Evie Hudak Colorado State Board of Education

a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District

HOW DOES NCLB FIT WITH SB 186 AND ACCREDITATION –OR DOES IT?

The latest concern in Colorado’s education community is being referred to as “alignment.” It’s really the problem of lack of alignment – between the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the state’s two accountability laws: Accreditation (HB 98-1267) and the Education Reform Act (SB 00-186, which requires ratings of schools on the School Accountability Reports). School districts are asking which “target” they are to “shoot for.” Should they concentrate on making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), on retaining their accreditation, or on improving SAR ratings?

Supposedly, districts have only one “target,” because NCLB requires each state to have “a single statewide accountability system.” According to our state plan, which was approved by the U.S. Department of Education, our single system is Accreditation. The way in which Accreditation is a single system is that it calls for districts to meet the requirements of all state and federal education reform programs. What that really means in terms of SB 186 is that districts will be accredited if they disseminate the SARs, not if their schools receive good ratings on the SARs. What that really means in terms of NCLB is that districts will be accredited if they provide school choice and supplementary services for schools that fail to make AYP, not if they actually make AYP.

The key aspects that determine whether a district is accredited are in the rules for the Accreditation of Schools and School Districts, promulgated by the State Board of Education: Students must show “reasonable progress over time” on CSAP and the district must make a good faith effort to comply with the various other provisions of the Accreditation rules (including implementation of content standards in all 12 content areas, improvement of technology, adequate recruitment and retention of teachers, and maintenance of safe schools).

Although not required for Accreditation, if a district wants its schools to look good in the public eye, it will strive to have their SAR ratings be good, or show improvement. Likewise, it might also want to avoid having its schools fail to make AYP. The alignment issue arises because what districts must do to accomplish either of these goals is different – very different.

The focus for improving the SAR rating is on increasing the “weighted score” for the school. The weighted score is derived from the level of proficiency on CSAP of students who count for the ratings. Because both Unsatisfactory and No Score count as -0.5, moving the Unsatisfactory students up to Partially Proficient (worth +0.5) is extremely valuable. Also, getting students to take the CSAP or complete it is just as valuable, or maybe even more if the students then score as Proficient (worth +1.0) or Advanced (worth +1.5).

Although moving students up from Unsatisfactory to Partially Proficient benefits the weighted score for the SARs, it does not ensure that a school’s rating will improve; that depends on how close to the borderline between different ratings a school is. For example, if a school’s weighted score is at the lowest end of the range for a rating of Average, it might be nearly impossible to improve the rating to High. On the other hand, increasing the number of students rising from Unsatisfactory to Partially Proficient will increase the chances of making AYP. (But then again, in most cases, it would have to be a fairly large number of students with the improvement to make the AYP target.)

Three kinds of students are exempted from the SARs: those who were not enrolled in the district prior to October 1; those who took, or would have been eligible to take, the CSAP-A (which is a small number of profoundly disabled students in Special Education classes); and English language learners who did not take a CSAP in Spanish. In contrast, NCLB exempts only two kinds of students: 0.5% of the profoundly disabled students, and students who have not been continuously enrolled in the district for one year. But AYP can only be achieved if the “participation rate” of students taking the CSAP is 95% of all students and of students in each subgroup. Although a No Score drags down the weighted score for the SARs, there is not a limit on it as there is for NCLB.

Another difference between the accountability systems has to do with disaggregation of students into subgroups. For the purposes of calculating school ratings on the SARs, there is no disaggregation. For NCLB, the subgroups are the major racial/ethnic groups, special education, English language learners, and the economically disadvantaged. For Accreditation, all of these except the economically disadvantaged are disaggregated, but students of exceptional ability (gifted and talented) are a subgroup, and in addition, the achievement of both genders is compared.

Whereas both the SARs and NCLB have students that are exempted, in Accreditation the performance of all students is considered. Whereas both NCLB and the SARs look at the qualifications of teachers, in NCLB teachers must meet strict definitions of “highly qualified,” and the SARs only report on the length of teachers’ experience and whether they are teaching in their field.

The worst aspect of all these differences is not really that there is such variation in what counts towards determining the merit of a school or district. It is not the fact that schools which fail to make AYP may still be accredited and/or get a good SAR rating. In fact, there is a strong likelihood that in working to make AYP, schools will improve their SAR ratings and be accredited.

The worst aspect is the wide variation in the kinds of data that must be collected and the calculations made with them for each of the three systems of accountability. That data “crunching” must be done in the Colorado Department of Education, which has had its budget slashed within the last year. Furthermore, local school districts will have to do some data work of their own to determine their best strategies for improvement. Because of the lack of alignment, they will be looking at three different pictures. There is a saying: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there.” What do we do if we’re trying to go to three different places at once?!