The Delaware Department of Education has released a working draft of a School Performance and Support Framework that would create the most aggressive state intervention authority in the state's history. The five-tier system categorizes all schools from Tier 1 (universal expectations) through Tier 5 (state receivership), with escalating state control over schools that do not improve.
Five tiers of intervention
The framework, published in September 2026, establishes a continuum. Tier 1 applies to all schools with universal expectations. Tier 2 offers targeted support for emerging risk. Tier 3 provides comprehensive support for schools facing significant challenge. Tier 4, directed state intervention, would require a state-approved turnaround partner, state-directed instructional and operational actions, leadership or staffing redesign when needed, and monthly implementation and performance review. Schools remain responsible for improvement, but the Delaware Department of Education's responsibility increases as needs become more significant or persistent, according to the draft.
Tier 5, receivership, would be considered when sustained underperformance persists after Tier 4 intervention, required benchmarks are not producing improvement, or leadership, governance, operational, or financial conditions substantially impede improvement. Under receivership, a state-appointed receiver or recovery leader would have defined authority, operating under a state receivership order and public recovery plan. Exit from receivership would be tied to sustained progress followed by a phased return to local governance.
Third-grade retention proposed with guardrails
The draft also proposes a K-3 early literacy system that could result in third-grade retention, but only under strict conditions. Retention may be considered only when a student scores at Level 1 on the state ELA assessment, the lowest of four levels, and the school can document that it provided required instruction, intervention, monitoring, and outreach. If required supports cannot be documented, retention is not available. No single assessment result is the sole determinant. The draft describes retention as a last resort after prevention, targeted support, and intensive support.
Six Good Cause Exemptions would allow promotion despite a Level 1 score: significant cognitive disability or alternate assessment; English learner with fewer than two years of U.S. English-language development services; an IEP team determination that retention is not educationally appropriate; a student previously retained once in K-3 with documented intensive intervention; alternative state-approved demonstration of grade-level reading proficiency; and recent Delaware enrollment without the full sequence of required supports.
The promotion-review provisions would not be retroactive, applying only to an incoming kindergarten cohort. If implementation begins in the 2027-28 school year, the first Grade 3 promotion reviews would occur at the end of the 2030-31 school year.
Delaware already has a retention statute on the books. State code requires that a third, fifth, or eighth grade student scoring well below the standard, Level 1, on the reading assessment shall not advance to the next grade unless they attend summer school and demonstrate at least Level 2 performance, or an academic review committee determines proficiency using other approved indicators. A student scoring below the standard, Level 2, may advance only with a parent-district agreement on an individual improvement plan.
Existing accountability structure would be replaced
Delaware's existing administrative code already establishes a tiered accountability structure for underperforming schools, with phases labeled under improvement, corrective action, and restructuring. Restructuring can include reopening as a charter school, contracting with a private management company, or closing the school. The new five-tier framework would replace or supersede this structure with a more clearly sequenced continuum.
Legislative action required
The draft states that some elements require legislative and regulatory action and that the department will implement each component only after the necessary authority, resources, and operating conditions are in place. The feedback timeline runs from September through December 2026, with legislative or regulatory recommendations planned for December. The Delaware Secretary of Education said legislation would be ready for the start of the new session in January.
Reaction from teachers union
The Delaware State Education Association president said the union has mixed feelings about the plan. The union favors additional instructional support for struggling students but expressed serious concern about the process leading to possible state takeover of local schools and the potential for 8- and 9-year-olds to be held back a grade. The union plans to gather feedback from members statewide.
State proficiency data
The draft framework comes as Delaware confronts persistently low proficiency rates. The 2026 state assessment results show Grade 3 reading proficiency at 40 percent against a 2028 target of 53 percent. Grade 8 math proficiency is at 29 percent against a 35 percent target. Grades 3-8 math has improved for four consecutive years, from 30 percent in 2022 to 35 percent in 2026. SAT math proficiency has remained at 18 percent for the third consecutive year.
How Delaware's proposal compares with other states
Education Secretary Cindy Marten has pointed to Mississippi's Literacy-Based Promotion Act as a model. Enacted in 2013, Mississippi's law combined third-grade retention for students not meeting reading benchmarks with intensive teacher training in evidence-based reading instruction, state-funded literacy coaches sent to struggling schools, early K-3 screening, and diagnostic supports. Mississippi rose from 49th to 29th on the National Assessment of Educational Progress Grade 4 reading between 2013 and 2019. Students had to score above the lowest two achievement levels or meet a Good Cause Exemption to be promoted to fourth grade. Delaware's draft proposes similar guardrails, including Good Cause Exemptions and a prevention-first approach.
Florida implemented a test-based third-grade promotion policy earlier than Mississippi. Research found that Florida's retention policy produced a 0.42 standard deviation increase in retained students' later ELA scores, about one-third the magnitude of Mississippi's estimated effect of 1.2 standard deviations, suggesting that the specific design and intensity of accompanying literacy supports matters significantly to outcomes.
Delaware's draft framework notes a peer-state lesson: broad authority alone does not produce academic improvement. Authority must be paired with a specific recovery strategy, strong implementation, and clear exit conditions. This reflects documented experience in other states where district takeovers or receivership in Newark, New Jersey; Lawrence, Massachusetts; and Camden, New Jersey have produced mixed results. The framework's Tier 5 design guardrails, including a readiness gate, defined authority, entry diagnostic, public recovery plan, reciprocal state commitments, and capacity-based exit, are explicitly designed to address this lesson.
What the research says
A 2023 study from the Wheelock Educational Policy Center found that retention under Mississippi's test-based promotion policy led to substantially higher sixth-grade ELA scores for the first retained cohort, with an effect size of approximately 1.2 standard deviations. The positive effect was driven by gains for Black and Hispanic students. Retention had no significant impact on sixth-grade math scores, absences, or special education identification. The authors note they cannot fully disentangle whether gains came from the additional year of instruction or from Mississippi's specific literacy-focused supports.
A 2024 peer-reviewed study by Noah Spencer in the Economics of Education Review found that Mississippi's Literacy-Based Promotion Act as a whole caused a moderate 0.14 standard deviation increase in Grade 4 NAEP reading scores for the average student and a 0.23 standard deviation increase for students exposed from kindergarten through Grade 3. Math scores also improved. Crude calculations in the study suggest retention explains roughly 22 percent of the observed treatment effect, with the remainder attributable to teacher training, coaching, and early intervention infrastructure. The study notes these back-of-the-napkin calculations are very sensitive to assumptions and should not be interpreted as definitive.
A 2025 working paper from the Annenberg Institute using a staggered-adoption difference-in-differences design across Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio, and Mississippi found that state-mandated third-grade retention policies alone, isolated from broader literacy reforms, produced a negligible and statistically insignificant effect of 0.014 standard deviations on fourth-grade reading scores. Mississippi was the exception, with gains of 0.10 to 0.16 standard deviations, but its success is attributed to the comprehensive Literacy-Based Promotion Act combining retention with intensive teacher coaching, professional development, and early intervention. The study concludes that improvements in literacy are driven primarily by sustained, high-quality intervention rather than by state-mandated retention enforcement itself. The study is limited to short-term outcomes and district-level data.
The Delaware draft framework itself acknowledges the evidence base on state intervention, stating that peer-state experience shows authority is not a turnaround strategy by itself and that receivership needs clear powers, a specific recovery plan, state capacity, transparency, and capacity-based exit. This aligns with the broader research consensus that governance changes alone, such as takeovers or receivership, do not reliably produce academic improvement without accompanying instructional and capacity-building investments.