Keeping your monster on a leash

School accountability

Perhaps the most significant criticism of the No Child Left Behind Act has been what opponents portray as the unjustifiably exclusive use of testing as the sole benchmark for school progress. [1] Among the alternative measures proposed include graduation rates, AP course enrollment, as well as achievement in the arts, history, and sciences.

Kansas posits that three elements are crucial to a succesful accountability system: short-term flexibility that allows schools to close their relative achievement gaps without incurring penalty following the initial reform, a payments and ratings system that recognizes the confluence of multiple factors in succesful schools, as well as a framework for school improvement.

In the system that this paper proposes, mild decreases in test performance are largely irrelevant to a school's standing: district's will make their assessments on renewing a school's term principally on an overall rating system that accounts for a variety of factors. Only schools that suffer sharp decreases or chronic nonperformance, will trigger direct action by the district.

Small drops that last for two to three years, should be expected at least once per decade in all schools - as a result, the consequences are reasoned - encouraging the review of school curriculum and policies by a school improvement team composed of persons chosen by the school and district in question. Such a system is by no means intended to cause institutional shame, but as necessary as one would need to consult a mechanic if their car fails.

7.1 In the five years immediately following privatization, failing schools are expected to make adequate progress towards national standards. A school with a current level 54% of students at exceptional to superior, for example, would need to improve their marks by 4.2 percentage points per year.

The length of the five-year transformation period is justified by a recent study on comprehensive school reform. The study found that “schoolwide changes take three to five years to bear fruit and that fidelity to the program is key to success.”[2]

7.2 Following this period, schools must maintain national standards, and must not fail to meet them for two consecutive years, or they will be required to consult a school improvement team.

Ratings

7.3 The means for assessing a school’s performance will be based largely on a compilation of ratings. For example, a school may possibly achieve ten stars: 2 each for math and reading performance (a 70% pass rate on each equals 2.8), 2 for graduation rate, 1 for science and history performance, 1 for art, 1 for AP enrollment, and 1 as a challenge index (the voluntary recruitment of disabled, or poor-performing students).

The purpose of this rating system allows for a more complete assessment of a school's performance - of which test performance is an important factor that can be offset by improvements elsewhere.

7.4 Every school must publish this information, and districts must provide the data for each school to all parents. These key performance indicators must be used with the intent of establishing a panorama of school performance from a credible variety of vantage points. Additionally, a national ranking for elementary and secondary schools will be produced annually.

Maintaining credibility

7.4 The district will serve as the coordinator of schools enrollment as they lack any direct benefit from data manipulation of dropout statistics.
7.5 Schools will be required following the five-year interim period to have digital testing centers, ideally in the form factor of tablet personal computers, for direct, digital assessments to maintain the integrity of testing. Such a format also offers the benefits of on-demand access and incorporating assistance for special-needs students.

Send in the army

7.6 If a school should fail to meet standards, the district will be expected to dispatch a focus group of five to ten highly trained persons to develop a plan of acceptable change in close coordination with the school’s staff and parents. Parents would vote on such a plan.
7.7 If a school reaches a state of chronic failure, the focus group would assume full operational control of the school, including personnel, with the exception of
the school’s focus—be it traditional, art, religious education, etc.
7.8 The nature of a school’s format will be reviewed by the district for all schools every five years. At this time, the district would initiate the process for significantly reforming poor-performing schools—soliciting bids as well as reviewing options for establishing independent schools, whose initial management is chosen directly by the district.

The market
The ultimate goal of privatization is that school success, standards, and opportunities will expand in accordance with market expectations. As schools can no longer afford to fail, given students' liberty to transfer elsewhere, and also the liberty to change operations, schools must compete to provide the best education. Markets allow for the implementation of reasoned, progressive incentives, particularly promising in encouraging good schools to recruit poor-performing or disabled students.

[1] Calls Grow for a Broader Yardstick for Schools. Maria Glod. The Washington Post. 16 December 2007.
[2] In Whole-School Reform, Staying True to Model Matters. Debra Viadero. Education Week. 14 May 2007. http://tinyurl.com/38anl5.