Credit: Louis Freedberg / EdSource

Credit: Louis Freedberg / EdSource

Past month's end, Congress is expected to laissez passer and President Obama is expected to sign the successor to the No Child Left Behind Human action, giving all states the breadth to broadly define student achievement and shape school improvement in ways that California already has been doing.

"NCLB was so discredited, and California has been in the lead in moving across it," said David Plank, executive manager of Policy Analysis for California Pedagogy (PACE). The neb, called the Every Student Succeeds Act, "adopts the arroyo that is similar to California'south emphasis on multiple measures (of gauging school progress) and reducing the punitive elements of accountability," he said.

In paring dorsum the powers of the side by side U.Due south. secretary of education and reversing form on controversial reforms, the bill would cease conflicts that Gov. Jerry Brown and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson have had with NCLB and U.Due south. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's expansive estimation of it. It would prohibit requiring states to use standardized examination scores to evaluate teachers – a big area of friction.

The Business firm easily passed the bill Wednesday and the Senate could take it up adjacent calendar week. If it becomes law, it volition permit each country to set its ain goals for districts and schools, and to decide how to mensurate progress in meeting them and identify and set the worst-performing schools. Gone volition be the often-criticized nationwide target of 100 percentage student proficiency, uniform penalties for falling brusque of targets and federal dictates on how to turn declining schools around.

Gone, too, at the cease of the school yr, will exist the waivers with some flexibility from NCLB that Duncan granted to 42 states and Washington, D.C., in recent years to revise their accountability systems. California didn't pursue a waiver because state officials disagreed with the preconditions that Duncan gear up. Just California headed off in its own direction of school reform anyway with the passage of the Local Command Funding Formula, which shifted more coin to low-income students and English language learners and more than authority to districts to make decisions. Next year, the Land Board of Education and the Legislature volition mankind out a new school accountability and student testing system that the state funding police force outlined. The Every Student Succeeds Act will formally grant all states the flexibility to practise and then.

"Like every country, we want a federal policy that allows for the flexibility and alignment to meet our local student needs and current country policies," Michael Kirst, president of the state board, said in a statement. "No Kid Left Backside did not do this. We believe many of the provisions at present being considered complement our state'due south policies."

Some elements of NCLB's mandates for accountability would go on, with some changes. States would have to:

  • Test students yearly in grades 3 through eight and once in high school in math and English language language arts and in grades 5, 8 and 10 in scientific discipline.
  • Track the data for racial, indigenous and other student subgroups and have activeness in those schools where subgroups are struggling.
  • Arbitrate in the worst-performing 5 percent of schools and in high schools with graduation rates beneath 67 percent.
  • Compile not only scores on standardized tests, merely too growth in scores over time, high school graduation rates and progress in reclassifying English learners to proficiency in English. Across these factors, which must be given substantial weight in an accountability system, states would have to incorporate non-academic factors, such as schoolhouse climate, parent and instructor date or access to advanced coursework and other career and higher readiness measures.

Those requirements are uniform with the management California has taken. It has gone beyond NCLB's one-dimensional focus on test scores to sanction schools. Tests scores are but one element of eight priorities ­– school climate and parent and educatee date among them – that the Legislature spelled out in the Local Control Funding Formula. The Local Command and Accountability Plans, which districts must consummate annually, include two dozen performance metrics, including student suspension, attendance, and dropout and expulsion rates. The 2022 funding formula addresses achievement gaps in redistributing funding and in requiring that county offices work with – and eventually arbitrate in – districts where student subgroups proceed to lag behind.

Potential source of conflict

Where California could have a run-in with federal officials is in determining the five percentage of schools that are lowest-performing and need a plan for corrective activeness. Compiling that list could require a fashion to rank schools – something like the Bookish Functioning Alphabetize, the three-digit number calculated from weighted factors like graduation rates and test scores. The country board suspended the API two years ago and Kirst and other board members accept made it clear they don't want to re-found it. They favor a drove of performance data, not a single ranking. Theirs would be a data dashboard with a mix of school or district metrics, some highlighting performance and others pointing to underlying conditions, such as suspension rates, that could point trouble.

"That'due south the rub; they don't want to practise another API," Plank said.

The state board's challenge volition be to marry the federal requirement for a state-produced list of schools with a more than decentralized schoolhouse comeback system that features a different arroyo to measuring performance.

"The linguistic communication of the bill suggests multiple measures of school quality volition need to be combined into a single summary measure to identify the lowest performing schools," said Rob Manwaring, an potency on school finance and accountability who is working with the nonprofit advocacy organization Children Now.  Likewise, "the Legislature may need to laissez passer legislation aligning the Local Control Funding Formula with the new world of Every Educatee Succeeds Act."

Until the state board chooses how to proceed and the federal government signs off on the country'due south new system, California will exist stuck with NCLB'south accountability requirements – so the board will feel pressure to move alee.

The state board hasn't made a final determination near abolishing the API, and the Legislature volition accept concluding say. Passage of the Every Pupil Succeeds Human activity volition strengthen the arguments of the country PTA and children's advancement groups, which prefer a elementary index comparing schools' performance.

Civil rights groups, with some reluctance, are backing the Every Student Succeeds Human activity. John Affeldt, managing chaser for Public Advocates, a nonprofit police force house and advocacy organization, expressed the ambivalence. "It's non a good thing in general to requite states this much authority; the bill marks a significant abdication of the federal role in pedagogy, relying on skilful-faith efforts of the states. But California is headed in the right direction with the yet unanswered question of whether in the end it volition become it correct."

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