Department of
18 Education be the host organization for the drafting
19 responsibility. And then we can change that if we get
20 wiser later.
21 MR. SCOTT: It almost is a -- you can almost
22 split the task, one law that covers the things we may
23 have to do in this coming spring of 2003, this coming
24 school year before the budget session meets and a
25 second effort looking at the more serious sanctions in
188
1 coming later years we don't have to legislate on at
2 this time.
3 MS. DEVIN: It could actually be a two-stage
4 process, those things that would come in first in this.
5 Is that acceptable?
6 MR. MCOMIE: Yes. Maybe I misunderstood. I
7 thought we had to get all this information or as much
8 as we would before draft legislation. And I guess the
9 bill will be a payback to you from your slush fund.
10 You will have to be sponsoring this stuff before -- I'm
11 getting confused.
12 MS. DEVIN: I think what we can do is that we
13 -- what the legislature would do is give the statutory
14 authorization. It may now as we're discussing split
15 what has to be addressed in the upcoming year with
16 those facing two, which if you look on the pages is
17 less consequential than out-years, and then more to the
18 public process in the more serious out-years after the
19 session when that would be covered. So it may be kind
20 of a twofold piece here in this bill, at least on the
21 first blush.
22 MR. MCOMIE: I think your original
23 explanation with Representative Lockhart's addition to
24 my motion, that would be the motion I would make if he
25 would second.
189
1 MR. LOCKHART: I have a second.
2 MS. SESSIONS: Do we in the motion we're
3 directing the state board?
4 MS. DEVIN: The state department.
5 MS. SESSIONS: Do we want to spell out that
6 we want citizen groups to include various and assorted
7 types of people like we do sometimes, maybe state board
8 members? If you include legislators in it? You want
9 to specify that or do you want to leave that up to
10 them?
11 MS. DEVIN: I might ask Mary Kay what would
12 you prefer?
13 MS. HILL: Just at first blush if we were to
14 do this because we have done this sort of involvement
15 before. You would look at school district
16 representation. You would look at school board, local
17 school board administration, probably a member of the
18 state board. Find a couple of members of the business
19 community, parents. That kind of flushes out kind of
20 how we would do it automatically. If you would feel
21 more comfortable specifying the membership that
22 wouldn't be a problem for us. But that is probably
23 given what I know about the current administration we
24 will have a new leadership team by the time you
25 actually pass this next year. So it would be to your
190
1 pleasure.
2 MS. DEVIN: I guess my preference rather than
3 hashing that out now, and I'm looking at the clock,
4 would be that we ask that the draft be put together and
5 somehow can imply with input an appropriate interested
6 parties and citizens. And then when it comes to you in
7 draft form if you wish to amend and add and specify.
8 If you feel that's necessary we can, but I would like
9 to take a break and move on to voc-ed, so we can move
10 to some draft instructions before losing the quorum, if
11 that would be okay.
12 All those in favor of moving to a draft on
13 this piece that we could look at at our upcoming
14 meetings, please say aye. (Voice response) Those
15 opposed? (Voice response) Okay, that does pass.
16 MR. SCOTT: Would this be an appropriate time
17 to deal with this school finance facilitation that the
18 instructions we developed in response to the last
19 meeting?
20 MS. DEVIN: I would like to take our break
21 and do voc-ed and take this up later.
22
23 Short break.
24
25 MS. DEVIN: We had some changes. Let me tell
191
1 you what will happen. The group that will be speaking
2 to us it was our impression that this would be your
3 last opportunity to ask questions in detail other than
4 the written report that is due November 1st. We have
5 found that they will be available holding meetings with
6 their working group October 23rd, which will work in
7 conjunction with our meeting in Laramie. However, I
8 will tell you that our meeting in Laramie is very, that
9 agenda is getting very packed at this point in time.
10 And so this really is the bulk of time that will be
11 dedicated. And it is important I think also because
12 you will have an opportunity to give direction at point
13 before the written report comes forward. You're going
14 to see some choices that are going to require some
15 costing out, and you need to perhaps express some
16 pieces, but we will not need to make final decisions
17 today as anticipated because of that additional
18 opportunity. But please don't not absorb this or ask
19 questions today because I can't assure you we'll have
20 that same amount of time in Laramie.
21 For that same reason Senator Scott has got a
22 piece that he would like to get some drafting on or ask
23 about that the committee input on. For that reason I
24 would like to break somewhere around 20 to or quarter
25 to 12 to take up his piece which was handed out to you
192
1 earlier this morning and discuss what you would like to
2 do with it before we lose a quorum.
3 We will then come back to the work of the
4 vocational education group, and it would appear that we
5 could then finish that before we take a lunch break.
6 And that is our last item of major business for today.
7 So we could actually I think wrap that piece up and
8 then people would be free to leave for home and get
9 lunch on their own. So that's our plan. If you will
10 move forward and get introduced. I'm not sure
11 everybody has met them. And we'll get to work.
12 MS. WIGERT: Thank you, Madam Chair, I'm
13 Terry Wigert, the State Director for Career Technical
14 Education at the Wyoming Department of Education. I'm
15 very pleased to be here today to report out on the
16 Wyoming vocational education legislation that was
17 enacted earlier in the year. You may be relieved to
18 know we will not be talking about standard error
19 deviations and you will not need your calculators to
20 perform any square root functions, so this may be
21 somewhat of a reprieve.
22 We're going to begin this morning and talk
23 about section five, which was relative to the urgency
24 grant. I would like to introduce Clayton Illian, who
25 is with the Wyoming Department of Education has
193
1 contracted to do the urgency grant as outlined in
2 section five. So I'm going to turn this over to him to
3 talk about how those were awarded and he's provided you
4 with materials that Mary has just distributed to you.
5 MR. ILLIAN: This morning I would like to
6 just cover briefly the outline of what we did and then
7 any questions or concerns you may have. Starting May
8 1st of 2002 when Number 27 Section 5 was sent to the
9 district it was first presented to them by Terry Wigert
10 in a memo outlining the vocational urgency grant, the
11 due dates. The awards would be made by August 15th and
12 of course the website for the legislature. In May we
13 started the process of the competitive grant
14 application. The process and the fiscal procedures
15 need to be put into place to be able to do this. On
16 May 30th we were able to have all of the vocational
17 urgency grant applications submitted to all the
18 districts within the State of Wyoming. The application
19 requirements, the cover pages, of course the budget
20 accounting accompanied that and the enrolled act also
21 accompanied with that. The refusal of application
22 option was also given to the districts, and I'll talk
23 more about that later. But the contract person,
24 myself, was designated in case there was any type of
25 concerns or discussions people would like to have. Of
194
1 course the due date June 30th.
2 During that time period we also, I
3 collaborated with the Wyoming Department of Education
4 members and the member, the reader we need, and
5 provided them with a list, which we begin June 14th,
6 went through the list of readers and decided we would
7 have at least two readers within the State of Wyoming
8 and one from outside the State of Wyoming. During that
9 time a training packet was developed and which the
10 readers would receive when they received the copies of
11 the grant applications.
12 Scoring rubrics was also developed which
13 included the actual components of the legislation, and
14 we made sure we followed that exactly as it was
15 written. Calls were received and returned in June on
16 regards to the refusal applications because we did have
17 all of the materials out. There were also calls
18 received in regards to the grant process itself. We
19 then received 20 refusals of application option, in
20 other words, districts have the option if they wish not
21 to apply for these funds, to go ahead and do so, but we
22 felt it was important to have them to put that in
23 writing. They did. We received 20. We also received
24 28 competitive grant applications by the due date of
25 June 30th. Out of that, 23 of them were for equipment
195
1 only. We have four which were equipment and tuition.
2 And one for tuition only. What you have before you
3 today is the applicants and awards in which on that
4 you'll see that there was 750 thousand dollars
5 allocated for this particular grant. We had a request
6 though of $1,937,065 out of the 28 school districts.
7 The readers were sent the applications. They then had
8 within two weeks' time to do the scoring rubrics and to
9 go through all the applications. And then we met on
10 August 2nd to actually go through and do the scoring
11 and look at recommendations for the 750 thousand
12 dollars that we did have and could allocate. Out of
13 that 18 districts were awarded either partial or full
14 amounts.
15 On Monday August 12th we were able to send
16 the letters, whether they be full approval or
17 conditional approval or denial, to all of the districts
18 that did apply for those funds. On August 15th we met
19 with the advisory council and also met with the NPR
20 staff Terry will introduce later to be able to
21 coordinate with them. The letters that were sent out
22 to the ones for conditional approval we give them until
23 September 30th to give back to us. And I'm proud to
24 say all districts as of the l6th have received final
25 approval letters and all money has been awarded in the
196
1 750 thousand that was available.
2 The conditional approval letters, during that
3 we asked them to make any adjustments or corrections
4 that they may have, and there were 12 districts that
5 had to do that for us. We again just came from the
6 advisory meeting. We met with the advisory council,
7 NPR staff to review some of the areas especially that I
8 was working on which was of course equipment and
9 supplies. We are in the process already of
10 establishing the mid year, end of the year reporting
11 formats that these districts will have to do for us.
12 And we will begin to do on-site monitoring as of
13 December of this year. And I will end at that and
14 answer any questions you may have.
15 MS. DEVIN: Any questions of this report?
16 Thank you very much for your hard work on this area and
17 getting it underway.
18 MS. WIGGERT: Members of the joint education
19 committee, I would like to now introduce to you Dr.
20 Gary Hoachlander who is the president of NPR Associates
21 from Berkeley, California. He is the person and the
22 organization that the Wyoming Department of Education
23 contracted with for the costs study. So, Dr.
24 Hoachlander, please come forward. He will introduce
25 his staff and two of the people who served on the
197
1 advisory panel and been discussion on Section 4
2 enrollbacks.
3 MS. DEVIN: I know you had a major working
4 group here in the state working with a lot of citizens.
5 MR. HOACHLANDER: Members of the committee,
6 thank you very much for inviting us to come and giving
7 us the opportunity to assist you in what I know is a
8 very, very important endeavor for the State of
9 Wyoming. I should tell you, and I'll be brief because
10 I know we are pressed for time this morning, I
11 personally have worked in vocational technical
12 education for I'm afraid more than 20 years. It says
13 how old I have become. It's an area that has been
14 enormously important to me. I believe in the value of
15 vocational education. I believe in the potential of
16 vocational education in combination with academic
17 education in our high schools to raise the achievement
18 of all students and to maximize their opportunity for
19 future education, post-secondary education and success
20 in the world. And I know that that's an objective and
21 a mission that you in the legislature share and that
22 the people of Wyoming also share. And we're very
23 honored to have been given the opportunity by you to
24 assist you in insuring that the students of Wyoming
25 have access to high quality vocational education.
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1 And that's in the most general sense the
2 charge that you gave us. More specifically you asked
3 us to assist you in identifying what is vocational
4 education in Wyoming, what are the criteria that define
5 the kinds of courses and programs that constitute the
6 vocational education curriculum. You asked us to help
7 you identify what does it cost to provide vocational
8 education and more specifically to help understand
9 whether, and if so, vocational education costs more to
10 deliver than other types of curriculum in high schools
11 throughout Wyoming.
12 And we concentrated specifically on three
13 aspects of cost differences. Class size, that is our
14 vocational education classes on the average smaller
15 than non-vocational vocational classes, and if so, that
16 would contribute to higher costs. We looked at the
17 cost of supplies and equipment. Does it cost more for
18 the kinds of supplies and equipment that are used in
19 vocational programs than it does in other types of
20 offerings. And thirdly we paid special attention to
21 the kinds of challenges that are presented in offering
22 vocational education in very small schools. Those are
23 the three major variables that were the basis of the
24 analysis that we did with respect to cost.
25 You asked us to collect data on who
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1 participates in vocational education in Wyoming, how
2 many students and to what degree how many courses do
3 they take. What percentage of total average daily
4 membership or full-time equivalent students in Wyoming
5 are represented by participation in vocational
6 education.
7 Fourthly, you asked that we take the
8 information that we collected with respect to cost and
9 with respect to participation and examine how that data
10 could be used in the system of funding education in
11 high schools, middle schools, if appropriate,
12 throughout the State of Wyoming, and to develop a
13 funding model that would recognize differences in the
14 cost of providing vocational education produced by the
15 different variables that I discussed.
16 And then finally to report to you the
17 findings of our study, our recommendations. That
18 report is due to you on November 1st, and you will
19 definitely have it by then. And we're here today to
20 brief you on some of our preliminary findings, to hear
21 from you your concerns, your advice to us as we wrap up
22 our final report.
23 The study has been directed by Dr. Steve
24 Kline to my left. Steve is a senior research associate
25 with NPR Associates. He has been assisted by Dr.
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1 Elliott Medrich also from NPR and Lucille Rosio-Bugarin
2 also with the staff of NPR Associates. Steve in a
3 moment will brief you on the basic findings of our work
4 to date.
5 I would like to say that the study had four
6 basic components. The first was that we collected data
7 on the cost and expenditures associated with providing
8 vocational education from all of the school districts
9 in Wyoming. We received responses from 98 percent of
10 the districts. I can't underscore too strongly the
11 wonderfully degree of collaboration, cooperation we had
12 from all of the school districts throughout the state.
13 They produced data for us under a very short timeline
14 and did it very thoroughly and very competently. In
15 addition we visited l6, a sample of l6 school districts
16 throughout the State of Wyoming to look more closely at
17 the kind of vocational education offerings that were
18 provided throughout the state, to understand from
19 superintendents, principals, teachers, some of the
20 issues that they were facing in providing high quality
21 vocational education in Wyoming, and to help us better
22 understand the data on expenditures and enrollments
23 that we were collecting.
24 Thirdly, the third component of the study was
25 to design a funding model, to take the data on cost, on
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1 participation and to design a model that you could use
2 to understand the consequences of changes in the
3 funding of vocational education, but education in
4 general resulting from these issues concerning
5 different costs, different levels of student
6 participation.
7 And then finally and very importantly we had
8 help from an advisory panel that was composed of 11
9 individuals from throughout the State of Wyoming;
10 superintendents, program administrators, teachers, and
11 we have two of those members of the panel with us
12 today. Tom Martin who is superintendent of schools in
13 Fremont 34 in Arapaho. And also Craig Maris who is a
14 vocational teacher in construction technology and power
15 mechanics, I believe. Craig is from Sheridan.
16 Before I turn this over to Steve to brief you
17 on the work that he and his colleagues have done I
18 would like to ask Tom and Craig to say a few things
19 from their perspective because they do represent
20 vocational education. They represent education
21 throughout the state and have been a very, very
22 important source of advice and counsel to us as we went
23 forward with the study. Tom, would you like to say
24 something?
25 MR. MARTIN: Members of the joint education
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1 committee, first off I would like to assure the
2 committee that a very thorough process was utilized by
3 NPR and the Wyoming Department of Education to come up
4 with our conclusions, which we have yet to arrive on.
5 We have some work left, but by the time your report is
6 due I assure you will have a very thorough report and
7 it will respond very specifically to your directive
8 through the statute. I would like to commend NPR. I
9 know they're from out of state. But these folks did an
10 awesome job of leading the process along with the
11 Wyoming Department of Education, who provided
12 outstanding leadership in the process. As panelists
13 who went through the process felt very comfortable
14 knowing that the Wyoming way things are done we're
15 represented well. We had the processes, hey, these are
16 issues we're dealing with in the State of Wyoming and
17 need to be considered. And Steve and Gary and others
18 from NPR listened. So I can assure you that that
19 occurred.
20 Vocational education program in any state is
21 a very complex issue. And while we got hung up
22 occasionally on the philosophical views and NPR was
23 very gracious in allowing us to represent the
24 philosophical views, we were brought back to task quite
25 often to work on the financial aspect as you directed.
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1 So we had to come back to the ground zero and get real
2 quite often. So just understand this is a very complex
3 process. Diverse views were represented from all
4 panelists to include NPR consultants and the Wyoming
5 Department of Education representatives. It's that
6 diversity that will give the report strength and you'll
7 see that diversity when you receive it.
8 We also felt that, well, obligated by statute
9 to address the court issue of constitutionality. I
10 want to assure the committee at least it's my feeling
11 and I'm sure other members of the panel that we did
12 meet that test at least to this point, and I think
13 you'll be very pleased with that aspect.
14 The other thing we felt compelled to do is
15 build a common sense approach to the funding. And this
16 really worried me as we started the process because I
17 know the relationships between members of the panel can
18 become strained because we let it all out. And as we
19 started to wrestle with the very issues we had to deal
20 with we did through NPR's leadership and the Department
21 of Education's leadership I think have come to a common
22 sense approach to funding. It's not complex. It can be
23 complex because you ask a lot of questions about it.
24 But I mean we all understood it. And we understand
25 it. And I think the public will understand it, and I
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1 think the legislature will understand it. And it will
2 fit into the MAP funding model that we have to deal
3 with for educational finance in the State of Wyoming.
4 We did receive comprehensive input. You had
5 11 panelists, experts from the national level here with
6 NPR, our Department of Education experts, and Terry and
7 Clayton seated behind us here. All went out into the
8 field, we discussed basic issues regarding concepts
9 we've come up with, and we received input. We're at a
10 point in the process where it couldn't become too
11 detailed in our presentation to our colleagues in the
12 field because we haven't arrived at conclusions
13 specifically yet. The general concepts we have
14 discussed with others. And with that I think I'll pass
15 to Craig Maris.
16 MR. MARIS: First of all I wanted to concur
17 with some of the things Tom has shared in terms of the
18 completeness, the detail and the overall major
19 contribution made on this panel and to this study by
20 such a diversified group of folks, including folks from
21 many aspects of education in Wyoming, many geographical
22 areas. As we struggle to try to help folks understand
23 what this meant to try to maybe travel from one school
24 district to another for a specific kind of vocational
25 experience and how that Wyoming is not really very
205
1 conducive to that. As an example many kinds of unique
2 problems we have here in Wyoming that need to be
3 considered.
4 NPR was just fantastic in terms of soliciting
5 and listening to our input on those specific kinds of
6 Wyoming issues. And it's been my experience in the
7 past that it's difficult sometimes to get folks from
8 out of state to really understand or take the time to
9 understand where we're coming from. NPR has been
10 wonderful in that way. I feel like this product we're
11 working towards will have a very unique Wyoming stamp
12 on it with a lot of Wyoming input. Again I concur that
13 the leadership from Terry and the state department has
14 been fantastic also.
15 The one thing that I wanted to share is I was
16 involved with site visits. Site visits out gathering
17 information, talked about the items at schools, looked
18 at facilities and equipment. And it was particularly
19 interesting for me to be out and see equipment after
20 being in vocational education as an instructor for 24
21 years it was wonderful to see what's going on, talk to
22 the folks in the field and then bring that along with
23 my own experience in this process. The site visits
24 were very thorough. Visiting the administrators, what
25 I call bean counters, the business managers,
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1 administrators and instructors and folks in getting a
2 complete view. I feel like it's a very complete study.
3 There was a lot of time spent on-site.
4 I want to share some other things in
5 addition. Being a vocational education instructor in
6 the field the rubber meets the road in delivering
7 services to our students. For 24 years in vocational
8 education I know what is, I know what was, and I think
9 I have my own personal concept of what it should be in
10 vocational education in the State of Wyoming. Working
11 with Wyoming Contractor Association as a very direct
12 supporter of my program, Big Horn Home Builders
13 Association and other contractors and employers, those
14 folks began to come to us several years ago in I won't
15 say a panic but very, very real concern about the
16 economy of our state and the development of our state
17 in terms of a work force to be able to accomplish the
18 things we need to do in the State of Wyoming. Their
19 concern in vocational training recruitment of our young
20 folks to get involved in those industries. Wyoming
21 Contractors folks, are you sure we're not educating our
22 students to leave the state, are you sure that's not
23 what we're doing. It's I think a very serious
24 concern. Those folks have real concerns over the
25 years, and my experience and my tenure as a vocational
207
1 educator I've experienced the previous mechanism of
2 funding vocational education that we lost several years
3 ago. I think that of course is what the court is
4 saying at that point, we suddenly had a problem in the
5 State of Wyoming.
6 These folks will tell you, they talk about
7 we've been funding education, vocational education this
8 way. I keep correcting them, we've been under-funding.
9 We need to do some things in my opinion to make that
10 happen.
11 The one thing I want to point out that the
12 data you've received, the information you are going to
13 look at in this report, although very accurate and I
14 think on target, is not what it should be. The funding
15 mechanism is based on not what should be or even what
16 was at one time in the state before we watched
17 vocational programs suffer in the last 12 years or so.
18 This study is based on what is right now what we're
19 spending on vocational education.
20 Now, the analogy that has been shared with
21 the panel is if you've been starving your cows for the
22 last 15 years perhaps your annual feed cost at this
23 time is maybe not exactly what it should be. So I'll
24 leave you with that.
25 MR. KLINE: I'm Steve Kline with NPR
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1 Associates, and what I would like to do is take a few
2 moments to share information NPR used in developing a
3 process for creating this funding mechanism, walk you
4 through some of the assumptions underlying the
5 governing of the operation of this proposed model and
6 of course answer any questions. Before doing that I
7 also want to publicly recognize the wonderful
8 contributions of our advisory panel, Tom and Craig, and
9 all the other members in keeping us, the outsiders,
10 focused on the Wyoming way. It's been a very, very
11 powerful and collaborative working experience. I also
12 want to recognize the Department of Education. Terry
13 and her staff have been tremendous in supporting us in
14 this work.
15 I'll be referring to materials we handed out
16 prior to the beginning of the session. One I'll refer
17 to as a five-step process model. There is also some
18 handouts of power point slides that rather than dim the
19 lights we though you would prefer to look at us.
20 Behind that in the power point is supporting data and
21 tables that we can refer to if the need arises.
22 As Gary mentioned the funding mechanism is
23 designed to compensate schools and districts the higher
24 costs of providing vocational education. Last year NPR
25 working with the Department of Education did a study to
209
1 look at the costs of providing vocational education.
2 And what we found was that while vocational educators
3 are no more expensive to employ than other type
4 instructors the smaller class sizes that characterize
5 vocational education can drive up the costs. And
6 that's because the students were sitting in class
7 because there are less of them than on average one
8 would expect, they don't generate enough funding to
9 offset the cost of providing the instructor for that
10 class.
11 The second is the higher costs of providing
12 equipment and supplies. And so to begin to aggregate
13 these costs and try to understand how the model needs
14 to compensate we came up with a five-step model. And
15 the first step, the intent of the legislation was to
16 address situations where districts, schools were
17 offering more expensive programs, but because of the
18 average cost of approach were not being compensated for
19 their services. And so we needed to come up with a way
20 of compensating, finding a way of making sure people
21 were compensated for the extent of participation. To
22 do that the recommendation was to look at student
23 participation in vocational education. Before you can
24 do that, you need to put on the table what is
25 vocational education. What is the course, what is the
210
1 program. Having done that, once you have identified
2 the group of courses, programs that you're going to
3 look at, you need to go into that and look at the
4 number of students participating. Based on that
5 information you need to find out in step two the
6 mechanism you'll use to equate, and that involves
7 looking at the average class size. We said the average
8 size of vocational education on average is smaller than
9 non-vocational, so we wanted to quantify that.
10 We also needed to look at equipment and
11 supplies, and in step three we have data that we
12 collected from districts on program expenditures for
13 equipment and supplies. We need to take all that then,
14 we have the information on equipment and supplies, we
15 have the information on students participating, and we
16 needed to address the cost efficiency concerns in terms
17 of how the money would be allocated out as well as some
18 expectations about whether equity and quality of
19 programs should be addressed. Then we take all that,
20 and this is the process beginning step five here, and
21 that would be apply the model and look at the data and
22 come up with scenarios. And I'll share with you at the
23 end of the presentation three scenarios that we are
24 looking at costing out.
25 I'll turn your attention to the first slide
211
1 entitled Vocational Courses and Programs. These slides
2 parallel the five-step process. I started off saying
3 if we talk about vocational education we need to
4 clarify what it is we're talking about. And in
5 particular we wanted to make sure we were focusing on
6 course work that was more expensive to provide. We
7 collected data on average class sizes for vocational
8 education offered in the high school and middle school
9 and junior high school levels and as well we collected
10 information for a subset of districts, we actually took
11 the master schedules and looked at student
12 participation in academic course work. We also using
13 data that is the model approach used in the MAP model
14 looking at teacher/student instructor ratios that the
15 state doesn't actually calculate average class sizes on
16 vocational, so we have to estimate that.
17 What we found looking at the data was that
18 secondary, course work in 9 to 12 does appear on
19 average about 25 percent smaller in vocational
20 education. We didn't see a significant average class
21 size difference at the middle school and particularly
22 junior high school level. We had a little trouble with
23 collecting some of the data at the middle school level
24 because of the way teachers are endorsed. And I'll
25 explain that in a moment. But for that purpose we
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1 focused the model, we're attempting to focus the model
2 on the high cost programs, which those are typically
3 offered in grades 9 to 12. We have to identify what is
4 vocational education within that grade 9 to 12.
5 The Supreme Court stipulated in their ruling
6 that they wanted the state, they directed the state to
7 quantify expenditures for vocational teachers and
8 equipment and supplies. Logically it makes sense if
9 you're going to put money into vocational education it
10 should be course work that's taught by an instructor
11 who holds a vocational endorsement. So what NPR did
12 was we sent out to every district in the state a
13 listing of the instructors that were endorsed with the
14 vocational endorsement, and we collected information on
15 their student participation in their classes. We
16 wanted to be sure that we were targeting funding on
17 vocational education, which is on average higher
18 costs. And for that reason we have identified
19 vocational course work not only as taught by an
20 instructor with a vocational endorsement but course
21 work that's in a sequence, and a sequence of at least
22 three courses in a program area or career cluster
23 area. And that would include course work that's
24 introductory as well as more advanced. Typically as
25 you get more advanced course work it's more capital
213
1 intensive. And it's intended to, and this comes from
2 the state definition to prepare a secondary student for
3 entering into employment or post-secondary school.
4 We recognize that not all, and the slide two
5 you can see we provided for a waiver process. And we
6 recognized that some districts, some schools may
7 provide course work that they feel is vocational in
8 content, but it may not be taught by a vocational
9 endorsed instructor or the course work which may be
10 less than a sequence of three courses, but again
11 fulfills the higher cost provisions, the preparing
12 students for employment and training, so we designed a
13 waiver process that people who felt they,
14 administrators who felt that the existing definition
15 would have an option.
16 We also found that incidentally very few
17 courses we found, five courses of the roughly 600
18 instructors only five courses that were taught
19 vocationally, classified as vocational but taught by
20 non-endorced academic instructors and approximately 24
21 holding other certification areas. So it's a very
22 small process, and to the extent that the waiver
23 process will apply it's fairly minimal.
24 Page two is we needed to, we now had the
25 information on the table. We focused in on courses.
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1 We needed to quantify student participation in there.
2 What we did we had for every vocational course
3 identified participation data. Using that information
4 we were able to quantify a full-time equivalent
5 student. We have based funding in the model on the
6 number of full-time equivalent students participating
7 in vocational education. Those students will receive a
8 higher weight sufficient to offset the higher cost of
9 educating them for smaller class sizes. We're not
10 talking about equipment and supplies. We also
11 structured the model so that when we're calculating
12 this weight we are focusing on a minimum of two
13 vocational programs. The assumption is that districts
14 with or schools will offer two vocational programs or
15 more. That means that the size of the weight may vary
16 from school to school.
17 When we say a vocational program what we mean
18 is it's the equivalent of a vocational instructor 1.0
19 vocational instructor FTE. It is possible to offer a
20 sequence of three courses with less than an 1.0, but to
21 build into the model a cost efficiency that forces
22 people to find part-time instructors is given the
23 difficulty of hiring instructors within the state is
24 somewhat unfair, so we structured it to provide a 1.0
25 weight.
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1 Why do that? First of all, what the model is
2 designed to do is to compensate schools for the higher
3 cost of providing vocational instruction. That's
4 because of the average smaller class sizes. There are
5 issues related to that though. If you just take a
6 single weight, the additional weight using an average
7 criteria, some districts, in particular smaller
8 districts in schools, will have trouble providing
9 services there. So what we have done to address the
10 quality issue is we have structured it so that
11 districts and schools that are smaller than a certain
12 threshold with two programs, a minimum of two programs,
13 it's about 133 students, and it's about five percent of
14 the schools, of the students enrolled in schools
15 statewide, they would be eligible for a higher weight,
16 higher than the, as we've roughly estimated about
17 1.25. Below that 133 ADM threshold students would be
18 weighted at a higher level.
19 We also were concerned about equity issues.
20 We didn't feel that it would be appropriate that simply
21 because a student lived in an area, perhaps in a small
22 community served by a small school, they should have
23 less opportunity than anyone else in the state because
24 their school will not generate sufficient FDE to offer
25 a whole host of programs. So we set the minimum of two
216
1 programs with the expectation that very small schools
2 will be able to generate extra weight to provide a
3 minimum of two programs. Larger schools over the
4 threshold will have sufficient funding to provide at
5 least two programs using just the weight of 1.25, which
6 is again the difference between average class sizes in
7 non-vocational and vocational courses.
8 I said that the equipment and supplies
9 component was not included in the funding model as a
10 first, on a first per student basis. And part of the
11 reason behind that is the economy of scale. Once you
12 have outfitted a classroom, and this is particularly
13 the case in larger schools, districts, you can run many
14 students through that classroom to use the equipment.
15 But a smaller school if you based it on student
16 participation may have a difficult time generating
17 sufficient resources. And so what we did was approach
18 it from the standpoint, and many states do this, is
19 allocate resources based on the number of vocational
20 instructors full-time equivalent units within the
21 qualifying sites. We based that on average statewide
22 expenditures. We have data from every single district
23 on how much they spend. We divided the total by the
24 number of vocational instructors and came up with an
25 average expenditure per FT instructor. We recognize
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1 that, as Craig said, we are dealing with what is. When
2 we went out on case study site visits we were told
3 quite emphatically by educators that I would call the
4 quality disconnect, the disconnect between what is and
5 what should be. And the feeling that in particular
6 with respect to equipment and supplies they did not
7 have the necessary resources to provide what they
8 consider the quality vocational program.
9 Accordingly, we believe there will a need to
10 consider some sort of adjustment to that equipment and
11 supplies provision. And right now what we have in
12 place is the urgency grant, which is the one time 750
13 thousand dollar allocation districts could apply for.
14 We are going to play with a number of different
15 options, one being trying to build into the model
16 itself some sort of adjustment. The difficulty is when
17 you don't have content and performance standards
18 stipulating what kind of equipment you really need to
19 provide a quality vocational education, it's difficult
20 to say how much more money you need. There is also we
21 don't have data on inventories on fixed assets in terms
22 of what currently is held by the districts. So one
23 possibility would be to recommend continuing some
24 fashion of the urgency grants until such time as we
25 have data that would allow us to quantify what is the
218
1 need out there for the augmentation above just what is
2 it to get to a reasonable what should be.
3 Whether that is 750 thousand dollars or some
4 smaller amount with the idea that people don't
5 necessarily have to get to a certain point in time
6 immediately, that they can scale in over time, ramp up
7 to that quality level as a possibility.
8 There is also the concern of start-up costs.
9 When you introduce a new program you have to, because
10 our formula is based on student participation for
11 staffing you have to have some offsets so you can hire
12 teachers to start generating student participation,
13 student full-time equivalent so you can get resources
14 to offset the instructor's salary and benefits. There
15 is also the need to purchase equipment and supplies.
16 So we believe there is a need to address the start-up
17 cost, but we don't believe it should be incorporated
18 within the model itself.
19 The challenge with that is it requires people
20 to be able to predict in the future when they want to
21 put in a program. It also assumes they can carry over
22 funding over time until such time as they have
23 sufficient money to purchase. So what we're
24 recommending is that these start-up costs be addressed
25 through a separate competitive grant formula that would
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1 operate outside the formula that districts seeking to
2 introduce a program there would be criteria and
3 guidelines and expectations of what would constitute a
4 start-up, a reasonable start-up program, they could
5 apply for that to offset the costs until such time as
6 they can begin generating student participation contact
7 hours.
8 And then the fourth step was consider cost
9 effectiveness approaches. And there is a slight typo,
10 and I credit our panel because they changed it
11 yesterday. What we did was took using the MAPing
12 function of Yahoo within districts charted high
13 schools, we found that in this cases there were high
14 schools within a very close proximity to one another.
15 In fact with the exception of one school most of them,
16 there were certain instances of outliers, but within
17 schools near one another most of them were within five
18 miles of one another. You when you have a situation
19 where you have a small school that is located very
20 close to a larger school there is some question whether
21 it makes a lot of sense to give them sufficient
22 resources to bring them up to two, minimum of two
23 programs with the expectation of staffing 1.0 for each
24 program giving all of them all the equipment and
25 supplies. What we thought would be more fair and
220
1 efficient would be to treat the two institutions that
2 were located near one another as a single unit within
3 the funding formula. That means you calculate their
4 eligibility of the size of their weight based on the
5 combined ADM. That will tend to drive down the weight
6 for the school, probably in most cases will put them
7 over the threshold and be at 1.25.
8 That imposes some reasonable amount of cost
9 efficiency. It promotes shares of resources. Students
10 can go from one institution or another to take
11 services, and you don't have to purchase similar
12 equipment and offer similar programs in both schools
13 when they're very close to one another.
14 The advisory panel was quite clear in feeling
15 that this should be based only on an intradistrict, not
16 interdistrict basis. And we're going to look at the
17 consequences of adopting interdistrict, but for now our
18 recommendation the assumption governing the model is
19 based on intradistrict.
20 And the last piece is somewhat polemic. I
21 should say it doesn't affect how the formula operates.
22 But there is some question about whether the funds that
23 are allocated should be categorical or not. And there
24 are trade-offs, and we were unable to secure even with
25 our own advisory panel any agreement on whether it
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1 should be -- there are trade-offs. But then again
2 there is some question about what you go through the
3 process of pulling out money, identifying that it's for
4 vocational ed purposes and then it gets shipped back
5 into the block grant and gets reallocated wherever.
6 If you make it non-categorical it does give
7 people a little flexibility. We felt if we were going
8 to proceed and the recommendation going into the
9 meeting yesterday was to at least consider this as
10 being non-categorical. But to put in place reporting
11 requirements so we have an opportunity to see how those
12 funds are actually being spent, so with the idea that
13 two or three years down the road you can look at the
14 expenditures, look at eligibility, look at where they
15 were spent. And if you see people are steering money
16 away from vocational education then take steps to
17 address that.
18 I should point out that if a district or
19 school begins to move resources away from vocational
20 education, the programs will suffer, the equipment and
21 supplies will become less, the equipment will become
22 obsolete, you perhaps won't have as many teachers.
23 That will drive down students participating, in turn
24 driving down their funding. So there are some internal
25 checks and balances to promote people to keep
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1 vocational education, either in the absence of the
2 categorical funding component.
3 And the last piece is to model the
4 allocations. And we feel probably the best way to do
5 this is take, there are three possible approaches
6 here. One is the legislature may not want to put any
7 more money into vocational education. It may simply
8 wish to recognize that the resources that are currently
9 put out there on average, included voc-ed, but they're
10 being distributed on an average basis, and so people
11 with more extensive programs are being penalized. In
12 that case what you would do is you re-allocate,
13 identify how much resources were for vocational
14 education, and re-allocate them based on student
15 participation, the intensity of the programs within
16 districts. What that will mean is that some districts,
17 those with less than average student participation will
18 lose resources. Those with greater amounts above
19 average would gain resources.
20 Second option might be to hold harmless those
21 districts that would lose. So you compensate districts
22 above the average for the extensive programs they're
23 offering. You hold harmless people below the average
24 so that they are not penalized or they don't lose
25 resources because of this new funding model. And that
223
1 will then generate some small, reasonably small amount
2 of additional state resources that would be put into
3 the system.
4 Third possibility is you may wish to look at
5 the increased funding that we need to provide, that
6 need to address this average class size issue, to
7 address the equipment and supplies and put additional
8 money in. What we'll do, we'll quantify how much more
9 money the state needs to invest in order to make this
10 model functional based on the assumptions that we
11 have. And our intent is to provide all of this, the
12 background of the model. We will be supporting the
13 information as of November 1st to the state. And that
14 concludes my remarks. If there are questions?
15 MS. ROBINSON: Dr. Kline, was the change you
16 mentioned a typo, was that from 20 to 5 miles?
17 MR. KLINE: Yes, it's from 20 to 5. That was
18 at the recommendation of our advisory panel.
19 MR. SCOTT: Question, and this my may go to
20 our legal staff as to you all. Seems I recall
21 something in the court decision we got into trouble
22 with having a cut-off point, but below that you got
23 more resources and above that you didn't as opposed to
24 an incremental approach. Does that apply in this
25 situation?
224
1 MR. NELSON: I believe what you're speaking
2 to is in the small school adjustment we had specific
3 cut-off points that they felt were arbitrary and felt
4 that any sort of adjustment that was based on that had
5 to be pretty well founded. I hate to take it beyond
6 the small school adjustment, but in that particular
7 case they found that the points that were established
8 in that adjustment to be arbitrary and not founded in
9 data. And we were directed to go back and rework that
10 to more reflect what was going on.
11 MR. SCOTT: So we maybe could do that if the
12 data supports it?
13 MR. NELSON: Exactly.
14 MR. SCOTT: Same question with regard to the
15 five mile thing, didn't we have a similar problem
16 there?
17 MR. NELSON: I share your concern. We did
18 have some problems in putting, on defining school, on
19 putting a territory in there. And that's when we ran
20 into that problem.
21 MR. HOACHLANDER: With respect to the so
22 called cut-off that Dr. Kline referred to, that is
23 derived from the data and is a function of the standard
24 that you would set as to the minimum number of programs
25 that would be required. And so basically once you
225
1 decide whether the minimum is two, one, three, four,
2 given the assumptions about class size and the
3 assumption that it requires one full faculty FTE to
4 provide a program, then mathematically the cut point
5 where the weight begins to increase beyond 1.25 is
6 automatically derived. There is nothing arbitrary in
7 the sense of a ledge, if you will, which is a term I'm
8 sure you're familiar with from school finance. In fact
9 the weight in this model increases smoothly, and so
10 there is no real threshold. It goes from 1.5 to 1.26
11 as school size begins to decline below the cut-off is,
12 which is this function of the minimum number of
13 programs.
14 So I think you're on pretty solid ground with
15 respect to the school size cut-off in this particular
16 model. It's derived from the data. It's derived from
17 standards about minimum program offerings, class size
18 and so forth.
19 With respect to the distance specification,
20 I'm less confident that we have data to support that.
21 I think it was the feeling of the advisory panel that
22 beyond five miles the time in transit becomes a serious
23 issue for students. And it becomes much more difficult
24 to attract students to leaving their home school and
25 going someplace else.
226
1 MR. SCOTT: We do have some experience in our
2 district with students moving between Kelly Walsh and
3 Natrona County High School for particular classes, and
4 they are within that five miles. It suggests it is
5 feasible for this kind of course.
6 MS. DEVIN: A follow-up to that, and I would
7 ask our advisory people that have been here, and maybe
8 one of the reasons I'm sensitized to it where you have
9 limited your inter- and intradistrict sitting on the
10 school facilities capital construction committee has
11 been an education in and of itself that I'm not sure I
12 would volunteer for again. We had had recommendations
13 come forward in their initial phase to actually build a
14 new school for two or three students when in fact the
15 buses of that district pass directly by the school of
16 another district in order take those two or three
17 students to a distance they felt allegedly was beyond
18 reason, another 20 minutes or 30 minutes. But they
19 literally passed by the front door of another district
20 school.
21 If I look at the resources of the state of
22 Wyoming as a whole and the good use of them, that
23 doesn't make a lot of sense to me, that you can't get
24 intradistrict cooperation. And yet I recognize it's
25 not without its problems. I know when we look at
227
1 special education districts in order to get a speech
2 pathologist, which is a very rare individual, we have
3 to share between districts. If we're going to invest
4 in high quality, good programs of an advanced level why
5 does intradistrict, interdistrict not make sense?
6 Should we completely eliminate that and what were the
7 discussions?
8 MR. MARTIN: We had a lot of discussions, and
9 one thing we need to mention is that the panel and NPR
10 and the Department of Education strongly encouraged
11 interdistrict cooperation. The No Child Left Behind
12 Act requires that in fact for rural areas. And we just
13 want you as a committee to know that in our proposal
14 there are no penalties assessed for interdistrict
15 because it's important. In fact the county that I am
16 from, Fremont County we have the Fremont County BOCES,
17 and eight skill districts reside in that area, and we
18 are all working hard together at this point in time. I
19 believe they're here today that maybe will discuss an
20 issue with you. But we feel strongly that that should
21 be in there.
22 But intradistrict when we have schools so
23 very close within the school district cooperating,
24 working with one another as Senator Scott mentioned we
25 feel that's great because otherwise the expense of
228
1 vocational ed would skyrocket to the point we could not
2 afford to fund it.
3 MR. MARIS: One of the concerns of the local
4 Wyoming folks on the advisory panel was this whole
5 issue of interdistrict collaboration. It's certainly a
6 direction we would like to move in the State of
7 Wyoming. We also feel the consolidation issue is a
8 pretty hot potato. We didn't want to bog this product
9 down for you in that situation, and of course this
10 recommendation is at your discretion to change. We
11 keep coming back to the idea when we make this proposal
12 to you as an advisory panel based on NPR data that the
13 issues that we maybe can't hammer out we leave that to
14 you.
15 MS. DEVIN: That does happen.
16 MR. MARIS: The other issue it's important
17 that everybody understand the small school adjustment
18 in terms of the amount of programs that are offered in
19 smaller schools, see, that's what we're talking about
20 here, interdistrict collaboration or intradistrict
21 collaboration and cost effective incentives that are a
22 part of this proposal only affects the rate at which
23 schools will be reimbursed for that vocational
24 education based on the fact that it costs more at a
25 smaller school. So for example, Senator Scott, Natrona
229
1 and Kelly Walsh are totally unaffected by it. They're
2 large enough schools they're not going to receive any
3 additional weighting funds for that purpose, so it's
4 really pretty insignificant in terms of total dollars.
5 These issues are pretty small.
6 MS. DEVIN: I guess if your colleagues ask,
7 one of the alternatives seems to be having to move to
8 any sort of consolidation from the legislative level is
9 greater cooperation between the districts.
10 MR. MARIS: I would agree with you, but the
11 grocery store owners in the small towns don't
12 necessarily see it that way. They see it as the first
13 step sometimes is consolidation, so it's a tough issue
14 as you well know.
15 MR. MCOMIE: I'm on the committee, we are
16 concerned that we have a drop-out problem we have 60
17 percent of our kids don't go on to college. And
18 hopefully good vocational education programs will keep
19 these kids in school and give them training for a trade
20 which we're sadly lacking in Wyoming. I really didn't
21 hear a whole lot about what is there that would help us
22 expand, two or three programs. You talked about that
23 vaguely. But I think the only way this will work if we
24 can share between districts some of these programs,
25 especially when the kids get to be juniors and seniors
230
1 they know pretty much what they want to do and yet we
2 still have to meet the academic standards as we spent
3 two days talking about already. I'm just real
4 concerned are we really going to address this because
5 your original comment we're starting from the low, not
6 what it was many years ago. And how will we get there
7 to capture 60 percent of the students to give them an
8 opportunity to have the choice?
9 MR. MARIS: In the previous vocational
10 funding mechanism which I taught, I had to fill out the
11 forms every semester and identify students who were in
12 those days a CRU, classroom unit data, and send that
13 in. At that time I was generating through my classes
14 CRU, CRU whatever it was times two. In terms of
15 growing those programs, which I think is what you're
16 addressing, in terms of growing those programs there is
17 certainly other issues in terms of moving kids from one
18 place to another, tracking kids with their issues,
19 philosophical issues we deal with. But in terms of
20 growing those programs when you have a funding
21 mechanism which my perception the court is requiring,
22 when you have a funding mechanism directly involved or
23 directly attached to the amount of students receiving
24 those services, those more expensive services, I can
25 assure you that the bean counter is going to talk to
231
1 the superintendent, the superintendent is going to talk
2 to the principal, and the principal will talk to the
3 counselors and more opportunities will be developed for
4 students to be in those kinds of classes following the
5 follow the money. The money is where the power is.
6 MR. MCOMIE: The first thing I wrote down was
7 how simple will it be with your funding formula when
8 these programs develop? I understand what I heard, go
9 beyond 1.25, one and a half or something like that.
10 MR. HOACHLANDER: The weight would not
11 change. I think what this formula does put in place a
12 foundation on which you can grow future programs
13 without having to get caught up in debates about the
14 relative costs. So in other words what would happen in
15 the future a district that wanted to add a new program,
16 assuming that the start-up cost provision was in place,
17 would make an application to the state. The state
18 department would have criteria that it would use to
19 judge the desirability of adding an additional program.
20 Those criteria might include local labor market
21 conditions, those sorts of things, I'm sure. You're
22 familiar with that. They would provide a start-up
23 grant to that school. It might be that there is an
24 initial one-year planning grant of some modest amount,
25 five, ten thousand dollars. A grant that would in the
232
1 second year allow them to hire the teacher to design
2 the curriculum and begin to offer that program. And
3 then probably in the third or fourth year that program
4 would become self-sustaining and would have to generate
5 sufficient student FTE at that 1.25 weight to continue
6 funding for that program. So the weight per se would
7 remain the same.
8 But the formula in combination with the
9 start-up provision would allow sort of the systematic
10 expansion of vocational education where it was
11 warranted, where it made good sense educationally. And
12 I think the important point about this particular
13 approach is that if in fact we're right about the
14 relative cost, you can then make these decisions about
15 whether it is wise or not to expand vocational
16 education on education merits, not the relative cost
17 debate. You certainly need to look at relative
18 effectiveness, but you no longer have built into the
19 system this incentive to avoid offering high cost
20 programs because you don't have the resources to
21 sustain them. And those decisions become made based
22 now on educational criteria, less so on cost criteria.
23 MS. DEVIN: I do think that is how part of
24 the reason funding fell away; it's also part of the
25 reason the old program got into difficulty. It was not
233
1 made on educational basis. There were districts very,
2 very legitimately producing wonderful vocational ed
3 programs. There were other districts where a true
4 voc-ed student never saw that money. There was
5 vocational English, math, every creative invention.
6 And it was really that abuse that destroyed along with
7 loss of funding that source. So if we can establish
8 that a new program is coming forward on a soundly
9 looked at education basis and for good reason that
10 gives us a lot more faith.
11 MR. SHIVLER: Some trades are specific, some
12 jobs are specific. Was it considered we could possibly
13 bring trades in to train these folks rather than
14 setting up the program for whatever. Could they work
15 into the program where they would do the training,
16 almost being a DECA program you work off site. When I
17 say off site, off the school site. And you would be
18 paid for this and at the same time be getting the
19 education. There is no need to set up the programs
20 where there is not a great need for the type of trades.
21 MR. KLINE: Yes, the way the formula is
22 designed there is a waiver provision so what you could
23 do if you have someone from industry who could come in
24 and train if you could make a case that they've going
25 to offer less than a sequence but there is a rationale
234
1 this is still high cost vocational education on
2 average, then the formula is built to accommodate the
3 participation of outside industry. I would also add
4 that although it wasn't part of our directive what NPR
5 is doing is putting together a white paper listing
6 different cost effective approaches that include
7 intradistrict, interdistrict and intersegmental, so
8 that would be looking at outside employers and
9 organizations to provide resources and knowledge. The
10 intent behind that is recognizing not everyone is going
11 to be happy, but to the extent we can help people see
12 exemplary practices, and these are real practices we
13 collected from schools and districts through the state
14 we'll be able to make that available to people so that
15 they can get some ideas and contact information so that
16 they can begin to think of new ways of offering
17 programs.
18 MS. SESSIONS: Along that same line that's
19 what I was thinking along is the best practice
20 available, are you going to, this was what you referred
21 to, not only best practices you've seen in the state
22 but across the nation and what's being done and what
23 our future job market looks like and putting that
24 together with vocational programs.
25 MR. KLINE: We are trying to in terms of best
235
1 practices, actually exemplary practices keeping that
2 with the state and intrastate focus because we felt
3 people, with the teachers and administrators feel more
4 comfortable knowing this was something that fit the
5 Wyoming way of doing things and was reasonable. We can
6 explore whether we want to expand that. I think the
7 intent behind this white paper was really to provide
8 people an understanding there are other options that
9 they should consider.
10 MS. SESSIONS: Is there a place in, I know
11 national vocational education associations, are there
12 places within that that can be available to school
13 districts or will be available and encourage for
14 students to use that information on I guess the
15 changing role of vocational ed?
16 MR. MARIS: I'm not sure that, personally I
17 guess I'm not sure that those issues are part of this
18 funding model. I think that's a step two, most
19 certainly. I think it is a local issue, but also a
20 state issue. In terms of this panel presenting
21 information and tieing this funding directly to
22 exemplary practices or improving the quality of
23 education programs, in terms of that versus local
24 control it's, I'm not sure we want to go down that
25 road.
236
1 MR. LOCKHART: Craig touched on this issue.
2 You talked about how to fund this, whether it should go
3 as a block grant to schools or some sort of measurement
4 control versus state. That is a very crucial issue.
5 Let me give you two examples. Two years ago we put
6 significant additional funding into K-12 education
7 based primarily on teachers' wages. Yet no more got
8 funded, signed by the governor, in came the words of
9 some school districts have higher priorities than wages
10 for the money, so with local control the state off site
11 created another tension we're familiar with. And at
12 least my view of the past practice of what happened
13 with vocational education, the state generally felt
14 like it was funding, and local control for their own
15 reasons moved that money to other locations and quality
16 of equipment and number teachers and class sizes went
17 down.
18 And so I think it would be helpful for the
19 legislature to have your panel's best shot at how we
20 get whatever we do to do the job for vocational
21 education as opposed to just an additional funding
22 source that goes out and maybe doesn't answer what
23 determines to be needed in our state as better
24 opportunities for students in vocational education in
25 some locations. And that's pretty tricky. It's a hot
237
1 button. But I think your panel and your recommendation
2 will be helpful. If you didn't just throw money
3 without direction at it.
4 MR. SCOTT: I take the opposite point of
5 view. I do get real concerned about the state level
6 dictating what is going to be particularly the programs
7 and think you ought to have the ability to change
8 things locally because otherwise I think it's a trouble
9 categorical funding issue, you get a system that
10 doesn't work for a number of localities involved.
11 Having said that, I have a series of questions here.
12 Are you seeing relatively similar amounts of programs
13 and students proportionately among the several
14 districts or are there radical differences?
15 MR. KLINE: There are differences. We
16 haven't done a complete analysis yet, but the
17 preliminary numbers that we've seen it appears that
18 there is a few outliers that both at the higher and
19 smaller district size, school size I should say. It's
20 not clear -- what we've done is we've analyzed the
21 information at the school level. This operates at the
22 school level, not the district. We have yet to roll
23 the individual school sites into the district and see
24 how that may or may not change. It may be that within
25 a given district one school may have a higher
238
1 vocational education than another, in which case would
2 tend to offset. There is variation, and there will be
3 consequences in terms of reallocating money among
4 districts if no additional resources are put into the
5 model.
6 MR. SCOTT: One of my concerns with the
7 general approach being used here and the same concern I
8 have with some of our other school things is that we
9 confuse costs with expenditures. Go out and measure
10 actual expenditures and call them a cost and as a
11 result get ourselves in considerable trouble. You tend
12 to reward those places that have expended and cut down
13 the ones that were discriminated against in the old
14 formula, didn't have the money to expand. I get real
15 concerned that we're just going to build in ongoing
16 inequities.
17 And the second concern I have is I see going
18 down to not have an amount for ADM or for high school
19 ADM or something like that, but something that depends
20 on the actual enrollment of the vocational programs.
21 I'm concerned that will build an incentive in for
22 people to play games with the system the way they did
23 before. And I don't yet have an answer to both of
24 those, except I would sure urge you to go to a per ADM
25 kind of funding as opposed to a count on who was
239
1 actually participating in voc-ed because I think you
2 would create perverse incentives.
3 MR. HOACHLANDER: Those are both very real
4 concerns. I think with respect to the 1.25 weight I
5 would based on national data as well as what we've seen
6 in Wyoming I'm reasonably confident that that is a true
7 cost difference that is associated with safety issues,
8 that's associated with the higher levels of technical
9 complexity that exist in some of these programs. And
10 the ratio 1.25 of vocational class size to
11 non-vocational class size in Wyoming much to my
12 surprise is identical to the national data. Wyoming
13 does not deviate from that national picture. It's
14 quite possible that nationally everybody is simply
15 doing, measuring their expenditure rather than cost.
16 But I have a fair amount of confidence in that number.
17 You are absolutely correct that whenever you
18 weight any kind of instruction more heavily than
19 another and reward it, agree to fund it, you create an
20 incentive to either relabel students, relabel courses,
21 all of those incentives are there. There is not an
22 easy solution, but I think one way to address that is
23 through standards. You already have done that in terms
24 of the standards that you set with respect to academic
25 course taking.
240
1 There are as a result of that pretty severe
2 limits on how much additional course taking students
3 can avail themselves of in vocational education. So
4 you do have some checks and balances built into the
5 system, but I think you know better than I we've never
6 succeeded in designing a system that people can't
7 gain. And you do your best to build in the checks and
8 balances that will prevent that.
9 Straight ADM funding doesn't really eliminate
10 that problem. It sort of submerges it, and there
11 aren't easy solutions. But there are checks and
12 balances built in. And I think particularly by staying
13 focused as you have on high school graduation
14 requirements, curriculum and program standards,
15 criteria for approving or not approving new programs,
16 you can address a lot of the concerns that you have.
17 MS. DEVIN: That is something we've not had
18 before. That is something that didn't come out a lot
19 in the discussion today. And I guess we're also
20 dealing with a couple of things here. We've not
21 specifically pulled out the designated funding in any
22 certain direction. We've tried to leave the
23 flexibility to the block grants. And generally,
24 Senator Scott, I'm sympathetic with that. But what
25 happens to us as a state is we're being asked in many
241
1 cases to pay for it twice. It's in the funding or
2 we're shorting an area. It's in the funding, and the
3 legislature says we won't fund any more. But then at
4 the local level it's not getting spent in that manner,
5 so teachers or parents are saying but the job is not
6 there.
7 So then it's come back and get the funding,
8 but again don't specify and don't take out what was
9 there before. So somewhere in this hammering out of
10 this process we have got to probably pull out what was
11 in there before and get the right amount back in,
12 whether we limit the flexibility, but the thing you
13 really don't want to hear again is it's not there and
14 the job is not there. And that's the dilemma of the
15 legislators have been caught in and we're struggling
16 with.
17 We're also caught in the dilemma that the
18 courts specifically went in and pulled out this item
19 and said you must address it. I think if you look at
20 the fine arts and you look at a number of areas they
21 say we have higher costs that we want addressed. So
22 they've given us a unique problem here in that they
23 pulled out one high cost area and not others. And
24 that's difficult.
25 The other piece that Representative McOmie is
242
1 accurate on is that this can be helpful in keeping
2 students in, certain groups of students in school. But
3 we need to keep our eye on what's happening. And what
4 the research behind that is showing it's probably not
5 the subject matter specifically, but these students are
6 having an interest shown in them by a concerned adult.
7 And it may happen to be an area they're interested in,
8 but that concerned adult teacher and the small class
9 size is giving that at risk student special focus they
10 don't get somewhere else. And it's probably not the
11 welding and not construction, but we're learning in the
12 at risk and substance abuse it's probably involved.
13 MR. MARIS: I agree, it's more than content
14 that is involved. But I have to stress many of these
15 students I know from experience it's because of the
16 area that I'm in and the educational environment it's
17 now possible to provide that student with that
18 attention and with that success that brings on that
19 feeling where that's pretty tough to do for that
20 particular student in the English class or academic
21 class. It's hard to really have that student
22 experience that success in those areas. You can
23 pretend and blow smoke about you're successful, son,
24 but they know when they are and they aren't. So
25 vocational programs offer that to that type of student
243
1 I think.
2 MS. DEVIN: Last time, Senator Scott, it was
3 handed out earlier dated July l6th looks like
4 volunteered to bring back some potential drafting
5 instructions to this committee to consider to look at
6 facilitation of, well, a facilitated discussion.
7 Senator Scott, would you like to present what you've
8 drafted?
9 MR. SCOTT: This arrived from discussion last
10 time and some of the issues they raised and the success
11 of that group in identifying some of the problems led
12 to the suggestion that maybe we could deal with some of
13 our school finance problems in the same manner. And so
14 what this does it's just bill drafting instructions. I
15 tried to include as many subjects as I could to get
16 them in the draft and then modify them and/or take them
17 out as we chose.
18 First was a set of legislative findings by
19 the generalized, really all the complaints I heard
20 about the current system tried to do it at a fairly
21 abstract level. Second, set it up as a facilitated
22 forum conducted under the auspices of the joint
23 education committee, at least 20, no more than 40
24 participants and selected by the co-chairman of the
25 joint education committee basically that's how the data
244
1 facilitation form was done and really has worked quite
2 well. Six legislators, three from each house with a
3 standard party split on them and then a listing of
4 others that ought to be represented without saying how
5 many, put in a prohibition against including outside
6 consultants on the forum or the attorneys who are
7 representing the parties, anybody who has a personal
8 financial interest in continuing the current system and
9 provided that there be a facilitator selected by the
10 co-chairman.
11 The first report November 1st, 2003, final
12 report unless the committee decides needs to go another
13 year and have the final report aimed at the budget
14 session, which I think may well be the way it will go
15 if it was going to be successful. The key part I think
16 is on page two, legislature suggests following
17 parameters for any improvements that the finance
18 system, overriding objectives, quality education to all
19 Wyoming students greatest extent possible finance
20 systems should be fair to the various communities.
21 Local control, point number C. And point number D, try
22 to solve complaints we have from the current system.
23 And then over on the next page telling them they're not
24 limited to the requirements set forth in the Campbell
25 decision, pointing out if they're going to violate
245
1 those it takes a constitutional amendment and they
2 really have to get a high degree of consensus because
3 without that you can't pass a constitutional
4 amendment. But I think it's important to say you can
5 go beyond the Campbell decision, but there are
6 consequences. Point F is just raise the issue of how
7 are they limited to the operating system or will we
8 take recommendations on the other major maintenance in
9 the school capital or not.
10 That's the basics of it. What I would
11 encourage, if the committee was agreeable, is to get it
12 drafted in bill form and then we can argue about the
13 specific provisions, whether we want this one to say
14 that or whether drop this particular thing out.
15 There is since our meeting I have learned
16 that there is an effort by school districts, started
17 out with just the small school districts and the
18 reality better move the large ones as well. There is
19 an effort by the school districts to start down this
20 road, and I think this would mesh very well as to
21 follow on that effort, trying to get some kind of a
22 resolution, negotiated resolution to the whole thing as
23 opposed to continued litigation and continued just one
24 level of complexity on another.
25 MS. DEVIN: Committee, you've had some
246
1 limited time with a lot of other pieces to take a look
2 at this. I think probably legislative findings as I
3 read are the most controversial piece that there is
4 diverse disagreement on. Certainly as I've mulled this
5 over there are some difficulties. I guess maybe the
6 most appropriate thing would be to say maybe for
7 clarity for me what is the goal of this, what is the
8 purpose of this? Where are we headed that we couldn't
9 do with another negotiated discussion or the current
10 offerings offered on the table?
11 MR. SCOTT: It's an attempt to redo the
12 current financial system. I think the current system
13 is just an impossible thing for us long term. And its
14 attempt to negotiate the agreement how to provide that
15 as opposed to individual legislators coming up with
16 specific proposals as opposed to additional litigation,
17 try to get all the parties in the same room and use the
18 facilitated forum kind of venue for developing some
19 consensus proposals for revising the current system.
20 MS. DEVIN: That brings me back to what
21 bothers me about, it does hit one issue because if you
22 stay under the present constitution there will be
23 negotiated settlement with the smaller schools, and
24 basically the court tossed that piece out. And there
25 was agreement between 29 school districts and the state
247
1 we would proceed, and they said you cannot negotiate
2 these things. So either or option in here concerns me,
3 and it puts the most, the smallest disagreer down to
4 one student or parent who sees that as violating their
5 rights, all of that negotiation were to go up in smoke
6 if one individual disagrees. If we eliminate the party
7 that can keep it cost based it has some appeal to
8 eliminate that, we could come to an agreement if
9 everyone would let us do that. But where we get out of
10 the cost based picture basis we're into that, so I'm
11 trying to visualize it. I want to throw it open to the
12 committee.
13 MR. SHIVLER: Senator Scott has been one of
14 my mentors. I also have a great respect for his
15 abilities. On this he and I totally disagree. I don't
16 think that this is as complicated as he says it is. I
17 think we are all starting to understand. It certainly
18 was a complex issue when we started with it. It has
19 had a series of errors that have been complicating the
20 whole process, but I think we worked most of those out.
21 And I think over a period of time we can work them all
22 out.
23 The thing that really concerns me is that the
24 court has accepted this. We've gone down this road
25 four, five, six years now. To turn around and start
248
1 anew I think all we're going to do is encourage more
2 ulcers. As Madam Chair just mentioned one person could
3 start this lawsuit. I think now we do have a framework
4 to work within. I'll be truthful, two years ago I
5 didn't understand it. But thanks to Mary Kay and Dave
6 I do understand a great deal more now. Words have been
7 added and words taken away. There are still some
8 problems with it, but I think they can be worked out.
9 I would hate to start all over again and find out we're
10 back to zero in two years and all these lawsuits and
11 all these problems.
12 MS. SESSIONS: I think there's a middle of
13 the road here. And Senator Scott and I both have been
14 on the data facilitation, been participants in that.
15 It has been a very beneficial and worthwhile process.
16 I would like to ask Senator Scott if he would consider
17 putting together something that doesn't lay out, and I
18 understand his feelings about the current system we
19 that finance schools with and many of us have mixed
20 feelings about that. But if we would put forth a
21 proposal, Senator Scott, that just asks for the
22 facilitation to occur and without any predetermined
23 biases without any predetermined anything and that like
24 you've done later on in the piece identified the people
25 that you would like to participate, but not excluding
249
1 anyone because I think the minute we start to exclude
2 we've sort of maybe cut our own throats as trying to
3 get a facilitated agreement. See what comes out of a
4 group like that, see what the feeling is about the
5 funding formula, see what else is occurring, see what
6 happens with that panel of people, and maybe we could
7 negotiate -- and I know that the feeling around the
8 state and the thing that's come out of the data
9 facilitation is this might be a time for a panel like
10 this to sit down and try to work through some of those
11 details but without any of the preconceived biases.
12 And let those come out of the panel, let all of the
13 findings come out of the panel of people being
14 facilitated. And then sit down with the powers that be
15 and say we can't agree on this and you'll have to
16 involve all your lawyers. I think once you get some
17 agreement reached, then bring in your powers to be and
18 say maybe we can agree on all of this, can we work
19 through those without going back to court. And I think
20 that from what we've seen from clear out in the state I
21 think people are ready to sit down and talk. But,
22 Senator Scott, and I would support you on that, but I
23 think we have to do it without any preconceived,
24 without any personal biases about where it's going to
25 go and what we each personally believe about the
250
1 different aspects of that.
2 And I would support going forward with the
3 proposal to form the panel, completely unbiased panel.
4 They'll be biased people, but I'm saying without any
5 bias parameters around it and try to take each issue,
6 identify the issue and take each issue and go down and
7 see what we can come up with. Maybe we can do it and
8 maybe we can't do it, but we'll know and then we can go
9 and ask for the power brokers to sit down with us and
10 say can we agree on this or this. And maybe we can't,
11 but I don't know it might be worth a shot.
12 MR. LOCKHART: I reiterate. I'm very
13 uncomfortable what you have here to start out with the
14 legislature findings. And I think we need to listen
15 very carefully to Senator Grant who was here yesterday
16 saying that we have come a long way with the processes
17 to improve education for young people. Let's try to
18 work within the frameworks established. I think that
19 was a wonderful kind of encouragement from him
20 yesterday, probably the most articulate discussion I've
21 heard. Such items as to do away with outside
22 consultants, we just had consultants sitting at this
23 table who got nothing but accolades from the local
24 panel how helpful they were. That would sure show a
25 strange bias to this piece of work. I think that there
251
1 are people who would prefer we only talk to people in
2 the State of Wyoming, but there are times when those
3 folks are helpful. I think that's good. I think that
4 Dick Gross did a wonderful job for facilitation with
5 the data and the data coming along identifying what our
6 responsibility is in the school agenda we're starting
7 to make this a come together. I agree with Senator
8 Sessions, we've come a long ways in facilitation. I'm
9 in favor of trying to figure out a way to do that. I'm
10 not sure this committee should be sponsoring this piece
11 of legislation.
12 MS. DEVIN: Another concern as I mulled it
13 over, and I'm not sure we've got a problem with it, but
14 I will raise it before some of the responses, because I
15 think we should respond, but if you look at our
16 frustration with that court decision and the separation
17 of powers they have every right to interpret the
18 constitution. But I believe they went well beyond in
19 the opinion of some legislators in stating how that
20 should happen. Those are points of disagreement and
21 contention. But a number of the frustrations expressed
22 here are the result of the court decision rather than
23 of the consultants that we brought in. So the
24 frustration with us on our part that it stepped onto
25 our separation of powers is certainly there and in the
252
1 minority opinion it was very much better expressed than
2 I could express.
3 However, I want to be careful that once we
4 pass these laws they become the property of the
5 executive branch to defend and to administer and to
6 negotiate and to settle. And I want to be careful that
7 we do not tread on their separation of powers but yet
8 we play our full role. And I'm sorting in my mind
9 where the clarity of that comes down in a negotiated
10 settlement. And without more legal advice and
11 expertise than I have I would have to think about that
12 longer in terms of knowing, but I think we do begin to
13 approach treading on some of their pieces. Although,
14 no one would like to see the litigation and the
15 discussion of finances and the discussion of quality be
16 returned more than I would. That's just an expression.
17 MR. SCOTT: I perceive I don't have the votes
18 on this at this time in this committee. Maybe Senator
19 Sessions can come up with something along those lines
20 that would work. I do predict the current school
21 finance system is simply going to fail. I think it
22 might be workable, but we may have to do that before we
23 can get anything done about it. There are I know
24 ongoing efforts outside to negotiate something that
25 would be more workable. I don't know whether that's
253
1 come in or not.
2 MS. DEVIN: And there have been. I don't
3 know if the committee got copies. At least there have
4 been restated offers on the part of at least the state
5 to try to continue to work on this on an official
6 basis. I saw one of those copies on the part of legal
7 counsel. And I don't know if the committee received
8 any copies.
9 MR. NELSON: We sent them.
10 MS. DEVIN: That offer has been put out there
11 a couple of times. There has been no response. I
12 don't know what the assessment of the willingness to
13 come to the table on this is either.
14 MS. SESSIONS: Is there any way we can put
15 something together that it comes from this committee
16 that makes an offer to negotiate that offers to set up
17 a forum and a process for negotiation and to take the
18 lead in it with those parties that are sort of putting
19 feelers out there along the way that they would like to
20 do something? I don't know if this is possible. I
21 suppose we -- I don't know why we can't do it. I don't
22 know how you do it, put an RFP out, put a proposal out
23 and have them contact us or something. I'm saying I
24 think they need a leader. And I perceive the education
25 committee as we have gone through this issue time after
254
1 time after time with trying to balance the funding.
2 Maybe we all know more sides of than anyone else, I
3 don't know. But they don't have a leader at this
4 point. And I would like Senator Scott to put his
5 wonderful mind to work. Is there a way to put
6 something out or to go ahead and form a committee,
7 promote it forward?
8 MS. DEVIN: Sort of assessment of interest.
9 MS. SESSIONS: Maybe that would be the first
10 step, assessment of interest. And contact the powers
11 and have it come from the education committee. And
12 every one of us if we buy on to it and agree and ask
13 for an assessment and have them do it in the writing
14 and maybe send it to LSO and send out responses to it.
15 Maybe that would solve the whole thing right there.
16 And maybe go to the second step, I don't know. I think
17 people who have not spoken maybe ought to give their
18 opinions too.
19 MR. MCOMIE: As I see this in two years, the
20 next budget session, we have to solve the small
21 schools. We have to solve vocational education. We
22 have solve all these problems or go back to court. We
23 have to solve it to the satisfaction of the
24 legislature, of the school boards, of everybody else.
25 It makes sense to me to try and get all the parties
255
1 together and resolve as many of these problems as we
2 can before we try to pass legislation and then sit in
3 committees, and you know how the legislature works,
4 once it's in committee, bingo, you have that time that
5 lay it back once in a while, but it's moving. It makes
6 sense to me to try to get these people together in the
7 form. I liked what Senator Sessions said. Let's not
8 show any biases, whether we agree with Charlie, whether
9 we would rather have a different formula, it's a little
10 late. As Thomas said six, seven years down the road in
11 these lawsuits. I think we can work something out.
12 I'll never understand the formula. But we
13 have smart people that are supposed to keep me informed
14 and in line. It's been that way all my life. I think
15 we need to try and draft something that will do this
16 before the budget session. I think it's apparent or
17 we'll see ourselves, someone will challenge us, even
18 the small schools saying hey, you're pulling our legs
19 out from under us, rightfully or not, whether we
20 started the bar too high, all those things. It's been
21 my experience good people sit down and negotiate
22 seriously and try to do what's best for everybody you
23 can solve most of your problems. I'm sure there will
24 still be areas of disagreement, but nobody wants to go
25 back to court and I'm sure the court doesn't want us.
256
1 I would support something, give it to our
2 wonderful staff and say bring us back something along
3 those lines words similar to what the data thing was,
4 and let us look at it in our next meeting for a short
5 period of time. I don't think it would take us five
6 minutes to vote it up or down.
7 MS. DEVIN: I'll caution that we have not, we
8 may not be two years from litigation. We have had the
9 preliminaries of, whatever the formal preliminaries are
10 to begin the request have already been filed. So
11 whether that will proceed beyond that point, I can't
12 tell you, but there is not a security that we have two
13 years before someone will make an objection to
14 somebody.
15 MR. MCOMIE: I have heard these same things.
16 I have talked to principally districts that have been
17 involved with it and talked to some of the school
18 boards, and they're all denying that that's the case.
19 The only thing some of them said they were trying to
20 get was the data. The CD's and spread sheet data. And
21 I have to take them at their word. Maybe, it's been
22 said one of the lawyers wants to buy a bigger boat, I
23 don't know. The fact is that yes, we're looking at
24 that. If we don't do something I think we're amiss.
25 MR. SHIVLER: Simple statement, equalization
257
1 in the state is diverse. It's not a simple process. A
2 plus B equals C. It's fairly complex any way we do it.
3 I think what we have now we worked through this thing
4 for several years, and I think we're at a point where
5 -- by the way I can help you understand this, you were
6 the mayor of Lander, I know that. So I think we're at
7 a point we have a hold of something we can work with.
8 And I think it's certainly a good idea to take the
9 parties now that are dissatisfied or possibly feel
10 disenfranchised, I don't know what the problem is. I
11 know the small schools we do have a problem. But take
12 them and explain to them where we are and why we're
13 there. A big portion of the problem is they're losing
14 population. We're not going to have the same amount of
15 funding for 150 students that we had for 100. It has
16 nothing to do with the formula. It has to do with the
17 fact we go from 105 thousand students to 85 thousand in
18 ten years. And we could go down to 75; it could get
19 worse. There are a lot of issues, and we can't blame
20 it all on the MAP proposal. My point is equalization
21 is not simple, any way will be complex.
22 MS. SESSIONS: I would like to propose we
23 develop and identify, the stakeholders prepare a letter
24 of assessment, ask for an answer so that can be looked
25 at before our October meeting, and they can either
258
1 choose not to answer it, which in essence will tell us
2 take a flying leap or show some interest in negotiating
3 or sitting down in a mediation process. And at least
4 we know where we are in this whole process and the
5 feedback and information we're getting through the
6 other mediation we're doing or the other facilitation
7 we're doing the state is ready to do it. Let's find
8 out if the state is ready to do it. If they say
9 they're ready to at least sit down and talk about it we
10 can design something from that point on. Now, the
11 question I have is do we have this authority to do
12 this? Can we do this? I don't know. I guess we can.
13 I suppose send the letter out.
14 MS. DEVIN: I think we probably need to be
15 careful how we word it. Can we come up with some
16 wording?
17 MR. NELSON: I will put something for your
18 review.
19 MS. DEVIN: Would ascertain interest in
20 pursuing this.
21 MR. SCOTT: I'm concerned that we could have
22 a problem getting to take it seriously. Maybe Senator
23 Session's earlier suggestion where we actually propose
24 some legislature might be a better vehicle for seeing
25 if there is interest.
259
1 MR. MCOMIE: That would certainly get people
2 to the table.
3 MS. SESSIONS: I would be more than willing
4 to work with Senator Scott on some draft legislation
5 for our next meeting, just facilitation of mediation
6 legislation. If we can, if we have to maybe ask the
7 attorney general if we can do this, I don't know. But
8 if we can do this I would like to hear from the
9 stakeholders because in all of this round-about way
10 we've been told they're ready to do this, and I guess
11 it's time to say are you ready or not.
12 MS. DEVIN: I guess that is something we need
13 to explore because I'm not entirely sure where we are
14 on that. I don't necessarily want to be egregious in
15 treading on the separation of powers, but I could
16 encourage moving forward where it is appropriate to be
17 active, be active.
18 I am approaching the point I could be,
19 knowing what time some people need to be out
20 approaching responsibility for their exceeding Wyoming
21 law speed limits. So we have been warned.
22 I guess I would accept that offer if it's
23 agreeable with the committee that Senator Sessions and
24 Senator Scott would work on something that was
25 non-biased. Would it be your pleasure we attempt to go
260
1 forward with a letter that ascertains interest also?
2 MS. SESSIONS: On the agreement of the
3 committee I guess for what I've heard all summer I
4 would certainly like to see, and I guess if I had not
5 been part of that facilitation, I would like to see if
6 people are willing to either say ignore us or indicate
7 interest, and they certainly have that -- if we can do
8 it, I guess we need to check.
9 MR. LOCKHART: I have a little concern about
10 trying to reach the parties and asking them are they
11 interested in facilitating negotiating. I don't know
12 how you do that what they would be saying yes or no to.
13 I think if I were any of the people on this letter we
14 all got copies of, how would you respond. Of course
15 they would be interested in working, but what would we
16 have as an end game. I think the draft legislature has
17 a way of focusing people on something they can get
18 their teeth into as opposed to a sort of general
19 expression of interest. So I don't think that would be
20 productive, so I would probably vote against it.
21 MS. DEVIN: And I certainly think there is
22 merit in whatever we enter into needs to have a
23 non-biased approach to it as I thought about the
24 statements.
25 MR. CHRISTIANSON: Chris Christianson, the
261
1 Wyoming Education Association. I think you'll find a
2 great deal of interest. The interest is there this
3 summer. I think a miracle occurred this summer in the
4 data facilitation committee. It worked well. We don't
5 have all the answers, but certainly it brought groups
6 together to the same table, and it should have been
7 going on five years ago. And I think you will find
8 it's not necessary to ask any of the groups if they
9 want to cooperate and come together and work together.
10 Yes, we demonstrated this summer we're willing to do it
11 and can do it. And we're ready to roll. So please
12 do. We too are tired of the litigation. And I think
13 you'll find bringing Wyoming people together that's the
14 first time this really happened this summer of the
15 interested parties, and we are getting results.
16 MR. MCOMIE: Chris said what I wanted to say.
17 MR. ATKINS: Al Atkins, Wyoming School Board
18 Association. I would echo Chris's comments. I think
19 it's time. I think we're ready.
20 MS. DEVIN: Then we're looking forward in
21 October of a piece that's --
22 MR. SCOTT: If Kathryn will take the lead.
23 MS. SESSIONS: I'm going to take yours and
24 rework it and give it back to you to look at. Okay.
25 MS. DEVIN: I think we can use some other
262
1 examples of pieces that we need to address or to get
2 the open forum that we got without preconceived ideas.
3 And I think there is strong feeling that went a long
4 way down the road. There is no finance system that has
5 undergone recent development or recent court rulings
6 that is simplistic in this country. They are complex.
7 Ours was the first and only required to be costed out.
8 There are those who have moved because they are
9 attempting to avoid decisions similar to ours because
10 of the difficulty it gives an administrator, but we've
11 come a long way. The errors, I would agree with
12 Representative Shivler, the concepts are pretty basic.
13 And it is actually the concepts that we have to agree
14 on. And whether there have been arithmetic errors that
15 occurred in the spread sheets as we rushed to session,
16 and that was a time line from the court, those have
17 been corrected. People have been straightforward about
18 them. I think we can work with that. In some cases
19 the legislature has let that money be water under the
20 bridge that went out. And in most cases the districts
21 have probably never been penalized for the errors.
22 Sometimes it's created over-payments. But nonetheless
23 we tried to work with that. I think we need to
24 continue. We're not getting frequent errors arising at
25 this point in time. They seem to be early phenomena
263
1 when the new piece goes in. I prefer not to see them,
2 but there will be. If we had a lot of time to run and
3 rerun and put the pieces out, as everyone would have
4 liked, they probably wouldn't be there. Let's proceed
5 on that.
6 MR. GOODENOUGH: The question is if anybody
7 had produced a document explaining the MAP model in
8 clear and concise language.
9 MR. SCOTT: The data facilitation forum is
10 attempting to do just that. I think by the next
11 meeting you'll see it.
12
13 Short break.
14
15 MR. HOACHLANDER: Madam Chairman, we are
16 still very much open to questions that you have
17 regarding the work that Steve and others have done, so
18 let us turn it back and answer questions that you
19 have. But I think we have certainly presented the
20 basic framework that we will be completing over the
21 next three or four weeks and reporting back to you at
22 your next meeting in October. We're happy to entertain
23 any additional questions that you have.
24 MS. DEVIN: Are there questions that the
25 committee has?
264
1 MR. MCOMIE: I would like to say I really
2 appreciate what you did and I think I can understand
3 your funding.
4 MS. DEVIN: I'm going to follow-up and
5 probably try to do more than one thing at a time here.
6 But if you had a school that was very intensive in
7 vocational ed and they had more than the two programs,
8 but they're small, how do they get funded because those
9 are some of the groups that have been the most
10 concerned. Review for me how they get funded.
11 MR. KLINE: The formula is designed to
12 compensate for the cost of providing a minimum of two
13 programs. The level of funding is determining by the
14 average daily membership of the school. Mathematically
15 driven it's based on the expectation of what the
16 average class size would be. Takes into account the
17 ratio between academic, between non-vocational and
18 vocational course work. If you dropped -- let's take
19 two programs. If you had a district or a school with
20 65 or fewer students their effective weight would be
21 2.51 per vocational FDE student. That means that on an
22 average they would offer a class size of about 6.6
23 students, around 7 students. It's a continuous weight.
24 So as you drop the ADM would drop, the weight would get
25 larger, class size would get smaller. If you stay with
265
1 this hypothetical let's say a 66 student ADM, this is
2 9-12 ADM school, and you went to three programs, you
3 have to increase the weight because now you have the
4 expectation of three full-time equivalent instructors.
5 The weight would then rise to 3.76, from 2.51 now to
6 3.76, and the effective class size would drop on
7 average to 4.4 students. If you kept the weight at, if
8 you kept the formula at a minimum of two programs what
9 that says is a smaller district, and the cut-off here
10 for additional weighting is 132 students, so if you
11 drop below that districts would be compensated at a
12 higher weight per student. The effective class size
13 would drop. But they could still over these two
14 programs.
15 If you switched down to three programs what
16 would happen is the formula is not designed to
17 compensate for the cost of offering, of staffing those
18 programs. And as a consequence the district would have
19 to make some choices about the type of vocational
20 education it chose to offer. It could still offer more
21 programs. There is nothing in the formula that says
22 they can't offer more than two. What that says is that
23 you're not going to receive additional weighting, so
24 you'll either have to offer, you may offer a third
25 program, which isn't full sequence, you may chose to
266
1 make that more exploratory, you may offer five programs
2 and make some of them more exploratory based and less
3 capital intensive. The district has flexibility how it
4 allocated its funding. But the formula is designed to
5 compensate for a minimum of two so the districts aren't
6 faced with this difficult decision of having to offer
7 or choose between losing money, if you will, making
8 vocational ed a lost leader offer, funding offer
9 programs.
10 MR. MCOMIE: Will this then go where the
11 non-certified people, say you had a couple of students
12 who wanted to take auto mechanics and you could arrange
13 with the dealership or something in your area so these
14 kids could go work and learn the computers and learn
15 these types of things with -- maybe it's a one of the
16 other voc-ed instructors watch them when they were
17 doing what they were supposed to be doing, so maybe
18 still offer the program and maybe not have the cost.
19 Was some of that other stuff you were talking about?
20 MR. KLINE: Yes, it depends. On the one hand
21 there is nothing to preclude a school or district from
22 making arrangements to work with outside agencies,
23 institutions to offer services and have students go
24 down and be monitored. The formula is designed to
25 compensate within the school for the programs offered.
267
1 But again districts have flexibility in how they choose
2 to use that funding. So then you could also if you
3 wanted to try to integrate that into the formula as one
4 of the programs that your school or district would
5 offer, there is the waiver provision so just this kind
6 of an experience would be permitted.
7 MR. MCOMIE: Thank you.
8 MR. SCOTT: I'm trying to understand how what
9 you're coming up with is going to work in my district
10 with the five-mile provision. We have two large high
11 schools. We also have small ones within the Casper
12 city limits within these five miles. Take for example
13 Roosevelt. The assumption would be that they should be
14 lumped in with the larger schools because either the
15 students would go to the vocational programs in the
16 larger schools for that particular course or the
17 instructors could come to the smaller schools, either
18 one of which could work depending on the nature of the
19 course that was being offered.
20 MR. KLINE: You're correct in that there are
21 large, Roosevelt is one, where you have to be located
22 within five miles of in this case two larger high
23 schools. The efficiency criteria really only kicks in
24 when you fall below the threshold of, in the case of
25 two programs, 132 students. There is no point in
268
1 pooling them because they're going to generate,
2 Roosevelt will already be above the threshold ADM.
3 They're going to generate 1.25 irrespective.
4 MR. SCOTT: I thought they were below the
5 threshold.
6 MR. KLINE: When I ran the numbers most
7 recently they were above the threshold. Just to tack
8 on to that, there are some instances where you have 9th
9 grades that are at a junior high school, they're
10 located in the junior high school. And the formula is
11 premised on grades 9 to 12. So we actually made
12 provisions. We contacted the junior high schools,
13 asked where their students then go, where do they feed
14 their 9th graders, enroll their students into the
15 receiving high schools. So they are included in the
16 formula even though they're not physically on site at
17 the secondary institution. Does that help?
18 MR. SCOTT: They're not counting junior highs
19 as separate schools? You're rolling them into the
20 other?
21 MS. DEVIN: We need to go back to the
22 statement early on you found no difference in the
23 junior high, and I don't have that exactly, you did not
24 find a difference at the middle school level in
25 vocational ed programs that you found in 9 through 12
269
1 in early on. You're focusing on the 9 through 12
2 because that's where the expense was actually found in
3 the data.
4 MR. KLINE: Yes, the focus on the 9 to 12
5 where the higher cost course work and in particular the
6 smaller class sizes tend to be offered. I'll try one
7 more time if it helps. I believe actually in the case
8 of Roosevelt it's a 10, 11, 12. So what happens in the
9 situation is the feeder schools from the 9th grade get
10 the 9th grader enrolled in the junior high get counted
11 toward the high school in terms of the ADM and for the
12 student participation in vocational education for the
13 purposes of the vocational funding formula.
14 MS. DEVIN: And the funding comes to the
15 districts.
16 MR. KLINE: That's correct.
17 MR. SCOTT: Take Roosevelt High School as an
18 example. It draws from four junior highs that I can
19 think of that have 9th grades, which the junior highs
20 also feed the two large high schools. And it's
21 unpredictable when they're in the 9th grade which of
22 those high schools the students will go to.
23 MR. KLINE: That's correct. And what we did
24 we called and spoke to the staff at the feeder junior
25 highs and asked for an estimate of where their students
270
1 end up going and then use that as a basis for
2 calculating the 9-12. But you're correct, there is no
3 way in predicting in advance where students will
4 attend. It would be possible to sort of backtrack over
5 time and get a more data driven estimate. What we were
6 using is based on the perceptions of the people at the
7 junior high school where their students are going and
8 using that as a basis of making sure those students are
9 not left out of the formula.
10 MS. DEVIN: Since the funding goes to
11 district as a whole for their distribution, does it
12 matter that much?
13 MR. KLINE: It doesn't, it matters only to
14 the extent that the formula is based on the assumption
15 of a minimum of two programs at each site within the
16 district. The district, the money is not attached to
17 the site, and the district has the flexibility of
18 allocating that money even in a categorical
19 circumstance would have the option of allocating those
20 resources generated through vocational education. So
21 at the district level it would be a push. But we did
22 want to try to track it through and be accurate from
23 the school level.
24 MR. SCOTT: I think with their five-mile
25 provision it works. I think if you didn't have that,
271
1 then we would have some real questions about how this
2 works.
3 MR. SHIVLER: You interpolated the 9th grade
4 to senior high. Did you interpolate the 6th to the
5 middle school?
6 MR. KLINE: No, we did not. We are not
7 basing the formula on the middle school; 7th, 8th, or
8 6th, 7th, 8th. That's not included within that.
9 MR. LOCKHART: I'm not sure I grasp all the
10 formula. What would be helpful to me before our next
11 meeting, have a brief agenda, have an example of here's
12 funding ADM today, here's funding and just take a
13 hypothetical school ADM funding for at least two
14 classes or whatever criteria you put there and what the
15 difference is. I think would be very useful. This is
16 complex enough, and trying to explain it to the public
17 will be difficult. If we get a tool like that we can
18 do a better job of arguing it well. That's a request.
19 MS. DEVIN: In addition, if you gave three
20 possible choices; the legislature add no more money,
21 they wish to hold harmless and the third in there
22 you're looking at the costing out each of those?
23 MR. KLINE: Yes, we are.
24 MR. SCOTT: On the other end of things how
25 would you handle the high school students taking
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1 vocational courses at the local community college?
2 MR. KLINE: The high school student taking
3 course work at the local college in this model is not
4 counted -- well, I guess they would be counted. We
5 would have it on the transcript as long as it's listed
6 in the school record that the student is participating
7 in a vocational course that would be counted.
8 MS. BOHLING: I would like to address that.
9 That takes place as a result of an articulation between
10 a school district and a college, and if they're getting
11 concurrent credit they are still being counted at the
12 high school as being a high school credit while getting
13 credit at the college. It's a win-win, so yes, they
14 are counted.
15 MR. SCOTT: That's why I asked, I know that's
16 how it works at the high schools.
17 MS. DEVIN: I know there was another hand.
18 Other questions?
19 Are there two gentlemen from the area of
20 Fremont County? You want to pull chairs, make room at
21 the table. I know you had a piece. We can continue to
22 ask questions.
23 This is probably a good time to thank you.
24 Last weekend a sports announcer said that the biggest
25 product of Berkeley was a five-year degree in protest.
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1 I'm pleased to see that there is some more productive
2 work coming out of the area.
3 MR. HOACHLANDER: Thank you very much.
4 MS. DEVIN: Gentlemen, I have been told that
5 you have a piece that you would like to present and
6 educate us on, and I think it's very timely that we do
7 that at this point.
8 MR. HOFFMAN: First of all I'll introduce
9 everyone. I'm Laughn Hoffman, Superintendent of
10 Schools of Fremont County School District 14. Merrill
11 Nelson, Superintendent of Fremont 6. And Les Bishop
12 works at the Fremont County BOCES. Also Allen Burke
13 works with the Lights On program up in Fremont County.
14 Thank you for allowing me to introduce them. I'll
15 start off and we won't take a lot of your time, but we
16 would like to talk about some things that actually
17 dovetail on what NPR shared with you in terms of
18 possibilities in the future that we're already started
19 on.
20 If you do not mind I will give you just a
21 brief history, about seven years ago the Fremont County
22 boards of trustees and on occasion our legislature
23 joining us sit down and talk about needs of children
24 that we have in common in Fremont County among our
25 districts. And two years ago one of the things that
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1 were of very much attention and concern -- you'll see
2 in your packets it appears the superintendents came up
3 with this idea, and I want to turn you to the correct
4 direction, and that is the boards of trustees in
5 Fremont County came up with this idea. And I think
6 maybe the letter just says superintendents.
7 The idea and the concerns were about
8 vocational education. Some of the things that came up
9 from our board members that things like the academic
10 standards pushing out the possibilities within the
11 schedules in our schools for students to take
12 electives, things like our declining enrollments going
13 on in all of our districts and still being able to
14 produce and offer quality vocational programs. Things
15 like acknowledging the fact that vocational education
16 is more expensive. We all know that. It's more
17 expensive to deliver than perhaps other courses are.
18 By such reasons that we've described to you earlier.
19 Also taking those things into account whether there may
20 not be ways to create a common scale within our
21 district to continue to offer quality vocational
22 programs. Again that came from our districts and also
23 joining the conversation was Central Wyoming College
24 and also the BOCES as a vehicle to help us look at ways
25 that we might be able to offer programs.
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1 And so two years ago the boards of trustees,
2 they directed the superintendents to get busy and start
3 to look at possibilities that might exist out there.
4 And again on the economies of scale looking at just for
5 a real simple example, if we have a good program in one
6 of our school districts within Fremont County that
7 maybe only has four kids and but maybe over in Fremont
8 6 there are three kids, and then look at ways that we
9 might be able to deliver those programs jointly or in
10 partnership and in some ways saving money.
11 Also another thing to look at is when we look
12 across the base what is the market looking for in terms
13 of training needs and what is the market now looking
14 for. Frankly, we talked a lot about adding programs,
15 but also in reality we're looking altogether to as
16 what's viable, what's workable, what does the market
17 demand any more. The possibility exists we may need to
18 get rid of some things too that don't really justify
19 themselves, maybe outdated or whatever the case may
20 be.
21 So we have started to work together and then,
22 if I may, I'll turn it over to Merrill Nelson and Les
23 Bishop to tell you about some real specific examples of
24 ways and means that we're trying to collaborate. And
25 just to end that that it is hoped that either within
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1 the model or there might be in the future some -- let
2 me digress. The other thing is that our school
3 districts all committed some money together jointly,
4 all of us did to see whether we could essentially
5 maximize opportunities for our students in vocational
6 education at the same costs or less. That really is
7 the key that we're shooting for here within
8 County-Fremont. With that I'll kind of go back and
9 turn it over to Merrill Nelson. Thank you.
10 MR. NELSON: One example of the sharing, and
11 I know you were discussing that earlier, is just as
12 Lonnie mentioned earlier that was Lonnie got to the
13 point he had a Microsoft class in his district and the
14 teacher left. And he didn't have enough student
15 participation to offer the class again. But we looked
16 at it together and between our two districts now we're
17 offering the class using distance learning technology.
18 And bottom line is that we find we've saving in the
19 neighborhood of 20 to 30 thousand dollars. And once
20 again it goes back to the idea of maximizing
21 opportunities, cost savings because we can find other
22 places to invest that money in our students in our
23 districts and have positive things happen.
24 There should be an executive summary in your
25 packets kind of hitting the highlights of the program.
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1 I want to make sure Les has an opportunity to talk
2 about what we're doing. We have kind of a two-prong
3 program going right now where we're working at actual
4 offerings that we can do for our students
5 collaboratively in the county as well as looking at the
6 career development plan that's a key component. We're
7 required that all of our students coming up will
8 graduate with a career development plan. So we put
9 those two pieces together. We are actively seeking
10 collaborations and cooperations with outside agencies,
11 including Central Wyoming College as was mentioned
12 before, and Casper College, Habitat for Humanity, Work
13 Force Development, all of those things.
14 And the reason basically we're here to
15 present this to you today is to ask for your
16 consideration when we get to the next budget cycle to
17 consider this to become a pilot program for the state.
18 MR. BISHOP: Started this position in August
19 coming from Jackson and have had an opportunity to meet
20 with all different school districts of Fremont County.
21 I have to compliment the superintendents here and ones
22 not with the programs they have in place in their
23 schools. By no means are we trying to drop any
24 programs from the schools. What is advantageous to me
25 is the fact that we have so many outstanding programs
278
1 in these high schools that it's fair enough to have the
2 kids have the opportunity to go over to these other
3 schools and get through distance learning or sharing
4 the instructors. It's been very successful. We're in
5 the process of, as Merrill described, it's in skeletal
6 phase. We're trying to meet with counselors, meet with
7 partners, Wyoming Contractors Association and having
8 these kids involved. So the enthusiasm is here. And
9 we very much like your support.
10 MR. SHIVLER: I would like to commend you
11 folks. I've been so impressed with Fremont County and
12 how they get along together. It's just very important
13 that we as a state support what you're doing because I
14 think this is the pilot program. I think that the work
15 you've done, the agreement you've all come to within
16 the districts is exemplary. Also the use of distance
17 learning. We have that available from every school. I
18 shouldn't say that, not enough people use it. I think
19 it's important we support you. I certainly hope --
20 unfortunately, I won't be there this next year to vote
21 for it, but I certainly hope that the rest of the
22 committee will carry this forward. I think they will
23 and do a good job. You're to be commended. You're
24 doing a great job.
25 MR. MCOMIE: One of the things that, they're
279
1 not here to spend a lot of time, but I would like the
2 give an example. Lander has a very good Navy ROTC
3 program. Riverton said we would rather send our people
4 to Lander. And it's made such a large group Lander is
5 lucky to get more funding from the Navy I guess to get
6 a second instructor. But so these kind of things, Lord
7 knows where this could lead, and it's the thing Wyoming
8 needs. And I've just been so proud of the people --
9 this isn't the only thing they do together. They call
10 us in once in a while, the legislator, just to be nice
11 to us, but they meet on a regular basis, school boards
12 and the administration and the parents.
13 MR. BISHOP: As far as the ROTC program I
14 have contacted Officer Florin. To get another
15 instructor we have to have 150 more kids or we have 105
16 right now in Lander. To get to the number over 150
17 that makes the need for another instructor. They are
18 in the process of considering that for Fremont County.
19 Basically you need a letter of inquiry about hiring
20 another instructor. We have interest at Wyoming
21 Indian, Wind River, Dubois, Shoshoni, would be willing
22 to participate. Great leadership program for kids,
23 great foundation to become team members. It's been
24 beneficial.
25 MS. DEVIN: Let me ask what you're asking for
280
1 support for this pilot project? What does that mean?
2 Dollars, authorization? What exactly are you in need
3 of?
4 MR. NELSON: At this point in time this
5 legislative session coming up is not a budget session,
6 but we have a request in there for 429 thousand dollars
7 a year in order to establish this as a statewide pilot
8 project. We would like to see this grow out, and
9 hopefully beneficial to all school districts as we grow
10 out. We're working actively with University of Wyoming
11 looking at their career development portfolios, number
12 of different items that we'll I believe come back and
13 pay dividends for all students in Wyoming.
14 MR. SHIVLER: As I understand it you were
15 self-funded but you also had federal grants. Didn't
16 they just run out this last year?
17 MR. HOFFMAN: What we have done is access
18 federal moneys to help support particular career
19 portfolio process. That's through Garrett moneys,
20 which you've probably heard about primarily designed to
21 serve at risk youth. That's a national nice fit within
22 the model and ties in nicely with vocational
23 education. And we don't know -- I know the Perkins Act
24 is up for reauthorization as well. We don't know which
25 direction that will take. But as part of the nice
281
1 thing about having BOCES involved is we can eyeball
2 those federal resources that are out there available
3 and then again collaborate to strengthen what's going
4 on within our programs in our county.
5 And if I may address, and then I'll be quiet
6 unless asked, one other issue that came up earlier
7 about that impression that is gotten by many right off
8 the bat that, boy, this sure sounds like consolidation
9 of school districts. And it's not. It's uniquely,
10 we're looking at consolidating services, particularly
11 pointed at high cost types of areas. And we're looking
12 at the economy of scale making that work again directed
13 at that. We're all retaining our unique differences
14 because we do have very unique differences among our
15 schools. I would also like to point out we have large
16 and we have little tiny districts involved in this
17 process too, so I would really like to -- and that was
18 something that our boards of trustees, believe me, it
19 was on the table, that was one of the first things,
20 will people perceive we're consolidating our school
21 districts. And the agreement was no, we're
22 consolidating some services and again pointing at
23 possibly cost savings. Also at the same time
24 increasing vocational opportunities for our kids. So
25 I'll be quiet unless asked. Thank you.
282
1 MS. DEVIN: How would you expend the money?
2 Would it primarily be a benefit within Fremont County?
3 Would there be a state benefit? How do you anticipate
4 spending?
5 MR. HOFFMAN: We think it has potential to
6 grow out farther, but with that 20 thousand dollars per
7 district we put in there in order to make that broader
8 based and find out whether it would work it would take
9 some money to do that. And it may take some money for
10 some initial cost out in other projects around the
11 state, if you will, sometimes the term seed money is
12 used. Sometimes seed money is the thing we want it
13 forever, but part of that money could be used as seed
14 money as a catalyst to bring some of the projects
15 together or if you put that out there as a possibility
16 for districts not willing to take that risk, okay, to
17 take that risk to try something, to break down some of
18 the barriers we just talked about. Even if it does
19 that in the long term it would be well worth it.
20 MS. DEVIN: Has the Department worked on this
21 project at all do you have any comment you wish to
22 offer at this point?
23 MS. BURNS: Yes, we have been working on it.
24 Joe Simpson was made aware of this collaboration 18
25 months ago maybe or something about the beginning, and
283
1 has shared that with our unit, the technical education
2 vocational unit. We are aware. We have people who have
3 attended their meetings. We've invited Les to join us
4 in a collaboration we're doing with areas of technical
5 education. So we're aware of what they're doing,
6 working with them. And we support it, and we see this
7 as one of best practice ideas. They've chosen as a
8 district on their own. It's not happening via a heavy
9 hand. It's happening by choice. And we see that as
10 probably one of the best ways for vocational education
11 to be delivered in a different way is by them choosing
12 to do it.
13 What they're doing also fits in with some of
14 the recommendations that will come from NPR. And that
15 is incentives perhaps that the legislature may choose
16 to include in the career technical education funding
17 model, that is when we were talking earlier today about
18 whether or not to count students just intradistrict,
19 but interdistrict, perhaps that would be done by an
20 incentive. That's the same kind of money this group is
21 asking for here. Money to do the kinds of things right
22 for kids. Students who can become engaged, prevent
23 drop-outs, to find a way to stay in school, be
24 interested in school. And we're seeing it as a win for
25 kids. So to answer your question in a word, yes, we're
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1 supportive of it and aware of what they're doing.
2 MR. LOCKHART: I just had one question. This
3 would be back to the other panel. Lander and Riverton
4 are more than five miles apart and you have a program
5 going back and forth. I think the State of Wyoming,
6 Big Horn Basin, Greybull, 13 miles; five miles doesn't
7 seem to optimize this collaboration like these folks
8 are doing. Is that a problem for you?
9 MR. HOFFMAN: Honestly we haven't gone far
10 enough with it yet in terms of logistics. I couldn't
11 say yes or no to that. It is gonna be an experiment in
12 terms of some of those connections. We're confident it
13 will work. But I would be lying to you if I said we
14 know it works for sure.
15 MR. SCOTT: Isn't it going to work depending
16 on the nature of the course? If it's something you can
17 do over distance learning? Heck, you could do that
18 with any county. If it's something doesn't work over
19 distance learning then getting Dubois or Shoshone to
20 come to something in Lander gets to be much more of a
21 logistic problem.
22 MR. HOFFMAN: That comes to you have to look
23 at schedules and whether you have blocks. And as a
24 matter of fact the partnership Wind River and ourselves
25 have done the instructor, the type of course with the
285
1 computer is is very hands on. You can't do everything
2 over the network. But what we have tried to do is
3 tried to set it up so the instructor spends part time
4 with Wind River with the hands-on stuff and then part
5 of the time. So really becomes a scheduling thing.
6 We're 15 miles apart from each other. So it really
7 comes down to looking at how you schedule in the long
8 run differently, not matching necessarily day for day
9 on the schedules. If you try to shoot day for day it
10 won't work because believe me our uniqueness in our
11 districts come out. My district takes two days off for
12 the state basketball tournament. Everybody goes to
13 Casper and spends money there. But if you lay your
14 schedule out in larger blocks of time you'll find
15 commonalities in schedules and calendars for that
16 matter too.
17 MR. NELSON: I definitely confirm what Lonnie
18 has just told you. Another one of the visions I have
19 is that we need to involve our students in summer
20 training and opportunities. I can see hands-on
21 opportunities taught during the school year. But then
22 in the summertime let's get them involved in Habitat
23 for Humanity, items of this nature. Let's provide them
24 on-the-job training opportunities with these skills
25 that we've working to build up. Once again my district
286
1 is unique. We have a four-day schedule out there with
2 Fridays being used for enrichment and remediation.
3 That gives me an awful lot of flexibility on Friday. I
4 would like to see other schools come in, other students
5 from other schools come in and be able to use the best
6 items that I have and then in turn I ask that I be able
7 to go into their schools and use the best items they
8 have.
9 MS. DEVIN: Thank you. A lot of work for a
10 worthwhile project. I appreciate your concerted
11 effort. Any other comments that your group has had,
12 wants to offer to this committee?
13 MR. MCOMIE: I have one statement that I
14 wrote down, and I don't know the answer to this. I
15 appreciate if somebody from the Department of
16 Education, maybe tell me about this in another
17 meeting. No Child Left Behind versus vocational
18 education, we're talking some of the vocational tech
19 stuff, bringing kids that are going to drop out because
20 they don't care about meeting these standards and
21 meeting all the things up there on the board causes
22 problems for school districts, etc. That's been
23 bothering me since I watched that presentation and
24 involved as I am trying to do something with vocational
25 education, and I don't know if they're compatible. I
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1 think that's based upon pure academics, nothing to do
2 with vocation.
3 MS. BOHLING: The No Child Left Behind Act is
4 tracking schools on reading, writing and math. Those
5 are very basic skills that all students need to be
6 successful no matter whether they go directly into the
7 job market or on to the university or post-secondary or
8 some other arena. Vocational education is very much
9 involved in reading, writing and math. Usually those
10 students apply those skills in such a way that it is
11 more relevant and those children can see what it is.
12 Certainly they are not in opposition. No Child Left
13 Behind is trying to emphasize the importance of having
14 those skills no matter where you go. Vocational
15 education takes them a step further and helps them
16 apply those skills. So I just could not agree that
17 they are diametrically opposed because they aren't.
18 And the way we write our standards in Wyoming we are
19 very skills based. When you look at our standards in
20 reading and look at our standards in writing and math,
21 they are very, very skills based. In fact when some of
22 the entities back east evaluate our standards in
23 Wyoming that is the one complaint they have with us is
24 that they say that we emphasize skills to the detriment
25 of content. And what we tell them is we do that
288
1 consciously because we let the districts pull the
2 content in. You can pull content in in a vocational
3 class or pull it in through what you call an academic
4 class. It doesn't really matter as long as the kids
5 have those skills. So the emphasis on vocational
6 education does not mean that No Child Left Behind, that
7 one has to be at the expense of the other. They work
8 in tandem with each other.
9 MR. MCOMIE: I hope that's right. My concern
10 is the measurement that I see up there. That's where I
11 think the problem could concur. I hope you're exactly
12 right.
13 MS. BURNS: I would like to just add one
14 thing to what Deputy Annette Bohling just said. When
15 we're talking about career and technical or vocational
16 education today we seem to think about tech ed or
17 welding or industrial arts or that kind of thing. I
18 would submit to you a career technical education
19 teacher in Wyoming is really charged with three primary
20 duties in their class. And the first is they have to
21 be including academic content in the course. If you
22 were to ask Craig or any other outstanding career
23 technical education teacher there is reading, writing,
24 analytical thinking and a whole host of academic skills
25 embedded in the course.
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1 Second, of course they're teaching a
2 technical skill, woodworking or whatever the course is
3 named. But third, we are also expecting they're
4 teaching the soft skills or the employability skills
5 that work force development, employers, business and
6 industry and labor have said the kids need to have when
7 they come out of school and go to work. So the
8 vocational teacher is doing all three which causes me
9 to lend support to what Annette just said. The
10 academic curriculum is not being left out of a career
11 tech ed course in Wyoming.
12 MR. HOFFMAN: Probably the biggest mismatch
13 that you'll find is how we're assessing the child
14 really learns the application skills and then making
15 that match to assessments that don't really lend
16 themselves well to the way they learn the best through
17 applying things. And that's something that's probably
18 one of the biggest cautions we have to be careful of
19 when you talk about the WyCAS system, for example, is
20 that it doesn't assess kids necessarily the same way
21 they're learning to apply their skills in a lab class.
22 It really doesn't, my opinion it doesn't do a very good
23 job of that. That's where I think kids can get lost in
24 the sense of because it has to be regurgitated and
25 memorized. Many times kids that learn best through the
290
1 applied labs in the vocational setting there is a
2 disconnect there. Then they scratch their heads and
3 get frustrated. And sadly enough sometimes they start
4 to think they're failures, and we all know they're
5 not. That can be really hurtful if you don't have good
6 means to do that. Thank you.
7 MS. DEVIN: One question. The Perkins money
8 for equipment purchases as I understand, has that been
9 factored into the discussions of your group?
10 MR. KLINE: No, they have not been factored
11 in. We based our analysis strictly on state general
12 fund.
13 MS. DEVIN: Perkins funds that go to the
14 district would be over and above what they provided?
15 MR. KLINE: Yes.
16 MR. SCOTT: That's true of all of our funding
17 formulas, does not take any kind of federal.
18 MS. DEVIN: I think that's true. However, in
19 this case we're looking at the equipment. They're very
20 specific it needs to be equipment. Just wanted to see
21 how those fit together. So often they're general
22 programs.
23 MR. MARIS: Our discussions on this panel the
24 Perkins money is intended for new innovative start-up
25 type program. Whereas, the equipment money we've been
291
1 talking about that's been captured in this study is
2 replacement equipment, upgrade equipment for existing
3 programs.
4 MS. DEVIN: Any other questions of the panel?
5 Then, Dave, I think we've covered, I think we've come
6 to the end of our agenda. Thank you for your work.
7 And we have as you can see a heavy schedule for
8 October, so I hope we'll all line that out. Keep on
9 your calendars. Calendars are getting really, really
10 tight. So I'm going to try to hold to these schedules
11 to try to carve out those things.
12 MR. MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I would like to
13 thank you for running a meeting where people feel
14 included.
15 MS. DEVIN: We are adjourned.
16
17 Whereupon the hearing was adjourned.
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