State Board takes action on accountability, assessment
Suspends API for 2014-15, favors multiple-measures accountability system
Published: March 18, 2015
By unanimous vote, the State Board of Education at its meeting on March 11, 2015, suspended the Academic Performance Index for the 2014-15 school year with the aim of developing and launching a new accountability system as early as fall 2016.
State Board members and other public education stakeholders expressed a shared goal of moving away from the API’s single-number measure, which is based exclusively on student test scores, to a system of multiple measures as recommended by the Public Schools Accountability Act Advisory Committee. These measures could include expulsion and suspension rates, graduation rates and even the condition of school facilities.
“We heartily support moving to a multiple-measures system of accountability, as was initially envisioned even in the early days of the API,” CSBA Senior Director of Policy & Programs Teri Burns said in a memo sent to the State Board. “Districts and county offices of education are complex entities that serve communities in many different ways, meeting the needs of diverse groups of students and parents. It is critical that schools be judged on how they are serving their communities, not on a single metric.”
In public comments, representatives from ACSA, Children Now, the California PTA, Los Angeles Unified School District and the CTA also spoke in favor of moving toward a multiple measures system.
However, speakers did voice some concerns. Stephen Blake, a senior adviser for Children Now, spoke about the current anxiety surrounding timelines for executing a new statewide accountability system, while Brian Rivas, director of policy and governmental relations for Education Trust-West, said the advocacy organization was concerned about “the level of attention given to educational equity.” He argued that by adding too many measures, the definition of what constitutes a good school could get lost or confused.
“We want something that we’ll be able to comprehend,” Lupe Aragon, a parent from Los Angeles USD, said.
SBE Member Trish Williams spoke to Aragon’s point. “Once parents understood the API, they had a way of being able to take a look at the school and another school and [make] a judgment of where they wanted their student to go to school. I agree with that and hope we’ll keep that in mind as we go forward.”
Several SBE members were quick to stress that the beneficial aspects of the API, including identification of student subgroups to help close the achievement gap, would be factored into the new accountability system.
“The API was misused,” SBE member Sue Burr said, noting that what was originally intended to be a growth measure evolved into a decile ranking system with punitive consequences for schools.
With the API, “those lower-decile schools made the greatest progress, but they were still labeled the lowest-performing schools,” SBE member Patricia Rucker said. Stakeholders say this inaccuracy would be corrected with new accountability system, which would lose the punitive aspect and instead measure growth.
Rucker also said that the State Board would revisit the timeline for implementing the new accountability system in order to make any needed adjustments.
Meanwhile, the State Board and other education groups face the challenge of helping parents understand the new system and how their students’ schools compare to others. Burns indicated that CSBA would help educate districts and boards about communicating with parents and community members. “We think we can do that job on a local level,” she said.
CAASPP Individual Student Results Report approved for one year
Also at the March 11 meeting, The California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress sought and received approval to use the new Individual Student Results Report for a one-year period. Students in grades 3 through 8 and 11 will receive the report, which measures their performance — and their progress beginning in 2016 — on the new Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced Assessments in math and English language arts. Smarter Balanced testing began on March 10. Districts will send the reports to students’ homes within eight weeks after they conclude testing.
While providing a student’s individual score, the new report has dispensed with the single number comparison score used in the former STAR report. Instead, state student performance will fall within a band. “We’re trying not to pigeonhole a student in an exact spot,” said Keric Ashley, director of the CDE’s Analysis, Measurement and Accountability Reporting Division. “There is a band in which a student could land. There is no magic line. Students won’t be in one level today and another tomorrow.”
“I love the bandwidth piece that gives parents some encouragement that it’s not just a single dot,” SBE Member Bruce Holaday said.
The new report was designed to be more dynamic and to provide more in-depth information. For the first year only, the student’s score will be measured against consortium-wide field test data. This data is intended to provide some context for parents, so that “a number isn’t just a number.”
Some State Board members and others questioned the practice of comparing student scores with field test data, claiming that school districts run the risk of misinforming parents
about their students’ true performance level, but others insisted that parents and students need a general frame of reference for the new scores.
“This is a starting point to help people get familiar with the test and the context,” said Tony Alpert, executive director of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.
“We don’t have that context because this is the first year,” said Burr. “Providing some kind of context is necessary.”
“We recognize that this is a one-year approval and that it reports only baseline scores. The addition of growth data next year will be very informative for all,” said CSBA’s Teri Burns in her memo to the Board. “We believe the report as proposed provides good context for parents and provides very individualized information.” Burns added that it would be helpful to provide information on the report in multiple languages.
New mega-item format helps align efforts
The March 11 meeting saw the introduction of the “mega-item.” The mega-item format attempts to tie together different but related efforts that California is making to help ensure they are aligned. The State Board covered all assessment efforts in one big item, and all accountability efforts in another.
School board members should be aware of the new format so they can better identify informational and action items. CSBA’s Teri Burns wrote in her memo to the State Board:
“The new format for considering all assessment items together allows for discussion of the interconnectedness of assessments, but can be difficult to identify which items on which the public is prepared to testify. We see merit in both the comprehensive discussion and more specific items and hope the Board will consider handling this item differently at different meetings, as appropriate.”
In separate actions, the State Board approved a test contractor — the Educational Testing Service — for the new Smarter Balanced assessments and received a report from the Statewide Special Education Task Force Committee. Read the story on the Committee’s report in CSBA’s March newsletter, which publishes later in March.
The SBE’s May meeting will include discussion of a draft LCFF rubric and of the accountability and assessment efforts underway in the state.