The state Board of Regents could adopt a new set of school standards in September to comply with the federal replacement of the Every Student Succeeds Act.

The Every Student Succeeds Act is the replacement of the No Child Left Behind Act. New York must submit its plan to the federal government for review by September, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo must sign off on the plan before the Board of Regents can give its final approval.

Earlier this week, the state Board of Regents discussed a 200-page plan that includes proposals to use out-of-school suspensions, chronic absenteeism rates and a College, Career and Civic readiness Index as a measure of school quality and student success beginning in 2018-19; decreases math and English language arts testing from three days to two days; and revises benchmarks for educating English language learners.

More than two-thirds of the 2,400 people who responded to a Board of Regents survey said chronic absenteeism should be used as a measurement of school quality.

“Research shows that both student engagement and regular school attendance are highly correlated with student success,” the plan states.

“Students who miss more than 10 percent of instruction have dramatically lower rates of academic success than do students who are not chronically absent. Using chronic absenteeism to differentiate between schools is intended to encourage schools to engage in aggressive efforts to ensure that students do not miss large amounts of instruction,” the plan continues.

The Board of Regents plans to use 2017-18 school year data as a baseline for holding schools accountable for out of school suspension rates. Beginning with the 2018-19 school year results, the state Education Department will assign each school a rating for each subgroup for which the school is accountable. Districts will be required to assist schools to address a school’s out-of-school suspension rate for any subgroup that receives a Level 1 rating. The state plans to include out-of-school suspensions as a measure of school quality and student success when the second cohort of Comprehensive Support and Improvement Schools is identified using 2020-21 school year data.

Schools will continue to be judged on graduation rates and performances indices in English language arts, mathematics and science at the elementary/middle school level and English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies at the high school level.

In addition to indicators that will be evaluated under ESSA, the Board of Regents is considering expanding the information it collects from schools each year. The Board of Regents will ask a group to consider measuring or reporting each school district’s school climate, school incident rates, per pupil school funding, access to preschool, full-day kindergarten, STEM courses, arts, physical education, history and social studies courses measured either through school reports of hours taught, the number of courses offered, the number of students enrolled or student survey results; percentages of fully certified teachers, percentage of in-field teachers in each school and the percentage of teachers with more than three years of experience; class sizes, number of counselors per student and an integration indicator that measures how often students of different race, socioeconomic status, language or students with disabilities are in schools and classrooms together relative to their presence in the district as a whole.

The work group is also expected to consider measuring how much college coursework high school students are completing, the percentage of students acquiring an industry-recognized license or certificate, percentage of students going to college or employment, the percentage of students enrolling in college within a certain time after graduation, the percentage of students who progress to a second or third year of college, the percentage of teachers leaving a school each year, the average number of teacher absences each year, a tool that measures teaching conditions in each school and a measurement of parent involvement and engagement in schools.

“While these indicators are being considered for inclusion in the accountability and reporting systems, the Department will develop a data dashboard that will be used to provide stakeholders with a transparent and intuitive way to assess the performance of schools in relation to a variety of metrics that include both those that are used for accountability and those that measure important aspects of schooling, but are not appropriate to be used for high stakes decisions,” the plan states.