SARC BITE 9 | NOVEMBER 28, 2002

Say Goodbye to the Era of Police-it-Yourself Accountability

The powerful and much respected Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education, Eugene Hickok, has warned states and districts to take seriously the letter and spirit of "No Child Left Behind." In a press teleconference on November 25, he cautioned, "Watch us, we are going to get pretty aggressive." These are fighting words.

A reporter for the Chicago Tribune wrote, "Hickok said too many states are finding bureaucratic ways around the sweeping No Child Left Behind Act instead of developing creative means to make it work. He said the department will step up its efforts to ensure that school officials meet the law's requirements. He did not offer specifics." Read the full story.

These are not just idle threats. Supt. Roy Romer of LA Unified, for one, is taking the big boys at their word. "These regulations are a mistake in both those regards for L.A.," said Roy Romer, Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent. "Obviously I can't tell you how we'll handle it at this point." Read the full story of Supt. Romers retort.

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

Romer specifically mentioned the impracticality of offering 150,000 students in 115 underperforming schools the option of transferring to the school of their choice. But this is exactly the issue for federal Undersecretary Eugene Hickok. He stated, "But the idea that choice should be limited by a lack of capacity runs counter to the intent of this law."

Hickok cited other NCLB requirements that many states and districts have failed to meet:

• Publish school and district level accountability report cards that meet the federal laws requirements;
• Notify parents whose children are in underperforming schools of their right to transfer to a better school, and have transportation provided;
• Notify parents in more seriously underperforming schools of their right to request tutoring for their kids at district expense;
• Staff underperforming schools solely with certified teachers holding full credentials, and in the case of high schools, qualified to teach the subjects theyre assigned.

This threat of enforcement is consistent with the strict definition of underperforming schools that was negotiated last spring. This quote from a congressional staffer involved in those debates conveys a flavor of the tension "We did intend for this to be a wake-up call, no question. A lot of people in Congress felt for too long states had been cooking the books, so to speak. We didn't want every district in every state to be in school improvement, but we expected a lot because we're not doing a good job. The school improvement problem is not a problem," added the congressional staff member, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's a call to help those schools. ... If they don't want them to fail, then let's do more for them." Read the full article from Education Week.

OTHER SIGNS OF ENFORCEMENT AFOOT

If your district is counting on a continuation of the era of infinite forgiveness, this might be a good time to pay attention to these other signals.

The California state law that raised the standard for accountability reporting, Senate Bill 1632, now more than two years old, required the California Department of Education to monitor compliance. It gave money to the CDE to do so. With a new superintendent of public instruction, Jack O'Connell, about to take Delaine Eastin's place, enforcement should soon follow.

And outside the castle of K-12, other signals abound. The Enron debacle ... the energy industry's preying on California's woes ... Worldcom ... Anderson Consulting's collapse. It is a long list of failures of self-policing. In this context, the serious turn toward enforcement by the federal government, and the push in turn by state agencies like the CDE to enforce the laws on local agencies like districts, is more credible. It is happening everywhere.

The wave of accountability is not a small one, nor is it a passing fancy. Some predict a flood. Those who prepare by learning to swim and building an ark are most likely to be among the survivors.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SARC DIRECTORS

1. Read the sections of NCLB that are related to SARCs.

2. Read the Education Code and the Senate Bill 1632 that redefined what SARCs should be.

3. Read what the good folks in the SARC division of the CDE have done to make the requirements clear for the year ahead. The data definitions are a good place to start. The CDE SARC division web site contains much more that is useful, including advisories, an archive of policy memos, and a directory to SARCs from other districts.

REFERENCES

• Eugene Hickok's comments, from an article which first appeared in the Chicago Tribune.
• Supt. Roy Romer's comments, from an article in the LA Times.
• Anonymous congressional staffer, on the seriousness of the federal officials negotiating the rules that will bring NCLB to life.
• The SARC unit's online information service on the CDE website.

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