DECEMBER 2009
Is California Ready to Step Up to North Carolina's Accountability Standard?
This owl has spotted a new arrival. He's a superintendent who gives a hoot about candor, clarity, and straight talk. He's new to California, having arrived in mid-August from North Carolina. Meet Sacramento City Unified School District's new superintendent, Jonathan Raymond.
In North Carolina, Raymond was Chief Accountability Officer for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS). His former district and state are both in the vanguard of the accountability movement. If Sac City gives him the freedom to do his best, this old owl bets he'll make the district a shining star—and teach us some lessons along the way.
A hint of those lessons was evident in the speech he made on his first day at Sac City. His comments to staff included this affirmation of transparency:
Accountability is more than just numbers on a page, or scores on a test sheet—although those are important, too! Accountability means all of us in public education taking responsibility for our work. We must make sure that work is effective and efficient—that schools are well run and children are learning and achieving.
I believe that adults must be held responsible for their work, and I also believe it's important that they have the support they need to succeed. For our school district, that means we must be clear about what schools control and what they don't. One big thing we can control is the quality of teaching and learning. Another is the leadership at the school level.
Indeed, parsing what educators control and do not control is the starting point for serious accountability. This owl can't help but wonder whether clarity would be better served by calmer and more thoughtful discussions of who, exactly, is responsible for what in the school world. This pertains as much to the achievement gap as it does to the school and district accountability.
The logic of Supt. Raymond's point leads directly to wiser questions. What do district HR directors do to hire those they believe will be the best teachers? What do school board trustees do to give management the power to retain only the best teachers when cutbacks require that they trim their rosters? Why do principals have the authority to approve probationary teachers for tenure with only a token evaluation? Why is Vista USD's superintendent the only one in California who insists on measuring teacher effectiveness using quantitative methods known as value-added assessment? (Terry Grier took similar steps in San Diego USD until he lost his board's support.)
WHAT PUTS CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG AHEAD?
CMS enjoys a well-deserved national reputation for enlightened management and academic achievement. It was the first district in North Carolina to have an International Baccalaureate Program and now boasts 15 participating schools. For the past three years, it has led the state and the nation in SAT scores for the top tenth of its students.
CMS is also known for candor and clarity. Part of CMS's reputation for transparency is due to Jonathan Raymond's success in improving the way the district reports results. He led a team that built on a strong foundation of speaking plainly and invested in its public's knowledge of its schools. His team created the Data Dashboard, an interactive online tool that satisfied the increasing appetite of the public and staff for detailed information on each school and the district as a whole. This fact sheet explains how to use the Dashboard.
The Data Dashboard can answer questions like the following: Is one school safer than another? Are the buses running on time? How much does it cost to run each school? If you're a teacher and want to see if other schools are doing better than your own in math, you'll find the answer with ease. Each school's Dashboard relies on the same categories and the same icons. Learn it once for your school and you've learned it for all. The Dashboard's effectiveness has been recognized by both Microsoft and the Data Warehousing Institute.
If that's not enough to "wow" you, take a look at the district's recently released annual report. It is a talking document, one that presents strong writing, clear thinking, and modern design. Short videos are laced throughout its pages. No more than half of each page is text, and each word is there for a reason.
Jonathan Raymond's success at CMS was made possible by two other factors. First, the district's communication director, Nora Carr, was his ally in setting the accountability bar so high. She is perhaps the best-known communications professional working for any district in any state. Her monthly columns in the American School Board Journal and eSchool News have educated tens of thousands of citizens who govern districts. She is a leader within her own organization, the National School Public Relations Association, and is currently chief of staff at Guilford County Schools in North Carolina.
Second, and more important, the state of North Carolina set the bar high for its own accountability reports. These reports provide key facts about attendance, test scores, crimes and violence, growth scores, and teachers, including turnover—all of which are compressed into a two-page summary.
The North Carolina accountability report has shortcomings, however. The design is awkward and less readable than it could be. The report uses dense tables filled with data that is unnecessarily exact and fails to provide any supporting graphics, which detracts from the reader's ability to grasp the data's meaning. The only text is from the district's leader, not the school principal. One positive, however, is that you can email the principal directly from the report (although this benefit is hidden in plain sight).
CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG RAISES THE ANTE ON NORTH CAROLINA'S SARCS
Because CMS's standards were higher than those of the state education agency, Jonathan Raymond's team created its own four-page school progress reports. Compared with the state's accountability reports, they are more readable and better designed. They contain important information about programs the school offers as well as a message from the principal. You'll find three measures of real-world parent and community engagement (satisfaction, volunteer hours, partnerships). The reports are updated twice yearly and are published in English and Spanish. The district printed copies of the reports in December 2008 for the prior school year and sent them to parents and staff.
Take a look at this progress report for East Mecklenburg High School.
MEASURES OF TEACHER AND SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS
The CMS school progress reports also incorporate two indicators of progress that California lacks. The first factor measures what percentage of students in a school made a year's progress in a year's time. This is based on each individual student's expected growth over the prior two years. Typically, about half of the students in the state meet this mark, but North Carolina sets the mark at 60 percent.
The second factor is the school's ABC designation based on the growth formulas established by the state in its ABCs of Public Education plan. This combines the growth factor for each of the students with a point-in-time snapshot of how well students performed against state-set standards of academic excellence. Schools are assigned one of seven designations ranging from "Honor School of Excellence" to "Low Performing." East Mecklenburg High School met its mark and was deemed to be a "School of Progress." You can read more about this ABC designation on the North Carolina state department of education Web site.
It's no surprise that an enlightened growth model is alive and well in North Carolina. The state started its ABC designation in the 1996-1997 school year and revised its growth model in 2006. North Carolina is also the home state of SAS Institute Inc., a privately owned research and software firm. One of their divisions, SAS in School, is led by Bill Sanders and June Rivers, the two creators of the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS). Since SAS, like CMS, is located in North Carolina, this owl's hunch is that this vision of accountability has strong roots in the region.
CAN CALIFORNIA LEARN THE RIGHT MOVES FROM NORTH CAROLINA?
California can learn some lessons from states with more evolved accountability methods. We could certainly look to North Carolina for lessons in reporting results, measuring teacher and school effectiveness in advancing student learning, and for its candor in reporting about real-world measures of school safety.
As a state we may be lagging, but some California school districts are stepping ahead of the crowd to communicate outside of the accountability zone. San Jose USD is publishing its climate survey results with polish and care. Santa Rosa City Schools is marketing its high schools with pride and has won awards for its intelligent work. San Dieguito UHSD is investing in reaching its larger community through a magnificent Web site. Los Angeles USD, under Ray Cortines' direction, is in year two of its own school report card project, and it persists despite incredible financial strain. These signs are hopeful ones, and they suggest this owl's several recommendations below.
RECOMMENDATIONS
| Step 1. |
Get directed. The state keeps tripping itself up with laws that block progress. It took a special emergency session of the state legislature to remove barriers in the Education Code to measuring teacher effectiveness and putting that data to work. That's a step in the right direction.
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| Step 2. |
Get more courage. Instead of simply reporting about school safety plans, report crimes and acts of violence like CMS does. This requires that you trust the public. Report teacher turnover. Report what percentage of students made a year's progress in each school. This requires that we measure gain-score and use value-added methods to do so, which means getting the courage to stand up.
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| Step 3. | Get wise. Investing in good reports is no more costly than investing in poor reports. Good reports only require clear thinking, effective designs, and good writing. Print reports and distribute them to everyone. Keep the reports short and sweet, but make more detail available to the more curious. |
REFERENCES
Learn more about Jonathan Raymond at the SCUSD Superintendent's page.
The Web site for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' accountability office.
The North Carolina ABCs accountability model.
The history of North Carolina's ABC measure of progress.
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