PROGRAM EFFECTIVENESS AND
ACCOUNTABILITY
PART 4. ALLOCATING REVENUES TO SUPPORT THE EFFECTIVE DELIVERY OF
SERVICES
The development of a Quality Education Model, the streamlining of categorical
programs, and accountability for student learning must be closely linked if the
goals of the Master Plan are to be realized. The logic of the adequacy model
recommended by the Finance and Facilities working group is that districts
should, in developing their priorities for funding, always keep in mind the
inputs required for high levels of learning consistent with state standards. The
streamlining of categorical programs requires a mechanism to ensure that funds
are spent on minimally adequate resources, in order to assure student outcomes.
The greater local flexibility in the use of resources envisioned in this report
must therefore be accompanied by both recognition of the resources necessary to
achieve California’s educational goals and a rational accountability
system.
Therefore, the state should establish minimum standards of
education, defined in terms of both inputs and outputs, which are targets for
districts to meet. If they fail to meet these targets, then they must develop
plans to meet them within a reasonable period of time — defined here as
three years. Since accountability for conditions of education and results begins
within the community served by schools, the goals, plans and achievements of
districts and schools must be public. The minimum standards will therefore be
matters of public record, as will be the district’s plans to meet these
standards if they fall short. Any group of citizens must have ready access to
information about whether or not a district meets these standards, with a
process in place that may trigger external actions to rectify sub-standard
conditions. Finally, over the long run the further development of the Quality
Education Model, and the resources necessary for its implementation, will be
driven by an assessment of the conditions of education and resources revealed by
this accountability system. This process closes the circle: the Quality
Education Model generates input and output standards, which in turn serve as
targets for districts and schools, which provide information to citizens and
others on their ability to meet these standards, which in turn may serve to
modify the Quality Education Model in the future.
An effective
accountability system should, therefore, include:
We review each of these components in turn.
Many of the components of the Quality Education Model are educational inputs,
like pupil:teacher ratios, and an effective system of accountability must
include standards that are based both on inputs and outcomes like those now
included in the Academic performance Index (API).
Recommendation 4.1:Therefore, we recommend that the Legislature continue to emphasize the development of performance standards, and that those standards be based both on key inputs to the educational system, as well as outcome measures, and that the input standards are aligned with the California Quality Education Model. |
The reasons for the inclusion of input measures is that some aspects of
schools — for example, the provision of minimally adequate and safe
facilities, and access to a curriculum of sufficient breadth — should be
considered basic requirements of all districts and basic rights of all students,
whether or not they influence outcome measures. Outcome measures may therefore
be insufficient to reflect attainment of these basic requirements and rights,
and therefore input standards are needed as well.
We propose input
standards of two types. The first, which we call guidelines, would be
used as a model against which a district could compare its own expenditure
choices. The elements in these guidelines would be based on the proposed Quality
Education Model that generates funding levels in California. In determining its
own expenditures, a district or school could assess the trade-offs involved in a
local budget, and explain them to the public. This would allow a local school
district or school to make choices that depart from the elements of the Quality
Education Model, but it would also challenge district leaders to provide clear
rationales for their choices. It would also give the public an informed basis
for judging the district leadership’s decisions. For example, if the
Quality Education Model includes pupil:teacher ratios of 1:20 as the basis for
funding districts, this 1:20 ratio would become the state’s
guideline, but districts could choose to use higher or lower ratios as
long as they are able to justify their decisions.
The second set of input
standards would establish minimum requirements for all districts and
schools, which they could not fall beneath under any conditions. For example, if
the Quality Education includes a funding provision based on a teacher:pupil
ratio of 1:20 for elementary schools, then this would serve as a guideline for
districts in the first set of standards; but the state would in addition specify
a minimum requirement of, say, 1:25 below which no district or school should
fall. The state’s guideline is presumably that no teacher should have an
emergency credential, but in addition the state minimum requirements require
than no more than 5% of teachers in any district or school be on emergency
credentials. The combination of guidelines and minimum
requirements therefore provides districts with flexibility in devising their
priorities for spending, while also protecting students by establishing certain
absolute minimum requirements.
We therefore recommend that the
development of the Quality Education Model, in addition to specifying the
funding elements of the Model that constitute a set of guidelines, also specify
a set of minimum standards that all districts and schools must meet. The
guidelines and minimum standards might cover the following:
Output standards are intended to provide targets and incentives for schools
to improve their programs and teaching so that all students achieve at adequate
levels. The state has started the difficult task of establishing output
standards with the Academic Performance Index (API) and the incorporation of
both the norm-referenced SAT-9 and criterion-referenced Standards Tests into the
API. This working group recommends that the state continue its efforts to
develop a robust and meaningful set of student performance measures based on the
state’s standards, and then to incorporate them into the accountability
system. It bears repeating that such a system must be aligned with the
state’s academic content standards; incorporate multiple measures,
including those related to progress through the education al system as well as
to learning; articulate clear and appropriate standards for student, school and
district performance; and be regularly re-examined for effectiveness, accuracy,
fairness.
In addition to establishing an Academic Performance Index that
is based on these criteria, the state should also re-examine the incentives and
disincentives associated with performance on the API. The current system of
incentives lacks transparency, or the ability of all participants to understand
precisely how their efforts in improving learning will be rewarded; and the
rewards and punishments now have counter-productive effects, for example when
low-performing schools have resources taken from them while high-performing
schools are rewarded. A more appropriate set of responses to exceeding or
failing to meet state outcome standards might include a subtle combination of
recognition for high-performing schools and technical assistance for
low-performing schools, rather than crude fiscal incentives and disincentives
that may not operate as intended.
In summary, then, in return for
providing school districts with greater flexibility in the allocation of funds,
the state will hold districts and schools accountable for justifying their
fiscal decisions against a set of state guidelines, to meeting a clear set of
minimum requirements, and for focusing on a variety of student outcomes
described in a broadened Academic Performance Index.
The state’s accountability system creates a set of guidelines, minimum
input requirements, and outcome goals for districts and schools, but the
interpretation and review of district and school plans for education should be
up to local communities. In order to understand what districts and schools are
doing, parents, community groups, and others interested in education must have
information in a form that they can readily understand.
Recommendation 4.2:We therefore recommend that the state establish a consistent and straightforward way for local schools to describe their expenditure and programmatic decisions, to compare them with the state’s guidelines, minimum standards, and outcome goals, and to clarify the trade-offs implicit in budget decisions. |
Community (rather than state) review and opportunity for action is an
important component of an effective accountability system. If any group —
including but not limited to parent groups, community advocacy groups, teacher
groups, or student groups — believes that the state standards are not
being met in a particular school, after reviewing the results of the reporting
system devised by the state, they would first be able to use the existing
Uniform Complaint Procedure to voice their concerns. This would also provide a
process by which the district could present a corrective plan, should it find
that state standards are indeed not being met.
If the district’s
response fails to resolve the problem, individuals should then be able to bring
an appeal to an educational authority with the power to require adequate
responses on the part of schools and districts.
Recommendation 4.3:We therefore recommend that the state Legislature establish a procedure for appeal, where citizen groups who have gone through the Uniform Complaint Procedure could bring their case to the county office of education or other responsible state-created agency, again providing sufficient evidence to justify their case of failing to meet state standards. The county office would then have the authority to investigate the complaint, determine its validity, and investigate which of several possible causes is responsible and therefore which resolutions are appropriate. This provides a mechanism for correcting actions of schools and districts in the event they are unable to resolve problems on their own. |
The final step in the process will be to use the information gathered by the
reporting system described above, as well as information gathered by the process
of citizen responses and complaints based on this reporting system, to revise
the Quality Education Model itself. For example, if there are substantial
complaints about inadequate facilities than cannot be resolved under the
proposed new funding model for facilities, then this information should be used
to revise the funding levels or the allocation procedures for funding
maintenance and facilities. If districts routinely depart from the parameters of
the Quality Education Model, for example by maintaining class sizes that are
higher or lower than the model’s guidelines, then this information might
be used to change funding allocations. If districts and schools routinely
violate minimum standards for counselors, for example, then the reasons for this
will need to be assessed and the inclusion of counselor standards in the Quality
Education Model re-evaluated. If certain kinds of districts — small rural
districts, for example, or urban districts — have difficulty adhering to
state minimum requirements, then changes in funding mechanisms may be justified.
If certain kinds of schools prove unable to make progress when judged by an
expanded Academic Performance Index, then the reasons for such failures should
be assessed and perhaps the overall strategy of providing input and outcome
standards will have to be revised.
Of course, a refinement of the Quality
Education Model would take place some years in the future, and the emphasis in
the coming years should be on its initial development and successful
implementation, not its revision or replacement. However, we stress that the
interim goal of the state should be to collect the information necessary to
continuously assess the effects of the Quality Education Model, and that this is
one of the benefits of establishing a uniform set of standards and an associated
reporting system.
We stress in addition that the collection of
appropriate information and the possibility of revising and refining the Quality
Education Model cannot be achieved unless there is consistency and stability in
developing and implementing this model. The purpose of a Master Plan, after all,
is the development of a framework that guides state and local policy for
decades, not for a year or two. Therefore adoption of the Quality Education
Model, and of the effectiveness and accountability system we have proposed as
part of it, requires that the state make a long-term commitment to the process
of developing, implementing, and refining this approach to financing schools.
| Table of Contents | |||
| Summary | 1. Finance | 2. Equity | 3. Community |
| 4. Accountability | 5. Facilities | Appendices | Members |