After spending $75,000 to hire a professional consultant to draft revised state minimum standards for public schools, the Department of Education moved forward this week with its own version.
that documentThe plan, introduced during Thursday's State Board of Education meeting, seems foreign to contractors who have been working on updating the standards for more than three years and education advocates who have been closely watching the process.
So far, the ministry has refused to release the consultant's draft, submitted on January 22, despite a right-to-know request.
A number of organizations are currently scrambling to analyze a new minimum standards document that will define public education in New Hampshire for the next 10 years, ahead of a public hearing scheduled for April 3.
“There were significant concerns with the previously considered version, but this version… There are even bigger concerns.”
Pretorius said the draft bill “seems to really dismantle public schools and water down the meaning of public schools.”
In 2020, the Ministry of Education signed the following agreements: $50,000 contract It will work with Durham-based educational institutions to “facilitate revisions” to the minimum standards for public school accreditation, known as 306. National Competency Based Learning Center. That contract was recently extended for an additional $25,000, said Fred Bramante, the center's director who has led the revision effort.
The center convened a 13-member task force to oversee the revisions. Educator's protest, which gathered public input through 13 listening sessions last year. Bramante, November met For the first time, it reached an agreement with the state's largest teachers union in response to concerns that teachers were not included in the revision process. Based on that input, the task force prepared a revised draft of 306s and submitted it to the Department of Education on January 22, Bramante said.
Meghan Tuttle, president of the state's largest teachers' union, which supported the January draft, said “thoughtful and intentional work went into the Jan. 22 draft.” Tuttle declined to comment on the department's draft because he has not yet been able to analyze how it compares to the revised version in which he was involved.
Bramante, who has overseen the multi-year revision process, said there are significant differences between the two documents.
“Fortunately, the[Department of Education]included many of our recommendations in the draft, but we also made significant changes,” Bramante said, pending further investigation by the committee's members. The task force does not take a position on the ministry's draft law, it added. Thorough analysis.
Last fall, members of Mr. Bramante's task force told reporters that the Department of Education planned to make changes to the draft 306 it exchanged with the task force and the Department of Education, including language regarding equity. As it turned out, the recommendations from Mr. Bramante's task force were not binding, and the department had the right to change documents introduced into the formal rulemaking process, as it did this week.
trust issues
306 Throughout the revision process, educators and policy experts iteratively emphasized It is a belief that the department, led by Secretary Frank Edelblut, cannot be trusted to protect public education institutions.
Special committee member Val Zanchuk said at a September hearing that many people were concerned that the revised 306s under Edelblut could “create loopholes for people with anti-public school tendencies.” admitted that he was doing it.
That concern was raised again this week by Reaching Higher's Mr Pretorius. Preliminary analysis It reported on the Department's draft report and outlined six key areas of concern. Among them, the document removes references to local control of education and also removes class size requirements, potentially leaving states with no cap on class sizes.
Additionally, she made certain changes in the document, such as replacing the word “instructions” with “study” and replacing the word “shall” with “may” to remove certain obligations. I have concerns about the wording.
Mr Pretorius is concerned that these changes could be used to change the calculation of “adequate education funding”. This is a constitutional requirement for the state to supply local governments and is the subject of ongoing litigation within the state.
She added that some of the changes in 306 are similar to efforts previously rejected by Congress. 2022 bill That would remove art, social studies and other subjects from the core academic areas studied by New Hampshire students.
“There have been legislative efforts to do some of this work, but they have not yet passed, and we now see the shadow of that in this proposed rule,” Pretorius said.
Bramante said that changes to class size requirements and certain subject requirements, including social studies, were not included in the January draft, in part because his task force identified them. He said this was because he didn't feel “in the right place” to make the change.
Consultant 3 minutes
Bramante said he wanted to present the task force's revisions to the State Board of Education ahead of the Feb. 15 meeting. He offered, but was told there was no time limit and he could speak during public comment, which was limited to three minutes.
Bramante said the task force's Jan. 22 document was supported by the school administrators association in addition to the teachers union, and he expects it will eventually be made public.
“When you have a document that is approved and supported by the leadership of the group that is responsible for implementing (these changes)…I think that says something,” Bramante said. “I'm not saying we're better than the[Department of Education]. … We've brought the group together, we've created a very reliable team, we've reached agreement on a number of very serious issues. , I think everyone would say that we have advanced competency-based learning.”
The state board is scheduled to hold a public hearing on April 3rd, where the public will be able to comment on the proposed update to minimum standards for public schools, in order to gain public input in the process. This is the only opportunity legally required to do so.
“It's a big day,” Pretorius said.
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