SDE: Students defined as Full Academic Year (FAY)

OK State Dept of Ed sent this bulletin at 01/17/2014 10:59 AM CST

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Dear Legislators,


You may recently have heard that the State Department of Education released a new definition of how it will classify students that are considered "Full Academic Year." In anticipation of questions, please find the information below which we believe will help you communicate the reason for the change.

The State's accountability system is and always has been based on students who are Full Academic Year (FAY). With the first implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), all states were forced to define the population of students who will be calculated into the accountability system. Currently, prior to any accountability determination, school sites are individually allowed to determine what students in the school are FAY, and which are "Non-Full Academic Year" (NFAY). Any student the school site designates as NFAY is excluded from the accountability determination.  

For the last several years, FAY students have been defined as students with "continuous enrollment beginning within the first ten days of the school year without an enrollment lapse of ten or more consecutive days." As such, any student who enrolled within the first ten days of school were considered FAY as long as they had no enrollment lapse of more than 10 consecutive school days.

The challenge with this definition is that it excludes too many students from the state's accountability system. In December, the State Board of Education adopted a revised definition of FAY students, changing how FAY students will be defined in response to concerns that students were not being adequately considered or "counted." Whereas the previous definition of FAY was based on enrollment within the first ten days of school, the State Board has changed the definition to be based on the October 1st enrollment count. A FAY student will, beginning with next year's accountability determination, be defined as any student who has been continuously enrolled from October 1st of the school year through test administration and has not experienced an enrollment lapse of more than 10 consecutive days. 

The new definition bases the determination of FAY (or NFAY) status on enrollment of October 1st. There are many significant reasons for this change:
  • Excluding Students From the Accountability System. The previous definition, which based FAY determination on the first ten days of enrollment, excluded students who enroll in school late and/or after Labor Day. The unintended consequence of this definition excludes students from the accountability system.
  • Follow the Money. Linking the FAY determination to October 1st is logical because schools receive funding based on the October 1st student count. Schools receive both state and local funding for students enrolled as of October 1st. As such, schools should be held accountable for use of that money in educating the student.
  • This is not new. Linking the definition of FAY to the expenditure of funds is common amongst states.
  • Consistency. Under the old definition, there is no statewide definition of FAY students. Because the FAY determination was made based on the first ten days of the school year, the definition of FAY varies throughout the state. A student excluded in one district may be included in another.
Under the old definition, if a child enrolled after the first 10 days of a school year, the school received funding for the student but did not have to count the student for accountability purposes. The adoption of this new definition, will result in increased accountability for all students enrolled in the public school system.