Northwest Education

Winter 2007 / Volume 12, Number 2.

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accountability:

a district and state partnership

By Bracken Reed and Richard Greenough

As the country marks the fifth anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act in January 2007, an increased number of districts are moving into improvement status, both in the Northwest and nationally. In addition, many districts are now moving to the next level of accountability, “corrective action.”

According to Section 1116(c) of the original Title IA legislation, corrective action by the state for a district in improvement can take different forms: deferring a district’s funds; instituting new curriculum; replacing district staff; removing specific schools from the district; authorizing students to transfer to another district; appointing a receiver or trustee to administer the district; or even abolishing or restructuring the district entirely.

In reality, most states are reluctant to take such drastic measures unless absolutely necessary. “The last thing we want to do is to take over districts,” says Roger Sampson, the Alaska Commissioner of Education & Early Development, “but after five years of not making progress a district may need more significant intervention.”

As more districts begin to hit that five-year mark the kind of state-level assistance Sampson alludes to is gaining national attention and raising multiple questions: What does the legislation actually say about states’ roles in providing assistance? Are all states required to provide the same kinds of assistance? What are states actually doing?

To answer those questions, the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory’s Center for School and District Improvement has conducted a study of the five Northwest states. Still in draft form, How Northwest States Are Responding to Schools in Need of Improvement: A Study of Current Practices (Davis, Krasnoff, Moilanen, & Sather, 2006) is one of the first systematic, multistate analyses of its kind. The report provides a brief summary of the legislation that addresses the state role, as well as details of current state efforts.

The State Role

NCLB legislation gives districts the main responsibility for providing assistance to schools in need of improvement. However, they’re not expected to do that alone. The original legislation called for states to develop a statewide system of “intensive and sustained technical assistance and support for school improvement” and to implement that support both to districts and directly to schools.

Section 1117(a)(4) of the legislation lists the three minimum components—described as “approaches”—of a statewide system of support to schools and districts: school support teams, distinguished educator services, and “additional approaches that increase the opportunity for all students to meet academic content and achievement standards.” The section also requires states to recognize and reward high-achieving schools.

In July 2006, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) released an update to the original NCLB legislation titled LEA and School Improvement: Non-Regulatory Guidance, which provides further definition of the state role. While this guidance gives more specific details—especially in regard to the function and purpose of school support teams—it again leaves many of the details up to individual states.

Typically, states are responding to the improvement mandate by strengthening approaches that were already underway prior to NCLB and by developing additional technical assistance efforts that are compatible with those efforts.

Common Ground in the Northwest

NCLB clearly prescribes state support teams as the “priority approach” for states to use. According to the NWREL study, states are doing just that. The original legislation defines the support teams as “composed of persons knowledgeable about scientifically based research and practice on teaching and learning and about successful schoolwide projects, school reform, and improving educational opportunities for low-achieving students.” The list that follows that definition includes not only educators from the state, district, and local level, but also parents, representatives from higher education, “pupil services personnel,” regional educational laboratories, and outside consultants.

In addition to state support teams, most of the Northwest states have implemented some form of the distinguished educator program. The legislation defines distinguished educators as “teachers and principals from Title I schools that have been especially successful in improving academic achievement.” These educators are typically invited to serve on a team that reviews the academic programs at schools in need of improvement.

Other approaches identified in the study as common to all states include:

• Extensive and ongoing communication about NCLB and related improvement issues
• Professional development designed to strengthen instructional weaknesses that led to improvement identification
• Mentoring and coaching for instructional leadership
• Emerging initiatives to support districts identified for improvement

For a list of each state’s major efforts, see Region at a Glance.

NWREL’s full report will be published in early spring 2007 on the Regional Educational Laboratory Network Web site: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/. Look for a link from NWREL’s site: www.nwrel.org.

How Are Districts Held Accountable?

District accountability and school accountability are measured in the same way: using statewide assessment scores and the federally approved adjustments to those scores, such as confidence intervals and safe harbor provisions. However, some provisions such as minimum N have important consequences when applied at the district level.

For example, in most states, districts are held to the same minimum N as schools. This means that all students in a given grade level are combined into a single group, as if the district had one big third-grade class, one big fourth-grade class, and so on. As a result, a district that does not have a single school that meets the minimum N for a given subgroup can still meet that number as a district. Each elementary school in a district may have fewer than 30 limited English proficient fourth-graders, for instance, and yet the district may very likely have more than 30 students in that subgroup when all schools are combined.

This situation can result in a district being designated as in need of improvement without having a single school in that status. For example, of the 30 school districts in Washington currently designated as in need of improvement, four of those districts do not have a single school in improvement. This situation raises a key question: How do districts in improvement make needed changes if none or only a small minority of their schools are facing school improvement sanctions?