How Have States Designed
Their Accountability Systems?
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How Have States Designed Their Accountability Systems? |
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While NCLB offers flexibility in implementation, its intent is crystal clear - all students must achieve proficiency on the state's content standards by 2014. NCLB defines accountability procedures focused on student achievement but leaves it to the states to define the content students should achieve, what constitutes proficient performance and the expected annual rate of improvement. States select reading or language arts. They also create assessments aligned to their content standards, define alternative content standards, assessments and performance standards for students with severe cognitive disabilities, and define procedures for ensuring valid and reliable decisions of subgroup, school, school system, and state progress. Much of the discussion around implementing NCLB has focused on the requirement of defining Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). The concept is straightforward. States determine their baseline based on school year 2001-02 assessment results and set annual AYP target so that by 2014 100% of students are achieving at the proficient level. The critical piece of AYP is that all subgroups, all schools, all school systems, and the state are held to the same target. Each must achieve at or above the AYP target before a school, school system, or the state can be said to have meet the expected level of progress. To ensure that the annual measures of progress accurately reflect the performance of all students, at least 95% of students must participate in the assessments. Some argue that these requirements virtually ensure that all schools in the country will fail to meet AYP at some point over the next 12 years. Their arguments are based on simulations of the status quo of educational practices and cynically assume that educators cannot rise to challenge of teaching all students. While these discussions are interesting, at best they are esoteric to the job at hand. At worst, they play to the too prevalent prejudice that not all children can be taught. It is time to get to the work of teaching all children. Within the context of NCLB, states have flexibility in implementing their accountability system. The most salient choice states have is the selection of the minimum number of students in subgroups and schools for whom the school, school system, or the state is to be held accountable. The dilemma is this: the intent is that schools are accountable for all students and the eight subgroups, however, the accuracy (reliability and validity) of decisions depends on the number of students in the school and/or subgroup. The two concepts are at cross-purposes. Furthermore, NCLB requires that states ensure that their decisions are valid and reliable. To address this issue, NCLB allows states to set a minimum group size for subgroups and schools. Ostensibly, allowing states to set the minimum group size allows them to address the reliability and validity requirement. The larger the groups size the more accurate the decision. However, the larger the group size the less likely it is that schools will be held accountable for the performance of subgroups. How many elementary schools have 30 or more students with disabilities or limited English proficiency? The other approach is to select a small minimum group size and address validity and reliability with the statistical concept of confidence intervals. The principle is that the smaller the number of student in a subgroup the wider the confidence interval. States have proposed and the USDE has approved plans based on both types of procedures. However, what may be perceived as an opportunity to reduce the vulnerability of schools does not alter the requirement that school systems and the state are held to the same AYP targets. Thus, a lager minimum group size or a wide confidence interval may appear to let schools off the hook for the performance of their subgroups but the reality is that accountability simply shifts to the school system and state levels. I would argue that it is easier to deal with the performance problem closer to the source of the problem and its solution. Ultimately it is teachers in classrooms who must address the performance issues of all of their students. States have flexibility in the selecting how many targets must be met in two ways: Grade specific or school-wide targets for reading/language arts and mathematic and the option of including other state defined measures. States can set AYP targets at each grade level separately for reading/language arts and mathematics or the targets can be set at the school level by averaging across grades separately for reading/language arts and mathematics. The practical consequence of this choice is the number of targets a subgroup, school, school system, or state must meet. For example, a typical K-5 elementary school in 2003 is held accountable for reading/language arts and mathematics performance in grade 3 and 5. If the school had a sufficient number of students in each subgroup, then it could be held accountable for as many as 36 (9x2x2) separate targets - one for each subgroup and all students (8+1), reading/language arts and mathematics (2), at grades 3 and 5 (2). The number of separate targets can be reduced to 18 (9x2) by averaging reading/language arts and mathematics across grades 3 and 5 separately. As more assessments are required the consequences of choosing a grade specific or school specific target compounds. For example, in 2005 when assessments in reading/language arts and mathematics are required in all grades 3-8, the elementary school could be held accountable for as many as 54 targets or as few as 18. While there are arguments for both choices, averaging across grade seems to make the most sense. It increases the accuracy of decisions by increasing the of number of students included in the decision and it reduces the number targets and hence the vulnerability of subgroups and schools. States may add other measures based on assessments or other academic indicators beyond reading/language arts and mathematics and the other required academic indicator required by NCLB. These may be other assessments of state content standards such as writing, social studies, or science. As well as other measures such as promotion rate. However, the inclusion of addition measures must not make it easier for a subgroup, school, school district or the state to meet their AYP target. States have flexibility in defining the rate of progress expected of their schools. Some states have set a linear course in which the AYP target increases equally each year from baseline to 2014. Others have defined slower rates of growth in the early years compensated by faster rates of growth in later years. Regardless of the required rate of progress all subgroups and schools are held to same target and more importantly 100% of students are expected to reach proficiency by 2014.
Consolidated accountability plans Consolidated accountability plans According to the Department of Education's recent press release all state accountability plans have been approved. http://www.ed.gov/PressReleases/06-2003/06102003.html
All states submitted draft accountability plans to the U.S. Department of Education by the Jan. 31 deadline. Following an initial review and technical assistance, if needed, the next step was onsite peer reviews of each state's proposed accountability plan. Teams of three peer reviewers — independent, nonfederal education policy, reform or statistical experts — conducted each peer review. Following a review of the team's consensus report, the department provided feedback to the state and worked to resolve any outstanding issues. Ultimately, Paige approved all the state plans." Approved state plans are available on the Council of Chief State School Officers' Web Site in printable (PDF) formats. http://ccsso.org/workbooks/workbooks.html The Education Commission of the States (ECS) links to state accountability plans on the individual state's web sites. In addition, ECS has analyzed all state plans and workbooks and produced a chart comparing the how states complied to the require components of the plan. http://nclb.ecs.org/nclb/ |
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| How Have States Implemented AYP? |
| How Have States Designed Their Accountability Systems? |
| How Do States Report Progress? |
| How Do States Provide Technical Assistance to Districts and Schools? |
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