Legislature(2019 - 2020)CAPITOL 106
04/29/2019 08:30 AM House EDUCATION
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| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| Presentation: Continuation of K-12 Funding Considerations by Mark Foster, Financial Performance Analyst | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
JOINT MEETING
SENATE EDUCATION STANDING COMMITTEE
HOUSE EDUCATION STANDING COMMITTEE
April 29, 2019
8:32 a.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
SENATE EDUCATION STANDING COMMITTEE
Senator Shelley Hughes, Vice Chair
Senator Tom Begich
HOUSE EDUCATION STANDING COMMITTEE
Representative Harriet Drummond, Co-Chair
Representative Andi Story, Co-Chair
Representative Grier Hopkins
Representative Chris Tuck
Representative Tiffany Zulkosky
Representative Josh Revak
MEMBERS ABSENT
SENATE EDUCATION STANDING COMMITTEE
Senator Gary Stevens, Chair
Senator Chris Birch
Senator Mia Costello
HOUSE EDUCATION STANDING COMMITTEE
Representative DeLena Johnson
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
PRESENTATION: CONTINUATION OF K-12 FUNDING CONSIDERATIONS BY
MARK FOSTER~ FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE ANALYST
- HEARD
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
See Education minutes from 4/24/2019.
WITNESS REGISTER
MARK FOSTER, Financial Performance Analyst
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Continued his presentation on K-12 in
Alaska: Investing in Effective Measures to Ensure Student
Success in Life.
ACTION NARRATIVE
8:32:05 AM
CO-CHAIR STORY called the joint meeting of the Senate and House
Education Standing Committees to order at 8:32 a.m. Present at
the call to order were Senators Begich and Representatives
Revak, Hopkins, Tuck and Co-Chairs Drummond and Story. Senator
Hughes and Representative Zulkosky arrived as the meeting was
in progress.
^Presentation: Continuation of K-12 Funding Considerations by
Mark Foster, Financial Performance Analyst
Presentation: Continuation of K-12 Funding Considerations by
Mark Foster, Financial Performance Analyst
8:33:25 AM
CO-CHAIR STORY announced the continuation of the presentation K-
12 Funding Considerations by Mark Foster by teleconference. She
noted they did not have a chance to review the appendices at the
last meeting and they would be starting on page 31 of K-12 in
Alaska: Investing in Effective Measures to Ensure Student
Success in Life and would follow-up with Frequently Asked
Questions.
8:34:36 AM
MARK FOSTER, Financial Performance Analyst, Anchorage, Alaska,
said he had been invited to appear to follow up on testimony he
provided to Senate Finance. He was retained by Senator von Imhof
to do research into K-12 investment levels and performance. This
is a follow on to that work and the subsequent questions on that
presentation.
MR. FOSTER turned to page 31, Investment Levels, Return on
Investment. He wanted to compare how Alaska stacks up to the
other states on the level of investment by category and the
return on investment on those cost-of-living adjusted costs,
specifically looking at how well the state is doing at getting
growth in student assessment based on the level of investment.
They will look at questions he received in Senate Finance on
spending levels by Alaska districts by category and talk about
what he found with his conversations with district
superintendents with respect to those investment levels.
Finally, they will look at revealing work done in Anchorage to
look at growth and proficiency.
8:37:09 AM
REPRESENTATIVE ZULKOSKY joined the committee.
MR. FOSTER said, moving on to page 32, that the U.S. Census
conducts a survey that asks districts across the country to
report on expenditure levels. For the most recent survey
available, FY 16, he will look at Table 8, Per Pupil Amounts for
Current Spending of Public Elementary-Secondary School Systems.
This is all the public school districts that report. He has
adjusted the raw data by state average cost of living using the
state average cost of living index that has been used by the
Alaska Department of Labor in its Alaska economic trends report.
Alaska is about 30 percent above the national average for a
statewide cost of living index. Wyoming is five percent below
the national average. The table shows total spending by state.
Wyoming is number one at $17,199 per pupil basis. Alaska is at
$13,333. Over time, Alaska began to decline relative to other
states after peaking about five years ago. As the states in the
lower 48 have recovered from the 2008 recession, Alaska has been
holding even and fighting against inflation. Alaska began to
fall in terms of its purchasing power on a per student basis.
This shows the results by FY 2016.
MR. FOSTER said page 33 shows the salaries and wages per pupil
amount, adjusted for cost of living. Alaska has fallen below the
median value and the average value in the United States. Alaska
is about 63 percent of Wyoming. The salaries and wage per pupil
amount for the United States is $6,866. When adjusted for cost
of living, Alaska is at $6,343. The salary and wages Alaska
offers on a per pupil basis are low relative to the U.S. and
creates challenges in attracting and retaining teachers.
MR. FOSTER said page 34 shows instructional investment on a per
pupil basis. Alaska has fallen to number 31, about 63 percent of
Wyoming. New York has the highest levels of investing in
instructional salary and wages and Alaska is about 58 percent of
that value.
MR. FOSTER said that for page 35, they take the current cost-of-
living adjusted spend, the total amount, and divide that by the
scale score growth from the fourth to the eighth grade in
reading on the NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress
scores to assess what is the return on for the dollars they are
investing for student growth. On a cost-of-living adjusted
basis, Alaska is just outside of the high-value, high-growth
quadrant for reading on the NAEP scores on reading for the 2013-
2017 scale. Alaska is doing fairly well in terms of return on
investment for reading growth from fourth grade to eighth grade.
MR. FOSTER said that page 36 shows the math scale score growth
is below the median. Alaska is in the low-value, low-growth
quadrant with room to improve. Nonetheless, based on the
dispersion, Alaska is not far from the middle of the pack. West
Virginia, Missouri, Vermont, Connecticut, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, and North Dakota are around Alaska and not
significantly far off from where Alaska is.
MR. FOSTER said page 37 addresses a Finance Committee question
about how Alaska would stack up based on the governor's proposed
February budget. Using the FY 16 U.S. census data and projected
growth for the lower 48, instructional salary and wages under
the governor's proposed budget would likely land Alaska at the
very bottom of the chart against the other states on a cost-of-
living adjusted basis. He would caution against anyone thinking
that the proposed budget will do anything other than create
serious and significant challenges for Alaska's ability to
attract and retain highly qualified and effective teachers.
8:45:02 AM
MR. FOSTER said they did touch briefly on the material on page
38, but he wanted to reiterate an important finding from some of
the large, longitudinal data bases being developed and analyzed.
The data on page 38 from Raj Chetty looks at the long-term
impact on student success, in this case, in terms of average
earnings for students aged 25 to 27 and the extent to which test
scores reflect their success in life. In the kindergarten test
score analysis, the kindergarten scores only relate to about
five percent of the differential in average earnings. Those
numbers tend to increase over time, over the grade progression,
but not significantly. It is important to remember that when
they are looking at the early elementary grades, those test
scores are weakly correlated with student success in life. They
don't want to overemphasize their importance in assessing how
students well are doing. Other factors tend to be much
important. One example of that is on page 39.
MR. FOSTER said that slide 39 contains information from "The
Full Measure of a Teacher" published in Education Next in winter
2019. The author, Kirabo Jackson, used a rich data set from
North Carolina that allowed him to look at the extent that test
scores or other factors drive success in student graduation and
adult outcomes. It is the noncognitive skills, adaptability,
motivation, and self-restraint, that are picked up across the
grade span. Good teachers help contribute to those factors and
those factors in turn are extremely important at driving student
success and creating opportunities. Mr. Jackson's conclusion is
that teachers' impact on "noncognitive skills is ten times more
predictive of students' longer-term success in high school and
their graduation rate than their impact on test scores." The
value-add that they find in this data looking at teacher impact
on students is on those soft skills, adaptability, motivation,
and self-restraint. It is a reminder that while test scores are
helpful in assessing how students are progressing, they don't
ultimately become a major factor in success in life. They are
only weakly correlated, so they do not want to overemphasize
test scores if their goal and mission is student success.
CO-CHAIR STORY said that Mr. Foster's role with the Anchorage
School District and being on the board probably correlates to
hearing a lot from business partners that part of what they want
is these soft skills. That is one of the most critical things
they are looking for in students. She asked if he would agree.
MR. FOSTER answered certainly. They have ongoing conversations
with that as a central feature.
8:49:38 AM
REPRESENTATIVE HOPKINS asked what the specific soft skills are
and whether he has seen anyplace in Alaska with examples of good
programs for those soft skills.
MR. FOSTER answered they cluster around those in bold on page
39, the adaptability, the motivation, the self-restraint. Within
that cluster is teamwork, learning to work with other students.
A critical piece that people sometimes forget about it is
working with other students from a wide range of backgrounds.
That is much more reflective of ongoing life experiences because
people interact with a variety of people in various endeavors in
a team setting. Anchorage started investing in social and
emotional learning over a decade ago. They have tried to infuse
that, especially in the early grades, in a lot of the work that
they do. From time to time, Anchorage will report out data
indicating that has been successful. Some correlation with test
scores exists, but ultimately efforts are focused on soft
skills. He is certain there are other adaptations across the
state, but he has not explicitly analyzed the nature and extent
of the programs across Alaska that are focused on soft skills.
REPRESENTATIVE HOPKINS asked if he could recommend anyone who
has worked on that.
MR. FOSTER replied that there are certainly people who have been
involved in the development and implementation of the programs.
He will get those names to him. They will have an idea about the
evolution of those programs and what worked best in the Alaska
context.
8:52:54 AM
SENATOR HUGHES joined the committee.
CO-CHAIR STORY said their educational partners, the Association
of Alaska School Boards, the Superintendents Association, and
others, are also working on those, so they should consult them.
MR. FOSTER said that page 40 is a follow up to discussions about
the percentage of program expenditures by functional category.
He has separated out, under the state chart of accounts,
instruction, support services, administrative services, and
operations and maintenance. On the bottom x axis, he has grouped
the Big Five [urban districts] and rural districts. Each
district gets a dot on the dot plot. For the Big Five, the dots
roughly show that 60 percent of total program expenditures are
for instruction. The rural dispersion goes from the mid-60s into
the sub-40s. Looking at support services shows the Big Five dots
are clustered and the rural dots are dispersed. For
administrative services, the Big Five percentages are around 12,
14 percent and rural areas have a fairly large dispersion. For
operations and maintenance, the Big Five percentages are around
ten to 15 percent and for rural districts, from ten to about 23.
At first blush, the question is what is happening in rural
districts. In the conversations they have had with
superintendents about rural success, one of things they ran into
around rural challenges was the continuing conversation about
the ability to attract and retain qualified and effective
teachers. In many cases, the rural districts cannot fill
positions with qualified and effective teachers, so they have
filled some of the positions in other areas with folks so they
can get people into the mix to help support students as best
they can with the budgets they have. That is one of the features
of the dispersion. The other feature of the dispersion that many
people may be aware of is the high cost of facilities in rural
environments, particularly for energy costs. That is one of the
drivers in the operations and maintenance dispersion.
MR. FOSTER said at first blush there may be concern about
spending outside of the classroom, but when they drill down,
they are tending to find that it reflects the challenge of
attracting and retaining teachers and the high cost of rural
facilities. Those are the primary drivers behind those
dispersions. Each district has its set of challenges, but those
appear to be the two primary drivers in the dispersion they see
in that data.
SENATOR BEGICH clarified that if they had the ability to recruit
teachers for rural Alaska, they would see the second bar from
the left tighten up. Effectively, school districts are back
filling because they can't recruit and that is reflected in the
stretched out fourth bar.
MR. FOSTER answered yes.
8:58:24 AM
CO-CHAIR STORY asked what instructional expenditures include.
She asked if it includes paraeducators, librarians, principals,
special ed teachers, etc., or if it only classroom teachers.
MR. FOSTER replied that instruction in the state chart of
accounts for Alaska is drawn slightly larger than the census
category. It includes teachers and people who are providing
services to students in classrooms, for example, teaching
assistants in the classroom. Principals and some of those
support services will be in admin. The state chart of accounts
is available on the Department of Education and Early
Development (DEED) website.
MR. FOSTER said pages 41-44 are expanded treatment for each of
the categories on the summary graph on page 40. Page 41 shows
the dispersion is great for instruction as percentage of total
state program expenditures. Similarly on pages 42, 43, and 44,
which give a better sense of dispersion by size of the program.
CO-CHAIR STORY said they received some information from the
Alaska Association of School Business Officials (ALASBO). They
had included principals in instructional costs. Their
calculation was 6.1 percent for superintendents and their staff
and school boards. They will get that to him.
MR. FOSTER said that when he was at the Anchorage School
District, they did not adopt that chart of accounts for purposes
of reporting to the school board and the public. When they look
at the national chart of accounts to benchmark against other
districts across the country, they adopted the U.S. census
definitions because they are more generally applicable. They
appreciate the state and that historic perspective, but that
puts them on an island in the ability to compare nationally. For
internal comparisons, he agrees with the information she has on
the state chart of accounts in terms of how they stack that up.
9:02:55 AM
SENATOR HUGHES clarified that page 41 shows that about a fifth
of districts are spending 60 percent or more on administration
instead of instruction. She understands they do not have
economies of scale and heating costs more, but she wonders if
there has been a deep look into how their funds break out and
could there be an adjustment. The Education Transformation Act
that the Senate is hoping the House will look at during the
interim has a piece about cooperative grants. It expands the
definition to allow partnerships between districts and other
entities, such as nonprofits and local governments, to look for
efficiencies. The bill requires that a cooperative grant would
always include one rural district to help move dollars into the
classroom. That could be a helpful tool. She asked him if she is
reading the graph correctly, that ten or more districts are
spending more than 60 percent on administration, is that
appropriate and could things be moved around in those budgets to
get more money in the classroom.
MR. FOSTER replied he has not done an independent analysis of
the administrative services as a percentage of the total state
program to look at the outliers, to be able to assess where that
spend is at and what the particular circumstances are. He can
report back the information they received from superintendents
when they asked them about the challenges. The basically
reported their key challenges were attracting and retaining and
higher operations and maintenance costs for facilities. The
combination of those two represented the majority of these
differentials, but he has not independently audited any
particular case.
SENATOR HUGHES asked if she were reading page 41 correctly, that
ten or 11 districts are spending less than 40 percent on
instruction.
MR. FOSTER said that on page 41, several districts are below 40
percent on instruction, but that presentation does not indicate
whether the balance is for admin, operations and maintenance, or
support services. It just shows instruction as a percentage of
the state program expenditures.
9:06:51 AM
SENATOR BEGICH said that page 43 does deal with admin services
and no district appears to be above 24 percent. Senator Hughes
brings up a good point about 11 districts having less than 40
percent going into the classroom. Earlier he asked if that was
because they cannot hire teachers in rural Alaska and
consequently there was backfill to other support services
sections, which are line 4 on the graph on page 40. The point is
that while there is less classroom instruction in the rural
districts, the cause of that appears to be, number one, they
cannot recruit teachers so they end up backfilling by bringing
in support services to provide some support and two, because
operations and maintenance costs are higher. No one is exceeding
25 percent for admin. What is happening is they cannot recruit
teachers into these districts because the state is not
competitive anymore. That is how he reads this.
MR. FOSTER replied that is consistent with the feedback they
have received from rural district representatives.
9:08:49 AM
CO-CHAIR DRUMMOND asked if the low percentage of funds spent on
instruction in rural Alaska be because those districts have
newer teachers at lower salaries. She asked where the cost of
recruiting and retaining teachers is shown on page 43.
MR. FOSTER said those HR costs would be in administrative
services. As far as the question about whether this reflects
lower teacher salaries and higher salaries in some of the other
support services and admin services sectors, that is certainly
possible. He would caution against that being too big a factor
in this particular set of numbers. He is pulling the Big Five
out and treating the balance of districts as rural. That would
include Ketchikan, Sitka, Kodiak, etc., and teachers there are
clustered at the end of the salary schedule rather than at the
beginning. Given the larger, regional hubs within this data set,
he is not sure it is true in aggregate, but it certainly is true
in the smaller, rural districts.
SENATOR HUGHES said that to clarify, when she referred to
instruction vs administration, she was lumping operations and
maintenance in with that. She asked if paraprofessionals or
teacher aides are counted as instruction or support services.
MR. FOSTER replied that if they are in the classroom, they will
be counted as instruction.
9:12:23 AM
REPRESENTATIVE HOPKINS said an Alaska statute limits how much
credit teachers from outside the state can be given on a salary
schedule. It is limited to six steps on a salary schedule for a
bachelor's degree and eight steps for a master's degree. They
have late career teachers come to the state who have been
teaching ten, 12, 15 years and can only get credit for eight of
those years. That limits experienced teachers coming into
Alaska. Mr. Foster had talked about how Alaska is in a national
market for teacher recruitment. In recent years, other states
that Alaska recruited from have had substantial jumps in their
salaries. Alaska recruits heavily from Washington and used to be
competitive against Washington, but after a Washington court
case was finally resolved, it has seen increases of 12 and 20
percent in teacher salary ranges. That will substantially impact
Alaska's ability to recruit experienced teachers.
CO-CHAIR STORY asked Mr. Foster to explain what is included in
support services.
MR. FOSTER said he would call up the state chart of accounts at
the end of the presentation.
MR. FOSTER said pages 45 and 46 have an Anchorage-specific
perspective. Now they are diving into a set of questions
regarding Anchorage. A frequent question was how well Anchorage
is doing compared to other large districts who have similar
challenges with diversity, mobility, and transitions. One
question was how well Anchorage compared to Miami-Dade, Florida,
which has a third grade retention policy if students are not
proficient. This has raised their fourth grade NAEP reading
scores at or above proficiency to around 42 percent. But
subsequent research into how they do in the eighth grade shows
that Miami has a significant fall off and had about a 32 percent
proficiency rate in 2017 for eighth grade reading. Austin,
Texas, is often the leading district in the Council of Great
City Schools in growing their students. The 2018 Key Academic
Performance Indicators Report shows that it goes from about 33
or 34 percent to 36 percent in NAEP reading proficiency from
fourth grade to eighth grade. The national public average is
steady at about 35 percent. The national large city schools'
numbers go from the 27, 28 percent rage and slow drop down to
about 26 percent.
MR. FOSTER said Anchorage does not report on the NAEP scale, so
they had to go to a 2015 NAEP publication that allowed them to
map and project their state performance standards on to the NAEP
scale so they could look at how Anchorage does from the fourth
to the eighth grade on the percentage proficient. Anchorage on
reading proficiency improvement from fourth to the eighth grade
exceeds the top district in the change in proficiency and the
proficiency level among the top 100 districts by attendance.
Anchorage is performing ahead of Austin, Texas, in that measure.
He wanted to give kudos to the Anchorage teachers, principals,
and teams at the schools. They are doing quite well in reading
growth from the fourth to the eighth grade compared to other
districts facing similar demographic challenges. It was a very
interesting study to see how well Anchorage stacked up.
SENATOR BEGICH asked why they don't talk about this story. They
talk about failing schools in this state all the time. There are
successful schools. This data alone ought to be a press release.
He asked Mr. Foster, who has worked in the district
administration and been on the school board, what accounts for
the level of success in Anchorage between fourth and eighth
grade. It is quite marked to the other districts on the graph.
He asked if there were similar data with the MAP [Measures of
Academic Progress] scores.
9:20:06 AM
MR. FOSTER replied that he has not dived into the MAP scores. In
terms of what might be driving that, he would turn to page 46.
He also was curious after he got those results to decompose each
of the grade level jumps and then try to research what was
making the difference. He looked at PEAKS [Performance
Evaluation for Alaska's Schools] scores to look at the
progression by each grade in the growth of the percentage
proficient for reading from 2016 to 2017 and 2017 to 2018. The
chart on page 46 shows growth and proficiency. From third to
fourth grade, fourth to fifth, and fifth to sixth it looks good
in terms of the percentage proficient. Then there is jump from
sixth to seventh, seventh to eighth, and eighth to ninth. There
is some evidence of acceleration in proficiency. There may be
something there they are doing differently from the rest of the
U.S. that helps to contribute to significant improvement in
proficiency and growth in the NAEP mapping. When he tries to
interview folks who have been in the district for many years,
what often comes up is the middle school model in Anchorage.
That involves enabling teachers to have more time to track and
collaborate on where students are and how they are doing to
ensure that the students are continuing to grow. At least in
interviews that is cited. The MAP scores show some evidence that
they are getting a good bump in scores from the sixth grade to
seventh grade. Anchorage seems to be doing well in orienting
kids from elementary school to middle school. He suspects there
are other factors, but that is the preliminary assessment.
CO-CHAIR DRUMMOND asked if they are looking at fourth and eighth
graders in the same test year on page 45.
MR. FOSTER replied that looks only at the NAEP scale in 2017. It
doesn't look at cohorts because he didn't have the cohort data
for prior periods.
CO-CHAIR DRUMMOND clarified that that means that the fourth
graders for this chart will be eighth graders in 2021.
MR. FOSTER answered correct.
CO-HAIR DRUMMOND asked if there is a way to look at fourth
graders in 2013 to compare them to these eighth grades in 2017.
MR. FOSTER responded that they don't have PEAK scores for that
prior period. He would have to analyze the prior AMP [Alaska
Measures of Progress] scores. That might be an analytic
exercise. The other challenge is that he doesn't have the
complete NAEP national and large city data sets.
9:25:12 AM
REPRESENTATIVE TUCK clarified that these are NAEP scores for
2017, but Mr. Foster had to do an adjusted factor for the
Anchorage School District for 2015 because they didn't have NAEP
scores for 2017.
MR. FOSTER replied that there was a NAEP report from 2015 that
shows how their test standards stack up to NAEP, so that gives
them way of translating Alaska state standards over to the NAEP
scale. Then, based on changes in the Alaska test from 2015 to
2017, they made further adjustments. It is a two-step process to
get them to the NAEP scale in 2017.
CO-CHAIR STORY asked if it was a good time to define support
services.
MR. FOSTER said he would go online to find the state chart of
accounts.
9:26:57 AM
At ease
9:27:03 AM
CO-CHAIR STORY reconvened the meeting.
MR. FOSTER said they would be looking at page 26 in the DEED
chart of accounts, the 2018 edition, which begins the
descriptions of the functional codes within the state chart of
accounts. Instruction includes the educational activities
directly involving the interaction between teachers and
students. It includes certificated classroom teachers or other
certificated personnel, classroom assistants who directly assist
in the instructional process. Examples of the types of
expenditures to include are salaries, employee benefits,
teaching supplies, textbooks, equipment, etc.
CO-CHAIR STORY asked if other certificated staff includes
special education teachers, ESL teachers, and gifted and
talented teachers.
MR. FOSTER said he thought those would be classified as 200 but
they would roll up to the instruction category. That is page 27,
special education instruction.
MR. FOSTER said there had been a question about administration,
which was on page 30. Administration includes principals while
not in the classroom. It is possible that a principal provides
teaching services in a small district and that activity would be
classified elsewhere, but principals in a large district not
providing classroom services would be in school administration.
CO-CHAIR STORY asked if the data on pages 40-44 is based on the
census data or the Alaska chart of accounts data.
MR. FOSTER answered that pages 40-44 were based on the Alaska
chart of accounts.
9:32:03 AM
MR. FOSTER moved to the handout on Frequently Asked Questions
and said one question was about whether they could use the
cohort-matched fourth to eighth grade test scores to measure
student growth. The short answer is yes. When the Educational
Testing Service (ETS) put together the NAEP scale score in
reading and math in one of the rewrites in the 1980s, they
specifically delineated the test period and the test scale to
enable them to compare fourth to eighth grade cohorts over time.
The detail around that design and pictorial maps are available
in the 1998 and 2003 ETS reports describing how they measure
gains from the fourth to the eighth grade in the NAEP scores.
They measure it not just by states. They looked at subgroups of
students, whether eligible for free or reduced lunch, and other
subgroups. The test is designed to allow changes over time to be
estimated among those cohorts. Those cohorts will change, but
NAEP samples the group and produces an estimate for the
population of students. They are looking at an estimate of how
the population is changing over time. For those purposes, NAEP
can be used. It is not following individual students. It is
following a group.
MR. FOSTER said that in some of appendices from governance
meetings, they use a rough rule of thumb that 12 points for NAEP
reading and math scores is equivalent to one year of schooling.
A 48-point scale score growth would be a benchmark for growth
between fourth grade and eighth grade. He did that for NAEP
reading and math growth between fourth and eighth grade for
2003-2013, 2011-2015, and 2013-2017. Alaska is above that
standard for reading but below it in math.
CO-CHAIR STORY noted that they are on page 2 of the Frequently
Asked Questions.
MR. FOSTER said another question was what is the basis for
offering that roughly half of the variation in test scores is
attributable to poverty. He points to the work he did as the
chief financial officer of the Anchorage School District and
subsequent work looking at PEAKS data and running regressions
against that data for free and reduced lunch or economically
disadvantaged, English language learners, mobility, and other
regression factors trying to identify the key variance drivers
across those data sets. He ran about six years of AMP data when
he was at the school district and then more recently two years
of the PEAKS data. His experience working through that data
leads him to suggest that somewhere on the order of half of the
variance can be contributed to poverty and poverty-related
factors.
MR. FOSTER said he offers up a few other places where they have
tried to estimate the prominent factors looking at student
achievement across the U.S. The Northwest Evaluation Association
that sponsors the MAP has an October 2018 report looking at the
relationships between poverty and school performance. This looks
at how well schools are doing on tests, not individual students.
That found something comparable to what he found, which is that
about half of school achievement can be accounted for by the
percentage of low-income students. That is a fairly robust
estimate going back to studies across time. The more recent data
in the last two or three years indicates the poverty cluster as
being responsible for roughly half. The Alaska data appears to
be comparable to the national data. Other reports suggesting
that gap may be on a growth trendline come from Sean Reardon at
Stanford, who published the "The Widening Income Achievement
Gap" in 2013. The Miami-Dade literature review is a
comprehensive look at the effects of poverty on student
achievement for a general audience. The discussion in that 2009
report is quite good.
MR. FOSTER said that he wanted to remind the committee that they
were looking at school performance and grades within schools.
They are clustering students when reporting out these scores.
They are taking some of the dispersion out of the data because
they are clustering students into schools. Individual student
achievement data within schools typically exceeds the dispersion
of the data between schools. Within a school, the variation in
individual student achievement is typically larger than the
variation between the schools. Each school and each teacher face
a wide variety of students each day. That is where they want to
focus their analytic and policy analysis on helping the teachers
with growing all of those students. It is a reminder that school
scores are instructive, but that is not where they are making a
difference in student lives. It is at the student level. They
want to provide tools to the folks on the front lines to measure
progress and make improvements on the standard academic
achievement and also build up the soft skills of adaptability,
motivation, and self-restraint.
9:41:24 AM
SENATOR HUGHES asked about the assertion on page 39 that
teachers' impact on non-cognitive skills is ten times more
predictive of student success. She asked if they are doing
anything to measure that in Alaska, is there anything that can
measure that, and is there anything in teacher college training
to help teachers learn to develop good methods to help students
with adaptability, motivation, and self-restraint.
MR. FOSTER replied that there is a lot of activity in this area
across Alaska. Some of it has been going on for over a decade
and includes some measurement of how they are doing in that
area. It is always an opportunity to take a fresh look at
whether those who are successful in this area are sharing that.
He doesn't have a good feel for whether that is occurring.
Others can opine on that, but it is occurring across Alaska.
SENATOR HUGHES said those skill sets are developed in the Alaska
Military Youth Academy. They see those kids start to soar. They
focus on teaching the students self-discipline and motivation.
They put them in team activities. The development of those
skills is fascinating to her.
MR. FOSTER said page four of the Frequently Asked Questions has
the question does poverty cause lower test scores. He would
answer that by stating that student achievement on standards-
based tests frequently reflect a host of challenges associated
with poverty. Poverty is shorthand for low household income and
limited social and household support resources. In the last few
years, there has been additional research about what is it about
poverty that is the driver that creates the challenges for
students in the early grades and into the high school grades,
where it reemerges as a factor and a head wind. It is not
directly causal, so much as it is the factors around poverty
that may be the driver of the differences. There is now a rich
literature examining what is it about poverty and Adverse
Childhood Experiences and parental and household support.
MR. FOSTER said another question is what other factors besides
poverty influence student achievement. That is a long list. The
work of John Hattie is an introduction to that long list.
Hattie's work tries to estimate not only what factors but what
the relative influence of those factors is on student
achievement. Mr. Foster said he would also include class size on
that list. The most recent research shows the more important
effect of the synergy between class size and effective teachers.
MR. FOSTER said another question is what factors should they
consider when they assess policy options aimed at improving
student success in life. It is important to emphasize that they
want to confer and consult with local subject matter experts who
are successful over time not only with affluent students but
with helping to grow a wide variety of students over their grade
span. There is a lot of rich, local knowledge that helps them
understand what drives student success, what sustains it, and
then validate that local expert judgement against local and
national data sets and case sets to make sure that they can
understand what is driving it. The flip of that is to take the
evidence and see how it translates into the local community.
Frequently they assume a national study will fit, but local
factors and circumstances may make it not applicable. That
knowledge exchange runs in both directions. They should use both
local and outside knowledge to give them a richer base to design
and aggregate their collective judgement about what works and
what doesn't and where to go to next.
MR. FOSTER said a question was whether teacher content knowledge
and competency of reading instruction matter. It clearly does.
There is an ongoing debate about what the critical elements are
of early literacy. Rather than relitigate that debate, he will
leave it to another study.
MR. FOSTER said that concluded his presentation.
CO-CHAIR STORY thanked him for his work.
9:52:20 AM
There being no further business to come before the committee,
Co-Chair Story adjourned the Senate Education Standing Committee
at 9:52 a.m.
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|---|---|
| HEDC_Presentation_K-12 Investing in Effective Measures_MarkFoster_24April2019.pdf |
HEDC 4/29/2019 8:30:00 AM |
K-12 Student Achievement |
| M Foster 4.29.19 Alaska K12 Student Achievement and Investment FAQs.pdf |
HEDC 4/29/2019 8:30:00 AM |
FAQ K-12 Student Achievement |