Category Archives: School Accountability

Ed News Colorado reports today regarding a dispute over publicly-funded teacher union employees, that an arbitrator has ruled in favor of the Douglas County Federation of Teachers (DCFT) and against the taxpayers. At issue is $118,500 school district officials say the union president agreed to pay rather than be accountable for the use of tax-funded time: Emails provided by the district show Superintendent Liz Fagen approached Smith about changing the arrangement, saying she wanted to provide more accountability for taxpayer funds.

Last time I wrote about Florida, it was touting their “silver medal” among the 50 states for growing student achievement in the past 15 years. The Harvard study that handed out the imaginary awards analyzed how much progress 4th-grade and 8th-grade students have made on the national NAEP test. Second place out of 50? Not too shabby. But how valid is it? Some critics have said the remarkable gains Florida 4th-graders have achieved, particularly in reading, are dramatically overblown because of their student retention policy. Since 2003 most of the state’s 3rd-graders who have failed to demonstrate reading proficiency have been held back, of course the test results for the smaller pool of 4th-grade pupils is going to look better. End of story, right? Not so fast. A recent Independence Institute guest speaker has gone behind the numbers to figure out just how much the retention policy can explain away Florida’s remarkable gains. In a newly published analysis for Education Next, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Marcus Winters finds the truth lies between the two claims, but closer to those made by Florida’s boosters than those made by its critics:

Here’s a good question I haven’t thought a lot about before: What kind of payments should school board directors be eligible to receive? I’m not talking about campaign contributions, which most districts unfortunately allow from groups that get dues collection services from government payroll systems. Special interests stopped Colorado from cleaning up that unethical cycle four years ago. No, I’m talking about publicly-funded compensation for official service. Last week a school board member from Loveland proposed that her Thompson School District might help cover expenses: Board member Denise Montagu sparked the conversation during a special meeting this week in which the application deadline for the vacant District A board seat was extended. Specifically, she asked if the board members could be reimbursed for mileage or receive a stipend towards their personal cellphone bills.

More than 10 years after Washington, D.C., gave us the No Child Left Behind era, the issue of educational accountability is returning to the forefront. How do we measure and attribute school success (or failure)? Who should be held accountable, and how should that accountability be shared? What should be the consequences, both positive and negative, and how will they be implemented and enforced? What role, if any, should the federal government play? The New York Times is hosting a forum with some of the brightest minds in education policy chiming in on the question: “Can School Performance Be Measured Fairly?” Now look, I’m not really fond of the way the question is framed. The obvious answer is Yes, just as obvious as the answer to the question “Can School Performance Be Measured Perfectly?” is No. That being said, some of the points respondents have made are significant, and deserve serious attention in policy debates:

Choice and accountability are two words you’ll hear my Education Policy Center friends say quite a bit if you’re around them enough. Empowering families with a broader range of educational options, and providing transparent information about — and real consequences for — a school ‘s learning results, are two general principles they and I regularly espouse. But what kind of accountability is appropriate for private schools that accept voucher students? One state with a large and growing private school choice program yesterday broke ground by adopting rules of a different kind from its predecessors. Fordham Institute blogger Adam Emerson, who supports the move, boils the decision down to its essence: Louisiana has shown us that it’s possible to offer private-school choice and control for quality in a way that doesn’t cramp what makes a private school unique. And in doing so, Louisiana has broken ground in school-voucher policy. While other states have made voucher and tax-credit-scholarship programs more transparent, only Louisiana would regulate enrollment at schools that consistently show poor performance. [emphasis added]

Has it been a whole year since the last big ACE Scholarships luncheon? Funny. I was still 5 then, too. Last time around it was my edu-reform crush Michelle Rhee, only a few months out of her famous tenure as chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, explaining her change of heart about vouchers and praising Douglas County’s choice scholarship program. The 2012 edition of the ACE Scholarships luncheon featured Foundation for Excellence in Education board chair Jeb Bush sounding the call for more choice as a catalyst to his winning education reform formula. His successful track record as Florida governor from 1999 to 2006 is tied to his focused and comprehensive approach to education reform. But as Governor Bush famously has said time and time again in various forms, “Reform is never finished because success is never final.” Therefore, the theme of his Denver speech yesterday was focused on the future, as reported by Ed News Colorado:

What a hubbub. Having finally read last week’s desperate New York Times attack against K-12 tuition tax credit programs, I was left scratching my head. Really? The Old Gray Lady seems awfully cranky about school choice and short on facts or serious arguments when it comes to this one. In a way, it felt like writer Stephanie Saul was pushing different random hot buttons to get people fired up about… something or other. As usual, overlooked in the article was the fact that nearly all gold standard academic research shows positive academic or competitive benefits from private school choice programs — and not one shows a negative impact. But that probably didn’t sound as compelling as the overblown assertion that “scholarship programs have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children.” Writing for Education Next, Jason Bedrick does the most thorough job of dismantling the implicit argument in Saul’s story.

It’s not every day when my parents turn on the radio and get to hear education policy top the national news headlines. But yesterday Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave a big speech to explain why improving education was “the civil rights issue of our era, and it’s the greatest challenge of our time.” Hardly a coincidence, I’m sure, but the Romney campaign also just released “A Chance for Every Child.” The document outlines his education policy plans, including:

Calling all Colorado education policy makers and policy wonks: I hope you’ll check out this new Fordham Institute report Defining Strong State Accountability Systems: How Can Better Standards Gain Greater Traction? My Education Policy Center friends and I can’t endorse everything in the publication. But it’s worth looking at because Colorado is one of seven state accountability systems profiled. The 2009 CAP4K changes to the state’s accountability law, as well as 2010’s educator effectiveness legislation, were both cited as key reasons for including the Centennial State in the analysis. The authors make some excellent points to chew on. First, improvements can be made to the way district and school performance data are presented:

A lot of big people were paying attention to Louisiana this weekend because of some big presidential primary election there. But I’m more interested in Bayou State developments from the world of K-12 education. And they look pretty big from here. Last Thursday night Republicans and Democrats in the Louisiana House of Representatives came together to approve a major educational voucher and charter school expansion (House Bill 976). The programs are mainly aimed at low-income students enrolled in schools with mediocre or poor performance on the state’s accountability system. The discussion and vote (63-42) went late into the night.