Data details on worst schools due out
Superintendents with schools on the state’s worst performing list and others have remained frustrated over the controversial selection process and the lack of transparency surrounding it.
Today or tomorrow at the latest, the state Department or Education is promising to post the data file that should shine more light on why the 188 schools were chosen for restructuring. (You should be able to find it here.)
Two weeks ago, the State Board of Education approved the final list. However, that hasn’t stopped the complaints. Calling the state’s list “an embarrassment to the district and the state,” Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines last week wrote the State Board and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, asking that they come up with a better methodology to create a “more realistic” list. That’s unlikely to happen, but Cortines attached the names of 28 schools in his district that he said were better candidates for restructuring.
Meanwhile, a consultant who does work for some districts with schools on the list has drafted a letter to the federal Department of Education requesting a two-week delay from the time that the state’s data file is released, so that districts can analyze the methodology and comment on it. Stephen Rhoads, an executive with Sacramento-based Strategic Education Services, is hoping, in turn, that the feds will look into questions that districts have raised.
Not much time, though, is left for further study. The schools on the list must soon apply for between $150,000 and $6 million in federal school improvement money spread over the next three years. They must implement one of four restructuring options dictated by the feds this fall.
The 188 schools were supposed to be the 5 percent of persistently lowest performing schools. The state used a combination of factors required by the Obama administration, modified by the Legislature and tinkered with by the state Department of Education after protracted negotiations with federal officials. After excluding small, alternative schools, and exempting any school that showed a 50-point increase in API scores in five years (a faulty legislative requirement), the final list appears to have excluded clearly some of the worst schools and drawn in schools that shouldn’t have been included. The primary criterion was the average proficiency rates in math and English language arts for three years.
Cortines noted 20 LAUSD schools with API scores below 600 (out of a scale of 800), about half of which were exempted by the 50-point gain. One school was Fremont High, with a graduation an API score of 524 and 1.5 percent proficiency in math and 14 percent in English language arts. Yet at least seven high schools with API scores above 640, including Seaside High in Monterey with an API of 659, were on the list.
Meeting with angry parents and teachers Wednesday, Oakland Unified Superintendent complained that four newly opened middle schools were also ensnared, the Oakland Tribune reported.
It’s unlikely that the feds will reject the schools or the methodology outright. However, the Legislature could recognize flaws in the methodology and revise the list for the next time around. The data file – which could have been released months ago – should help in that effort.
Correction: An early version said that Crenshaw High in Los Angeles was exempted from the restructuring list because of its 55 point API gain. In fact, due to how the gain is calculated, it is on the list.
4 Comments
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SVEF is the education foundation advocating for the needs of school districts across Silicon Valley. SVEF seeks to improve public education through establishing partnerships with the private sector and the education community ..
This list has been particularly disturbing in Oakland where I live and work. Four out of the five schools that were identified in OUSD are small schools that have already underwent many of the suggested changes only a few years ago. They are doing substantially better than their large comprehensive predecessors, however, because each school only has 2-3 years of state they just missed reaching the 50 point API exemption. Furthermore, there are many schools in Oakland which have been persistently failing but were not identified due to other exemptions. These examples only prove how disconnected CA Dept of Ed is from schools and classrooms. A policy with the potential to create change for the students who need it most has, in my mind, been completely screwed up.
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I would agree with Johathan. The federal guidance for this program was to use “current status” and “recent growth” for constructing a persistently low-achieving schools list. That was excellent well founded guidance. The screw-ups were in CA’s detailed implementation of that guidance, and the lack of vetting for CA’s detailed methodology by LEAs and the public compounded the methodological flaws. As John indicates, how to unring a bell and get a more realistic list is very problematic. Doug McRae, Retired Test Publisher, Monterey
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With so much instability in staffing and such high turnover in students, plus the mind-numbing effects of NCLB-inspired curricular narrowing, it’s not surprising that some schools are persistently viewed as struggling or under-performing. But this whole approach reeks. The state and federal government have neglected these schools, teachers, and students for years, burdened them with stupid mandates, ignored the plight of the communities in which such schools are most often found, and now they’re punishing the staff and students for their failure to meet narrow and somewhat mysterious criteria.
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Let me guess. The criteria and process, once settled on, will identify a number of “failing schools” in Beverly Hills in the south state and Tiburon-Belvedere in the north. No? This identification of “failing schools” won’t include schools in extravagantly wealthy areas? It must be a coincidence. Right. Interestingly, Nicholas Kristoff has an article in the NYT (3/26) noting that since the mid-1970s the US has dropped the ball on getting people out of poverty. It has also dropped the ball on improving school achievement. Another coincidence? Right again. The revealed “wisdom” seems to be, take all the failed (see NAEP results) policies re standards, sanctions, high-stakes assessments, sanctions, data abuse, sanctions, standardized/prescriptive instruction, extravagant contracts for textbook/testing corporations, sanctions, demonstrably failed Chicago style “reforms,” and double down on the sanctions and some strange alchemy will occur that creates success. After all, we’ve only been trying these faith based school reforms for twenty years. The floggings will continue untill morale improves.
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