The Vermont Agency of Education (AOE) has drafted a Vermont State Plan responding to the Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA). Over an 11 month period beginning in November 2015, the AOE’s outreach efforts gathered public input from a variety of stakeholders (institutions of higher education, K-12 teachers and administrators, including school boards and ESL teachers, and community and business representatives). A detailed summary of the public input and the way it influenced the AOE’s evolving drafting is available online, providing video and text summaries of the plan, broken down as follows:

· Overview of Vermont State Plan

· Overview of Accountability

· Overview of Continuous Improvement

· Supporting Excellent Educators

· Supporting All Students

· Performance Management System

· Public Input

NCTE members can expect to see a draft plan presented to Governor Scott in the coming weeks; the Agency expects to submit its plan to the Department of Education in April. Public input led the Agency to reaffirm its commitment to the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards as Vermont’s academic learning standards. Public input also led the Agency to adopt particular models for supporting and developing principals’ administrative skills, and for distributing the portion of Title 1 funds set aside for statewide school improvement via formulas that permit a broad focus on the supervisory unions or school districts most in need of support. Members can look to the draft plan to articulate how local supports may be developed.