September 2000

BY STATE EDUCATION COMMISSIONER RICHARD P. MILLS

The Meeting in Brief

The Regents will convene their annual Legislative Public Policy Conference this month in addition to the regular monthly meeting.

The Conference topics will include school leadership, career and technical education, teaching, financing of higher education, and cultural institutions’ contributions to communities and education. In addition, Regents will consider the Library Commission’s recommendations, public protection within the professions and improving outcomes for children with psychiatric disabilities. At this writing, we already have a large advance registration for the Legislative Conference.

Here is a summary of the regular meeting.

• Unlicensed teachers in Schools Under Registration Review
• CUNY Master Plan
• Budget adoption – except for State school aid which is scheduled for November
• Library Services recommendations
• Teacher certification exam results for colleges/universities

• Higher education quality assurance
• Year 2 of Standards Implementation Study
• Career and technical education proposal
• English Language Learners policy issues
• Task Force on Closing the Gap report and discussion of four symposia
• Subcommittee on State Aid report on policy issues
• Special education space

• Four charter school applications and one charter revision
• Appointments to Roosevelt District Review Panel
• 2001-2002 Proposed Budget
• CUNY Master Plan

The Regents acted earlier this year to support teacher recruiting. It’s a critically important strategy for closing the gaps in student achievement. For example, the Board created the framework for alternate route programs, changed regulations to enable effective out-of-state recruiting, and advocated effectively for funding that took shape in the Governor’s Teacher’s of Tomorrow Program. And this support will continue.

New York City is under a court order to employ certified teachers in the SURR schools. With the opening of school, all common branch (preK-6) teachers in positions filled since September 1999 will be certified. All non-common branch teachers hired anywhere in the City must go to the SURR schools.

Here are some steps that New York City can take on its own behalf:

• Hold additional training sessions for the alternate route throughout the year. The Regents emergency action to create this opportunity in July was not a summer program.
• Invite other public and independent colleges and universities to offer the alternate route.
• Expand the New York City Board of Education’s recruiting team.
• Recruit now for the 2001-2002 year. Students and faculty in New York Colleges and Universities need to hear the City’s recruiting message as soon as the new academic year begins.
• Support the Regents legislative proposal of last year to enable recently retired teachers to return to the classroom.

State law requires the City University of New York to adopt a master plan every four years for Regents approval. The Regents will discuss the Master Plan and the results of the CUNY hearing conducted on September 6^th in New York City.

Three criteria guide the Regents decision on the CUNY Master Plan:

1. Has the University responded to the statutory requirements for the plan? These are defined in section 6206.
2. Is the plan consistent with the University’s mission as defined in section 6201?
3. Will the plan help achieve the goals of the Statewide Plan for Higher Education?

It will be helpful to again examine these two important sections of statute and the Statewide Plan while reading the CUNY Master Plan. I will offer my recommendations before the Regents meeting.

Regents have worked on their 2001-2002 proposal since February to link budget to their strategic plan. The Board established expected outcomes and evaluation criteria for the initiatives and reviewed existing initiatives. In April, the Board evaluated initiatives proposed by program offices in the State Education Department in committees. The Board Committees discussed the proposed initiatives for 2001-2002 in June, and the full Board discussed the proposals as a whole in July.

With the exception of the state aid proposal which comes to the Regents for a vote in November, the 2001-2002 Budget proposal is ready for adoption.

At the meeting we will discuss state teacher exam results in relation to the institutions that prepared the teacher candidates. Regents policy requires colleges and universities to get at least 80 percent of those who complete their programs to pass the state teacher exams. Institutions that fall short must improve their performance or lose the right to prepare teachers.

Long and thoughtful discussion with higher education leaders in all sectors has brought us to a major milestone with the Quality Assurance Initiative in Higher Education. The Regents will receive final recommendations this month. This work will support institutional improvement and better information for the public. We should also use the work on this project by the Advisory Group on Quality Assurance and the Commissioner’s Advisory Group as the foundation for Regents advocacy for higher education funding.

I am pleased to see the promise of more coordinated external accountability reporting for institutions. There is no reason for duplicative and uncoordinated demands for information from public agencies and accrediting bodies.

I am especially pleased to see that 15 colleges and universities representing all sectors have agreed to pilot a web-based information system for consumers.

Congratulations to higher education leaders who stayed with us through these discussions and to Deputy Commissioner Patton and his colleagues who guided this work.

Children with disabilities should be educated with their non-disabled peers. For years Regents, State Education Department staff, District Superintendents and local Superintendents of Schools have pursued this goal together. We now know that students are moving into integrated settings faster than projected in the plans. Of the 39 regions including New York City, 30 have already exceeded their five-year target and all regions expect to reach the target by the end of 2003.

This is no ordinary budget year for libraries. With the force of the Regents Commission on Library Services behind us, the 2001-2002 budget proposal can begin a fundamental change in the quality of library services. What’s new here? Everyone should have access to basic library services just as they have access to public education, no matter where they live.

Prior to Regents action on the budget proposal, the Cultural Education Committee will decide on a proposal to put the Commission recommendations into effect. The proposal calls for a budget of $60 million for Library Aid to Localities, $20 million for public library construction, and $15 million for public school library support through the School State Aid package.

The Regents decided several changes in their operations during their July Retreat. Those scheduled for September are in place. For example, the Higher Education and EMSC committee meetings are scheduled to enable all Regents to attend most of both committees. The Regents meeting will begin early on the first day to allow more discussion. We are using a new format for all Regents items. The new cover page for every item contains a summary, relevant strategic goal(s) and the reason for the matter coming before the Board. The Quality Committee will take up other items from the Retreat.

Expect another active year. In September we will see new elementary, middle grades and high school test results. We will announce the accountability levels for schools. And the teacher exam results for teacher education program completers will appear.

Later in the fall we will begin a series of regional meetings on Closing the Performance Gap, another series to listen to comments on the Career and Technical Education proposal, and in November we will have our Forum on Implementing Standards. In addition, the November 8 school finance forum will be on teacher recruitment.

I am looking forward to the Regents Conference on the Professions 2000. The theme is professional regulations in the 21^st century. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer will speak as will Dr. Joyce Brothers and many other distinguished contributors to public debate in this arena.

We have worked together with the professional community for months on the horizon issues that will affect the professions and professional regulation in the public interest. The changes are profound. For example, a major new concern is how to ensure that those entering the professions today will keep pace with rapidly changing professional practice. As a result, there will be participants from the higher education community at this Regents Conference. We face a whole new world with the advent of telepractice, managed care, and the challenge of ensuring continued competence. These and other concerns will drive the agenda. The Conference is a unique opportunity for the Regents and staff to pursue this work with interested parties.

The Statewide Forum on Standards Implementation will convene in Albany on November 16, 2000. The purpose is to engage practitioners, experts and the public in a discussion on implementation of the State learning standards at the mid-point of our nine-year timeline. The Regents and I will interact with the forum members. Our main responsibility is to listen to the discussion and use what we hear to inform our policy discussions. We will schedule full Board time in December and beyond to determine if any changes in policy are needed given progress to date.

The forum participants will take up three topics during the day-long meeting:

• Are we doing enough to support students and teachers in reaching the standards?
• How do we encourage high performance of students and schools?
• What do the data tell us about the ability of students and schools to achieve higher standards in the time proposed?

The Congress is on summer recess until after Labor Day. Before leaving town, the conference committee charged with reconciling Senate and House proposals for funding operations of the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education completed its work. While final committee decisions have not been released, there is general consensus that education will receive an overall funding increase above that proposed by the President. However, the President and congressional Democrats have reservations about specific provisions of the measure, including its purported lack of discrete line items for class-size reduction and school construction.

The next move for the Congress has yet to be announced. Congressional leaders must decide whether to try to pass the conference report, send it to the President for a probable veto, and negotiate final numbers with him or go directly to negotiations using the report as a base for discussion.

In the last days of debate before the recess, there were reports of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization being brought back to the Senate floor. This never happened. Given the short time to the target adjournment date of October 6 and the statutory requirement to pass all 13 appropriations bills (only 2 enacted to date), the Congress is unlikely to return to the ESEA again this year.

A monthly publication of the State Education Department

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