Title I -- (1) Regulations on standards and assessments;
(2) Your State's plan

1.  Comments on Proposed Regulations on Standards and Assessments - Due June 5, 2002

The Department of Education has published proposed regulations for standards and assessments under Title I.  They are the results of the negotiated rule-making process set up by the Department (and which we have challenged in court, for failure to meet the law's requirement to equitably balance the numbers of negotiators representing parents and students those representing
educators and education officials).

To review the proposed regulations, go to http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fedreg/a020506c.html .  (This is the table of contents for the May 6th Federal Register.  The proposed regulations are the first document under Education Department - you have your choice of HTML or PDF.)

The Department is also working on proposed regulations on other issues, including adequate yearly progress, accountability, teacher quality and paraprofessionals, allocations, private school students and schoolwide programs.  (Drafts are not available yet, and these did not go through
negotiations, but comments may be made about those issues - either now before proposed regulations are released, and/or later in response to the specific proposed regulations).

Attached is a first, quick and partial draft of some of our comments on the proposed regulations ("Proposed Regs on Stds and Assessments.comments"). The comments are in the order of where they appear in the regs.  However, two of the biggest issues are:

    200.3(a)(2) -- Use of norm-referenced tests
    200.3(c) --  Inclusion of local assessments in the "state" system


2.  Your State’s Consolidated Plan for ESEA (including Title I) is being submitted to the Department of Education by June 12th.

Each State has to submit its Consolidated State Plan (including for Title I) to the U.S. Department of Education by no later than June 12th. The Department’s application form and instructions is available at <http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/CFP/conapp02.pdf>.  The final requirements for the plans appear in the May 22nd Federal Register and are available at <http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fedreg/a020522c.html>. (This is the table of contents for the May 22nd Federal Register. Scroll down the table of contents to the Education Department.)

If you have not commented on your State’s draft plan, your State’s comment period may already have closed. However, (a) because of the press of the June 12th deadline, the State may not have provided adequate opportunity for informed comment, and (b) if you didn’t see a notice about the opportunity, that is additional indication that notice was not adequate. Thus, you should feel free to comment both to the State and to the U.S. Department of Education. In any event, because of the very limited time for planning the many complex issues under the new No Child Left Behind Act version of Title I, your State should probably be viewing the June 12th submission as an interim plan and taking the time to develop a revision with fuller public involvement.

Attached are some brief thoughts about how to analyze your State's draft plan ("CSPs.suggestions").

As additional background, also attached is a second, earlier set of comments on regulations that CLE submitted before the Department of Education issued draft regulations ("Pre-Reg Comments".)   These are attached because they may be helpful in thinking about your State plan.  (In contrast to the comments regulations comments above, which are keyed to specific points raised by the Department's proposal, these earlier comments are broader, both in the range of standards and assessments issues it addresses and in going beyond standards and assessments to other planning and implementation issues.)

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If you submit comments to ED on the regulations or to your State or ED on your State Plan, we would much appreciate a copy.  Send a copy to pweckstein@cleweb.org .


Documents:
1.  Proposed Regs on Stds and Assessments comments.rtf
2.  CSPs Suggestions.rtf
3.  TI. Pre-reg comments.doc