The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Migrant Education has initiated a comprehensive needs assessment process that is designed to assist states with improving the quantity and quality of data collection on their migrant students. The data must then be analyzed in order to establish achievement gaps--between migrant students and their non-migrant peers—that the state migrant education program will then strive to close through the development of a specific research-based action plan that will enable the MEP to measure progress of their migrant students.
Margie Loveland is the State Director of Migrant Education in Delaware, and is committed to continuing the CNA process that was begun in collaboration with the Region III Comprehensive Center in 2004-05. Pamela Wrigley will be representing MACC in facilitating the CNA process. This effort to improve data sources will lead to an increased understanding of migrant students’ needs, and improve their representation in both state and district databases. The Migrant Education Program State Director with the assistance of a Management Team and a MACC facilitator will focus on collecting accurate data and developing new data sources in order to establish measurable benchmarks to track migrant student achievement. This management team will provide information and updates to the Delaware State Committee, the DESS Leadership Team.
This activity is designed to build state capacity in the area of using data to identify the academic needs of a sub-population of students (Migrant students) so that the SEA can appropriately address the needs of Migrant students in its technical assistance to districts needing improvement.