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I. Introduction:
RI has taken a somewhat unique path regarding school
accountability, as compared with the other 49 states.
Rhode Island has always considered the school, not the
student, to be the unit of accountability. To help
foster and nourish schools that work well for each one
of their students, the state developed an
information-gathering and reporting system with a wide
variety of accountability facets or lenses. As such, RI
has more ways of viewing school functioning than many of
our fellow states. From the SALT visit teams who observe
schools firsthand to the details that govern the
research methods of the “value-added” charts, RI’s
considerable accountability mechanism depends on
multiple information lenses. (For a more complete
understanding of the functions and products of RI’s
system, see the 2001 State Analysis “Looking through
RI’s School Accountability Lenses.”
As the state (and now the federal government as well)
presses for hard evidence of improved student
performance as well as related measures such as higher
graduation rates and better school climate, RI’s policy
is to give the schools good information to allow them to
determine how they might best improve, given their
unique student population and community circumstances.
Even the judgments rendered by the School Performance
Groupings list, new this year, are only a first annual
benchmark in the larger journey towards 100% proficiency
of all students. The lists themselves are an addition to
the other data ‘lenses.’ RI’s school data is now
mature, allowing us to arrive at
some necessary judgments. When the
School Performance Categories lists were first
published in February 2002, some school communities
objected to the apparently simple-minded and narrow
approach of using only test scores to describe the
quality of schools, which are complex organisms, each
with unique characteristics. However, these judgments in
no way signal RI’s retreat from its multi-faceted
approach to school accountability. The lists (beginning
on page 14) are really only one more facet, albeit one
that describes a school’s relationship to the ultimate
goal: 100% proficiency of all students. RI’s goal has
not changed. Its strategy has not changed. All along,
one of the objectives for the information system was to
identify persistently low-performing schools in order to
fashion and eventually insist on improvement through a
sequence of responses and consequences for such a
school. These performance categories with their designation –
yes, labels, as some have complained – of ‘low,’
‘moderately’ or ‘high performing’ as well as ‘improving’
or ‘not improving,’ provide school communities and the
public with a port of entry into the much more
comprehensive and complex picture of a school and its
data. But using the full range of a school’s data is the
only way to get the full story. Upon investigation, one
school’s poor performance might be the result of
circumstances beyond its control: a history of
short-tenured principals, lack of curriculum,
inexperienced teachers and a district’s neglect, just to
invent a plausible example. Another school with
precisely the same designation might be in the midst of
promising reform – with, say, much more challenged
children, a research-endorsed curriculum only recently
implemented, and evidence that attention to the
children’s social needs is paying off with an improved,
more orderly school climate. The point is that while the performance categories are
the central character, they are still only one player in
a big story. Is student proficiency becoming more
robust? Are the preconditions for improved performance
themselves improving? For example, a school community
that has worked hard to reorganize teacher teams or
student advisories is doing important, necessary work.
But improved teacher-student relationships only
facilitate the achievement of RI’s goals and will not,
by themselves, boost student performance without
well-trained teachers and well-mapped, project-rich
curricula and high expectations for all students. RI has taken the multi-faceted approach because each
facet describes a different internal system within a
school, and all systems need to be ‘go,’ which is to
say, effective and integrated.
Furthermore, the federal government recently raised the
stakes. The “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001” (NCLB 2001) – the
revised Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA
2001 – dramatically changes the education landscape for
the states. In effect, the federal government insists
that the quality of public education improve, especially
for those poor, urban children who are traditionally
ill-served. The huge bill – 1,184 pages, available at:
http://edworkforce.house.gov – will be refined and
challenged over the years, but the spirit of its
insistence will probably not diminish. It responds to a
public outcry for higher yield on the considerable
investment in public education locally and nationally.
This act calls for annual testing of all public-school
children in grades 3 through 8; school report cards;
various sanctions for “failing” schools, including the
offer of alternative choices for students trapped in
chronically low-performing schools; and increased
accountability for schools, systems and states.
To a degree, RI is already ahead of the federal curve
because we have been building an accountability system
that includes several of the elements mandated by the
new federal legislation. For example, we already publish
individual reports on schools in Information Works! RI
is one of only 16 states whose testing program meets
federal Title I requirements. RI will have to test more
often, but the tests per se have passed muster. We
believe information really does work. One of the new federal mandates is to develop a
criterion by which to identify failing schools. RI’s
2002 performance groupings are a good first draft of
what such criteria might look like in the future.
According to the law, each year states must impose
sanctions against low-performing schools to increasing
degrees – at a rate that seems impossibly ambitious to
many educators. The specifics of the law could evolve
over time, but significant, measurable improvement will
remain the federal expectation.
Many factors support high achievement; others impede it.
Specifically to take into account as many of those
factors as possible, RI requires schools to collect
various data in addition to student performance, so they
have high-quality information about how to improve,
given each school’s unique student population and
community circumstances. The judgments expressed by the
school performance categories are not final, summative
pronouncements, but benchmarks along a journey to full
proficiency.
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