I.
Introduction
Over the past decade,
several states have created comprehensive accountability systems
designed to increase student learning in public schools. These
accountability systems are based on "high-stakes"
standardized testing of a state curriculum. Local educators face
consequences based on how well their students do on these exams.
They receive rewards for good student performance and are subject
to interventions to rescue children from low-performing schools.
Using the recent accountability reforms in Georgia as a backdrop,
this article considers the role of local flexibility within an
accountability system--flexibility over paperwork,
resources, personnel, and curriculum for local
educators.
This increased
flexibility involves a decentralization of authority that is
broader than, but inclusive of, school-based management. To
implement the increased flexibility for local educators
contemplated in this article would require profound decreases in
the dizzying array of state and federal regulations governing
local districts, schools, and personnel.
Increased flexibility
for local educators is not merely an option in a world where
local educators are subject to a comprehensive accountability
system imposed by a state--it is a requirement for success.
Failure to provide local educators with flexibility to meet
statewide learning goals for students would lead to blurred lines
of accountability, and would not capitalize on the unique talents
of local educators and other unique local circumstances, both of
which would ultimately prevent accountability systems from
realizing their full potential. In addition, this failure will
likely prevent accountability systems from surviving the
political battles that periodically surround public education.
This article makes a case for providing local flexibility within an
accountability system and provides a discussion regarding the
granting of flexibility, types of flexibility, vehicles for
granting flexibility, and who should receive
flexibility.
To those ends, section
II provides an overview of comprehensive accountability systems
that measure school and student performance and hold local
educators accountable for this performance. Section III
describes the appropriate role for local flexibility within such
an accountability system. Types of local flexibility and
vehicles for granting this flexibility are presented in sections
IV and V. Section VI discusses who should get flexibility,
including guiding principles for state policymakers. Section VII
contains concluding remarks.
II. Overview
of Accountability
Several states,
including Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, and, most recently,
Georgia, have created comprehensive accountability systems
designed to increase student learning in public schools. A
"comprehensive" accountability system has each of the
following three components:
- Goals for
student learning at all grade levels.
- Accurate
measurement of student learning outcomes.
- Rewards for
local educators (superintendents, principals and other
administrators, and teachers) for good student outcomes and
interventions to rescue children from failing
schools.
We served on the staff
of the Governor's Education Reform Study Commission (GERSC)
that led to the creation of the comprehensive accountability
system for Georgia's public schools.1 At the first Commission
meeting in June 1999, Georgia Governor Roy E. Barnes announced
the "charge" for GERSC:
Let us come to the table
and pool our best ideas, let us bring our best-hearted
intentions, and let us steel up our best resolve to ensure for
our children tomorrow a better system of public education than we
find today.
--Georgia Governor Roy
E. Barnes2
In his speech, Governor
Barnes announced the formation of four committees, the most
ambitious of which was titled "Accountability."3 In
describing the role of the Accountability Committee, the Governor
said he wanted an end to "excuse-based education" in
Georgia public schools. The committee members included business
executives, legislators from both major political parties,
retired educators active in education policy circles, and a
retired college president (who is currently a professor).4 The
Accountability Committee heard testimony from several local,
regional, and national researchers and professional educators
about accountability approaches in other states and important
conceptual issues in designing an accountability system. Many of
the individuals who made presentations were veterans of the
standards and accountability movement and recommended
comprehensive standardized testing on public school students in
several subjects.5 The committee members were told that these
exams should be curriculum-based exams called
criterion-referenced tests, and these exams could be used as an
important measuring stick for evaluating the performance of
individual students, educators, schools, and districts. Using
such exams for accountability purposes is commonly known as
"high stakes testing."
Although the
Accountability Committee made no formal recommendations, the
committee members coalesced around the following
ideas:
- Students in grades
3 and above should take curriculum-based exams at the end of each
school year, based on the state of Georgia's Quality Core
Curriculum.
- There should be
threshold scores on these exams that indicate how well each
student has mastered the material.
- Local districts,
schools, and educators should be held accountable for how well
their students performed on these exams by a system of rewards
for good performance and interventions for persistently low
levels of student learning.
- These rewards and
interventions should be based on levels of student learning and
improvements.
- There should be a
new, agency, independent of the state's Department of
Education, created to monitor performance of the exams and other
educational outcomes and to administer rewards and
interventions.
House Bill 1187, passed
by the Georgia General Assembly in the Spring of 2000 and signed
into law by Governor Barnes set up a state accountability system
for public education in Georgia that closely followed the
thinking of the members of the Accountability Committee (Chapter
20 Section 14 of the Georgia Official Code).
For the first time,
Georgia had an accountability system based on the end product of
education--student learning. The state Department of
Education, which prior to the formation of the education
commission had already begun refining the state curriculum (QCC)
and creating curriculum-based exams, would administer statewide
exams to students in grades 3 and above. These exams were first
administered in some grades and subjects in the Spring of 2000,
and they will be fully implemented in all grades and subjects by
2002. For both schools and educators, the law provides several
rewards for good performance and interventions for persistently
low performance--performance defined in terms of student
learning of the state's curriculum and other, currently
unspecified, student outcomes. Rewards and interventions will be
implemented once the exams are fully implemented. The rewards
and interventions passed under the new accountability law
include6:
1) Two grades (A
through F) will be awarded to each school, where one grade will
based on levels of student learning outcomes and the other grade
will be based on improvements in student learning
outcomes; 2)
All certified
personnel at a school will be given a $1,000 bonus for each
"A" grade the school receives and a $500 bonus for
each "B" grade.
"If a school has received a grade of D or F
for a period of two consecutive years or more, the State Board of
Education could appoint a school master or management team to
oversee and direct the duties of the principal of the school in
relation to the school until school performance improves and the
school is released from intervention by the director, with the
cost of the master or management team to be paid by the
state."7
"If a school has received a grade of D or F for a
period of three consecutive years or more, the State Board of
Education shall implement one or more of the following
interventions or sanctions, in order of
severity:
- (A)
Removal of school personnel on recommendation of the master or
the school improvement team, including the principal and
personnel whose performance has continued not to produce student
achievement gains over a three-year period as a condition for
continued receipt of state funds for administration
- (B) Allow
for the implementation of a state charter school through the
designation by the State Board of Education;
- (C)
Mandate the complete reconstitution of the school, removing all
personnel, appointing a new principal, and hiring all new staff.
Existing staff may reapply for employment at the newly
reconstituted school but shall not be rehired if their
performance regarding student achievement has been negative for
the past three years;
- (D)
Mandate that the parents have the option to relocate the student
to other public schools in the local school system to be chosen
by the parents of the student with transportation costs borne by
the system; or
- (E)
Mandate a monitor, master, or management team in the school that
shall be paid by the district."8
Although the newly
created Office of Education Accountability (OEA), independent of
the state's Department of Education, has not yet determined
what student learning outcomes will determine these school-level
grades that will drive the rewards and interventions.
Nevertheless, it is mandated in HB 1187 that student performance
on the curriculum-based exams, both levels of performance and
improvements, will be the main determinant of each school's
grades.
The cash bonuses to
teachers and the potential interventions, especially public
school choice and opening a state-funded charter school in the
neighborhood of a failing school are not widespread across the
U.S.9
Although the issues
involved are extremely important, our purpose here is
not to discuss the merits or demerits of accountability systems
based on high stakes testing and state mandated rewards and
interventions.10 This article considers the appropriate role of local
flexibility within a comprehensive accountability system and
several implementation issues, including what kind of flexibility
to grant, how to grant it, and to whom should flexibility be
granted.
III.
Flexibility Within An Accountability System
In this section, a case
is made for providing local educators and schools with
flexibility--if and only if the local educators are held
accountable for their performance by an outside entity.11 At the end
of this section, we discuss the issues of negative unintended
consequences that may be present in systems of comprehensive
accountability and governance in a decentralized
system.
The argument for
flexibility under a system of accountability has been made before
(Hanushek, 1994; Hannaway, 1996). We reiterate their claims and
discuss implementation and political economy concerns as
well.
Comprehensive
accountability means three things: goals for student learning,
student learning outcomes are accurately measured, and local
educators (school boards, superintendents, principals and other
administrators, and teachers) are subject to rewards for good
student outcomes and interventions to rescue children from
failing schools. If truly held accountable for student learning
outcomes, local educators have strong incentives to do
whatever it takes to achieve the specified student
learning goals.
Without a significant
degree of control over the means for education improvement, such
as budgets, personnel, and curriculum, local educators cannot
ultimately be held accountable for achieving the assigned end of
improving and achieving a high level of student learning. This
point is best demonstrated by considering two polar opposite
forms of "accountability."
Accountability over
Inputs, Process, and Program Implementation
Suppose the state were
to give each school student learning targets and a prescription
for how to achieve those targets. If a particular school
obediently implemented the state's prescription and the
level of student learning was low and was not improving, then
this failure belongs to the state--not the school. This
school would be responsible for properly implementing the
state's prescription; the school would not be ultimately
responsible for student learning. Local educators, who possess
better information about their own unique talents and the local
circumstances, including the types of students, resources, and
environment, may wish to deviate from the centrally prescribed
education formula because they deem such changes as beneficial in
their local situation. Local educators who acted on those wishes
would be subject to sanctions for not following the script they
were given.
This approach to
"accountability" makes state policymakers responsible
for student learning outcomes and local educators responsible for
implementing the state's prescription. This blurs the
lines of accountability, because lawmakers, parents, and other
citizens will inevitably blame local educators for any low
performance by students. In addition, the unique talents of
local educators and circumstances of local schools are not
exploited to best achieve the state's goals. Taken
together, these two problems will frustrate local educators and
could lead to poor implementation of state education policy,
higher teacher and administrator attrition, and even a reversal
of state education policy regarding standards and accountability
as local educators make credible arguments that state policy
inhibits local creativity and misplaces blame for any
failures.
(Results-Based)
Comprehensive Accountability
A second approach is to
have state and local education authorities articulate the desired
standards for student achievement and hold schools and educators
accountable, through rewards and interventions, for meeting or
failing to meet the standards. Choosing the second path, the
path of accountability for student learning and flexibility on
"how to" meet the goals, local educators are
encouraged and empowered to pursue their own paths for success,
and, thus, they would be ultimately responsible for the results
of their own initiative.
The purpose of
flexibility within a results-based accountability system is to
allow educators and schools to create their own roadmaps for
educational success given their unique student populations,
circumstances, and personnel. Although local school systems,
schools, administrators, and teachers across the nation have
varying degrees of flexibility, even when there is little or no
local accountability, the level of flexibility that is desirable
under a results-based accountability system is much larger than
that which is desirable under the typical notion of
"accountability"--accountability over on inputs,
process, and program implementation.12
School-based management
plans (flexibility plans) implemented in various states across
the nation do not typically provide much local flexibility, and
there is not any evidence that school-based management alone
leads to better student outcomes (Summers and Johnson, 1996). In
fact, an Education Commission of the States report cites a RAND
study that concluded that no school-based management effort
"has yet created the hoped-for dramatic improvements in
school quality (Education Commission of the States,
2000)."
State policymakers in
Georgia, and in other states as well, are reluctant to give local
educators more autonomy. This reluctance is understandable given
the lack of true accountability in most states. In a world
without results-based accountability, many education rules and
regulations are absolutely necessary: Relative to a world with no
accountability over process or results, such rules and
regulations promote good student outcomes. The goal of rules and
regulations is to elicit good school performance, students
learning beyond expectations. However, most local educators
believe that many of the current laws and rules, through
unintended consequences, hinder them from offering the best
possible education to each child. However, eliminating such
rules is not necessarily warranted--local educators have
little incentive to act in the best interest of children without
the rules if they are not held accountable for student
outcomes--it is human nature. This is not a characteristic
of educators, but one of humans in general.13
If given autonomy, what
incentive does a local educator have to pursue whatever it takes
to make sure that students achieve if they are not held
accountable for student learning outcomes? If given autonomy
over hiring decisions, what is to stop a principal from hiring a
relative or friend who may not be competent as a teacher?
Nothing unless there are certification rules and other
regulations to drastically mitigate the chance of this
occurring. (Of course, no set of rules can completely eliminate
all corruption or well-intentioned, but misguided, policies).
However, these rules limit the principals' flexibility over
who he or she can hire to teach. These rules are desirable if
the principal is not held responsible for student learning
outcomes. If principals are held responsible, such rules may not
be necessary, and may even harm student learning by denying some
good teachers the ability to teach in our public
schools.
Given the reluctance
of state lawmakers and officials to grant local flexibility,
local educators, who desire more flexibility over resources,
personnel, and curriculum, because they believe that their
students will benefit from doing things in different ways, will
have to accept results-based comprehensive accountability
(student learning goals, measurement of progress toward the
goals, and rewards for success and interventions to rescue
children from persistent failure) in exchange for the increased
flexibility. But there is another side to that coin: State
policymakers who wish to impose results-based comprehensive
accountability systems on local educators may have to grant
increased flexibility to see their accountability reforms realize
their full potential and to make their accountability reforms
"stick" politically. Failure to judiciously increase
flexibility may lead to a gradual erosion of accountability
measures. If local educators who have little or no flexibility
to improve schools are blamed for any school failures, then such
a situation is not likely to be politically tenable. Those
wrongly blamed will make the arguments that they are held
responsible for things beyond their control, and the end result
could be the erosion of accountability based on student
learning--and any benefits that would come from such an
incentive system.
There are opportunities
for obtaining flexibility available to local schools under
current Georgia laws and regulations, and, by and large, local
educators are not taking advantage of them. These opportunities
include the waiver process, charter school conversions, and
demonstration schools. Although there are many waiver petitions
to the state's Department of Education to gain relief from
state regulations, the vast majority of them are for the same two
or three things (e.g. block scheduling). Charter school
conversion opportunities have been available since 1993, and
there have been less than 30 conversions (out of 1,887 schools).
The similar demonstration school process has been available since
the mid-1980s, and, to our knowledge, there has been only one
application. Georgia has recently begun implementation of a
results-based accountability system, and this new era will likely
result in a large increase in the interest of local educators in
utilizing the existing flexibility to do things in different
ways--because they are now held accountable for student
learning. If local educators under a system of accountability do
not wish to increase their autonomy over resources, personnel,
and curriculum, then we suspect that the rewards for good
performance and/or the consequences for failure are not providing
strong incentives or motivation. That is, the accountability
system would not be comprehensive because it does not contain
adequate rewards and interventions.
Negative Unintended
Consequences and Increased Local Flexibility
Many education
policymakers and researchers have expressed concerns about
negative unintended consequences that may result from inaccurate
measurement of student and school performance--which may
cause schools with low and high average student performance from
being incorrectly sanctioned or rewarded; measuring only some
student outcomes--which will likely lead to too much
emphasis on what is easily measurable; and incentives--which
may distort educators' efforts in unintended, undesirable
ways, such as a decline in collegiality which decreases
inter-teacher professional development. Hannaway (1996) suggests
that parents, the actors in a child's education closest to
the situation, can be empowered, via decentralization, to act as
monitors of the education process to minimize the harm caused by
any negative unintended consequences of incentives and
flexibility (decentralization). Through local (individual)
school councils or via some form of parental school choice,
parents will be empowered to make their voices heard regarding
the actions of individual schools. Under its 2000 accountability
reforms, Georgia created local school councils composed of two
parents, two "businesspeople," two teachers, and the
school principal--the majority is non-school employees.
Legally, these school councils have almost no power, but it will
be interesting to see the impact of their mere existence on
school and district-level decision-making.14
Governance
Under regimes of
centralized decision-making in public education, citizens exert
their influence by electing school board members and/or federal,
state, and local lawmakers who in turn make decisions regarding
school policy. Providing increased autonomy to un-elected local
educators would disenfranchise parents and other citizens from a
large degree of the education policymaking process. Therefore,
it is likely that any increase in decentralized authority would
not survive politically if parents and other taxpayers did not
have some mechanism of exercising their political rights over
their children's schools, or the schools they finance. As
stated above, two ways to implement this mechanism include local
school councils and enhanced school choice. Given this line of
reasoning, one may include "parents and other
citizens" in the list of local educators who receive
increased autonomy under increased local flexibility. This issue
is not necessarily one of giving parents and other citizens more
direct decision-making authority; the issue is at what
level do the citizens' representatives make education
policy decisions.15
Issues for State and
Federal Policymakers
The first issue facing
policymakers is whether there is a comprehensive accountability
system that is solid enough to contemplated large increases in
local flexibility. If yes, then the second issue is whether
existing, perhaps largely unused, flexibility under current laws
and regulations is enough to empower local educators to make
whatever changes are necessary to increase student learning,
which makes local educators ultimately responsible for student
learning. A third issue is whether parents and other citizens
are empowered to participate in education decision-making and to
monitor their local schools to minimize the harm caused by any
negative unintended consequences. This next section discusses
areas in which states may consider granting increased flexibility
to local educators.
IV. Types of
Flexibility
Under a comprehensive
accountability system focused on student learning outcomes, state
and federal laws and/or regulations can be repealed to provide
local educators with flexibility over four broad
areas:
Reporting
Requirements;
Financial
Resources;
Human
Resources;
Curriculum.
We briefly discuss
decentralizing authority in order to increase local flexibility
over these four areas, and then we list specific examples of
increased flexibility that could be granted to local educators,
where these examples come from the flexibility offered to public
schools that currently operate under a high degree of
accountability: charter schools.
Reporting
Requirements
Local educators, in
both district offices and individual schools, must complete a lot
of reports for both the state and federal governments. This
paperwork is typically in the form of reports that must be
completed before and after the receipt of funds from federal and
state education programs. The pre-funding reports are typically
plans on how the particular pot of money would be spent, and the
post-funding reports tend to be assessments of how successful the
particular program was at implementing the program--the
program's effect on student learning is all too often
amorphous or nonexistent in post-funding reporting. Thus, the
purpose of this oversight is to ensure that the money is spent in
ways the state or federal government deems best for the
students. Under the new comprehensive accountability system in
Georgia, the Office of Education accountability will conduct
results-based assessments. These will be formal assessments and
performance measurements for student learning such as
standardized curriculum-based exams. Given that these
assessments directly measure--student outcomes--what
the current oversight measure indirectly, much of the current
reporting requirements may be superfluous.
Filling out paperwork
is arduous for local schools and systems, especially for smaller
school systems. One associate superintendent of a small school
district who we spoke with said that he spends about 30% of his
time on filling out reports--time that he feels could be
better spent on instructional and programmatic improvements. In
addition, the time and resources previously devoted to filling
out and monitoring paperwork could be used to train local
educators to be better managers of their increased flexibility.16
Reduced paperwork has
practical flexibility benefits as well. For example, some school
districts have directors of technology. These directors must
fill out a lot of paperwork on how state technology monies are
spent. Any time these directors spend filling out paperwork is
time not spent training teachers how to use the
technology.
We list two
alternative ways for the state to reduce reporting requirements
on local educators:
-
Have state
education departments satisfy much of the reporting requirements
imposed by the federal government; under accountability reporting
requirements, state departments of education have the information
necessary to fill out much of this paperwork. If the state
assumed this reporting burden, local educators--the
educators closest to the students--would have more time to
focus on teaching and learning.
- Give local
schools systems and schools more flexibility over financial
resources. Having flexibility over financial resources would
allow local educators to spend less time reporting (to the state)
how each dollar is spent.
Financial
Resources
Many public school
districts receive monies from states through foundation grants
and categorical grants. Individual public schools, in turn,
receive monies from school systems. Superintendents and
principals could be empowered to spend more state monies in the
ways they deem most appropriate to best educate their unique
student populations. In addition, any state regulations,
explicit or implicit, of local money could be repealed as well.
The purpose of flexibility over financial resources is to empower
those closest to the children to try new things, to augment
existing programs that are working, and reduce or eliminate
programs that are not working for their particular students (such
programs may work in other places for idiosyncratic reasons). A
by-product of this flexibility would be to reduce paperwork for
system and school administrators and teachers, which would allow
them to spend more time focusing on doing whatever it takes to
improve their schools.
A good way to
demonstrate flexibility over financial resources is through an
extended example.
Individual school
districts in Georgia typically get English to Speakers of Other
Languages (ESOL) dollars from the state. Many small school
districts have only a small number of ESOL students, so the state
money they receive for the ESOL program does not cover a full
teacher's salary. School districts that have such scale
issues must use locally generated funds or other state funds for
personnel to pay the balance of an ESOL teacher's salary.
In addition, the district would have to use local funds for ESOL
materials. Authority to use other state funds to purchase ESOL
materials would free up the local money for other programs that
local educators deem most important given their particular
student populations, faculty, staff, and
environment.
Where would
"other state funds" come from? Wouldn't those
other state funds be better spent on the programs for which they
were earmarked by the state? Perhaps, but consider an additional
scenario. School districts in Georgia often receive money from
the state based on the system's "needs," needs
as determined by the state, and these needs tend to be drive by
overall FTE counts and FTE counts for various student sub-groups
that are calculated to the hundredth decimal place. For example,
a system may receive state funding for 2.35 guidance counselors.
Per state regulations, the system that received funding for 2.35
guidance counselors must hire two guidance counselors. Under
Georgia law, the remaining 35% of a guidance counselor must be
spent on guidance counselors or direct teaching personnel, or
else the money reverts back to the state. That is, the local
system must use all that state money for guidance counselors or
direct teaching personnel or lose it. Allowing local schools and
systems to use the guidance counselor money for guidance
counselors or direct teaching personnel is an example of
flexibility over resources available under current laws and
regulations. However, there could be increased flexibility over
that state taxpayer money. Suppose local educators believe that
because of their superior guidance counselors or students (of for
any other idiosyncratic reason) that the money that was
originally intended to hire 35% of a guidance counselor does not
need to be spent on guidance counseling or direct teaching
personnel. Suppose the school system would rather use those
state funds for a competing, albeit worthy, program. Suppose the
school system wants to use those funds for ESOL materials. Under
current Georgia law, this money must be spent on hiring a third
guidance counselor or part of a teacher, and this requirement may
not lead to the highest and best use of those
funds.
Another good example
is maximum class size restrictions.17 Without a comprehensive
accountability system, such class size restrictions may be
necessary to ensure that the state money is spent wisely.
However, under incentives from a comprehensive accountability
system, can states trust local educators to spend that money
wisely? Are smaller classes always the best use of those
funds?
Alternatives to give
local educators flexibility over financial resources
include
having fewer
state programs and give the monies formerly earmarked for
programs to local schools on a foundation basis, and
allowing local
educators to spend monies earmarked for less than 50% of a
position in any ways they deem necessary.
Human
Resources
Regarding what types
of individuals may be hired for some tasks and how much
individuals are paid, systems and individual schools in Georgia
are bound by three major state laws: teacher certification,
"fair dismissal" (tenure), and the salary schedule.
The purpose of
certification is to ensure that only individuals of a sufficient
competency are permitted to be teachers. Under certification
laws and regulations, sufficient competency of potential teachers
is determined centrally, not by local systems and schools. This
is in contrast to higher education and private K-12 education
where potential teachers are evaluated by individual schools and
departments within schools. An unintended consequence of
certification requirements is that some prospective teachers feel
that they face too large of a barrier to offering their services
to schools. How many prospective educators are deterred is
unknown.
Individual schools
and systems could be granted flexibility over who is permitted to
teach. The elimination of certification requirements, including
alternative certification requirements, would open the doors to
teaching to individuals who are not willing to go through the
process of obtaining certification. For example, programs such
as Teach for America carefully screen recent college graduates
and place them as teachers in schools. These new college
graduates typically did not study education, and many of them
wish to teach for only a short period of time. Local systems and
schools could be empowered to decide for themselves if they wish
to screen new college graduates, older folks looking for second
careers, or others who are not certified to see if any or many of
them would make good teachers. Thus, the issue is not one of
teaching quality; it is a question of who decides whether an
individual is competent to teach. In addition, states could
recruit and screen exceptional college graduates who did not
study education as undergraduates and any others interested and
market these potential teachers to local systems and schools.
Such a state program would provide local educators with
flexibility by expanding the pool of possible teachers.18
Flexibility over
"fair dismissal" (tenure) provisions could be granted
to local schools or school systems--individual school
systems or schools could be granted the authority to design their
own "fair dismissal" policies. Held accountable for
results, individual systems and schools would have the incentive
to create fair dismissal policies that allow them to maximize
student learning. Georgia decentralized its statewide tenure
provisions, by severely weakening them, as part of its 2000
education reform law. Only the Clayton County school district,
so far, has created its own tenure provisions that provide more
protections than the new state law. Nevertheless, these
provisions are weaker than the previous state fair dismissal
protections (Sansbury, 2000).
Many southern states
have a minimum teacher salary schedule that is based on years of
service and training. Elimination of a state-mandated salary
schedule for teachers would allow individual schools or systems
to decide whether they want to pay less to some teachers so that
they may pay more to teachers they deem as important contributors
to the overall mission of the school. Used judiciously, such
policies could help schools retain good teachers, and provide
incentives for bad teachers to find something else to do. An
additional form of flexibility would be to allow for schools to
lure teachers by offering to start them at a higher step on the
schedule than their years of service and training would dictate.
This flexibility would allow schools to pay more to better
teachers, which may enhance retention of these superior
teachers.
Curriculum
In the new
standardized testing in Georgia, students will take exams
designed to test Georgia's Quality Core Curriculum (QCC).
The QCC is designed to be the minimum amount that students should
learn in the various grade levels and subjects. Local educators
could remain free to augment the QCC in new and creative ways.
Of course, mandating statewide curriculum-based testing severely
restricts local educators' autonomy over curricular
decisions. Therefore, states are responsible for the quality of
the curriculum, and, under flexibility, local educators are
responsible for whether students' master the
curriculum.
What specific
flexibility ought to be granted?
One level of
flexibility is the current level of state and federal regulation
applied to private schools, which is minimal. A less extreme
level of local flexibility is the flexibility requested or the
flexibility actually granted to "traditional" and
"conversion" charter schools. Traditional charter
schools that are public schools that are not neighborhood public
schools; traditional charter schools are schools of choice.
Traditional charter schools face a stronger set of incentives
than other public schools; two outside actors hold them
accountable for results, a central authority and parents.
Traditional charter schools are, in theory, able to gain a large
degree of autonomy in exchange for the possibility of a death
sentence--if the charter school does not meet performance
goals specified in their charter, a local school district or a
state may revoke the charter, which means the school closes. In
addition, traditional charter schools are held accountable by
parents who may or may not decide to enroll their child in the
charter school. Where traditional charter schools exist, parents
have the option of sending their child to their neighborhood
public school or the charter school. Typically, before central
authorities have closed failing charter schools, there have been
dramatic drops in student enrollments at these
schools.
Given these strong
incentives to provide a high quality education to its students,
traditional charter schools have the incentive to seek to free
itself from any rules and regulations that hinder teaching and
learning. Therefore, any state or federal entity that seeks to
identify any rules and regulations that may hinder teaching and
learning in neighborhood public schools should look to rules and
regulations that charter schools seek to escape, and the rules
they actually escape.
Conversion charter
schools are neighborhood public schools that have received
increased flexibility from the state. These schools are
different than traditional charter schools in that they are not
schools of choice. According to officials in the Georgia
Department of Education, conversion charter schools ask for, and
receive, far less local autonomy than traditional charter
schools. Conversions have maintained most of their previous
organizational structure and curricular goals, but asked to be
exempt from such things as report cards regulations, how they
handled certain categorical funds, and when they tested their
students. It is likely that these schools could not obtain even
more flexibility, and do not seek to do so, because they are not
schools of choice. That is, they do not operate under the strong
accountability faced by traditional charter schools. Perhaps the
change in school governance in Georgia via school councils will
provide the accountability and citizen authority necessary for
conversion charter schools to ask for and receive increased
flexibility.
For the research reported here, we
interviewed several individuals about their experiences with
flexibility and the flexibility given to charter
schools:
- Beverly
Shrenger, Coordinator, Georgia Charter
Schools, Georgia Department of Education;
- Deborah
McGriff, Edison Schools, Inc.;
- Rich
O'Neill, Edison Schools,
Inc.;
- Greg
Giornelli, Principal, Drew Elementary
School, a traditional charter school in
Atlanta,
GA;
- Regina
Merriweather, Principal, Druid Hills High School, a
conversion charter school in
DeKalb County,
GA;
- Jeffrey
Williams, Georgia School
Superintendent's Association;
- Paul
Hill, University of Washington,
RAND Corporation.
Based on telephone
interviews, we compiled a list of rules of regulations that
charters typically seek to avoid. Any central authority
considering whether to abolish rules and regulations facing local
educators should look to the relief given to charter schools
because, under comprehensive accountability for results, all
neighborhood public schools will have at least one important
characteristic of charter schools--responsibility for
student outcomes and consequences based on those
outcomes.
- Salary
Schedules. Many charters want relief from salary schedules
in order to have the capability to pay what Edison Schools, Inc.
refers to as "comparable and competitive" salaries.
These salaries are made up of an hourly rate, a yearly percentage
increase, incentives and bonuses, and stock
options.
-
Curriculum. Schools want the ability to develop the
criteria for their own lesson plans. Some charters use such
prescribed curriculums as Core Knowledge while others are totally
innovative and use curriculums particular to that school. For
example, Edison schools prefers to use its own curriculum for at
least 70% of class times, and the state or district can dictate
the remaining 30%.
-
Non-Categorical Use of Funds. Traditional charters
typically receive complete freedom over their budget allocations
at the school site. Conversion schools typically ask for only
limited flexibility or one-time flexibility. For example,
conversion charter schools may ask to use some funds ear-marked
for extra-curricular activities to buy technology.
- External
Reporting. The type and amount of process reporting to
chartering agencies, school boards, and the Georgia State
Department of Education is often less than what is required of
traditional public schools.
- Grading.
Many charter schools want to have the ability to deviate from
traditional grading scales. Druid Hills Charter, a conversion,
changed its grading scale so that the letter grade
"D" was inclusive of the 60th to
69th percentile. Some schools want to implement a
policy of no grading, checklist reports, or even rely strictly on
portfolio's to show students achievement.
- Seat Time and
Scheduling. Charters have asked to be exempt from the states
requirement of 150 hours of clock time per year. Edison Schools
have a longer school year than most public schools, while some
charters opt for longer school days. This coincides with the
request to alter the daily schedule for students (i.e. block
schedule) that require different time configurations than most
districts currently operate under.
-
Textbooks. Since many charters wish to fully implement
their school design, they request the ability to choose textbooks
that may or may not be approved by the local school
board.
-
Certification. Teacher certification has not been a large
issue for many charters thus far, as most charters have hired
primarily certified teachers. Charters do exercise their ability
to hire non-certified teachers in hard to fill subjects such as
math, science, and world language. Additionally, some charters
allow teachers certified for grades k-3 to teach 4th
grade, for example.
- Promotion and
Retention. Charters want the opportunity to choose which
students are promoted and retained each school year. Charters
feel that this exemption is imperative if they are going to be
held accountable for each student's eventual success or
failure.
- Assessment
instruments. Some charter schools like to perform their own
assessments, and request waivers from assessments, such as norm
referenced testing, that are notused for
accountability purposes.
-
Technology. Charter schools like to use technology in a
way that is consistent with their instructional goals. According
to the U.S. Department of Education, 96% of charter school
classrooms nationwide were equipped with computers. However,
charters like the capability of choosing their own software, the
amount of time each student uses a computer and the ability to
buy computers with multi-media capabilities.
- Service
Providers. Charter schools are typically allowed to choose
what non-educational (maintenance, janitorial, insurance,
purchasing, legal, health, social, before/after school,
transportation, athletic, etc.) services are offered and who will
be the provider of those services. More than two thirds of
charter schools nationally either provided the service themselves
or used outside providers.
Suppose a state
government decides to provide local educators with flexibility
over at least some of these areas. This local flexibility raises
a governance issues regarding consent of the governed. Parents
and other citizens, through their influence on the political
process, may permit schools of choice more latitude over their
resources, personnel, and curriculum because no parents are
forced to send their children there. Since traditional charter
schools are schools of choice, all parents who choose one for
their children have revealed they support what the school is
doing differently than the neighborhood public school. This
argument would suggest that flexibility given to conversion
charter schools is the appropriate amount of flexibility to
provide, in exchange for accountability. However, under
Georgia's new accountability law, individual school
councils were created. Although these councils do not currently
have much authority, they would surely be megaphones for
parents' and other citizens' voices to be heard in
school-level discussions of how to best use any increased
flexibility. Therefore, under the stronger consequences facing
local educators under Georgia's new accountability reforms
and the presence of the local school councils, the wider latitude
given to traditional charter schools is possible for neighborhood
public schools. Another mechanism to solve the governance
problem would be some form of public school
choice.
V. What are
the vehicle(s) for granting flexibility?
Once a state, or
federal, government decides to grant increased local flexibility
because of heightened accountability for local educators, how can
it complete that task? Alternative vehicles for granting
flexibility include:
- An entity that
analyzes each and every state, or federal, rule and regulation
and decides which ones are not needed, and which ones may be
abolished without changing a law. This entity would be analogous
to then Vice-President Gore's National Performance Review
that was created in 1993. This new entity, or a piece of an
existing entity, could be charged with analyzing each and every
state (federal) regulation of local systems and schools.
Regulations deemed to be impediments to teaching and learning
would be eliminated by the entity.
- A legislature
and executive could analyze each and every state law and decide
which are no longer needed under a comprehensive accountability
system. Only the legislature and executive can change existing
state (federal) laws. The legislature could devote some portion
of a legislative term to reviewing existing laws regarding
education and deciding which laws are antiquated given an
environment of results-based accountability. Perhaps a one-time
bipartisan committee could be formed to begin the task. This
vehicle for granting flexibility was used in Texas and Florida.19
- A permanent
entity that has the sole responsibility of hearing petitions from
individual schools and decides whether to grant a large degree of
autonomy to individual schools in exchange for a promise of
increased student learning beyond normal expectations. This is
similar to the Georgia waiver process. The difference is that
flexibility will be granted for a whole range of items at one
time, in exchange for tangible, measurable promises of increased
student learning. A permanent new entity, or piece of an
existing entity, whose sole mission is to hear petitions from
local systems and schools for large degrees of flexibility in
exchange for accountability would provide a permanent vehicle for
enhancing flexibility and accountability. Creating an entity
that has hearing these petitions as its sole mission would
expedite the waiver process, and one of its goals would be to
become less arduous than the current waiver process. Agreements
between this entity and individual schools or systems would be
akin to performance contracts. Failure by the local educators to
live up to the increases in student learning specified in the
agreement could result in the loss of the flexibility. Any
significant regression in student learning after receiving the
new flexibility could result in a state-mandated intervention,
which would mean less local autonomy than was initially
present.
VI. Who Gets
Flexibility?
Under comprehensive
accountability based on student learning (results), flexibility
could be granted in three ways:
as a feasible
alternative, in a world of accountability based on results, to
empower all local principals and teachers find their own
roadmaps for success given their unique student populations,
circumstances, and personnel;
as a reward to a
school or system for high levels and/or improvement in student
learning;
as an opportunity
to low performing schools to improve.
Thus, differing
degrees of flexibility may be granted all schools, only schools
that demonstrate a high level of performance, and/or only schools
that demonstrate a low level of performance.
Texas, for example,
dramatically reduced the regulations that the Texas Education
Agency imposed on local systems and schools. After the passage
of their accountability law in 1993, the Texas House and Senate
Education Committees met jointly to eliminate all state laws and
policies that addressed "how" local educators should
provide schooling to children. At that time, the chairs of each
committee were from different political parties, and the
"scrubbing" of their state laws and policies went
very well and was bipartisan. The flexibility law that
subsequently passed stated that local systems had to abide by the
accountability code and the funding code. The law also contained
specific language to prevent the Texas Education Agency from
making any policies that did not pertain to the accountability or
funding portions of the Texas state code. The relationship
between the state and local school systems in Texas is one of
"if it is not in the accountability or funding code, then
you can do it. No questions asked." Examples of
regulations that were eliminated in Texas include: the length of
the school day and year, seat time for specific subjects, and the
minimum required number of library books per
pupil.
Texas has not yet
been able to document to what extent the increase in flexibility
led to its recent increases in student achievement. (We obtained
all information about Texas from a phone interview with Dr. Criss
Cloudt, Associate Commissioner, Office of Policy, Planning, and
Research, Texas Education Agency. Dr. Cloudt made a presentation
to GERSC 1999.)
Schools who
demonstrate a high level of performance and/or improvement have
demonstrated that they have "what it takes" to manage
a school under the current rules and regulations. Such
successful leadership could be entrusted with even greater
flexibility, to see if they could increase school performance
even higher. However, one could argue, "Why rock the
boat?" if the school is already high performing. We want
to "rock the boat" because we suspect that added
flexibility, under accountability, will allow high achieving
schools to do even better. Texas provides additional flexibility
to schools that receive an "exemplary" rating from
the state.
Schools whose
students are persistently low performing may credibly suggest
that state laws and regulations are due part of the blame for
this low performance. Some suggest that these schools should be
given added flexibility, above what is given to other schools, in
order to see if they can improve. Others argue that giving these
schools added flexibility would reward
failure.
Guiding Principles
of Granting Flexibility
Based on the arguments
made here, we offer three guiding principles for any
state or federal policymakers deciding whether to grant
flexibility to local schools, systems, and educators:
- Keep your eyes
on the prize. The purpose of flexibility is to allow
educators to better organize their systems, schools, and
personnel in order to increase student learning.
-
Trust but verify. Flexibility should only be granted in
exchange for accountability, a promise that student learning
would increase beyond normal expectations. Failure to meet the
terms of the promise should result in loss of flexibility. If
under the flexibility, student learning in the school
significantly regresses, the school should receive help, which
would leave the school with less flexibility than it had
initially. Under this principle, flexibility could be given to
all schools, including low performers.
-
Remove existing barriers to creativity that strives for
excellence. Any system or school that wants to improve
should be allowed to try, in exchange for accountability for
results.
VII.
Conclusion
With the passage of
HB 1187 in the year 2000, Georgia's educational system has
entered a new era of comprehensive
accountability--results-based accountability. The state
will set expectations and measure student learning outcomes;
systems, schools, and local educators will be rewarded for
exceeding the standards; and the state will intervene to rescue
children from schools that are persistently falling below the
standards. Given the movement toward comprehensive,
results-based, accountability systems in several states, it is
time to revisit the issue of decentralization in public
education. Education researchers and policymakers should
carefully consider the issue of decentralization within such
accountability systems. To the extent that the rewards for
success and interventions to rescue children from low performing
schools prove to be significant in state accountability systems,
local educators, in these states and in other states implementing
similar incentives, should be given increased flexibility over
paperwork, resources, personnel, and curriculum.
The purpose of
flexibility within a results-based accountability system is to
allow educators and schools to create their own roadmaps for
educational success given their unique student populations,
circumstances, and personnel. The level of flexibility that is
desirable under a results-based accountability system is much
larger than that which is desirable under the typical way of
doing things, which in Georgia pre Y2K reforms meant
accountability based on inputs, process, and program
implementation. Within a results-based accountability system
educators and schools have strong incentives to do whatever it
takes to achieve the specified student learning goals.
Any increase in
flexibility is only possible because of the new era of
accountability. The more that systems, schools, and personnel
are rewarded for successes and subject to interventions for any
failures, the more flexibility that may be granted to local
educators. The combination of empowerment through local
flexibility and consequences through rewards and interventions
would give local educators the motivation and incentives to do
whatever it takes to make sure the students in their care
succeed.
State-imposed
comprehensive accountability systems are dramatic increases in
state regulation of curriculum and assessment coupled with
incentives for increased student learning. By themselves, these
new state regulations may lead to better student outcomes, just
as many centrally imposed regulations perhaps lead to better
outcomes--in the absence of accountability based on student
outcomes. Nevertheless, without increased flexibility for local
educators--flexibility over paperwork, resources, and
personnel--these standards and accountability reforms will
not achieve their full potential because they fail to capitalize
on the initiative and industry of local educators and they better
information they have about unique local talents and
circumstances. In addition, failure to empower local educators
while holding them ultimately responsible for student learning
outcomes will lead to an exodus from public education among local
educators at best and political pressure from within to
emasculate accountability reforms. For these reasons, we
recommend large increases in autonomy for local educators under
comprehensive accountability systems.
Potential negative
unintended consequences from high stakes testing, incentives, or
local flexibility can be mitigated by school governance changes
such as school councils and school choice.
Agenda for Policy
Research
As noted by Hanushek
(1995) and Hannaway (1996), how well students learn under
comprehensive accountability systems coupled with local
flexibility will determine the success of this, and any,
education reform. In particular, a system of incentives and/or
local flexibility may cause unintended harm to student learning
by focusing too much attention on what is easily measurable
and/or allowing autonomy to be misused without responsibility.
Therefore, education research must increase efforts to evaluate
the effects of these reforms on student learning. In addition,
given that the basis for increasing local flexibility is premised
on accurate measurement of student outcomes and significant
incentives through rewards and interventions, education research
must also analyze the extent to which measurement of student
outcomes is accurate and incentives are meaningful. Without
these conditions present, states and the federal government
should be wary of going down the path, despite its promise, of
increased flexibility for local educators.
Notes
1Scafidi
and DeJarnett served on the staff of GERSC in 1999 and 2000, and
Freeman served on the GERSC staff in 2000.
2 The full
text of this speech is available on-line at
http://ganet.org/governor/edreform/speech.html
3The other
three committees were:
Funding: which
studied ways to increase equity of school funding across the
state.
School Climate:
which, in the wake of the Columbine (Colorado) and
Heritage High (Georgia) violence, studied ways
to make schools safer.
Seamless Education: which studied ways to make the transitions
from k-12 to
technical colleges,
and k-12 to
two-year colleges easier.
4None of
the accountability members were officials in teachers'
unions or professional organizations or any of the other
professional organizations for educators (school board, school
superintendents, etc.).
5For
example, Georgia State University Professor Gary Henry made
several presentations to the accountability committee very early
in the process. Previously, he served as an education official
in Virginia and consulted with the state of North Carolina when
they set up a testing and accountability system. Gwinnett County
(GA) School Superintendent Alvin Wilbanks, who instituted high
stakes testing in his district's schools, served as a
Committee member as well. These individuals, as well as
education officials from Texas and North Carolina who also made
presentations to the accountability committee, seemed to support
very strongly the "Standards and Expectations"
recommendation of the 1983 "A Nation at Risk" report,
which called for "rigorous and measurable standards, and
higher expectations, for academic performance and student
conduct."
6Many
states that have implemented accountability systems such as
Georgia's have rewards and interventions. For example,
Kentucky and North Carolina give bonuses to teachers at schools
deemed successful (based on their students' outcomes).
Florida allows students at schools deemed failing to transfer to
other public schools in the district, at the district's
expense and offers them a modest scholarship to attend a private
school (the private school portion of thes school choice option
is currently under litigation).
7Georgia
Official Code 20-14-14
8Georgia
Official Code 12-14-41
9Examples
of these consequences around the nation include cash bonuses to
teachers in schools deemed successful in Kentucky and North
Carolina and public school choice for students in schools deemed
persistently failing in Florida. For schools deemed failing,
many states have reconstitution and removal of school personnel
at the behest of the state, but these provisions are rarely
implemented. Failure to utilize interventions leads to an
elimination of any motivational benefits that come from having
consequences.
10Helen
Ladd has wondered, "whether the undesirable side effects of
accountability and incentive systems can be kept to a tolerable
level (Ladd, 1996)." Issues surrounding standards and
accountability include the accuracy and quality of
curriculum-based exams, whether such exams and incentives in
general cause too many unintended consequences that harm teaching
and learning, and whether all children benefit from these exams
and from comprehensive accountability systems. Good references on
these debates over accountability and the validity of high stakes
testing include, Behn (1997), Betts (1998), Hannaway (996), Kohn
(1999), Ladd (1999), Koretz, et al (1996), Grissmer, et al
(2000), Klein, et al (2000), and the contents of the volumes
Holding Schools Accountable (1996), edited by Ladd, and
Improving America's Schools: The Role of Incentives,
edited by Hanushek and Jorgensen.
11Thus,
federal government efforts to provide local educators more
flexibility over federal taxpayer resources could be made
contingent upon the existence of comprehensive state-level
accountability systems.
12While
working for GERSC, we heard several Georgia state employees
suggest that it was "impossible" to have local
flexibility and accountability at the same time. Their comments
suggest that the culture of state monitoring of local inputs,
process, and program implementation is alive and
well--despite the passage of a results-based comprehensive
accountability system the previous year. Examples of
"accountability" for inputs, processes, and
implementation include state regulations on maximum class size,
state prescribed curricular programs, and teacher salary
schedules. For each of these examples, many states hold local
educators "accountable" for adhering to and
implementing these state mandates. These examples are in
contrast to states holding local educators accountable for
results--student learning outcomes.
13Surely
college professors would love to avoid annual reviews of their
research productivity, student evaluations of their teaching, and
deans watching the number of students signing up for their
courses and the national rankings of their departments. Each of
these output measures is used to determine annual pay increases.
In the absence of these measures of productivity, strong rules
and regulations would be needed to govern professors'
activities. Similar analogies can be made for all occupations,
inside and outside of education.
14Chicago public schools have school councils that have real
power--each school council hires its school's
principal. See Bryk, et al (1998) for more details of the
school governance structure in Chicago. Given the vast
differences in authority, it is likely that the impact of
Georgia's school councils will be much smaller, under
existing legislation, relative to the Chicago
experience.
15Under
a school choice regime principals and teachers would be the local
educators who directly make educational decisions, while parents
vote to give local educators power to make decisions for their
children through their school choice decisions.
16Hannaway (1996) suggests that local educators who are given,
for the first time, a large degree of autonomy need training in
"the range of production possibilities in education"
as well. If empowered to make changes, held sufficiently
responsible for their decisions, and skilled in management, local
educators will take it upon themselves to discover and create
"possibilities in education."
17In its
2000 education reform law, Georgia began to enforce decreased
maximum class sizes.
18The
Massachusetts Institute for New Teachers (MINT) is such a state
program. MINT recruits college graduates to enter its summer
program. MINT students teach summer school in the morning and
take teacher preparation courses in the evening. Individual
public schools in Massachusetts are permitted to hire MINT
graduates and grant them full certification. By expanding the
pool of available teachers, the state has given local educators
more flexibility over personnel (Scafidi, 2000).
19Interview with Texas education official Dr. Criss Cloudt and
documents from the Florida Department of Education and Florida
Senate Bill 1770.
Acknowledgement
This original version of
this article was prepared for the Governor's Education Reform
Study Commission 2000 (GERSC 2000) in the state of Georgia. All
views expressed here are the authors' and do not
necessarily reflect the views of GERSC 2000, the state of
Georgia, Morgan County Public Schools, or Georgia State
University. The authors thank Gary Henry, Rob Watts, Martha
Wigton, Tom Wagner, and David Watts for helpful comments and
suggestions.
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About the
Authors
Benjamin Scafidi is an
Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Administration and
Urban Studies in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at
Georgia State University. His research interests include
education and urban policy. For the past two years he has served
on the staff of the Governor's Education Reform Study
Commission for the state of Georgia. Before joining the faculty
at Georgia State, he served as a research associate at the Center
for Real Estate and Urban Policy in the New York University
School of Law, and as an analyst with the Center for Naval
Analyses. He holds a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and
a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Virginia.
Catherine Freeman is
Senior Research Associate in the Fiscal Research Program of the
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State
University. Her primary research work has been in school finance
and education reform, and she has served on the staff of the
Governor's Education Reform Study Commission for the state
of Georgia. She holds a M.Ed. from The University of Texas-
Austin and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Vanderbilt
University.
Stan DeJarnett is the
Associate Superintendent of Morgan County, Georgia Public
Schools. For the past two years he has served on the staff of the
Governor's Education Reform Study Commission for the state
of Georgia. He has over 20 years experience in public education,
and he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in
Educational Leadership.
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times since October 25, 2001