Holding the state accountable

Leadership, Sept, 2001 by Fred Tempes

HOW MUCH LONGER CAN THE RICHEST STATE IN THE NATION PRETEND THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP IS CAUSED BY SCHOOLS AND STUDENTS ALONE?

When the California Legislature passed the Public Schools Accountability Act in 1999, it was heralded as a reform strategy with teeth. Poor-performing schools would be identified, provided support, and then -- if they did not improve -- the state would intervene, perhaps even taking over a school or shutting one down.

It is unlikely, however, that the primary strategies of PSAA -- modest support and strong sanctions -- will do much to address the most critical issue facing public education in California, the chronic underperformance of identifiable subsets of schools, often referred to as the achievement gap.

The reason we can hope for only modest success from PSAA is that it is based on a faulty premise: That the problems of low-performing schools and their solutions are school specific. Identify the problems, select research-proven solutions, implement those solutions, and soon the school will be on the path to recovery.

Of course, there is some truth to this belief (the premise is faulty, but not entirely false). With the kind of support offered by PSAA -- the services of an external evaluator to help identify problem areas in the school and next steps for improvement, coupled with some financial resources to enact those next steps -- most schools will manage some improvement over current levels of student achievement.

It was precisely to work to improve the results of low-performing schools that groups like WestEd and many individuals answered the call to become external evaluators and provide assistance. Although it is clearly too soon to make any definitive statements about the educational value being added by external evaluators, early indications from California as well as data from other states are that external review and support can move these schools forward. And since it is almost axiomatic that every school can do at least a little better, this finding would not be unexpected.

For the last 30 years, the body of research describing what good schools do has been growing. While the words used to describe the critical elements of a high-performing school vary from place to place, the elements are fairly constant and resemble this list:

* A rigorous, well-defined curriculum accessible to all.

* Instructional materials that match the curriculum.

* Teachers who know how to teach the curriculum in ways that both engage students and acknowledge their diversity.

* Frequently administered assessments that measure how well students are mastering the curriculum and are used to help teachers improve their instruction.

* Professional development opportunities for teachers that relate directly to the school's curriculum and that provide teachers ample time to work together to solve instructional problems.

* Keeping families involved in and informed about the education of their children.

* Leadership at the school that supports a culture of high expectations and helps keep the focus on teaching and learning.

Knowledgeable external reviewers can help a school see how well it is doing on these "standards of effectiveness" and suggest appropriate next steps for improvement. In fact, if all schools operated in the same context -- similar resources, similar students -- then an external evaluator, backed up by a system of state sanctions, might be sufficient to bring low-performing schools up to standard.

But not all California schools are operating in the same context. Many of our schools enroll large numbers of students who speak little or no English while others serve students who come from homes with scarce economic resources. The challenges faced by these schools are vastly different from those faced by schools where almost all the students speak English and whose bedroom libraries rival those of many inner-city classrooms.

Although our most challenged schools do have their idiosyncratic problems to solve, in some measure the underperformance of these schools is attributable to a statewide pattern of low achievement. For example, the chart above shows the distribution of schools in which 50 percent or more of the students participate in the Free and Reduced Price Lunch program across the API decile rankings.

Distribution for schools with more than 50 percent economically
disadvantaged students across the 10 API rankings in 2000:

Number of Schools   API Ranks

1                      638
2                      631
3                      592
4                      502
5                      383
6                      257
7                      118
8                       45
9                       13
10                       2

Note: Table made from bar graph.

Even casual inspection reveals that a school with more than 50 percent of its students in the school lunch program is about 80 times more likely to be in decile 1 or 2 than in decile 9 or 10. Clearly the effects of poverty present real challenges to schools that serve students from low-income homes. The results for schools enrolling large numbers of English language learners, Hispanic or African American students are similar to the figures above.