Friends:

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The Senate Education committee is arranging a public hearing at 8:00 AM Monday, February 3rd for two bills that we requested and Senator Taylor has sponsored.? This hearing will accept public testimony, written, online, or in person.

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I will host an information session ONLINE tomorrow night for anyone who is interested or would like to learn more about how to participate in the legislative process. See below for the zoom link and come join the chat!

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addresses accountability data about student achievement AND issues related to TAG data reporting at the state and district level.

?The first part of the bill addresses a decision by the State Board of Education that excluded TAG and high achieving students out of the provisions of the Student Success Act designed for students in groups with special needs.? This section of the SSA spells out groups of "underserved" students who will be explicitly included and for whom there will be "longitudinal growth targets."? Several other provisions of the SSA and even of other bills, laws, and rules reference this section, so when TAG students were excluded from this section of the SSA, the data called for elsewhere also did not include TAG students.

?The bill calls for a breakdown of TAG students by income, ethnicity, ELL, and Special education status,? compared to the overall population in a district.? It also calls for district-level reports on spending for services, student performance, course taking, FTE and staff credentials, and results of parent surveys "on the adequacy of instruction provided to talented and gifted children.," and also adds this data to the state report card together with district size.

Most of this information is already provided by districts to the Oregon Department of Education but it is not consistently reported.? Some of this information is in the state report card, but some of it is in reports that each district submits separately to the Department and is not collected for a statewide report.

Collecting and reporting this information will make it possible to ensure that our new identification rule and our TAG spending are having the intended outcomes.

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However, the most important part of this bill is not limited to TAG or to high-achieving students.? It requires the Oregon Department of Education to report student achievement GAINS broken down by grade level, ability level, and income/ethnicity.

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Currently (including in the latest accountability "Dashboard") the department does report overall student achievement levels by ethnicity and income but this does not show how much these students are learning—it just shows where they are at a single point in time.?

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The only way to use achievement scores to ensure that every student is actually learning is to look at student growth during the school year.? Breaking this down by ability level ensures that the gains of students at either end of the achievement scale aren't concealed by the gains of students in the middle.

States that anyone who knows a student may refer that student to an identification team for assessment for TAG.? This ratifies current practice in most Oregon districts, but it was missing from our original TAG mandate.? Research has shown that when referrals for assessment are limited, some gifted students are more likely to be missed.
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Margaret DeLacy is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

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Topic: Lets meet!

Time: Jan 28, 2025 07:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

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Meeting ID: 838 5761 9179

Passcode: 380320

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