SYSTEMIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND REVIEW
“Accountability” can mean different things to different people
and in different situations. A common occurrence is for people to agree about
the importance of accountability, but to differ how they envision the concept
being used in practice. Accountability is frequently limited to the acts of
measuring, reporting, and responding to schools' and students' test scores.
Once scores are reported, the schools or students are “held
accountable” through systems of rewards and sanctions, or perhaps simply
publicity. Significantly, such accountability most often flows in a particular
direction; students, and then their teachers and parents, are likely to be
“held accountable” by school boards, the State, or the public.
There are few mechanisms for students, teachers, or families to use tests or
other performance measures to hold anyone else accountable.
In contrast
to this limited view of accountability, the Student Learning Working Group calls
for the construction and implementation of a vision of systemic, shared
accountability—a two-way, mutual, and blameless vision of accountability
wherein improved learning results are tightly linked to improved conditions for
learning. Systemic, shared accountability includes those things that the State
and school districts do to provide high-quality education for all
students as well as to evaluate school offerings and student performance.
It focuses on the provision of high-quality education to all students. That
focus must be shared and accepted by families, community organizations,
businesses, and other Californians along with state agencies, school boards,
administrators, teachers, counselors, and students.
Such an
accountability system for California must be guided by valid, comprehensive,
understandable, and regularly reported data on a set of indicators that permit
useful, informed, democratic decisions and judgments about student learning and
the conditions under which the students learn. Ultimately, adequate and
well-advised support for public schools depends upon the public’s will to
shape public priorities and make wise investments on behalf of high-quality and
democratic schooling. Clearly, a system of multiple indicators for
accountability and improvement is crucial to marshalling public will and wise
investments in the schooling that most benefit students and the state.
The recommendations below are aimed at creating such a system for California. The current statewide Academic Performance Index (API) and the School Accountability Report Cards (SARC) are the state’s first, imperfect steps toward a useful information system supporting education in California. As currently constructed and reported, however, these instruments don’t begin to meet the principles outlined above. As such, they are insufficient to inform policymakers, the public, the press, and parents about whether the educational system and the schools are fulfilling their obligations to every student. To develop a meaningful system of educational accountability, the State must augment and redesign its current efforts as follows:
Recommendation 8.1: Develop, legislate and fund a comprehensive
system of PreK-16 educational indicators. These indicators will require data of
the highest quality and utility provided by a longitudinal student-focused data
system and from other school-level data about educational resources, conditions
and learning opportunities. These indicators must be constructed and reported
in ways to reveal the character and distribution of learning conditions and
outcomes for various groups of California students across and within schools and
systems.
The State must develop and report yearly on a
comprehensive, yet parsimonious set of educational indicators, constructed from
the data provided by an integrated, longitudinal learner-focused data system and
by other school-level data about educational resources, conditions, and learning
opportunities. (See Appendix G for a comprehensive list of
indicators.) Such indicators must be easy to understand and thereby trusted as
relevant. They must tell a coherent story about the status of the educational
system, enable policymakers and the public to recognize problems on the horizon,
and guide interventions. They must measure common and enduring features of the
educational process by means that are amenable to action. They must enable
policymakers, professionals, families, and the public to monitor the status and
quality of the educational system and provide information to guide the
improvement of policy and practice. The State’s accountability framework
must specify mechanisms for monitoring and assessing the distribution and
quality of access and opportunity, as well as outcomes.
Useful
accountability systems monitor all levels (student, education personnel, school,
district, state education agencies, legislature, and governor) of the
educational system, and include indicators that measure the effectiveness of
each level (PreK-16) in exercising its responsibilities. Consequently, the
State’s indicators should enable the public to hold policymakers and
governing bodies accountable for providing the commitment, policy mechanisms,
resources, and conditions of a
high-quality system of education, as well as holding schools, educators, and
students accountable for the outcomes that result. Additionally, the indicators
provide comprehensive information about all schools, not just about those that
are “low-performing.” Although there are many exemplary schools,
the State needs information about these schools just as it needs information
about schools where students are underserved. Finally, the indicators must
permit analysis of opportunities and outcomes
by racial, ethnic, linguistic, and gender
populations, and among students assigned to various programs within schools.
State policymakers must be mindful of adding additional reporting and
paperwork burdens on schools, but schools may not object if they were to see
prompt, tangible responses based on the data provided to them. Good information
about the state’s schools must not be compromised.
Recommendation 8.2: Develop the K-12 Academic Performance
Index (API) so that it includes indicators such as dropout rates, grade
promotion, and other indicators of outcomes, in addition to multiple measures of
student achievement
Such measures of inclusiveness (keeping students
in school, keeping them in core, academic classes, moving them through the
grades) provide valuable indicators of school performance in themselves.
Including them in the API also will balance test data in ways that reduce the
likelihood that schools have boosted scores by pushing kids out, keeping them
out, assigning them to special education, or retaining them in grade—all
of which artificially inflate test scores but harm students and do not actually
improve achievement.
Recommendation 8.3: Create and report a
K-12 “Opportunities for Teaching and Learning Index” (OTL) that
parallels the API. This index will report schools’ performance on
standards for high-quality learning resources, conditions, and opportunities.
Like the API, the OTL should be reported in ways that permit statewide school
comparisons, and comparisons with high-and average-performing schools. The State
will create benchmarks and rubrics of prototype schools that will serve as
desirable models of the goals every school is expected to achieve.
Such an index must be based on standards for resources, conditions, and
opportunities that specify what government agencies—states and school
districts—must provide all schools, in rich and poor neighborhoods alike
so that educators can offer the curricular opportunities and programs required
for the achievement of student performance standards. Similarly, the index must
also incorporate benchmarks of standards of practice that direct school
organizations to develop approaches that enable students to master the
State’s and local school district’s content standards and college
admissions requirements. The elements for both types of
standards—resources and practices—are broadly outlined in
Recommendations 3, 4, and 5 above. To be genuinely helpful, both the API and
OTL indices must permit meaningful comparisons across schools, districts and the
state.
Recommendation 8.4: Develop a long-term strategic plan for
the meaningful use of accountability data and indicators by state and local
policymakers, educators, and all Californians. This plan should include ways to
determine the impact of programs and interventions designed to improve learning
conditions and outcomes and for remedying inadequacies. Included in this plan
should be
To use indicators and benchmarks effectively, educators and local communities
need the resources, technical assistance/training infrastructure, as well as the
hardware and software for analysis. Such infrastructure would also go a long way
to reducing the burden of reporting data to the State. In addition, they need
district and school level support in the use of data to inform instruction at
the classroom level and community engagement. Families and educators who engage
together as school research and assessment teams can use local data to monitor
and recommend improvements in their schools. For example, widespread teacher
involvement in moderated scoring of performance tasks improves teacher
knowledge. Educator and family dialogue around disaggregated data can yield
richer understandings of curriculum and teaching and generate strategies for
improvement. Community based organizations, together with educators, could
provide local community responses to schools, districts, and the State and
regularly provide workshops and public sessions to help families understand
benchmarks, rubrics, and accountability mechanisms. However, families
must be assured that their participation in the school accountability process is
authentic and protected. Appendix H specifies some of the necessary
protections.
Importantly, students can also benefit from learning how to
assess one's situation, decide upon remedies, plan the necessary remedial action
to correct the situation, measure how well the actions were performed, and
identify the goals being met. Such habits of mind are all aspects of
self-sufficiency that are valuable for every student’s civic
participation, academic advancement, and value in the workplace.
Recommendation 8.5: The State, in collaboration with California Community Colleges (CCC), California State University (CSU) and the University of California (UC) systems, develop, and require K-12 schools to provide teachers, counselors, students, and families yearly reports that document individual students’ progress toward CSU/UC eligibility.
Such a report should include progress toward career choices and work
preparation as well as the students’ position in the four-year, college
preparation sequence, and would be updated each marking period. The report
should also include a summary of existing school and community-support programs,
so that families can help ensure that students are guided into appropriate
help.
Recommendation 8.6: The State must provide incentives for
schools to create high-quality programs and to support the students with the
greatest educational need. Incentives for such schools should be directed at
supporting the spread of these educational innovations to as many other schools
as possible.
Exemplary schools should be recognized both by
documenting their successes for sharing with other schools and by having
additional or continued autonomy. Recognition of school initiative and
achievement should promote learning and cooperation, rather than competition
among schools for financial rewards. They will enable us to create not just
learner-centered classrooms, but also learning-oriented systems of education in
the state of California. Successful schools should be awarded grants to further
develop, document, and share their practices with other schools in
school-to-school networks, much like the teacher-to-teacher networks that have
been so successful in stimulating classroom and curriculum reforms through the
California Subject Matter Projects. These school-to-school networks should be
expanded with a more widespread program for recognizing, documenting, and
sharing school successes.
Recommendation 8.7: Develop interventions in K-12 to promote
student learning and success in schools of greatest need. These practices will
support schools’ efforts to build their organizational capacity, develop
high-quality programs and support student learning.
Intervention
strategies that are research-based
and provide supports should be developed for schools of greatest
need. When the State ascertains that there are serious shortcomings in a
school's resources, conditions, opportunities, or student learning, a process
should be set in motion that enables and requires the State and local districts
to provide intervention and problem-solving resources and strategies. The State
could require schools of greatest need to develop action plans to develop
opportunities for teaching and learning. This problem-solving process should
involve a qualified team of educators in evaluating the nature and sources of
problems. It should deal with the root causes of school failure—including
the availability and use of qualified personnel, administrative support,
curriculum resources, organizational structures, student grouping and promotion
practices, and other core features that define students' experiences in
school.
The State and district should cooperatively assume
responsibility for ensuring that the resources and technical assistance needed
to implement the plan are made available. If policy changes are needed to
implement the plan or to ensure that the problems experienced by the school do
not recur, then the State and local district should also assume responsibility
for developing new policies that are more supportive of school
success.
It is critical that the State's efforts to recognize success,
remedy low performance, and ensure equitable learning is based on thoughtful,
educationally sound means for identifying schools that require intervention of
the State. When incentives are triggered by simplistic measurements such as
average school test scores, perverse incentives are created that harm students.
Since such measures can be manipulated with changes in school population,
schools often seek to boost their average test scores in educationally
counterproductive ways. California’s efforts to support school success
and provide student safeguards must be more sophisticated and more educationally
productive than these mechanistic approaches. They need to be based on the
growth and success of all students in the schools and on educationally sound
evaluations of school practices.
Recommendation 8.8: Bring
postsecondary education into an integrated accountability system by requiring
and supporting public postsecondary institutions to do all of the
following:
Although the
principles of accountability apply
at both the K-12 and postsecondary levels, the particulars of
accountability must differ for the two levels. Elementary and secondary
standards work toward a set of knowledge and skills common to all students.
Postsecondary certificate programs, baccalaureate, and advanced degree programs
are based on student specialization in particular disciplines. One of the
strengths of California higher education institutions is a continuing
reexamination of what constitute appropriate depth and breadth requirements and
curricular variation. It is within the undergraduate major or graduate subject
matter that faculty establishes competencies. Any recommendations on
accountability should reflect these differences.
Efforts to bring the
postsecondary segments into an integrated accountability system should also
build on the accountability mechanisms that are already in place. In the
community college system, a comprehensive set of college-specific performance
and outcome measures have been established to document enrollment, successful
course completion, advancement to the next academic level within basic skill
disciplines, workforce preparation, degree and certificate attainment, and the
achievement of university transfer. Under the auspices of the system-wide
Partnership for Excellence
initiative (PFE), baseline data is gathered for each of
the 108 colleges and used to establish targets for annual growth and
improvement. While provisions for financial rewards and sanctions for
institutions that either met or fell short of target goals were established,
funding augmentations needed to implement the rewards and sanctions were
suspended for the 2001-2002 program year. All colleges however, are required to
provide the State with ongoing periodic progress reports on these basic
accountability measures.
UC and CSU currently employ a Compact/Partnership model. Specifically, this model establishes a two-way partnership between the State and higher education institutions in which the State commits to an adequate and stable level of funding for higher education in exchange for a commitment by the institutions to achieve specific outcomes in areas that further state goals (for example, providing access to all eligible students, reducing "time-to-degree," increasing the production of graduates in high-need areas like teaching and engineering/computer science).Although there is no precedent for using sound social science evaluation methods, and certainly no tests, for determining the learning and teaching effectiveness of postsecondary education, California’s colleges could certainly learn much from a variety of data gathering. Nevertheless, we must have data that report the success of postsecondary institutions, as well as K-12 schools, in educating California’s different student populations equally well.
Recommendation 9:
In no way, however, should this strengthened
intersegemental collaboration be construed as giving higher education oversight
over K-12, or as giving K-12 education oversight over higher education. Rather
it means a reciprocal relationship that influences the content and processes of
both K-12 and university education and informs policymaking by the appropriate
legislative and administrative bodies.
Recommendation 9.2:
Develop policies and fund initiatives on a regional basis to support the
transition of students through the educational system
Among the most
prized contributions that higher education can make to K-12 education is the
involvement of its faculty in the public schools. Both the University of
California and the California State University have developed intervention
programs designed to increase the college participation rates of students
historically underserved in higher education. These outreach and student
academic preparation programs provide academic support to California’s
diverse population of elementary, middle, and secondary students who are
disadvantaged educationally and economically. However, because of limited
resources, UC and CSU are unable currently to provide these services to all
California public high schools with low college participation rates or to middle
schools that serve as feeder schools to these high schools. Therefore, the
legislature should provide support for expanding these services that prepare
students academically for admission to public four-year
universities.
Recommendation 9.3: Expand the faculty reward
system in the public colleges and universities and provide compensation for K-12
teachers to support faculty involvement in intersegmental programs, providing
incentives for higher education faculty to engage in PreK-16 alignment of
standards, curriculum, assessment, etc., and in PreK-16 outreach.
In order to facilitate faculty involvement, higher education needs
to demonstrate that it places value on the involvement of its faculty in
inter-segmental activities that are designed to enhance student achievement and
contribute to the reform efforts underway in our schools. Moreover, the PreK-12
system must also demonstrate in tangible ways that teachers are expected to
participate in such activities and will be rewarded for that participation.
| Table of Contents | |||
| Summary | Introduction | Goals/Curriculum | Opportunities |
| Assessment | Accountability | Access | Members |