001This presentation will discuss the title one part A requirement related to the LEA plan required descriptions which has been selected for review as part of the program monitoring validation process being conducted by the federal program compliance division at the Texas Education Agency. This presentation is intended solely to provide general information and guidance to Texas LEAs, ESC's, nonprofit subgrantees, and participating private schools receiving equitable services. The content of this presentation reflects the Texas Education Agency's current understanding of statute and applicable federal guidance. The content of this presentation is subject to change as a result of future guidance or other updates provided by federal agencies with regulatory oversight of these programs. This presentation does not constitute legal advice and entities are therefore advised to seek legal counsel regarding the information and guidance provided in this presentation before
002acting upon the education provided. The Texas Education Agency does not permit third-party recording or the use of artificial intelligence summary services during its grants related trainings. Attendees of TEA's grant related trainings may not use AI services, language models, applications, interfaces, or assistants to attend, review, or record the trainings. TEA further prohibits any person or entity from using the information included in its grants related trainings to train AI technologies. Any attendees of TEA's grant related trainings who violate this prohibition may be removed from the trainings and may be barred from attending future grants related trainings. Documenting overall compliance for a program requirement may require several forms of documentation to be maintained locally and available upon request by TEA and/or an auditor. To ensure overall compliance with program requirements, LEAs should refer to the program guide and/or
003other program related resources that reference the multiple forms of documentation required to be maintained locally. The documentation requested for submission during the validation process may not include all forms of documentation that are required to be maintained locally. The agenda for today's presentation will include a discussion of the specific program requirement, acceptable documentation for the validation, past validation issues, a discussion of examples, and the resources that are available for item 1.1. The selected LEAs must submit evidence showing that the required descriptions have been incorporated into the LEA plan. Acceptable documentation for this would include the relevant pages of the LEA's Title One Part A program plan for the specified school year that includes the statutoily required descriptions. For the area related to student monitoring and supports, the LEA must describe how the LEA will monitor students
004progress in meeting the state academic standards by developing and implementing a well-rounded program of instruction to meet the academic needs of all students. by identifying students who may be at risk for academic failure. By providing additional educational assistance to individual students who the LEA or school determines needs help in meeting the challenging state academic standards and by identifying and implementing instructional or other strategies intended to strengthen academic programs and improve school conditions for student learning. The LEA plan shall describe how the LEA will ensure that all students receive a highquality education and close the achievement gap between children meeting the challenging state academic standards and those children who are not meeting such standards. Please note that the description should not simply be a statement that the LEA will do these things. The LEA must describe
005how these things will be accomplished. In the area of teacher quality, the LEA plan shall describe how the LEA will identify and address any disparities that result in low-income students and minority students being taught at higher rates than other students by ineffective, inexperienced, or out of field teachers. In the area of school improvement and support activities, the LEA plan shall include how the LEA will carry out its school improvement activities and responsibilities if any campuses within the LEA are identified by TEA as comprehensive support and improvement, targeted support and improvement and/or additional targeted support campuses. The LEA plan must also include the measure of poverty the LEA will use to identify campuses as eligible for Title One Part A programs. Statute allows ELEAs to select from the following measures of poverty. Children ages 5 through
00617 inclusive in poverty counted in the most recent census data approved by the Secretary of Education. Children eligible for free or reduced price lunches under the National School Lunch Act. Children and families receiving assistance under the Title 4 Part A of the Social Security Act. Children eligible to receive medical assistance under the Medicaid program or a composite of any of the above measures. Whichever measure the LEA selects to identify campuses, the LEA must use the same measure of poverty to rank campuses and to allocate Title One Part A funds. The LEA plan must describe the nature of the programs to be conducted under schoolwide and targeted assistance programs and where appropriate educational services outside of set schools for children living in local institutions for the neglected or delinquent and for neglected and delinquent children in
007community day school programs. The LEA plan must describe the services the LEA will provide to homeless children and youth to support the enrollment, attendance, and success of homeless children and youth in coordination with the services the LEA is providing under the McKenna Vento Homeless Assistance Act. The LEA plan must include the strategies the LEA will use to implement effective parent and family engagement. If applicable, the LEA plan must describe how the LEA will support, coordinate, and integrate services provided with Title One Part A with early childhood education programs at the LEA or individual school level, including plans for the transition of participants in such programs to local elementary school programs. If an LEA has campuses that are operating a targeted assistance program, the LEA plan must include the criteria that will be used to identify
008the eligible children most in need of services under Title One Part A. For grades 3 through 12, these must be multiple educationally related objective criteria such as benchmark tests or STAR assessments. For grades preK through two, these would include multiple criteria that are age appropriate. This could include teacher checklists. If an LEA has middle school and/or high school grades, the LEA plan must describe how the LEA will implement strategies to facilitate effective transitions for students from middle grades to high school and from high school to post-secary education. including any coordination with institutions of higher education, employers, and other local partners and increased student access to early college, high school, or dual or concurrent enrollment opportunities or career career counseling to identify student interests and skills. The LEA plan must also include a description of how
009the LEA will support efforts to reduce the overuse of discipline practices that remove students from the classroom, which may include identifying and supporting schools with high rates of discipline disagregated by each of the subgroups of students. If applicable, the LEA plan must describe how the LEA will support programs that coordinate and integrate academic and career and technical education content through coordinated instructional strategies that may incorporate experiential learning opportunities and promote skills attainment important to the in demand occupations or industries in the state. and work-based learning opportunities that provide students in-depth interaction with industry professionals and if appropriate academic credit. And finally, the LEA plan must describe any other information on how the LEA proposes to use funds to meet the purposes of Title One Part A and that the LEA determines appropriate to provide, which
010may include in how the LEA will assist schools in identifying and serving gifted and talented students and assist schools in developing effective school library programs to provide students an opportunity to develop digital literacy skills and improve improve academic achievement. Please note that any LEA reservations of Title One Part A funds that have not been addressed in the previous descriptions should be included in this section. Issues related to the required descriptions in the LEA plan that may result in an improvement needed status include the auditable documentation was not submitted, the documentation submitted does not include the required descriptions or the documentation submitted is not for the school year specified in the validation. When reviewing the documentation, the most common issues that we found were that the descriptions were missing or that they weren't identified or that
011the descriptions themselves were incomplete. For example, one set of documentation that we received was a set of pages from an LEA's plan that showed all of the listings where Title One Part A was included as a fund source. But there wasn't any indication on any of the pages submitted which description was supposed to go with which page. There wasn't any indication to tie it to any of the required descriptions. Here's an example of what we mean when we say the descriptions were incomplete. For example, the requirement is that the LEA plan shall describe how the LEA will ensure that all children receive a highquality education and close the achievement gap between children meeting the challenging state academic standards and those children who are not meeting such standards. The description that appeared in the LEA's plan
012said the LEA will ensure that all children receive a highquality education etc. So this was like a statement of assurance. It's not a description of how the LEA is going to accomplish this. The LEA could turn that statement into a good description just by specifying how they plan to do it. So by adding to the end of the sentence by doing the following and then listing out a bulleted uh set of activities that the LEA was going to conduct to ensure that all children receive the highquality education and close the achievement gap. The LEA can include its descriptions throughout its plan or it can have them all together in one set of descriptions for title one part A. Either is acceptable. Um, if the LEA sends us separate relevant pages where the descriptions are from
013throughout the plan, that's fine. If they're labeled, um, if they have it all in one set, uh, that's also fine. One example of this as all in one place u is the example on screen now where each of the descriptions is numbered and the LEA proceeds to explain how they will accomplish each of the uh activities that are each of the descriptions that's required. One advantage to this is that if a particular description is not applicable, for example, on screen number three doesn't apply to this particular LEA because they do not have any campuses that are currently in school improvement. Uh so they are able to say there clearly that that does not apply to them. This really helps the auditors because then the auditor knows that they don't have to keep looking for that
014particular description. One example, one example of how this is uh also helpful to the LEA is during the annual review when the LEA looks at their descriptions, they're able to easily see which ones they might need to add. Uh for example, if they have claimed that it's not applicable from the previous year, maybe they now have a campus that's in school improvement and they can easily see that they need to add a description of what they are doing for that particular campus with the Title One Part A program. One other advantage to this is if they are not conducting a particular activity anymore and it needs to be changed, they're easily able to see that. Okay. So, if they are uh if they have changed, for example, the the uh way they identify low-income students
015and they're using another allowable method uh to do that, um the LEA doesn't just simply delete it because they're not doing that anymore. they can easily see that now they need to add something else to go in the place of what used to be for description 4. So it can be u helpful to the auditors to see easily what the descriptions are and which ones are not applicable. It can be helpful for the LEA as they're re conducting their annual reviews so that they can see easily uh which uh sections may need to be updated. Next, we will review the resources and support that are available to assist LEAs in completing the program monitoring validation process. In the category of overall process resources, eleas can access the PMV process handbook, instructions, training video, and training
016slides for tips on submitting documentation and a video on how to navigate the Smart Sheet Work app system. These, as well as other programspecific resources, are available on the ESSA program monitoring validations web page. For each requirement included in the validations, there is a guidance document that describes the acceptable documentation as well as training slides in a training video that discuss previous findings. These resources are available to eleas to review prior to submitting documentation for selected PMV requirements. Please take advantage of these documents to ensure that the district is informed of the overall process for program monitoring validations and all program specific resources. Complimentary technical assistance and training are available from each regional education service center. ESC contacts for each regional center are located towards the bottom of the TEA Title One Part A web
017page. Questions related to the program monitoring validations for the Title One Part A program may be directed to Vivian Smurl at essport tea.ex.gov.