10/7/11

Today, the Texas Education Agency released updated guidelines and also announced the deadline for filing reports and data for comparability of services involving No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB).  School districts are required to conduct comparability of services testing, and file reports and data with the Texas Education Agency no later than Friday, November 11, 2011.  School districts that receive Title I, Part A funding AND that have more than one building for each grade span are required to submit two documents to TEA, the Comparability Assurance Document and the Comparability Computation Form (CCF).  School districts that do not participate in Title I, Part A, OR that have only one campus for each grade-span group are required to submit only the Comparability Assurance Document. 

To access instructions for completing the comparability documents, click on the link below.

http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=6996&menu_id=798 

Updated guidance from the U.S. Department of Education on comparability of services is excerpted below.

• "The USDE has clearly stated that only one division to a single grade span group (small campuses and large campuses) may be made based on a disparity of enrollment. The LEA has the flexibility to decide where the higher enrollment/lower enrollment division is made, but there may only be one division. For example, in an LEA where there is a significant disparity in enrollment at a particular grade span (i.e., high schools ranging from 150 students to 3,500 students), the higher-enrollment high school campuses grouped for comparison might include campuses with 900 students to 3,500 students and the lower-enrollment group could include campuses from 150 students to less than 900 students.
• In general, campus groupings must be made based on broad organizational categories: elementary, middle, and high school. LEAs may not group campuses by exact grade spans. The expectation by the USDE is that this will produce fewer grade-span groupings within each LEA and will result in more campuses being compared to similar campuses.
• LEAs with fewer than 1,000 students will no longer be exempted from the comparability of services requirement."

To access the Texas Education Agency TO THE ADMINISTRATOR letter, dated October 7, 2011, on this topic, click on the link below. 

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/taa/grants100711.html