Maine DOE Releases Chronic Absenteeism Data in an Effort to Support Student Success

The Maine Department of Education (Department) has collected chronic absenteeism for the 2016/17 school year as a non-academic indicator of school success. Absenteeism for any reason, excused or unexcused, has potential negative consequences on student learning and it is important for schools, districts, and the Department to have this broader measure of student attendance so that we can measure student success. Previously, the Department collected Average Daily Attendance (ADA), and truancy data. ADA measures the average number of students who attend school on any given day. Truancy is a measure of unexcused absences.

Research shows a statistically strong link between school attendance, the development of academic skills, and the likelihood of high school graduation. Research also shows that when a large percentage of students are chronically absent, even the progress their peers, who have better attendance, may suffer.

Below are some additional facts to help answer questions about the shift in chronic absenteeism data collection:

Why is this important?

Chronic absenteeism is a new indicator in Maine’s Accountability system which was designed as part of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Current research shows chronic absenteeism has a clear relationship to negative consequences for students, including lower achievement, disengagement from school, course failure, and increased risk of dropping out.

How is chronic absenteeism defined?

Chronic absenteeism is a measure of how many students miss a defined number of school days for any reason. In Maine, this equates to missing 10% of school days or 18 days (based upon 175 school days). As part of Maine’s accountability system, student information will be compiled into an overall school measure indicating the percentage of students at the school who have missed 10% or more of school days. For further information about how chronic absenteeism data is collected visit http://www.maine.gov/doe/data/student/attendance.html.

Where can I find the data?

The 2016/17 chronic absenteeism data is available here. The percentage of Maine students missing 10% or more school days is higher than anticipated as this is the first year school districts have reported this data to the State.

What can schools and districts expect now?

The Department is already working to develop a system of supports available to newly identified Tier II and Tier III schools, with resources to address challenges of attendance. These supports are part of the differentiated tiered model of support under the new ESSA Accountability model with identifications being made in January 2019.

Chronic absenteeism data will be collected annually through the Maine Department of Education’s Synergy Student Information System at the end of the academic year going forward.

The Department will continue collecting truancy data, as required by Maine statute.

For further information about the Department’s ESSA Accountability Model and needed supports, contact Janette Kirk at Janette.Kirk@maine.gov or (207) 624-6707.

Reminder: Register now for 2018 Commissioner’s Conference – session highlights available

The 2018 Commissioner’s Conference will be held at the Augusta Civic Center on Wednesday, June 27th and Thursday, June 28, 2018. The Maine DOE has been working closely with Maine School Management Association (MSMA) to ensure that this year’s sessions meet the needs of attendees – see conference highlights below.

Find additional resources and information including pricing, a draft agenda, lodging options, further details about registration, including guest registration, and more on the Maine DOE Commissioner’s Conference webpage.

Register now »

Conference Highlights

Fulfilling the Dream of a Prosperous Maine
Duke Albanese, Commissioner’s Conference Keynote

“Fulfilling the Dream of a Prosperous Maine: Getting There Requires a Focus on Education and Effective Leadership for Learning, Citizenship, and Opportunities for All Maine Students”

Finding widespread prosperity has been difficult for our state. Although Maine presents abundant opportunities to thrive and prosper as individuals and communities, pockets of vibrancy have often been limited even during the best of times. To turn the tide and make our state a great place to live and prosper, high quality education is the key. We have the scale and wherewithal to build a world-class early childhood through higher education system focused on equity and enriching learning opportunities for all students. What we need to achieve this is strong, effective, creative, and resourceful leadership. Can Maine do it? Yes. Who will lead?

Duke Albanese will serve as Commissioner Keynote, in addition to conducting a break-out session.

Cracker-Barrel Session
Commissioner Hasson and Maine DOE staff

Come to this informal session and get a chance to talk one-on-one with Commissioner Hasson and Maine DOE staff, including Department leadership. The Department will also have available some insider updates for superintendents.

Certification: What You Need to Know
Maine DOE staff

This session will provide participants with a review of important changes resulting from recent revisions to certification laws; clarification on common misconceptions about certification requirements and processes; an opportunity to discuss communication strategies for certification; and a question and answer segment on the new online system.

Legislative Update
Maine DOE Staff

The Maine Legislature adjourned its Second Regular Session sine die on May 2, 2018. While education bills remain, including LD 1869 –”An Act To Establish the Total Cost of Education and the State and Local Contributions to Education for Fiscal Year 2018-19 and To Provide That Employees of School Management and Leadership Centers Are Eligible To Participate in the Maine Public Employees Retirement System”—which are preserved to be carried over to any special session of the 128^th Legislature, others were passed and became law are either in effect now as emergency legislation, or will become law on Wednesday, August 1. This session will include a summary of enacted educated-related legislation, the status of bills preserved by the joint order, and a progress report on the status of rulemaking.

Open Forum: Addressing the Teacher Shortage
Open Forum lead by DOE staff

What can Maine do to address the teacher shortage while strengthening our educator workforce? In this open forum session, we will discuss barriers to teacher retention and recruitment and what is being done across the state to overcome these obstacles. Together we will collaborate on ways that all stakeholders can work together to build our educator workforce and promote the teaching profession.

Put your Collaborative Project on the Regionalization Map
Maine DOE staff

During this session, participants will learn about the EMBRACE II initiatives, including lessons learned; be introduced to the process of forming a regional service center; learn about the upcoming grant opportunity offered by the Fund for the Efficient Delivery of Educational Services (FEDES); brainstorm possible regionalized services and programs; and have an opportunity for questions and answers.

We Have Formed a Regional Service Center: Now What?
Maine DOE staff

During this session, participants will provide input for the Department as to what regional service centers and executive directors need for support; gain an understanding of the monitoring and reporting requirements for a regional service center; receive legislative updates that directly impact regional service centers and their funding; and have an opportunity for questions and answers.

Panel: Preparing Kids for Maine’s Workforce
Maine DOE staff and panel of industry representatives

What are employers looking for? What are students prepared to offer? What can Career and Technical Education (CTE) provide for industry and students? In this session, a panel of industry representatives will share what they look for in an employee. We will discuss and seek ideas for how Maine’s CTE programs can help create more opportunities for students and meet workforce needs.

PreK with Staying Power!
Maine DOE staff

High quality prek has great potential; but research shows that to truly lessen the achievement gap, certain program elements must be present before kindergarten or the gains will “fade out” in the early elementary grades. What are the goals for a prek program in your district? Are you seeing these goals realized in child outcomes over time? Come hear about the prek programs that include the research-based elements and the end-of-prek outcome data that predicts 5^th grade reading, writing, and math scores.

Improving K-3 Literacy Achievement by Building Teacher Knowledge
Maine DOE MoMEntum staff and educators from pilot schools

The Department is implementing an early literacy/technology learning pilot project, MoMEntum K-3 Literacy, in schools located regionally across Maine. This initiative provides high-quality professional learning to build teacher knowledge and skills to impact student learning. This session will provide an overview of the initiative; details about the professional learning, including intentional instruction, opportunities for student practice, technology integration, and assessment that informs ongoing instruction; preliminary findings related to student achievement; and lessons learned so far. During this panel discussion, participants will have the chance to hear from and ask questions of those leading the program as well as participating educators and school leaders.

Closing the Achievement Gap with Early Math Education
Maine DOE staff

Two years of assessing current state data shows an increasing gap in the percent of grade 3-5 students statewide who meet or achieve state expectations in mathematics as compared to ELA/literacy. The Maine Department of Education is embarking on a new initiative called the Numeracy4ME K-4 Mathematics Pilot program, in schools located regionally across Maine. This initiative provides high-quality professional learning to build teacher knowledge and skills to impact student learning of mathematics. This session will provide an overview of the initiative, including details about structure of the professional learning, the focus on numeracy concepts, and implications for PK-4 learning and assessment applicable to all schools.

Work Session: 2018/19 School Approval Requirements & Process
Maine DOE staff

This session will provide guidance on the 2018-19 school/district approval requirements and the new more streamlined process in the Department’s NEO system. Superintendents will have the opportunity to begin completing the approval process at this session – bring your laptops.

Open Forum: Performance Evaluation and Professional Growth
Maine DOE staff

This session will provide district leaders an opportunity to share their PEPG triumphs and tribulations. Do you have a strategy that is working well in your district that you would like to share with others? Do you have a need for greater support in certain areas such as observations and feedback? Is your school or district interested in improving the quality of the Student Learning Objectives? Participation, creative strategies, and a willingness to share is encouraged in this session!

Raising the Bar for Technology in Maine Schools
Jim Moulton, Apple Inc.

How do we help our students learn today and prepare them for a rapidly changing world? A driving force behind this change is technology. It affects the way we communicate, the way we work, the way we live day-to-day. It also empowers every individual—and every learner—to create amazing things and make a difference in the world. But first, we need to raise the bar for what’s expected, and what’s possible, for learning with technology.

Substance Abuse Resources
Maine Center for Disease Control

The presentation will provide an overview of Maine Prevention services, specifically substance and tobacco use prevention including electronic nicotine delivery systems/vaping to school leaders. The information provided will be useful for school administrators as they consider policies, practices and education necessary to protect and optimize the health and safety of students. Materials, resources and a list of community prevention providers who can support school prevention efforts will be available at this presentation.

Elevating Concussion Education: How to Address Everyone
Maine Concussion Management Initiative (MCMI), Colby College

As schools prepare for the start of each year, it’s the perfect time to update concussion education. To ensure that head injury is addressed with each population in the district, MCMI has tailored plans to educate all stakeholders. Everyone in your district will benefit from tailored and current concussion information. Attend this session to learn more about how to get involved.

Other possible sessions:

Steve Levesque, and Glenn Cummings – Educating the Workforce Panel
Adult Education
Budget Methodology of State/Local Funds for ESEA
ESSA: School Improvement for All
Early Math Education
Post-secondary enrollment and credentialing options
Truancy
Trauma

Changes to graduation reporting

Due to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, Maine has been refining a new accountability model moving towards a more purposeful and meaningful approach to supporting Maine’s schools experiencing challenges. A component of the high school accountability model is graduation. In order to reduce the burden on school districts and refine graduation reporting to align with the accountability model data requirements, the Department is instituting the following changes.

May 2018 – Validation of the first three years of the student’s enrollments for those students that are part of the 2017/18 cohort. Additional guidance is available for reporting.

June 30, 2018 – Validating all enrollments for the 2017/18 school year pre-K through 12.

All students will need to be exited with the appropriate exit code before June 30, 2018. There will be an end-of-year certification process. Details will be discussed in the May webinar trainings. A description of the appropriate exit code and their descriptions can be found here: http://maine.gov/doe/data/student/Synergy_upload.html

Districts will report in Synergy State Edition the exit status for each student as of June 30, 2018. We understand that often times plans change over the summer for students however it is important that the exit status for every student is recorded with the latest information you have at the time.

August 15, 2018 Reporting Deadline for high school graduation

District will report in the NEO Graduation module the final graduation status of students who may have taken credit recovery classes over the summer in order to graduate within the 4-year cohort and were not included in the June 30, 2018 reporting. Only the summer graduate data will be able to be modified at this time and students will need to have successfully completed their summer recovery classes in order to be considered an on time graduate.

Next steps

Beginning early May, schools will be asked to validate the enrollments of students who are part of the 2017/18 cohort.
At the end of the 2017/18 school year, schools will be asked to end all Synergy State Edition enrollments for every student in all grades with their appropriate end status, prior to July 1.
Beginning in early to mid-August, the NEO Graduation module will be open for the purpose of updating only summer graduates. All other enrollment validations were covered in steps one and two above.
The dropout validation is being separated from the graduation validation. Dropouts will be validated in the September/October time period as usual.

Questions regarding new graduation process should be directed to: Travis Wood 207-624-6742

Questions regarding access to Synergy State Edition or NEO should be directed to: DOE Helpdesk at 207-624-6896.

2017/2018 graduation data report due 6/08; webinar training available for new collection process

The Maine Department of Education (Department) has modified the data collection process for graduation reporting which will impact the process for collecting the 2017-2018 graduation data. The graduation data is due for submission in the Maine DOE’s NEO System on June 8, 2018, and needs be certified by June 15, 2018.

The new process has been designed to give districts that operate high schools a procedure to edit the first three years of their cohort data for the 2017/2018 graduation cohort.

The new process is now open for reporting. There will be two scheduled webinar trainings on Monday May 14, 2018 to assist data coordinators and others in completing this report:

Please note: both training sessions will be recorded and available to view at your convenience, at a later date.

Update for Returning Users – 4 Year Graduation Process
Date: May 14, 2018
Time: 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Description: This session is for those familiar with the overall graduation process in NEO. The session will concentrate on the new process only. Please note that those new to NEO graduation processing may attend this session as well.
Registration link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2259395630371646465
Webinar ID: 719-861-043

New Users – 4 Year Graduation Process
Date: May 14, 2018
Time: 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Description: This session is for those who are just starting with NEO’s graduation system overall, and will include guidance on both the graduation module and the new collection process for 2017/2018. However, if you are familiar with NEO graduation processing, you may attend this session.
Registration link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1423731608889969409
Webinar ID: 108-457-627

Download guidance for the new graduation process: http://maine.gov/doe/data/documents/April_Grad_Training_Doc.pdf

Learn more about the changes to graduation reporting.

To gain access to the graduation module in NEO contact the MEDMS Helpdesk or call 207 624-6896. For assistance with the graduation module contact Travis Wood or call 207 624-6742.

Submit board decisions about school calendar revisions (including weather-related) to Maine DOE by May 30

The Department is asking Superintendents to submit any board decisions about revising the School Administrative Unit calendar, including the number of weather-related makeup days using the extended hours option, as outlined in M.R.S. Title 20-A Section 4801.

This information will be used to help the Department verify attendance data for the school year.

Please submit the information by May 30, 2019 to Maine DOE School Enrollment Specialist Pamela Ford-Taylor, via email at Pamela.Ford-Taylor@maine.gov.

PRIORITY NOTICE: EF-M-14 April 1st Resident Enrollment Report will not be collected for 2017/18 school year

This notice was sent to Private School Administrators.

The Maine Department of Education (Department) will not be collecting the EF-M-14 April 1st Resident Enrollment report for non-publicly funded students for the 2017-2018 school year.

In previous school years, the Department collected the EF-M-14 April 1st resident Enrollment report in April and the EF-M-13 in October to capture a head count students of attending private schools.

At this time, the Department is actively working on identifying an improved collection process that will be less labor intensive and more timely for schools and other consumers of the data.

The Department will use the October 1 collection to calculate the subsidy count of publicly funded students. For those instances where an April 1 count is needed, the Department will use a “year-end” count that is as of April 1, but not due within the same rigid time frame.

Further communications and actions for Private School Administrators will be forthcoming once an improved process is identified.

For further questions or clarification contact Maine Department of Education Student Data Analyst, Travis Wood at (207) 624-6742.

Synergy summer training survey

The Maine Department of Education’s Help Desk staff is preparing for a summer training session and feedback is needed to ensure the training needs of Data Managers, Superintendents, CTE Directors, Tech Directors and others entering student data for the State Synergy System are addressed.

Please take a few moments to answer the following survey so we can better understand the training needs those entering student data for the State Synergy System.

DOE Summer Training Survey »

For further information and questions, please contact the Data Help Desk at 207-624-6896 or medms.helpdesk@maine.gov.

Maine Education Financial System to update identification numbers for uploads

The Maine Education Financial System will be moving from MEDMS IDs to ORG IDs on July 1, 2018. Over the past few years the Maine Department of Education data collection systems have been migrating towards using ORG IDs to identify School Administrative Units, and other organizations, in their data collection systems.

Starting on July 1, 2018 the Maine Education Financial System will also use the new ORG IDs for all uploads from the school accounting systems.

ORG ID can be located at the top of the ED 279, on each page, to the left of the SAU name. ED 279s can be located here: http://www.maine.gov/doe/eps/

School units should work with their vendor to update this field for the export that their local accounting system creates. Starting July 1, 2018 if a school administrative unit is still using the MEDMS ID their file will not upload to the Maine Education Financial System.

For further information contact Tyler Backus, School Finance & Compliance Coordinator at 207-624-6635 or Tyler.Backus@maine.gov.

Maine Education Assessments (MEA) Student Test Status Extended 3/16/18

The Department is extending the period to identify a student’s test type as “alternate” or “general” until March 16 in order to allow districts sufficient time to complete their updates.

All students participating in the Multi-State Alternate Assessment (MSAA) for mathematics and ELA/Literacy or the Personalized Alternate Assessment Portfolio (PAAP) for science must be identified in the Synergy Student Information System by March 16^.

Students that are not identified in the Special Education Student Services module of Synergy will participate in the grade 3 – 8 mathematics and ELA/Literacy eMPowerME test, or the or the high school mathematics and ELA/Literacy SAT test.

For further information regarding alternate assessment testing contact Sue Nay at sue.nay@maine.gov or 624-6774. For technical assistance with Synergy contact the Helpdesk at MEDMS.Helpdesk@maine.gov or 624-6896.

Maine DOE offers new resource to help local districts monitor student growth in reading

The Maine Department of Education (Department) will begin using a universal reading metric called The Lexile® Framework for Reading to help Maine school districts monitor student growth and progress.

The Lexile Framework, which aligns with Maine’s State eMPowerME Assessments administered to grades 3 through 8 (among many other nationally used assessments), will allow districts to benchmark reading growth and assist with a comparison of data across commercial assessments.

“The framework will provide all schools in Maine with an additional resource to enhance classroom instruction,” said Maine Department of Education Commissioner Robert G. Hasson, Jr. “It will also help schools in their efforts to support families working at home with their children.”

The Lexile Framework was created by MetaMetrics® and provides a scientific approach to measuring growth and matching students to ability-appropriate learning materials. The Lexile Framework involves a scale for measuring both the reading ability of an individual and the text complexity of materials he or she encounters.

Content specialists at the Maine Department of Education, in collaboration with MetaMetrics, are beginning to prepare professional development opportunities that align with Lexile Framework data to help districts make instruction improvements based on student need.

The new resource is available through funds from Title I grant money from the U.S. Department of Education and administered by Maine’s Department staff, with ongoing professional learning opportunities to support statewide implementation.

Set to become available late spring/early summer, districts will be able to start using the new resource to monitor growth beginning in the 2018/19 school year, both within a single school year and from year-to-year going forward.

For more information contact Rachel Paling, Maine DOE Director of Communications at Rachel.paling@maine.gov or (207) 624-6747.