ESSA

Lockport City School District and North Park Junior High School administrators believe recently created comprehensive education plans will change the determinations both got from the New York State Education Department saying they were in need of improvement.  In January, the state education department released its determinations for the classification of districts under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the new federal education law, and deemed Lockport a “target” district and North Park a “Comprehensive Support and Improvement” school.  At the time of the classification, North Park Principal Bernadette Smith said she believed the main thing that led to the school’s CSI designation was the number of students who do not take the state assessments, which are optional. Smith noted the ESSA criteria is based on a 95 percent participation rate in the tests, and at North Park, 61 percent of students took the tests last year.  Smith said in a recent interview that some of…