Meeting of the Board of Regents | November 2009

Report of the

REGENTS EMSC COMMITTEE

to

The Board of Regents

November 17, 2009

              Your EMSC Committee held its scheduled meeting on November 16, 2009.  All Committee members were present except for Regent Cohen, who was excused.

ACTION ITEMS

Charter School

Your Committee recommends that the Board of Regents returns the proposed first renewal charter of the Excellence Charter School of Bedford-Stuyvesant as proposed by the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York, with the following comments and recommendations:  That the curriculum be aligned to the New York State Learning Standards.    [EMSC (A) 1]

Curriculum Frameworks and Professional Development

Your Committee recommends that the Board of Regents authorize the Department to design a process and funding strategy (including seeking competitively awarded federal funding) for producing revised curriculum frameworks and to align professional development with the newly developed frameworks. These curriculum frameworks will provide an additional level of specificity to the New York State learning standards which would serve as the foundation for providing all students with a world-class curriculum.   [EMSC (A) 2]

              Your Committee recommends that the Board of Regents approve the Department’s recommendation to begin development of a virtual high school initiative for the 2011-12 school year.   This initiative builds on the online credit recovery initiative approved for 2010-11 and will provide access to rigorous courses and content rich instruction aligned with New York State Learning Standards.  [EMSC (A) 3]

              Your Committee recommends that the Board of Regents endorse the creation of a College and Career Readiness Working Group to be appointed by the Chancellor and be comprised of Regents, Department staff, and experts from P-12, higher education, and the business community. The Working Group would be charged with developing recommendations for consideration by the Regents on the redesign of the New York State high school diploma requirements and Regents exams, to better align them with college and career readiness, as well as a review of the GED policy and program.  [EMSC (A) 4]

MOTION FOR ACTION BY FULL BOARD

              Madam Chancellor and Colleagues:  Your EMSC Committee recommends, and we move, that the Board of Regents act affirmatively upon each recommendation in the written report of the Committee's deliberations at its meeting on November 16, 2009, copies of which have been distributed to each Regent.

MATTERS NOT REQUIRING BOARD ACTION

Graduation Rate Goal and Annual Targets – The Committee considered four policy questions to help determine the graduation rate goal and annual targets they wish to establish for New York State and submit to USED for approval:

1.      What is the percentage of students in an accountability group that schools and districts should be expected to graduate within five years of first entry into grade nine?

2.      If an accountability group is below the specified graduation goal, how much annual progress must the group make in order to still make adequate yearly progress (AYP)?

3.      Is there any minimum graduation rate (floor) for an accountability group below which a school or district should not make AYP even if the school or district is achieving the annual performance target with that group?

• Do the Regents want to establish an aspirational graduation rate goal and a separate graduation rate goal for accountability purposes?

Staff will come back in December with additional information on options available to the Regents for establishing a new graduation rate goal and annual targets. 

[EMSC (D) 1]

That concludes our report.

                                                                                    Anthony Bottar and Merryl Tisch       

                                                                                    Co-Chairs