Institute for a Competitive Workforce In Focus€¦ · The Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW) is the nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)3 affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Institute for a Competitive Workforce

In Focus:A Look Into Teacher Effectiveness

A Look Into Turning Around Failing Schools

Moving From Data Systems to Data Use

Standards Implementation and College and Career Readiness

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for a Competitive Workforce

1615 H Street NW Washington, DC 20062

Phone: 202-463-5525 www.uschamber.com/icw

The Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW) is the nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)3 affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. ICW promotes the rigorous educational standards and effective job training systems needed to preserve the strength of America’s greatest economic resource, its workforce.

Through its events, publications, and policy initiatives—and drawing upon the Chamber’s extensive network of 3 million members—ICW connects the best minds in American business with the most innovative thinkers in American education, helping them work together to ensure the nation’s continued prosperity.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations.

© Institute for a Competitive Workforce, October 2011

Table of Contents

In Focus: A Look Into Teacher Effectiveness ...............................................................2

In Focus: A Look Into Turning Around Failing Schools ..............................................21

In Focus: Education Data Systems: Moving From Data Systems to Data Use ..............38

In Focus: Standards Implementation and College and Career Readiness ....................47

In Focus: A Look Into Teacher Effectiveness

In Focus: A Look Into Teacher Effectiveness | 3

While there is broad consensus that high-quality teachers are key to raising student achievement, there is significant disagreement about how to measure and reward quality and ensure that every classroom has a high-quality teacher.

Specifically, this In Focus brief focuses on the following chief areas that are driving the teacher quality conversation at the national, state, and local levels:

• The Role and Impact of Collective Bargaining

• Teacher Evaluations: The Role of State Laws and Collective Bargaining

• Teacher Compensation: Seniority Rules Still Dominate

• Teacher Tenure: Low Bar for Granting, High Bar for Taking Away

The Role and Impact of Collective Bargaining

Collective bargaining refers to the regular, district-level negotiations of teacher representatives (labor) and district representatives (management) regarding salary, working conditions, and terms of employment. The result is a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), commonly called a union contract that covers all teachers whether or not they are union members.

Collective bargaining has a relatively short history in U.S. education; it has been common practice for only about 40 years. The National Labor Relations Act broadly governs collective bargaining. Approximately 33 states legislatively define collective bargaining—whether it is mandatory, optional, or prohibited; who can be covered by a CBA; which issues are negotiable; and actions to take if an agreement cannot be reached. Most states limit the scope of bargaining to wages, hours, and other conditions of employment such as health benefits, vacation time, and pension plans. Sometimes states are divided into two groups—union and right to work. However, a right-to-work state simply means that CBAs are prevented from requiring workers to support and share the costs of union representation.

There is not a great deal of difference between collective bargaining states and noncollective bargaining states in terms of teacher wages, working conditions, and terms of employment. Most researchers agree that states and districts without collective bargaining have preemptively adopted legislation, policies, and practices that were bargained for elsewhere.

The most important link between collective bargaining and teacher quality is the limitations that collective bargaining places on eliminating ineffective teachers. There are two main issues. First, the contractual process for eliminating any teacher is long, cumbersome, and rarely used. Second, when layoffs must occur due to financial difficulties, collective bargaining agreements typically dictate that teachers be fired on a last in first out basis without regard to any other factor.

Collective bargaining emerged as a high-profile issue in the 2011 spring legislative sessions in many states, with Wisconsin possibly attracting the most attention for its dramatic partisan standoff.

While collective bargaining is, of course, not limited to education, a number of states in 2011 enacted new laws that will alter the way collective bargaining operates in education. Florida repealed existing provisions requiring that workforce reductions be made pursuant to collective bargaining agreements. Instead, if layoffs are needed, local boards must retain employees “based on educational program needs and performance evaluations of employees in the affected program areas.”1 Employees with the lowest performance evaluations must be the first to be released.

4 | Institute for a Competitive Workforce

Similarly, Michigan specified that reductions in force must be based on the results of teacher evaluations. Ohio’s new law requires local districts to create procedures to use evaluation results for retention, promotion, and dismissal. Nevada and Utah now prohibit layoff decisions based solely on seniority. Nevada requires that other factors be considered, while Utah permits districts to consider an employee’s performance evaluation and a school’s personnel needs.

Teacher Evaluations: The Role of State Laws and Collective Bargaining

Teachers in U.S. classrooms are regularly evaluated, both when the teacher is on probation and when the teacher has been granted tenure. The terms of these evaluations, which are dictated by collective bargaining agreements, have primarily been based on process, rather than linked to teacher compensation, and were almost never tied to student achievement. But a number of states have confronted this issue during 2011 legislative sessions, with dramatic change in this area as a result.

As a measure of the magnitude of these changes, consider the data in Table 1, which is based on 2009 research by The New Teacher Project (TNTP). It provides the specific requirements for 12 school districts. Contrast the 2009 data with the new state legislative requirements for teacher evaluation outlined in Table 2.

Table 1: District Teacher Evaluation Requirements—Tenured Teachers

District Formal Evaluation FrequencyNumber of Observations

Length of Observations

No. of Ratings Possible

Peer Review Process

Akron Public Schools

Once every 3 years No more than 4 More than 15 minutes 5 No

Cincinnati Public Schools Once every 5 years

1 sufficient in length; 2 at certain levels on the salary scale

Sufficient in length to justify rating

4 Yes

Chicago Public Schools

Once every 2 years, or annually for teachers rated satisfactory or unsatisfactory

At least 2 Data not available 4 No

Denver Public Schools

Once every 3 years At least 1 At least 20 minutes 2 No

District U-46 (Elgin)

Once every 2 years At least 1; no more than 3 At least 30 minutes 3 No

El Dorado Public Schools

1 per year No requirement Data not available NA No

Jonesboro Public Schools

At least 1 per year At least 1 formal and 1 informal

Formal at least 30 minutes 2 No

Little Rock School District

Full evaluation every 3 years, with teachers evaluated on various domains each year

Different domains evaluated every year so that each teacher is comprehensively evaluated every 3 years

Data not available

Data not available No

Pueblo City Schools

Once every 3 years 1 per year Data not available 2 No

Rockford Public Schools

Once every 2 years 3 One must be at least 30 minutes 3 No

Springdale Public Schools

Once every year Varies No minimum Varies No

Toledo Public Schools

Every 4 years, 4-year contract teachers only; continuing contract teachers not evaluated unless performance concerns

At least 1 At least 30 minutes 2 Yes

Source: Data from Daniel Weisberg, Susan Sexton, Jennifer Mulhern & David Keeling, “The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness,” The New Teacher Project, 2009, http://widgeteffect.org/downloads/TheWidgetEffect.pdf.


Standard practice dictates that teachers should be evaluated by the school principal. In larger schools, this may be delegated to an assistant principal or a department head. New teachers are evaluated at least annually, while in most states, established teachers are evaluated on a one- to five-year cycle. These evaluations are typically based on brief observations of the teachers in their classrooms, during which time the principal uses a checklist to verify certain teacher actions and classroom characteristics.

Table 2: 2011 Changes to State Legislative Requirements for Teacher Evaluation

State

No. of Required Evaluations—New Teachers

No. of Required Evaluations—Experienced

Teachers

Student Achievement a

FactorLinked to

CompensationDismissal of Low-

Performing Teachers

Arkansas 1 1/3 years No No Yes

Florida NA NA Yes Yes Yes

Georgia NA NA Yes NA NA

Indiana 1 1 Yes Yes Yes

Michigan 2 2 Yes No Yes

Minnesota 1 1 Yes No No

Nevada 1 NA Yes No Yes

New Mexico NA NA Yes NA NA

North Carolina 4 NA No No Yes

Ohio 2 1 Yes No Yes

Utah 2 1 Yes No Yes

Wyoming NA NA Yes NA NA

Source: Data from the Education Commission of the States, “Recent State Policies/Activities, Teaching Quality—Evaluation and Effectiveness,” 2011, http://www.ecs.org/html/Document.asp?chouseid=2193.

The single common factor across most of these state changes is the mandatory inclusion of student achievement data as part of a teacher’s evaluation. Many of these new laws also include principals and other administrators, whose evaluations also must now include student outcomes.

These changes should begin to dramatically shift the criteria on which teachers have long been evaluated. The following evaluation checklist provides some insight into traditional evaluation criteria.

Planning and Preparation

• The teacher has materials, supplies, and equipment ready at the start of the lesson or instructional activity.

• The teacher is prepared to present the lesson and gets students on task quickly at the beginning of each lesson or instructional activity.

• The teacher has instructional plans that are compatible with district-wide curricular goals and State Learning Standards.

• The teacher has instructional plans that match objectives, learning strategies, assessments, and students’ needs at the appropriate level of difficulty.

• The teacher provides adequate plans and procedures for substitute teachers.


Classroom Environment

• The teacher establishes rules and procedures that govern student verbal participation during different types of activities (e.g., whole class instruction, small group instruction).

• The teacher frequently monitors the behavior of all students during whole class, small group, and seat-work activities and during transitions between instructional activities.

• The teacher interacts positively, effectively, and appropriately with students.

• The teacher encourages students to set goals.

• The teacher maintains stimulating learning environment by displaying correlated bulletin boards and/or student work.

Instruction

• The teacher maintains a high level of student time on-task.

• The teacher asks appropriate levels of questions, which students handle with a high rate of success.

• The teacher conducts lessons or instructional activities at a brisk pace and avoids unnecessary slowdowns, but slows presentations when necessary for student understanding.

• The teacher uses a variety of instructional strategies to meet the needs of a variety of learners.

• The teacher begins lessons or instructional activities with a review of previous material or with an anticipatory set of prepared materials.

• The teacher routinely uses verbal, written, and other work products to check student progress.

• The teacher provides corrective and enrichment activities.

• The teacher uses assessment data to monitor student progress and develop appropriate remediation activities, including formative and summative techniques.

Professional Responsibilities

• The teacher maintains accurate records to document student performance.

• The teacher interacts effectively and appropriately with students.

• The teacher is involved in professional growth activities.

• The teacher adheres to established laws, policies, rules, and regulations regarding attendance.

• The teacher is punctual in duties, committee assignments, supervisory assignments, teacher assignments, and parent-teacher conferences.

• The teacher demonstrates flexibility and responsiveness by adjusting to district, cooperative, or student changes.

Source: Data excerpted from “Teacher Evaluation Form for the Grundy County Special Education Cooperative,” http://gcsec.mornet.org/Files/Employee%20Manual%20CD%20PDF/Teacher%20Evaluation%20Form.pdf.


Sample Items From Florida District Teacher Evaluation

Scale Innovating Applying Developing Beginning Not Using

Providing Clear Learning goals and Scales (Rubrics)

Adapts and creates new strategies or unique student needs and situations.

Provides a clearly stated learning goal accompanied by a scale or rubric that describes levels of performance and monitors students’ understanding of the learning goal and the levels of performance.

Provides a clearly stated learning goal accompanied by a scale or rubric that describes levels of performance.

Uses strategy incorrectly or with parts missing.

Strategy was called for but not exhibited.

Tracking Student Progress

Adapts and creates new strategies for unique student needs and situations.

Facilitates tracking of student progress using a formative approach to assessment and monitors the extent to which students understand their level of performance.

Facilitates tracking of student progress using a formative approach to assessment.

Uses strategy incorrectly or with parts missing.

Strategy was called for but not exhibited.

Effective Scaffolding of Information within Lessons

Teacher is recognized leader in helping others with this activity.

Within lessons, teacher organizes content in such a way that each new piece of information clearly builds on the previous piece.

Teacher scaffolds the information but the relationship between the content is not clear.

Teacher attempts to perform this activity but does not complete or follow through with these attempts.

Teacher makes no attempt to perform this activity.

Identifying Areas of Pedagogical Strength and Weakness

Teacher is a recognized leader in helping others with this activity.

Teacher identifies specific strategies and behaviors which to improve upon from routine lesson segments, content lesson segments, and segments enacted on the spot.

Teacher identifies specific strategies and behaviors which to improve upon but does not select the strategies and behaviors that are most useful for development.



Mentoring Other Teachers and Sharing Ideas and Strategies

Teacher is a recognized leader in helping others with this activity.

Teacher provides other teachers with help and input regarding classroom strategies and behaviors.

Teacher provides other teachers with help and input regarding classroom strategies and behaviors but not at a specific enough level to enhance their pedagogical skill.



Source: Data from Robert Marzano, “Art and Science of Teaching Observation and Feedback Protocol,” iObservation, given in 2011, http://www.iobservation.com/Marzano-Suite/Protocol.

On the Ground

Evaluation systems exist in the real world, where districts often have their own informal, but widely understood, norms of dealing with evaluations. In some schools, teachers are asked to complete their own evaluations and then discuss them with the principal. In many districts, every teacher is granted a “perfect” score. The New Teacher Project notes that between 94% and 99% of teachers, depending on the type of evaluation scale used, are rated either “good” or “great.”

The inclusion of student achievement data—if implemented as planned—should result in less local ability to avoid evaluations entirely. Some of these new state laws require that students are not to be assigned for two consecutive years to a low-performing teacher, or that parents be notified if students are assigned to a low-rated teacher. Such requirements—while highly controversial—also are likely to transform the evaluation process.


The Department of Education included new detailed reporting requirements as part of the Phase II State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) applications under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which passed in 2009. These reporting requirements included information about the systems used to evaluate teachers and principals and the use of those results from those systems in decisions regarding teacher development, compensation, promotion, retention, and removal. Each state had to either provide the website where this information is publicly available or commit to a timeline no later than January 31, 2012, to publish the following information:

• A description of the evaluation system(s).

• Whether the system(s) include student achievement or student growth data as an evaluation criterion.

• Number and percentage of teachers rated at each performance level.

• Whether the number and percentage of teachers at each performance level are reported for each school in each district.

As seen in Table 3, very few states collect this information. It can be argued that as a result, few states actively consider whether the system used to evaluate teachers leads to any improvements in teaching. Complete state plans are available at www2.ed.gov/programs/statestabilization/phase-ii-resources.html.

Table 3: State Teacher and Principal Evaluation Information

State Highlights Web Address for Teacher Information (Including Number and Percentage of Highly Qualified Teachers)

Description Provided

Teacher Ratings

Principal Ratings

Alabama Stated on website: “Alabama does not link student achievement data to teacher or leader evaluation.”

www.educatealabama.net/about.htm

www.alabamapepe.com

Yes, under revision

No No

Alaska State does not currently collect data.

www.eed.state.ak.us/reportcard No No No

Arizona State does not currently collect data.

www.ade.az.gov/asd/hqp/AZ_CSPR_Part_I_FY2009.pdf (CSPR)

No No No

Arkansas Friendly report card format but limited information available.

www.arkansased.org/testing/performance/read.html

http://normessasweb.uark.edu/schoolperformance/State/State.php (CSPR)

No No No

California State has collected data and published in advance of federally required timelines.

www.cde.ca.gov/nclb/sr/tq/schlstfrpt.asp

Yes Yes Yes

Colorado State does not currently collect data.

www.cde.state.co.us/FedPrograms/index.asp

No No No

Connecticut Website includes only teacher distribution data.

www.sde.ct.gov/sde/cwp/view.asp?a=2703&Q=322314

No No No




Teacher Ratings

Principal Ratings

Delaware Website provides information on ratings for teachers, specialists, and administrators. However, data on the evaluation system appear to be limited to the state requirements for such systems.

www.doe.k12.de.us/csa/dpasii/default.shtml

www.doe.k12.de.us/csa/dpasii/ti/dpasII_TeachDPASIIGuide.pdf

See pages 1 and 37–40.

http://regulations.delaware.gov/AdminCode/title14/100/106.shtml#TopOfPage

See the public link for the statewide Teacher Appraisal System.

New regulations have been adopted for the 2011–2012 school year that further define Student Improvement (106A Teacher Appraisal Process Delaware Performance Appraisal System (DPAS II) Revised)

http://regulations.delaware.gov/AdminCode/title14/100/106A.shtml#TopOfPage

Yes No No

District of Columbia

Website provides data on highly qualified teachers and plans for additionally required data.

www.osse.dc.gov/seo/cwp/view,a,1222,Q,564028,PM,1,seoNav,%7C31195%7C.asp

No No No

Florida Teacher data are comprehensive; no principal information.

New legislation requires publicly reporting statistics on teacher and/or administrator rankings.

www.fldoe.org/ARRA/arra-Indicator.asp

Yes Yes No

georgia State information on teacher evaluation systems is limited to state requirements.

www.lexis-nexis.com/hottopics/gacode/default.asp

Yes No No

Hawaii Teacher data are embedded in “employment reports.”

http://doe.k12.hi.us/index.php (under heading “Reports”)

No Yes, in application only

Yes, in application only

Idaho State does not currently collect data.

www.sde.idaho.gov/site/teacher_certification/HQT/docs/Dec.%202009%20CSPR%20submission%201.5-1.5.3.doc

No No No

Illinois State does not currently collect data.

www.isbe.net/SFSF No No No

Indiana State does not currently collect data.

www.doe.in.gov/hqt No No No

Iowa State collects data on the use of student achievement in teacher evaluation and presumably could report it publicly prior to the federal deadline.

www.iowa.gov/educate/index.php

Yes, but not reported publicly

No No




Teacher Ratings

Principal Ratings

Kansas State has a single web page with links (or placeholders) for all data.

www.ksde.org/Default.aspx?tabid=3918#a

Yes Data under review

Data under review

Kentucky Plans for collecting and reporting each data element are provided in easy-to-read tables.

www.education.ky.gov/KDE/Administrative+Resources/Finance+and+Funding/American+Recovery+and+Reinvestment+Act/tate+Fiscal+Stabilization+Fund/Area+A+Achieving+Equity+in+Teacher+Distribution.htm

No No No

Louisiana State collects data on the number and percentage of teachers at each performance level and presumably could report it publicly prior to the federal deadline.

www.teachlouisiana.net/Teachers.asp?PageID=5602 (CSPR and teacher equity plan)

No Yes, but not reported publicly

No

Maine State collects data on teacher and principal evaluation systems, including how they are used and whether they rely on student achievement data. State collects data on the number and percentage of teachers and principals at each performance level. State presumably could report these data publicly prior to the federal deadline.

www.medms.maine.gov/medms%5Fpublic/ReportPortal/Portal.aspx?CurrentLocation=%2fPublic+Reports%2fNo+Child+Left+Behind (under heading “Teacher Quality Reports”)




Maryland Website provides searchable data by school district.

http://marylandpublicschools.org/MSDE/programs/arra/sfsf2

Yes Yes Yes

Massachusetts State does not currently collect data.

http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/staterc/enrollment.aspx?fyCode=2008

No No No

Michigan State does not currently collect data.

www.michigan.gov/documents/cepi/2008_Fall_equitable_dist_312643_7.pdf (teacher distribution data)

No No No

Minnesota State does not currently collect data.

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/About_MDE/Fed_Stimulus_Update/index.html (no teacher data located)

No No No

Mississippi State does not currently collect any of the data. State plan indicates that the state is developing a statewide data collection system.

http://orshome.mde.k12.ms.us/Account/2010Report/HQTch10.pdf

No No No

Missouri State does not currently collect data.

http://dese.mo.gov/schooldata/school_data.html

No No No




Teacher Ratings

Principal Ratings

Montana State does not currently collect data.

www.opi.mt.gov/Reports&Data/index.html?gpm=1_9

http://opi.mt.gov/Accred/HQT.html

No No No

Nebraska State does not currently collect data.

www.education.ne.gov/ARRA (no teacher data located)

No No No

Nevada State does not currently collect data. New legislation requires publicly reporting statistics on teacher and/or administrator rankings.

www.doe.nv.gov/Assessment_NV_ReportCard.htm

www.doe.nv.gov/Accountability_NCLB.htm

No No No

New Hampshire Website provides data in charts by district.

www.education.nh.gov/nclb/index.htm

http://www.education.nh.gov/data/staffing.htm

Yes Yes Yes

New Jersey State does not currently collect data.

www.state.nj.us/education/grants/nclb/app/per10/cspr2.pdf (CSPR data)

No No No

New Mexico Rather than actual data, state appears to be reporting its requirements for districts.

http://ped.state.nm.us/edFundII/dl10/Descriptor%20_a__1_%20Teacher%20Evaluation%20Tied%20to%20PD%20Compensation%20Promotion%20Retention%20Removal.pdf

http://teachnm.org/programs/3-tiered-licensure-system.html

http://ped.state.nm.us/edFundII/dl10/Indicator%20(a)(3).pdf

http://teachnm.org/administrators/principal-and-assistant-principal-evaluation-process.html

http://ped.state.nm.us/edFundII/dl10/Indicator%20_a__6_.pdf

Yes No No

New York State does not currently collect data.

www.emsc.nysed.gov/ppd/documents/HQTNatl201008-09data.xls (this is a downloadable Excel file of HQT status)

www.emsc.nysed.gov/ppd/HQT-Equitable.html (teacher equitable distribution plan)

No No No

North Carolina Although state indicates that it currently collects data on teacher evaluation systems, it is referring to a new teacher evaluation system being implemented in SY 2010–2011.

www.ncpublicschools.org/fbs/arra/sfsf/reporting/equity

No No No




Teacher Ratings

Principal Ratings

North Dakota State does not currently collect data.

www.dpi.state.nd.us/dpi/reports/Profile/0809/ProfileDistrict/HQ.pdf

No No No

Ohio State does not currently collect data.

http://education.ohio.gov/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=400&ContentID=2635 (CSPR data)

No No No

Oklahoma Although state indicates it collects some data, it is referring to state requirements for teacher and principal evaluations.

www.sde.state.ok.us/NCLB/TitleIIPartA.html (CSPR)

No No No

Oregon State does not make the most basic information—the number and percentage of teachers who are highly qualified—available publicly.

www.ode.state.or.us/search/page/?id=2215 (teacher equitable distribution plan)

No No No

Pennsylvania State does not currently collect data.

www.education.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/highly_qualified_teacher_requirements/8631 (HQT data and teacher equitable distribution plan)

No No No

Rhode Island State does not currently collect data.

www.ride.ri.gov/EducatorQuality/DOCS/SFSF/teacher_quality_2009.pdf

No No No

South Carolina State description of evaluation system is limited to state requirements. State collects district-specific teacher evaluation outcomes but does not report this publicly.

www.scteachers.org/Adept/evalpdf/ADEPTresults2009.pdf

Yes Yes No

South Dakota State does not currently collect data.

http://doe.sd.gov/oess/documents/CSRP_PartII_0809.pdf (CSPR)

No No No

Tennessee State description of evaluation system is limited to state requirements.

http://state.tn.us/education/frameval/index.shtml

www.tapsystem.org/policyresearch/policyresearch.taf?page=resources&pcat=2

Under new legislation passed by the General Assembly and signed by the governor on January 16, 2010, all LEAs must use a new model to be developed by an appointed advisory committee, which will include student achievement outcomes or student growth data as an evaluation criterion.

www.tennessee.gov/sos/acts/106/pub/pc0002EOS.pdf

Yes No No




Teacher Ratings

Principal Ratings

Texas State does not currently collect data.

www.tea.state.tx.Us/index4.aspx?id=4662&menuid=98

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/nclb/PDF/Clarified-Attachment6HQT.pdf (teacher equitable distribution plan)

No No No

Utah State does not currently collect data.

http://u-pass.schools.utah.gov/u-passweb/StateData.jsp?report=HQ

www.schools.utah.gov/arra/reporting.aspx

No No No

Vermont State does not currently collect data.

http://education.vermont.gov/new/html/licensing/hqt.html#data

No No No

Virginia State does not currently collect data.

www.doe.virginia.gov/federal_programs/esea/reports/consolid_state_perf_rpts/121809.pdf (CSPR HQT)

www.doe.virginia.gov/federal_programs/esea/title2/part_a/index.shtml

No No No

Washington State does not currently collect data.

www.k12.wa.us/TitleIIA/HighlyQualifiedTeachers.aspx (HQT and teacher equitable distribution plan)

No No No

West Virginia State description of evaluation system is limited to state requirements.

http://wvde.state.wv.us/certification/data/index.php

http://wvde.state.wv.us/certification/data/evaltaskforce.php

Yes No No

Wisconsin State does not currently collect data.

www.dpi.wi.gov/esea/pdf/cspr0809i.pdf (CSPR HQT)

www.dpi.wi.gov/esea/pdf/wi_hqt_plan_2009_update.pdf

No No No

Wyoming State collects information on evaluation systems but does not report this publicly. State could report these data publicly prior to the federal deadline.

www.k12.wy.us/A/sfsf.asp

www.k12.wy.us/FP/HQT/hqt_plan.pdf


No No

Note: In Table 3, states in “red” denote those providing no publicly available data related to a description of their teacher evaluation systems, teacher ratings, and principal ratings. States in “yellow” denote those providing at least one or two of these reporting elements, and states in “green” report on all three elements.

Some states clearly stand out for their existing data collection and reporting. New Hampshire and Maryland are the only two states that currently collect and publish teacher and principal evaluation data. California, which did not have any of the teacher data when it submitted its SFSF Phase II application, managed to collect the data together with required quarterly Recovery Act reporting. These data are available to the public well in advance of the federal deadline. This effort stands in contrast to many other states, which report that they will simply meet the federal deadline. It is hard to determine why some states—such as Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Wyoming, and South Carolina—


that have already collected data, nonetheless, have no plans to make it public any sooner than the federal deadline of January 2012.

Many states reported that the only place these data are publicly available is in their Consolidated State Performance Reports—dense statistical reports required by the U.S. Department of Education. In some cases, states have reluctantly complied with this required reporting and have complained publicly about the extensive burden of compliance. At the same time, some states have not made the data—which they have already collected for federal purposes—available in any meaningful form for the general public. Even the length of the web addresses in Table 3 points to the difficulty members of the public may have in locating these data on many sites. It stands to reason that without this requirement, states would make even less data publicly available.

Student Achievement

Until recently, virtually no state or school district used student achievement as a measure for evaluating teacher performance. However, due in part to the Race to the Top competition, several states have passed laws making student achievement a significant factor in teacher evaluations—in some states, at least 50% (see Table 2). While these provisions have been adopted, for the most part they have yet to be implemented. It remains to be seen if these changes will actually take hold. If so, they could mark the beginning of a significant shift in the process by which teachers in this nation are evaluated.

Teacher Compensation: Seniority Rules Still Dominate

In the United States, the vast majority of public school teachers are compensated on a single salary scale. Although these scales are currently included in and reinforced by collective bargaining, such systems predate union contracts by several decades. The single salary scale, which began in 1921 in Denver and Des Moines, Iowa, was implemented to counteract discrimination, well before civil rights laws were passed nationally. White teachers were commonly paid much more than African-American teachers, while the largely female elementary school teachers were paid much less than the largely male secondary school teachers. The single salary scale was developed to protect teachers from administrative unfairness and discrimination both at the school and district levels. The single salary scale established “years of experience”—or seniority—as a neutral criterion on which to base compensation. After collective bargaining was established in the 1960s, unions preserved this system despite advances in civil rights laws that contain their own protections against discrimination.

Besides preserving the salary scale, unions have influenced teacher pay in other ways. Depending on the study, the “premium” unions bring to teacher salaries ranges from 5% to 20%; in other words, teachers earn between 5% and 20% more because of the influence of unions. Unions also have, according to some, reduced the variation in teacher starting salaries, thereby compressing the pay scale. As unions bargain for raises, the largest portion of those raises accrues to the most senior teachers—a 4% across-the-board raise is much more valuable to the teacher earning $50,000 than to the teacher earning $30,000.

Unions also have negotiated for supplemental pay for teachers who take on more work (such as coaching sports or serving as a department head), earn additional qualifications (such as the National Board Certification, which is developed in conjunction with the National Education Association), or receive a master’s degree. Education researchers Susan Moore Johnson and Morgaen L. Donaldson say that these supplements are still secondary to seniority: “The single salary scale was expanded with columns that rewarded teachers who earned academic degrees beyond the bachelor’s. However, within each column on the pay scale (for example, bachelor’s, bachelor’s plus 30 hours, or master’s), a teacher’s upward movement still depended on experience, with every year bringing an automatic raise, or step increase, until the teacher reached the top of the scale.”2


The value of additional qualifications has been studied, and results are mixed. Some researchers have found a small, positive effect of National Board Certification on student achievement. However, research definitively shows that additional degrees, such as a master’s, have no impact on student achievement.3,4,5

Recent education policy debates have called into question the validity of seniority as the basis for compensation precisely because it treats all teachers equally and does not differentiate on the basis of teacher quality. Given the history of the single salary scale with its emphasis on equity, it is somewhat easier to understand why it has not been linked to teacher evaluations (which can be influenced by administrator bias) or to student achievement data (a relatively recent phenomenon).

Teacher Tenure: Low Bar for Granting, High Bar for Taking Away

Tenure for a teacher is a guarantee of a lifetime job in the school district, barring significant economic downturns—which could necessitate layoffs—or egregious misconduct. Yet granting tenure is not, for the most part, viewed as a significant decision by school districts. As the National Council on Teacher Quality writes, “Neither teachers’ unions nor state legislatures look upon tenure as an honor conferred upon a teacher who is found by some measure to be effective. In their view, tenure at the PK–12 level is a right that should be conferred to all employed teachers with a few years of satisfactory teaching experience.”6

Again, this is a decision that—due in part to federal pressure—is being reexamined in many states. In the past, the process of granting tenure was largely a function of time served. Once individuals graduated from a four-year college with a teaching degree and passed a state licensure test, they were granted a provisional teaching certificate, which enabled them to secure a teaching position in a school district. State law typically sets the conditions for converting the provisional teaching certificate into a regular teaching certificate, as well as the requirements for renewing or maintaining that certificate over time. The responsibility then shifts to the school district to determine whether the provisional teacher becomes permanent, to decide if state requirements have been met, and to provide any mentoring, induction, or oversight for the provisional teacher.

State law sets the time frame for granting tenure, and this is one area where some states have begun to make changes. The Education Commission of the States found that 18 state legislatures had modified at least some elements of tenure or continuing contract policies.

Table 4: Years to Tenure

State Years to Tenure/Continuing Contract/Nonprobationary Status Last Known Revision

Alabama 3 2011

Alaska 3 1999

Arizona 3 2009

Arkansas 3 2005

California 2 2006

Colorado 3—with 3 consecutive years of effectiveness 2010

Connecticut 40 months 2011

Delaware 3—with at least 2 years of satisfactory ratings on student improvement 2010

Florida Annual contracts only (grandfather clause applies) 2011

Georgia 3 2010

Hawaii 1 2008

Idaho Annual contracts only (grandfather clause applies) 2011


State Years to Tenure/Continuing Contract/Nonprobationary Status Last Known Revision

Illinois 4-based on performance evaluation 2010

Indiana Varies by date hired—but cannot have rating of ineffective 2011

Iowa 3 2003

Kansas 3 2009

Kentucky 4 2008

Louisiana 3 2003

Maine 3 2011

Maryland 3 2010

Massachusetts 3 2010

Michigan 4–5—depending on number of consecutive ratings of highly effective 2011

Minnesota 3 2011

Mississippi 3 2010

Missouri 5 2011

Montana 3 1997

Nebraska 3 2004

Nevada 3—requires satisfactory on performance evaluations for 2 consecutive years 2011

New Hampshire 5 2011

New Jersey 3 1999

New Mexico 3; 5 for level-2 license 2010

New York 3 2007

North Carolina 4 2011

North Dakota Not specified 2009

Ohio 3 2011

Oklahoma 3—cannot be rated as ineffective for 2 consecutive school years 2011

Oregon 3 2007

Pennsylvania 3 1996

Rhode Island 3 1997

South Carolina 2 2004

South Dakota 3 2005

Tennessee 5—requires evaluations demonstrating above expectations or significantly above expectations for last 2 of the 5 years

2011

Texas 3 2005

Utah 3 2010

Vermont 2 1997

Virginia 3 2008

Washington 2 2010

West Virginia 3 2008

Wisconsin 3 2011

Wyoming 3 2011

Source: Data excerpted from Kathy Christie and Jennifer Dounay Zinth, “Teacher Tenure or Continuing Contract Laws,” Education Commission of the States, 2011, http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/94/93/9493.pdf.

The second area of change is in the permanence of tenure. While tenure—also called continuing contract—is technically not a lifetime guarantee, in practice it has become such a guarantee. In the vast majority of districts, fewer than 1% of such teachers are ever dismissed. As states have reconsidered issues of teacher quality, including adding student achievement as an evaluation factor for teachers, they also have in some cases created


new requirements for dismissing ineffective teachers that essentially spell the end of tenure as it has traditionally been practiced.

In fact, one state—Idaho—has eliminated tenure. Its new legislation says, “No new employment contract between a school district and certificated employee shall result in the vesting of tenure, continued expectations of employment or property rights in an employment relationship.”7

The following chart highlights some of the changes that directly impact the permanence of tenure.

Table 5: Changes in State Tenure (Continuing Contract) Requirements

State Grounds for Dismissal Required Dismissal

Arkansas Teachers deemed to be unsatisfactory will be placed on intensive support status. Provides for termination of teachers in certain circumstances. No

Florida Teachers with 3 ratings of unsatisfactory cannot renew their contracts. Yes

Georgia Teachers must demonstrate student learning in order to renew their certificates. Yes

Indiana Teachers rated ineffective are considered probationary. Teachers hired after 7/2012 may be dismissed for incompetence, defined as an ineffective rating on 2 consecutive evaluations or 2 consecutive improvement necessary ratings or ineffective/improvement necessary ratings in 3 out of 5 years.

No

Michigan Rated as ineffective on 3 consecutive year-end evaluations. Yes

Nevada Teachers rated as unsatisfactory may not be renewed for the next school year. Post-probationary teachers receiving an unsatisfactory evaluation or a minimally effective evaluation must be evaluated 3x in next school year.

Yes

North Carolina Teachers rated below proficient must become proficient and demonstrate sufficient improvement, or the superintendent may recommend demotion or dismissal.

No

Oklahoma Probationary teachers rated as ineffective for 2 consecutive school years shall be dismissed or not reemployed. Probationary teachers who have not attained career teacher status within a 4-year period shall be dismissed or not reemployed.

Yes

Utah Continuation in teaching from year to year is contingent upon satisfactory teaching performance, which must be measured using the educator evaluation program.

No


At the end of the designated period, the district decides whether to award tenure to the teacher—in other words, to offer the teacher a continuing contract that comes with significant protections. State law also sets the requirements for granting tenure—satisfactory evaluations (see Teacher Evaluations: The Role of State Laws and Collective Bargaining on page 4). In 2010, New York City denied tenure to a historically high 3.7% of provisional teachers. Denver denied tenure to only 3%. According to a series of studies by The New Teacher Project, many teachers don’t believe that “the probationary period provides new teachers adequate support to develop the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in the classroom,”

with teacher agreement to that statement ranging from 20% in Denver to 66% in Toledo, Ohio.8

In some cases, these changes also extend to administrators, as Table 6 illustrates.


Table 6: Criteria for Administrator Dismissal

State Criteria for Administrator Dismissal Required Dismissal

Florida District determined Yes

Michigan Rated as ineffective on three consecutive year-end evaluations Yes

Nevada Post-probationary administrators receiving an unsatisfactory evaluation or a minimally effective evaluation are considered probationary. No


Why Is Tenure So Powerful?

Tenure originated to redress the fact that teachers prior to the 1960s could be, and frequently were, fired for virtually any cause, for example, becoming pregnant. Tenure officially provides a teacher with the right to due process before being fired. However, the protection of due process extends much farther. In reality, the percentage of teachers who are terminated is very low, and media reports have revealed arrangements, such as New York City’s “rubber rooms,” that keep teachers on the district payroll sometimes for years as appeals wind through the system.

It’s not entirely clear why tenure is viewed as virtually sacrosanct, but there are certainly indicators. Any action against a teacher for poor performance starts with a negative evaluation. Both teachers and principals believe that there are incompetent teachers in their buildings. But principals are generally reluctant to give poor ratings to teachers in their buildings. Research is very scarce on the reasons, but it could be due to personal loyalty, concern that a poorly performing teacher would reflect poorly on their leadership, reluctance to cause trouble for the district, lack of commitment to the large amount of paperwork and time burdens necessary to complete the process, or concerns that the principal would not be supported by the district office and/or superintendent. The New Teacher Project asked principals in select school districts about this issue and found that many principals think that the “time, effort, and resources required to dismiss a non-probationary teacher for poor performance is too high.”9

It is extremely difficult and costly to fire a teacher. In 2008, USA Today wrote that it cost $250,000 to fire one teacher in New York.10 In Springfield, Illinois, the cost is only slightly lower—$219,000.11 And in some cases, the costs are much higher. In 2005, The Hidden Costs of Tenure, based on an Illinois newspaper investigation, found that cost is a tremendous barrier to removing poorly performing teachers.12 T.J. Wilson, a Monticello, Illinois, attorney specializing in education labor law, says that school officials cite cost as one of the major reasons for not trying to dismiss underperforming teachers. “When I sit down with school administrators who want to fire someone, I tell them to plan on spending at least $100,000 in attorney fees and that they still may lose,” Wilson says. “Those administrators are sitting there thinking three new teachers could be hired for the cost of firing one bad one. There is always the possibility that the school district may have to cut some program that benefits children, just to pay for the cost of firing a teacher. This is the biggest reason school districts do not try to fire bad teachers.”

And there are other ways for principals to remove poor-performing teachers from their own buildings, if not from the district. In some districts, principals can involuntarily transfer teachers to an “excess pool,” a process much easier and less politically charged than giving a teacher a negative evaluation. In addition, principals can urge teachers to transfer to other schools, or they assign teachers to other positions (perhaps one less to the teacher’s liking) in the same building. In this manner, poorly performing teachers get passed from school to school, a process some call the “dance of the lemons.” Even in districts without such policies, it seems that it’s easier, and less controversial, to simply wait out a bad teacher. In some small rural districts, where the school system is often the largest employer, principals wait for teachers to retire—a process that can take 30 or more years—rather than create the necessary upset, paperwork burdens, and the long process of trying to fire a teacher.


Teacher Quality—Stakeholders and Resources

There are numerous resources available for information on how to advocate for high-quality teachers in your community. Here is a list of organizations invested in the teacher quality debate.

Name Type Position Website and Useful Publication

Education Trust Advocacy

Having a high-quality teacher in the classroom is the single most important factor in student achievement, especially for poor and minority students.

www.edtrust.org

Read: Fact Sheet on Teacher Equity, www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/Ed%20Trust%20Facts%20on%20Teacher%20Equity_0.pdf

The New Teacher Project

Advocacy

Teacher evaluations need to be dramatically improved, including differentially rewarding teachers for performance.

www.tntp.org

Read: The Widget Effect, http://tntp.org/publications/reports/the-widget-effect

National Council on Teacher Quality

Advocacy

Current teacher unions block reforms; changes are needed in teacher policies at the federal, state, and local levels in order to increase the number of effective teachers.

www.nctq.org

A customizable database of state policies regarding teachers: www.nctq.org/cb

Read: Invisible Ink in Collective Bargaining Agreements, www.nctq.org/p/publications/docs/nctq_invisible_ink_20080801115950.pdf

Students First Advocacy

Teacher evaluation should be separated from collective bargaining given the inherent conflict of interest; seniority policies are not in the best interests of children.

www.studentsfirst.org

Read: Agenda, www.studentsfirst.org/blog/entry/america-education-system-is-broken-today-we-release-our-plan-to-begin-fix

Teach for America

Service Provider

Good teachers don’t need to come through formal teacher preparation programs. According to Time magazine, Teach for America “places more teachers in U.S. schools (and with better results) than any other preparation program or college.”

www.TeachForAmerica.org

Read: Making a Difference? The Effects of Teach for America in High School, www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411642_Teach_America.pdf

Education Commission on the States

ResearchState Teacher Tenure/Continuing Contract Laws

www.ecs.org


Endnotes

1. Education Commission of the States, “Recent State Policies/Activities, Teaching Quality—Evaluation and Effectiveness,”

2011, http://www.ecs.org/html/Document.asp?chouseid=2193.

2. Susan Moore Johnson and Morgaen L. Donaldson, “The Effects of Collective Bargaining on Teacher Quality,” in

Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today’s Schools, ed. Jane Hannaway and Andrew Rotherham.

(Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2006).

3. Kate Walsh and Christopher O. Tracy, “Increasing the Odds: How Good Policies Can Yield Better Teachers,” National

Council on Teacher Quality, www.nctq.org/nctq/images/nctq_io.pdf, accessed September 2011.

4. Marc Holley, “A Teacher Quality Primer: For Michigan School Officials, State Policymakers, Media and Residents”, Mackinac

Center on Public Policy, June 30, 2008, www.mackinac.org/9592, accessed September 2011.

5. Dan Goldhaber and Emily Anthony, “Can Teacher Quality be Effectively Assessed? National Board Certification as a Signal

of Effective Teaching,” The Urban Institute, January 10, 1996, www.urban.org/publications/411271.html, accessed

September 2011.

6. Emily Cohen, Kate Walsh, and RiShawn Biddle, “Invisible Ink in Collective Bargaining: Why Key Issues are Not

Addressed,” The National Council on Teacher Quality, July 2008, http://www.nctq.org/p/publications/docs/nctq_invisible_

ink_20080801115950.pdf, accessed September 2011.

7. Kathy Christie and Jennifer Dounay Zinth, “Teacher Tenure or Continuing Contract Laws,” Education Commission of the

States, 2011, http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/94/93/9493.pdf, accessed September 2011.

8. The New Teacher Project, “District and State Studies (June 2007-March 2010)”, The New Teacher Project website, http://tntp.

org/publications/ district-and-state-studies, accessed September 2011.

9. The New Teacher Project, “Teacher Recruitment, Hiring and Performance Management in Springdale Public Schools,”

PowerPoint presentation, March 2010, www.tntp.org/files/TNTP_Springdale_Report_Mar2010.pdf.

10. Frank Eltman, “Firing Tenured Teachers Isn’t Just Difficult, It Costs You,” USA Today, June 30, 2008, www.usatoday. com/

news/education/2008-06-30-teacher-tenure-costs_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip, accessed September 2011.

11. Scott Reader, “The Hidden Costs of Tenure,” Small Newspaper Group website, http://thehiddencostsoftenure.com, accessed

September 2011.

12. Ibid.


In Focus: A Look Into Turning Around Failing Schools


Struggling schools are not new, but the definitions have changed—as have the requirements for these schools. It is instructive, therefore, to examine the role that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has played over the past 10 years in identifying these schools and driving improvement. NCLB has been largely credited for shining a light on these struggling schools to ensure that all their students are at grade level in at least math and reading. However, this identification has not come without controversy. Are too many schools identified as being in need of improvement? Not enough? What are schools doing once they are identified? Are the school turnaround models required under NCLB effective, and do they work across rural, urban, and suburban settings? These are just some of the questions driving the school turnaround debate at the national, state, and local levels.

This policy brief is intended to provide background and analysis of these issues to help inform business leaders seeking to be involved in education reform.

NCLB: Identifying Struggling Schools

At No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB’s) core is the goal that all students be proficient (“at grade level”) in math and reading by 2014. Since 2001, states have set annual minimum targets toward meeting this goal. Schools in which all students, or any subgroup of students, are not achieving this minimum for two consecutive years, are identified as a school “in need of improvement.” Only Title I schools in this group must undertake school improvement efforts under NCLB.

More specifically, NCLB includes three general stages of school improvement. Once schools miss their target for two consecutive years, they enter Stage 1, which requires schools to provide public school choice—giving students the option to transfer to a high-performing school within the district. If a school misses its target for three consecutive years, it must continue to provide public school choice and notify low-income parents that their children are now eligible for tutoring services outside the regular school day. While neither of these elements impacts the core instruction of the school, they do support students whose parents choose one of these options. In other words, this phase of school improvement offers limited support around the edges, with the goal of providing additional instruction to students who remain in the school.

Once a school has missed its performance targets for an additional two years, it enters Stage 2. The law refers to this stage as corrective action. At this point, the law requires the school to examine and reform the way it delivers core instruction to all students. Specifically, schools are given the following options:

• Replace school staff who are relevant to the failure to make adequate yearly progress (AYP).

• Institute and fully implement a new curriculum based on state standards and provide appropriate professional development for all relevant staff.

• Significantly decrease management authority at the school level.

• Appoint an outside expert to advise the school on its progress toward making AYP based on its school plan.

• Extend the school day or school year.

• Restructure the organization of the school (see Table 1 for more details).

Stage 2 lasts for two years. Schools that have entered Stage 1 or 2 and have made AYP for at least one year are effectively “frozen” at their current stage of improvement, continuing to offer the necessary requirements outlined in the law. Schools that make AYP for two consecutive years are removed entirely from the “needs improvement” list.

Schools that continue to fail to meet AYP after five years move to Stage 3, also known as restructuring.

In Focus: A Look Into Turning Around Failing Schools | 23

Stage 3 has received the most attention for two reasons: first, because the options provided to schools are dramatic and second, because most schools have avoided all but the most lenient choice—”any other major restructuring.”

The restructuring options in the law are as follows:

• Reopening the school as a public charter school.

• Replacing all or most of the school staff (which may include the principal) who are relevant to the failure to make AYP.

• Entering into a contract with an entity, such as a private management company, with a demonstrated record of effectiveness to operate the public school.

• Turning the operation of the school over to the State Educational Agency if permitted under state law and agreed to by the state.

• Any other major restructuring of the school’s governance arrangement that makes fundamental reforms, such as significant changes in the school’s staffing and governance, to improve student academic achievement in the school and that has substantial promise of enabling the school to make AYP.

Table 1: Stages of School Improvement

Number of Years Missing Targets

Stage of School Improvement NCLB Language/Requirements

2 1Offer students an opportunity to transfer to another public school (public school choice)

3 1Offer tutoring to low-income students remaining in the school

4 2 Corrective action

5 2 Corrective action/planning for restructuring

6 3 Restructuring

7+ 3 Restructuring

Source: Data from U.S. Department of Education, “Elementary and Secondary Education Part A — Improving Basic Programs Operated by Local Educational Agencies,” U.S. Department of Education website, http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg2.html#sec1116, accessed August 2011.

Many Schools Identified

As Graph 1 illustrates, there were nearly 15,000 schools identified as “in need of improvement” in the United States for school year 2009–2010—roughly 16% of all public schools. The schools identified include nearly 6,000 in restructuring (an increase of nearly 4,000 schools in just three years) and approximately 2,000 in corrective action—a number that has remained relatively constant.


Graph 1: Number of Public Schools in School Improvement Nationwide: 2005–2009

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

14,000

16,000

Schools in Any Statge of Improvement

Schools in Restructuring

Schools in Corrective Action

Num

ber

of S

choo

ls

Source: Data from U.S. Department of Education, “ED Data Express,” U.S. Department of Education website, http://www.eddataexpress.ed.gov, accessed August 2011.

However, the percentage of schools identified for improvement varies greatly from state to state as a result of many factors, including the relative rigor of state standards and assessments—such as what qualifies as “proficient” under the state’s definition. While nationally, 16% of all public schools were identified as in need of improvement for school year 2009–2010, in the District of Columbia, fully 68% of schools were identified as such compared to just 1% of all schools in Utah.1 Another key factor that affects state variation is the way that states set their annual goals. While some states expected progress early, setting goals that gradually rise to the 100% requirement, others back-loaded their goals so that in the last years before the 2013–2014 deadline, expectations will rise dramatically. States with relatively lower goals have fewer schools that cannot meet them.

2005–2006 2006–2007 2007–2008 2008–2009 2009–2010


Graph 2: Percentage of Public Schools in School Improvement by State: 2009–2010

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

AKALARAZCACOCTDCDEFL

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MAMDMEMI

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NMNVNYOHOKORPAPRRI

SCSDTNTXUTVAVT

WAWI

WVWY

Source: Data from U.S. Department of Education, “ED Data Express,” U.S. Department of Education website, http://www.eddataexpress.ed.gov, accessed August 2011. (Data not provided for Georgia).

Significant differences, as seen in Graph 3, also exist by state in the percentage of public schools required to undergo restructuring—the most intensive stage of school improvement—as of the 2009–2010 school year, the latest year for which data are available.


Graph 3: Percentage of Public Schools in Restructuring by State: 2009–2010

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

AKALARAZCACOCTDCDEFL

GAHIIAIDILINKSKYLA

MAMDMEMI

MNMOMSMTNCNDNENHNJ

NMNVNYOHOKORPAPRRI

SCSDTNTXUTVAVT

WAWI

WVWY

Source: Data from U.S. Department of Education, “ED Data Express,” U.S. Department of Education website, http://www.eddataexpress.ed.gov, accessed August 2011. (Data not provided for Georgia, Indiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah, or Wisconsin).

Graph 3 also highlights the variability among states in the percentage of public schools in restructuring. While 30 states had less than 5% of their schools in restructuring in the 2009–2010 school year, nine states (in addition to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) had at least 10% of their schools in restructuring. Again, this reflects the differences between states that identified more schools earlier, since a school’s improvement stage reflects the number of years it has been in improvement. States with a relatively large proportion of schools in restructuring—in


some cases, more schools than can be usefully supported in reform—point to the future of all states as the NCLB deadlines approach.

When identifying schools at different stages of improvement, the law does not distinguish between a school that missed just one target for a single group of students and a school that missed all targets for all students. The same consequences apply to schools regardless of the details. However, by the time a school reaches restructuring, it is more likely missing academic targets for all students, as graph 4 from the U.S. Department of Education shows.

Graph 4: AYP Targets Missed by Title I Schools That Did Not Make AYP in 2005–2006, by Stage of School Improvement Status for 2006–2007

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

NotIdentified

25%

17%

35%

23%

39%

20%

27%

14%

42%

20%

19%

19%

58%

22%

12%

8%

65%

15%

13%

7%Year 1 Year 2 Corrective

ActionRestructuring

Achievement of “All Students” Group

Achievement of Two or More Subgroups But Made AYP for “All Students” Group

Achievement of a Single Subgroup Only

Other Combinations of Targets

Note: Among schools that did not make AYP based on 2005–2006 assessments and were not identified for improvement in 2006–2007, 25% missed an achievement target for the “all students” group.

Source: Data from U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service, “State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, Volume IX—Accountability Under NCLB: Final Report,” Washington, D.C., 2010. Based on data reported by 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 12,785 Title I schools that did not make AYP in 2005–2006 in these states.

What Is the Impact of Identifying Struggling Schools Under NCLB?

Given the extent to which many states have been identifying schools “in need of improvement,” it is now possible to examine the fundamental premise of NCLB: school improvement. Does the process work? Do schools implement escalating reforms until student achievement improves? In a perfect world, since NCLB’s implementation in 2002, the experiences of thousands of identified schools would have provided a wealth of information to answer these questions.

However, we know very little about whether corrective action works, and only slightly more about the effectiveness of restructuring. It was only in 2010 that the U.S. Department of Education began requiring states to report the year-to-year status of schools “in improvement.” Without this information, it has not been clear how many new schools appear on the list of schools “in need of improvement” each year and how many schools have improved enough to sufficiently exit the list altogether.

AYP Targets Missed:

Perc

enta

ge o

f Stu

dent

s M

isse

d


It’s not even clear whether—and to what degree—schools have done what the law requires, although a 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggested that while schools do take some actions, they are far less stringent than the law would suggest.2

Corrective Action

The GAO estimated that “6% of schools did not take any of the required corrective actions and that about a third continued corrective actions implemented during earlier years of school improvement but did not take a new action after entering corrective action status.” As seen in Graph 5, hiring an “outside expert” and “changing internal structure” were most often selected as part of corrective action.

Graph 5: Estimated Percentage of Schools That Implemented Corrective Actions 2005–2006

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Hired outside expert62

61

41

26

16

10

5

Changed internalstructure

Implemented new curriculum

Replaced staff

Extended day

Extended year

Decreased management authority

Percentage of schools

Corrective actions

Largely consistent with GAO’s finding, the U.S. Department of Education reported in 2010 that corrective actions took place in about 88% of identified schools, although it did not examine the quality or intensity of those actions. However, it found that “implementation of a new curriculum was the most frequently reported approach to corrective action, followed by appointment of an outside advisor.”3 Other researchers found that, across several states, the following activities were most common: professional development; new instructional materials; and prescribed programmatic changes (e.g., pacing calendars, structured reading and math programs, and new or extended services, including summer school, extended day, and afterschool programs).

Restructuring—More Like Corrective Action

The 2007 GAO report also provided insight into restructuring. As with schools faced with corrective action, the GAO found that “a majority of restructuring schools implemented a required restructuring option.” However, as seen in Graph 6, 40% of the schools chose the less defined “other major restructuring” as their reform.

Source: GAO survey.Note: These sum to more than 100% because some schools implemented more than one action.


Graph 6: Estimated Percentage of Schools That Implemented Restructuring Options Under NCLB

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Chose “other” major restructuring40

27

9

5

1

Replaced staff

Contracted with an entity

Taken over by the state

Became a charter school

Percentage of schools

Restructuring options

With respect to the main option selected by schools, senior associate partner with Bellwether Education Partners Sara Mead wrote,

“Many of the activities undertaken by schools under the guise of ‘other major restructuring,’ however, seem far less aggressive than what the law’s authors probably had in mind. The state of Michigan allows schools to meet NCLB’s restructuring requirements by hiring a state-trained ‘coach’ to advise the school’s staff and implement improvement plans. While this approach seems to help some Michigan schools, it hardly makes major changes to a school’s governance or carries serious consequences for its employees. In fact, the coaching strategy sounds strikingly similar to the less intrusive options offered to schools in the corrective action stage that precedes restructuring. A number of schools appear to have responded with whole-school reform models or a new curriculum—also options for schools in corrective action.”4

Perhaps most interesting about the GAO study was the finding that “although there was no relationship between any of the specific activities and whether a school made AYP, a higher percentage of schools that fully implemented improvement activities made AYP compared with those that had not fully implemented activities.” It’s just common sense: schools that implemented their improvement plans, improved. The relatively small percentage of schools that are exiting improvement status may simply mean that few schools are actually doing what the law requires.

The Center for Education Policy (CEP) studied NCLB restructuring in six states, asking what can be learned from states’ experiences with restructuring schools. Agreeing with the GAO, it found that none of the prescribed restructuring options had any more success in turning around a school than any other.5 In fact, some of these restructuring options had unintended negative consequences that delayed or prevented school reform. For example, some schools had difficulty finding enough qualified teachers, started the year with substitutes or teachers with emergency certification, spent so much time over the summer hiring staff that they had little or no time to plan for the new school year, or had union contracts that made it difficult to choose staff or caused restructuring schools to lose new teachers due to layoffs.

Source: GAO survey.


CEP concluded that schools that did “turn around” relied on

• multiple, coordinated improvement activities,

• reform efforts that had evolved over time, and

• frequent (monthly) use of data to guide decisions.

With the knowledge of the Education Department, all of the six states that CEP studied have moved away from the prescribed NCLB options and

• began targeting supports to the most academically needy schools or districts,

• leveraged additional support for schools, labeled “in need of improvement” by relying on partnerships with other agencies and organizations,

• increased their use of needs assessments to diagnose challenges in restructuring schools, and

• expanded on-site monitoring or visits to restructuring schools.

School Improvement Grants: What’s the Difference Between Low-Performing Schools and Schools in Improvement?

School Improvement Grants (SIGs) are authorized under NCLB but received limited funding or attention until the last few years. In 2007, the SIG program received $125 million, with most of these funds distributed by states to districts far and wide, with the result being that very little was targeted to the schools furthest behind. In 2008, however, the program received nearly a half billion dollars, followed by more than $3.5 billion in 2009 as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The program received another $546 million in 2010 and $534 million in 2011. No congressional action has yet taken place for fiscal year 2012.

Along with this large increase in funding was a new focus: concentrating significant resources on those schools furthest behind, including setting sights on the 2,000 high schools responsible for more than half of the 1.2 million students dropping out each year. This same focus was also reflected in the competition for the Race to the Top (RTTT) funds. Consistent with this new focus, President Obama, in his budget request for fiscal year 2012, would rename these “School Turnaround Grants.” Obama also proposed adding $54 million, which would provide a total of $600 million for schools in the 2012–2013 academic year.

This concentration of funding into a smaller number of schools—as well as the growing evidence that not enough low-performing schools were taking sufficient action to improve—led the Department of Education to develop a new set of definitions for low-performing schools for the SIG and RTTT programs.

These new definitions of low-performing schools may be a preview of what the administration would like to see in a reauthorization of NCLB. It answers some of the criticisms surrounding NCLB, including that the previous definition for a school “in need of improvement” identified too many schools as failing—both by including schools that have relatively small groups of low-performing students and identifying too many schools for states to reasonably assist.


The new set of definitions for identifying low-performing schools includes the following:

• The administration asked states to look only at overall achievement for all students in a school, rather than subgroups. While this has the advantage of focusing resources on the very lowest-performing schools, it bypasses schools that have both high-performing and low-performing students, since using average performance masks the lower-performing groups. This concerns the civil rights community, which fought hard for the disaggregated reporting of subgroup data under NCLB.

• The administration asked states to identify schools that were low-performing in both reading and math, although states could weight one area more heavily than the other. A school failing in reading but succeeding in math would not be identified.

• Resources were focused on schools that had made little or no progress over a number of years (the number was set by each state). This has the effect of screening out schools with a sudden drop and schools with an up-and-down pattern of achievement.

• States were to add schools that had a graduation rate of less than 60%, the definition of a “dropout factory” used by Johns Hopkins University researchers.

• States had to identify a minimum of five schools.6,7

Using these definitions, states had to create three “tiers” of schools and then prioritize funding to districts using those tiers. States first had to fund districts willing to serve both Tier I and Tier II schools—essentially ensuring that funding was directed to the lowest-performing schools and to secondary as well as elementary schools. States could only provide funding for Tier III schools if they had already funded all eligible Tier I and Tier II schools that had applied. Table 2 shows how the tiers worked.

Table 2: School Tiers

Tier Schools that …

Ihave Title I funds and are in the lowest-achieving 5% of all schools in the state in reading and math, as defined by each state OR

graduate less than 60% of their students in four years.

IIare eligible for Title I funds (generally, above 35% poverty) but do not receive them and are in the lowest-achieving 5% in reading and math, as defined by each state OR

graduate less than 60% of their students in four years.

III have Title I funds and are not in Tier I.

Sources: Data from U.S. Department of Education, “Race to the Top, Application for Phase 2 Funding,” U.S. Department of Education website, http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/applicant.html, accessed August 2011. U.S. Department of Education, “Schools Improvement Grants Application,” U.S. Department of Education website, http://www2.ed.gov/programs/sif/applicant.html#app, accessed August 2011.

This process resulted in a list of just over 2,000 low-performing schools, as well as some 13,000 higher-performing Title I schools eligible for funding, for a total of more than 15,000 eligible schools; of these, 1,228 were funded by SIGs. These figures are based on data from 49 states and the District of Columbia; data were not available for Hawaii.8 To receive funding, districts had to agree that their Tier I and Tier II schools would take on one of the four models required under NCLB and had to demonstrate that they had the capacity to carry out the model.

Although many of the words are the same, in practice these new SIG grants differ dramatically from the SIG grants awarded before 2010. Differences are as follows:

• Schools must agree to implement one of four reform models that the Department of Education has laid out for improving low-performing schools.


• The Department of Education evaluated states’ processes for scoring grants and awarding funds, ensuring that funds would go only to the schools with the greatest need and the greatest capacity and commitment to reform.

• Schools receive three-year grants, with renewal contingent on showing progress on a number of indicators.

• The level of resources is exponentially greater. In prior years, SIG grantees could receive between $50,000 and $200,000 per year; new schools receive a minimum of $500,000 per year and a maximum of $2 million per year.

• For the first time, states have to report on the progress of these SIG-funded schools.

Table 3 describes the four reform models for improving low-performing schools:

Table 3: Reform Models for Improving Low-Performing Schools

Model Requirements

Transformation Replace principal, replace at least 50% of staff, and undertake a variety of activities, including governance changes and professional development.

Turnaround Replace principal and undertake a variety of activities, including new teacher and principal evaluation systems and differential pay linked to performance.

Restart School is made into a charter or run by another external organization.

Closure School is closed and students are reenrolled in other schools.

Source: Data from U.S. Department of Education, “What’s Possible: Turning Around America’s Lowest-Achieving Schools,” post on blog “Ed.gov Blog,” March 5, 2011, http://www.ed.gov/blog/2010/03/whats-possible-turning-around-americas-lowest-achieving-schools/, accessed August 2011.

The statistics on SIG schools (based on data reported from 49 states’ and D.C.) tell us a few things, although it’s not yet clear whether this is representative of all failing schools. These data are for schools that succeeded in obtaining SIG grants—only 1,228 of the more than 15,000 schools identified.

More than half of grantees were urban schools, as seen in Table 4.

Table 4: SIG Grant Distribution by School Location

School Location Percentage of SIG Grants

Rural 23%

Urban Fringe (Suburban) 24

Central City (Urban) 53

*Analyses were based on schools in 49 states and D.C., not including Hawaii.

Source: Hurlburt, S., Le Floch, K.C., Therriault, S.B., and Cole, S. (2011). Baseline Analyses of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible and SIG- Awarded Schools (NCEE 2011-4019). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

Table 5 indicates that unlike past Title I efforts, many more grantees are high schools, including alternative and charter schools.

Table 5: SIG Grant Distribution by Type of School

School Type Percentage of SIG Grants

Elementary 32%

Middle 22

High School 40

*While a vast majority of schools receiving SIG grants were “regular” schools, 5.5% were charters and 6.19% were “alternative” schools.

Source: Hurlburt, S., Le Floch, K.C., Therriault, S.B., and Cole, S. (2011). Baseline Analyses of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible and SIG- Awarded Schools.


Since the SIG formula did not look at subgroups, it is not possible based on these data to examine whether failing schools serve more of one type of student than another. However, larger schools do tend to have more subgroups of students.

What may be the most important statistic about these grants is that fully 74% of schools selected what is widely considered to be the least rigorous intervention—“transformation.”9

Table 6: SIG Grantees’ Choice of Intervention Method

Model Chosen Percentage of SIG Grants

Transformation 74%

Turnaround 20

Restart 4.0

Closure 2.0

Source: Data from U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service, “State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, Volume IX—Accountability Under NCLB: Final Report,” Washington, D.C., 2010.

We found wide variation across states in the extent to which the different interventions were selected.

Only 20% of states made a decision to close any school among its lowest 5%. However, some states were particularly focused on the most rigorous reform models, including Maryland, which had no schools in Transformation, six in Turnaround, and five in Restart. As seen in Table 7, Virginia, California, and Colorado were also among the small number of states focusing on more than just Transformation.

Table 7: Number of Schools Choosing Each Intervention Model by State

State Turnaround Restart School Closure Transformation

Tier III School Improvement

Strategies

Alabama 0 0 0 11 0

Alaska 0 1 0 6 0

Arizona 7 0 0 12 0

Arkansas 0 0 0 7 0

California 29 5 2 56 0

Colorado 6 1 3 9 0

Connecticut 6 1 0 7 0

District of Columbia 4 3 0 3 0

Delaware 0 0 0 2 0

Florida 17 0 0 54 6

Georgia 2 0 0 24 0

Idaho 0 0 0 6 0

Illinois 4 1 0 5 0

Indiana 3 0 0 4 0

Iowa 0 0 0 6 0

Kansas 1 0 0 5 0

Kentucky 6 0 0 4 95

Louisiana 0 0 0 2 30

Maine 1 0 0 5 0


State Turnaround Restart School Closure Transformation

Tier III School Improvement

Strategies

Maryland 6 5 0 0 0

Massachusetts 5 0 0 7 0

Michigan 9 0 0 19 0

Minnesota 3 0 0 16 0

Mississippi 0 0 0 8 0

Missouri 14 0 1 17 0

Montana 0 0 0 6 0

Nebraska 0 0 0 7 0

Nevada 3 0 0 7 0

New Hampshire 0 0 0 7 0

New Jersey 3 1 0 8 0

New Mexico 1 0 0 8 0

New York 5 0 0 20 0

North Carolina 6 1 0 17 0

North Dakota 0 0 0 1 37

Ohio 8 0 0 27 6

Oklahoma 1 0 0 9 0

Oregon 0 0 0 12 0

Pennsylvania 6 7 2 43 0

Rhode Island 0 0 0 0 0

South Carolina 0 0 1 18 0

South Dakota 1 0 0 1 16

Tennessee 6 0 0 6 60

Texas 2 0 0 46 18

Utah 0 0 0 7 0

Vermont 0 0 0 10 56

Virginia 0 5 2 11 40

Washington 3 0 1 14 0

West Virginia 0 0 0 15 0

Wisconsin 0 2 4 5 35

Wyoming 0 0 0 3 3

TOTALS 168 33 16 603 402

Source: Hurlburt, S., Le Floch, K.C., Therriault, S.B., and Cole, S. (2011). Baseline Analyses of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible and SIG- Awarded Schools (NCEE 2011-4019). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

Regardless of the model selected, states must for the first time report annual updates for these schools so that it is possible to look closely at the success of the reforms. Specifically, states must report the percentage of students at or above proficiency in reading and math, the intervention model used, the number of minutes students attend school, increases in learning time (e.g., summer school), student attendance rates, the number of students taking advanced course work or dual enrollment courses, and teacher attendance rates. Baseline data and updates are to be published in states’ annual consolidated state performance reports.

In addition to the new state reporting requirements, the Department of Education in January 2011 announced a new monitoring process for SIG grantees that makes some significant changes to the way monitoring has been


conducted. The new process is intended to move from examining compliance to supporting improvement. The first reports are just beginning to emerge from this process.

For the first time in Title I monitoring history, Department of Education staff conducted structured classroom observations and interviewed students and teachers about school improvement. Staff also interviewed parents; in the past, they have interviewed parents about school communication, but these interviews focus on school improvement and changes the parents see and want to see in the school. The department plans on integrating these new processes into overall Title I monitoring for school year 2011–2012 (the new monitoring protocol is available at www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/monitoring/sigreportsll/index.html). Reports take several months to produce and are published on the department’s website (www2.ed.gov/programs/sif/index.html).

With these SIG grants, the Department of Education is setting in place more safeguards to make sure that schools really implement reforms—and that the level of funding leaves no room for excuses. The department also has established much higher expectations for state participation in support of reform, including direct monitoring of grantees. One of the first requirements is that states post all SIG applications—both successful and unsuccessful—on their websites so that stakeholders can see precisely what schools are supposed to be doing to improve.


Low-Performing Schools—Stakeholders and Resources

Name Type Position Website and Useful Publication

Education Trust

Advocacy Many high-poverty, high-minority schools succeed. Evidence of success shows what’s possible.

www.edtrust.org

Read: Stuck Schools, www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/publications/files/StuckSchools.pdf

The Center for Education Policy

Advocacy Federal government has an important role to play in education and there are lessons to be learned from how NCLB was implemented.

www.cep-dc.org

Read: Improving Low-Performing Schools: Lessons from Five Years of Studying School Restructuring under No Child Left Behind, www.cep-dc.org/cfcontent_file.cfm?Attachment=CEP%5FForumReport%5FImprovingLow%2DPerformingSchools%5F120709%2Epdf

The Fordham Foundation

Advocacy Supports strong school reform options and school choice.

www.edexcellence.net

Read: Are Bad Schools Immortal? The Scarcity of Turnarounds and Shutdowns in Both Charter and District Sectors, http://support.edexcellence.net/site/Survey?ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&SURVEY_ID=1360&pubttl=195816748&NEXTURL=http://www.edexcellencemedia.net/publications/2010/20101214_AreBadSchoolsImmortal/Fordham_Immortal.pdf

RAND Research Does not take positions; conducts research on the implementation of federal programs.

www.rand.org

Read: No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Evidence from School Visits, www.rand.org/pubs/external_publications/EP20100059.html

Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education

Research Provides reviews of educational interventions in the Best Evidence Encyclopedia.

www.bestevidence.org

Read: Better: Evidence-based Education magazine (available by free subscription)

American Institutes for Research

Research Does not take positions; conducts research on the implementation of federal programs.

www.air.org

Read: Beyond the School: Exploring a Systemic Approach to School Turnaround, www.air.org/focus-area/education/index.cfm?fa=viewContent&content_id=1141&id=110

Public Impact Advocacy School reform possible and can be managed and supported.

www.publicimpact.com

Read: School Restructuring Options under NCLB: What Works When, www.learningpt.org/pdfs/School_Restructuring_Guide.pdf

Also read: http://educationnext.org/the-big-uturn


Endnotes

1. U.S. Department of Education, “ED Data Express,” U.S. Department of Education website, http://www.eddataexpress.

ed.gov/, accessed August 2011.

2. United State Government Accountability Office (GAO), “No Child Left Behind Act: Education Should Clarify Guidance

and Address Potential Compliance Issues for Schools in Corrective Action and Restructuring Status,” September 2007,

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d071035.pdf, accessed August 2011.

3. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service,

“State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, Volume IX—Accountability Under NCLB: Final Report,”

Washington, D.C., 2010.

4. Sara Mead, “Easy way out,” Education Next, Winter 2007, http://educationnext.org/easy-way-out/, accessed August 2011.

5. Jack Jennings, “Turning Around the Lowest Performing Schools: A Noble Goal and a Daunting Challenge,” April 7, 2011,

post on blog “Huffington Post,”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-jennings/lowest-performing-schools_b_845703.html,

accessed August 2011.

6. U.S. Department of Education, “Race to the Top, Application for Phase 2 Funding,” U.S. Department of Education website,

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/applicant.html, accessed August 2011.

7. U.S. Department of Education, “Schools Improvement Grants Application,” U.S. Department of Education website, http://

www2.ed.gov/programs/sif/applicant.html#app, accessed August 2011.

8. Hurlburt, S., Le Floch, K.C., Therriault, S.B., and Cole, S. (2011). Baseline Analyses of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible and

SIG- Awarded Schools (NCEE 2011-4019). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional

Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

9. U.S. Department of Education, “State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, Volume IX—Accountability

Under NCLB: Final Report.”


In Focus: Education Data Systems: Moving From Data Systems to Data Use

In Focus: Education Data Systems: Moving From Data Systems to Data Use | 39

Background

Growth of Data Requirements

The requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the America COMPETES Act, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), state accountability systems, and efforts to evaluate the impact of schools, districts, students, principals, teachers, and others involved in educating children have dramatically increased the demand for high-quality education data and infrastructure. As additional steps are taken to raise academic achievement, the collection, analysis, and use of education data become even more critical. Educators can use data to target resources, improve instruction, and respond to other educational challenges in our schools—all actions that are critical to improving student learning.

The past two years have seen remarkable progress toward the full implementation of state data systems and some of the training necessary to use data. Yet we are still data rich but information poor.

The Data Systems We Have—and the Data Systems We Need

States continue to make dramatic progress in building longitudinal data systems with the support of several federal initiatives, including the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) grant program funded through the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education and two programs that are part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)—the Race to the Top (RTTT) grant competition and the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF). The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) surveyed states’ progress in implementing 10 essential elements of a statewide longitudinal education data system and found tremendous progress. Twenty-four states have all 10 elements in place; another 19 lack only 1 or 2.1

These 10 elements represent state capacity to collect and house data:

1. A unique statewide student identifier that connects student data across key databases across years.

2. Student-level enrollment, demographic, and program participation information.

3. Ability to match individual students’ test records from year to year to measure academic growth.

4. Information on untested students and reasons why they were not tested.

5. A teacher identifier system with the ability to match teachers to students.

6. Student-level course completion (transcript) data.

7. Student-level college readiness test scores.

8. Student-level graduation and dropout data.

9. Ability to match student records between the early childhood, K–12, and higher education systems.

10. State data audit system assessing data quality, validity, and reliability.

Taken as a whole, states have made tremendous progress on developing systems capable of collecting and storing these data elements. However, the most critical aspects of these systems still have the lowest implementation across the states.

• Seventeen states cannot connect teacher and student data and therefore cannot match student progress to specific teachers (element 5).


• Fifteen states do not collect student achievement data beyond state test scores—such as grades and courses completed—and therefore cannot identify students who are falling behind (element 6).

• Eleven states cannot link postsecondary and K–12 data and therefore cannot identify successful teacher training programs or determine which schools produce students who require remediation when they get to college (element 9).

• Six states do not collect college readiness test scores and therefore cannot track how participation rates and scores change over time for low-income and minority students (element 7).

Three states—Connecticut, Montana, and South Dakota—have not implemented three of these four critical system elements.

Despite these gaps, DQC credits states with tremendous progress over a relatively short period of time. Overall, the bottom line is positive: States have the data to answer critical policy questions.

Data Versus Action

Many fewer states have taken the steps necessary to translate data into action. Now that the state systems are largely built, states must turn to how to use the data. In many ways, this is a much harder task—as states move from the technical details of specifying system variables to the human dimensions—training and buy-in.

Graph 1: Number of States by Number of Actions or Elements

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Number of States by Number of Actions or Elements (2010)

Nu

mb

er o

f S

tate

s

Number of Action or Elements

Elements

Actions

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Source: Data from Data Quality Campaign, “Data for Action 2010,” Data Quality Campaign website, http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/stateanalysis/actions, accessed July 2011.

As seen in Graph 1, while more than 20 states have all 10 elements of data systems in place, only 11 states have taken at least 5 of 10 actions necessary to use the data.


These actions are as follows:

• Link data systems (10 states).

• Create stable, sustained support (32 states).

• Develop governance structures (40 states).

• Build state data repositories (40 states).

• Implement systems to provide timely access to information (8 states).

• Create progress reports using individual student data to improve student performance (23 states).

• Create reports using longitudinal statistics to guide system-wide improvement efforts (27 states).

• Develop a P–20/workforce research agenda (28 states).

• Promote educator professional development and credentialing in data use (1 state).

• Promote strategies to raise awareness of available data (9 states).

The greatest progress can be seen in two areas: governance structures to guide data collection and use and state data repositories. Map 1 shows the progress of state actions across the country.

Map 1: Actions Taken by States to Build Data Systems

Source: Data Quality Campaign, “Data for Action 2010,” Data Quality Campaign website, http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/stateanalysis/actions, accessed July 2011.


The most critical state actions are also those least likely to be in place:

• Only 10 states have successfully linked data from pre–K through higher education and the workforce.

• Only nine states pay sufficient attention to raising awareness of available data. When states do offer this type of training, it is for state personnel and school board members only—not parents or students.

• Only eight states have implemented systems to ensure timely access to longitudinal information, which is necessary to ensure that parents have the information they need to make decisions before the next school year begins.

• Only one state, Florida, has taken the necessary actions to build educator capacity to use data, although DQC reports that many more states are making progress. Since this is arguably the most important function of data systems, much more action is needed in this area. In a 2010 U.S. Department of Education study, researchers found that “training for teachers on how to use the data system to analyze student achievement or on how to use data to change their instructional practice are the two types of training least likely” to have been provided.2 At the same time, research has shown that the most important way to obtain teacher buy-in is to offer hands-on training with data.3

Barriers to Progress

Two key barriers appear to be stalling progress in implementing these critical actions. First, significant concerns about privacy and security of data have yet to be addressed. Second, state and district systems do not work together. While state systems have benefited from the bulk of federal investment, district systems are more likely to contain information most useful to teachers and principals.

Privacy and Security. The key federal safeguard for privacy is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a law passed some 30 years ago, long before today’s data systems. FERPA is intended to protect individual student information from being widely disclosed, similar to the limitations within the Health Information Patient Privacy Act (HIPPA).

But as states have developed these expanded data systems, some officials have hesitated to use and share data because of privacy concerns. In fact, the protections included in FERPA have led states to request clarification from the U.S. Department of Education. On April 8, 2011, the department published proposed amendments to FERPA regulations that would broaden access to data. These amended regulations include many changes that it argues would facilitate use of data in ways that better support educational decision making, including allowing reciprocal data sharing between higher education and K–12 and early childhood education and K–12. However, these changes are controversial and still under consideration. Despite the potential usefulness of data, privacy must be maintained.

State Versus District-Level Systems. Despite the progress of states in building data systems, district access to robust data systems is still limited. This “may impede district achievement of … the education goals outlined in ARRA: establishing pre–K to college and career data systems that track student progress, providing and assessing effective interventions for the lowest-performing schools, and assessing teacher effectiveness and the equitable distribution for qualified teachers for all students (particularly students who are most in need).”4 Systems that exist do not save teachers time and rarely provide teachers with information that they can act on immediately. In a survey of district administrators, researchers found that differentiated instruction—the customization of instruction to meet individual students’ needs—is more theory than practice. While states have made tremendous progress in building data systems, they have not taken the steps necessary to get data into the hands of teachers and principals.

Further, “districts report that they rely primarily on data systems they purchase or develop themselves for the purposes of instructional improvement.”5 States have yet to address the cultural and technical differences between state and district data systems. As states finalize their data systems, attention must be paid to this linkage. Without


it, states may have tremendous capacity to house data—but the data will not be used by teachers and will not benefit students.

Schools’ Capacity to Use Data for Improvement. Another barrier is the capacity of schools, districts, and states to use data to improve practice—also called continuous improvement. For example, under Florida’s Continuous School Improvement Model, schools are expected to routinely examine data, but most lack the systems to support this process.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, “While districts have the capacity to conduct some types of inquiry, few have electronic data systems that allow them to link outcomes to processes as required for continuous improvement.”6 Notably, few districts have systems that “support inquiry into the factors that districts can actually influence to try to raise student achievement. Just 42 percent of districts can generate data reports showing student performance linked to participation in specific instructional programs; just over a third (38 percent) can execute queries concerning student performance linked to teacher characteristics; and just over a fourth (27 percent) can generate data reports linking school performance to finance data.”7 While overall progress continues, there is little to suggest that this need has been targeted.

The Policy Environment

States have received significant federal support for data systems through ongoing grant programs and the infusion of resources within ARRA. The initial deadline for the data, September 30, 2011, was extended to January 31, 2012.8

Federal policy has fueled the focus on education data. NCLB ushered in a new recognition by policymakers that creating and using state education data systems were critical to improving student achievement. The requirements of the America COMPETES Act, coupled with funding initiatives such as RTTT, have allowed for significant state and local efforts to use and benefit from education data.

As Congress and the administration seek to build upon these efforts, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA) represent opportunities to continue improving upon existing policies and funding options.

Absent new legislation or another impetus, the future of state activities in this area is not clear.

ESEA—Enacted in January 2002, NCLB is the most recent reauthorization of ESEA. While NCLB did not mandate the creation of a specific data system, NCLB’s requirements to track and publicly report student and school-level achievement and hold districts and schools accountable for results necessitated the development of systems to manage the volumes of data produced. While initial systems struggled to respond to these needs, many states have made great strides in improving their data systems to a point where they can functionally respond to NCLB’s requirements.

In reauthorizing ESEA, Congress is likely to consider policies that require significant data capacity. Some of these policies examine the connection between student achievement data and teacher effectiveness. To properly link individual student achievement data to specific teachers, states and school districts need data systems capable of tracking these elements. With its focus on teacher effectiveness, the next reauthorization of ESEA will require—explicitly or not—that states and school districts have the data systems necessary to link teachers with the achievement data of their students.

ESRA—The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 established the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). In creating IES, which restructured and brought new focus to the Office of Education Research and Improvement, Congress sought to build a more independent research agency at the U.S. Department of Education capable of responding to increased demand for research on proven and effective practices.


IES offered one of the first focused federal funding sources for the creation of state longitudinal data systems starting in 2005. As Congress looks to reauthorize IES, the Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grant program will certainly receive attention and scrutiny. The existing program was created before there was consensus within the education community on the required elements of an educational data system as embodied in the DQC’s 10 essential elements. Congress will likely consider whether to embed these elements in this program.

With further specificity in the SLDS grant program and the likely focus for ESEA reauthorization, Congress will continue to focus on protecting the privacy of student and teacher-relevant data in state data systems. Privacy of individual student records and the information that makes up these records is paramount if funding for data systems is to continue. Numerous instances of data breaches in both the public and private sectors remind us of the importance of keeping data secure and allowing access only for authorized and crucial purposes.

Promising Policy Proposals

Ensuring that data systems are fully implemented and can be used to produce student achievement gains are critical to continuing to improve education in this country. A number of promising programs, studies, and practices are helping to enhance this effort:

National Student Clearinghouse Pilot. The National Student Clearinghouse is at the center of a new pilot program to track the postsecondary outcomes of high school students in three states. The clearinghouse, which maintains a database with nationwide college enrollment and degree information, has now distributed reports in three pilot states. The reports fill a hole in states’ education data by bridging the gap between two pools of existing data: information about public school students’ high school experience and about those students’ enrollment and success in college. This information enables public school education leaders at the state, district, and school levels to better understand how well their students perform in college and how specific elements of their high school education relate to college enrollment and persistence.

The pilot program represents collaboration among the National Student Clearinghouse, the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (CEPR), College Summit, MPR Associates, and state and local education agencies in Florida, Georgia, and Texas. In addition to the reports, the project seeks to create a web tool and related professional development resources. Over the coming months, project partners College Summit, the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, and MPR Associates, Inc. will work with education officials in the three pilot states to use the project’s data in concrete, results-oriented ways, for example, providing professional development to selected schools and districts.

The Tracking Postsecondary Outcomes for High Schools Pilot Project is supported by more than $14.5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Strategic Data Project. The Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (CEPR) is housing a new comprehensive program that will greatly improve how district and state leaders use data in management and policy creation, resulting in improved outcomes for students. This program will combine the assembly of data for decision making, a performance review for education agencies illustrating how data can be analyzed to yield new insights into student outcomes, and the placement of full-time Strategic Data Fellows to provide agency leadership with ongoing analytic support. CEPR hosted Beyond the Numbers: Transforming Data into Knowledge in May to convene education agency leaders and Strategic Data Project Fellows to evaluate the current quality and use of data at local and state levels and identify the challenges facing the education sector in transforming data into knowledge. As of this writing, materials from the meeting have not been published.

Teacher-Student Data Link Project. The Teacher-Student Data Link project is a cross-state, collaborative effort focused on developing a common best practice definition of “Teacher of Record” and business processes for collecting and


validating linked teacher and student data. Led by the Center for Educational Leadership and Technology, the initiative brings together the state education departments in five states: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio, and three of their local education agencies (LEAs) to conduct a comprehensive assessment of their data systems, business processes, and policies related to the linking of teacher and student data. By combining their collective experiences, knowledge, and resources, participating agencies hope to access one of the most essential components of their data systems and use data to increase student learning and improve teacher quality.

Conclusion

Few businesses would collect data without a clear strategy for using that information. Yet that is the case in many states and school districts today. Federal law has prompted states to collect and report information, but the information has moved in one direction—from the schools to districts, states, and the government. Prompted again by federal requirements, only recently have states begun to examine how data can be used for more than reporting. Meanwhile, at the local level, schools and districts describe being overwhelmed, even drowning in data, without being able to make sense of it. These are challenges that businesses have taken on and mastered. As states and districts continue down this path, businesses should consider lending their expertise to this conversation so that data can truly be used to inform educational decisions.


Endnotes

1. Data Quality Campaign, “Data for Action 2010,” Data Quality Campaign website, http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/

stateanalysis/actions, accessed February 2011.

2. Barbara Means, Christine Padilla, Larry Gallagher, and SRI International, “Use of Education Data at the Local Level—From

Accountability to Instructional Improvement,” U.S. Department of Education, January 2010, p. 36, accessed February 2011.

3. LinkIt! Research Group,”Trends in Data-Driven Instruction, July 2009-May 2010,” PowerPoint presentation to District

Administrators.

4. Barbara Means, Christine Padilla, Larry Gallagher, and SRI International, “Use of Education Data at the Local Level—From

Accountability to Instructional Improvement,” p. 12.

5. Ibid, p. 17.

6. Ibid, p. 21.

7. Ibid.

8. Michelle McNeil, “Ed. Dept. Gives States More Time for Stimulus Reporting,” Education Week, September 26, 2011, http://

blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/09/ed_dept_gives_states_more_time.html, accessed October 2011.

In Focus: Standards Implementation and College and Career Readiness


Background

Developing and implementing academic standards and their impact on college and career readiness have been major objectives for state and federal policymakers since the 1980s. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush convened governors for a historic education summit to focus on key national education goals. This discussion led to the creation of the National Education Goals Panel and the National Council on Education Standards and Testing. Many of the ideas developed from this effort were incorporated into the Goals 2000 Act, one of the first education policy initiatives by the Clinton administration in 1993.

Goals 2000 created the National Education Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC), which was intended to provide an independent, voluntary certification of state academic standards, “opportunity-to-learn” standards, and assessment systems. Opportunity-to-learn standards were provided to ensure a minimum level of necessary conditions for learning. Because these standards represented a departure from the long tradition of state and local control over education, these concepts quickly became controversial and were repealed when Republicans took control of Congress in 1994.

Congress passed the Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA) in 1994. IASA largely began what has been nearly a two-decade focus on academic standards in federal education law. This statute required that states develop and implement academic standards for elementary and secondary education as a condition of receiving federal education funding under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This requirement was expanded and enforced as part of the latest reauthorization of ESEA, referred to as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Importantly, under both statutes, states retained control over the content of their academic standards and related assessments.

Uneven Progress

Under each successive authorization of ESEA, states have responded differently to meeting the requirements of the law, with some states crafting rigorous, high-quality standards, and others adopting much weaker ones. The same pattern is true of assessments. It is possible for a state to have relatively high standards but a low-level assessment. It is also possible for a state to have both high standards and a rigorous assessment but to set the passing rate too low, showing students to be proficient when they are not. According to federal law, the requirements become the minimum, and some states resist meeting even this minimum. The purpose of the law is to protect students and their families in states slow or reluctant to adopt reforms. As New Schools Venture Fund’s Dr. Ted Mitchell testified in February 2011 to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the federal government can provide political cover necessary to make tough decisions.1

Today, this widely acknowledged variation of state standards has become a topic of conversation and concern. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Education began requiring states to publish, alongside their own test results, students’ scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often called The Nation’s Report Card. The idea was to enable parents and the general public to gauge the rigor of a state’s standards, and the assessments that measure students’ acquisition of the standards compared with NAEP scores. This same proposal was debated and rejected by Congress while working on NCLB, a testimony to how much the conversation has shifted in the last decade.

Indeed, these comparisons show that in many states, while students demonstrate proficiency on state tests, NAEP scores show a much lower level of achievement. Quality Counts 2011, an annual publication by Education Week, awarded the country overall a grade of only D+, based largely on low NAEP scores.2

In Focus: Standards Implementation and College and Career Readiness | 49

Many experts on standards and accountability believe that despite years of development and numerous revisions, most current state standards and assessments are not of the rigor and scope to be considered college and career ready and do not meet the requirements of a modern, world-class education. For instance, in July 2010, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute issued a series of analyses of the rigor of state standards. Consistent with past findings, one report found varying degrees of rigor among the individual sets of standards utilized by states.3

Common Core State Standards

Even in the context of concern over global competitiveness, most states have not updated their standards in the decade since the passage of No Child Left Behind, although some have changed their tests or, as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan often says, have lowered the requirements for proficiency on those tests. These two factors—the link between federal requirements and state standards and the relative age of state standards—make the recent development of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) noteworthy.

Early in 2009, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers launched an initiative with nearly all the states to develop a “common core” set of state elementary and secondary academic standards. CCSS is designed to be college- and career-ready, internationally benchmarked, and consistent for all students. This consistency in academic standards is intended to help facilitate meaningful comparisons of students’ annual progress among the states. Since the standards’ inception, 44 states, representing 86% of the student population, have adopted CCSS. 4

Two federal actions in 2009 spurred state engagement with CCSS. In early 2009, Congress passed, as part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (ARRA), the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF). As a condition of receiving SFSF funding, states promised the U.S. Department of Education that they would improve the quality of their academic standards and meet the requirements of college and career readiness. Although SFSF did not require states to adopt the Common Core, many states did so.

The Race to the Top (RTTT) program—another component of ARRA—was a major catalyst for the swift adoption of CCSS by states. In the application process for RTTT competition, states were awarded additional points if they committed to adopting common standards; in fact, all 41 states applying for RTTT made this commitment.

Another form of federal support for the Common Core took place in 2010, when the U.S. Department of Education awarded RTTT Assessment Funds to two consortia to develop the next generation of assessments tied to CCSS. In September 2010, the U.S. Department of Education awarded $330 million to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). Both consortia have pledged to complete assessment systems by 2014. These two assessment systems are also intended to move testing forward by considering the needs of English language learners and students with disabilities during the initial test design. All but five states are participants in one consortium or the other, and several states participate in both. Furthermore, the consortia received additional grant funds to implement the new assessments.

As with any set of standards, the assessments used to measure achievement of CCSS are critical. The grants to PARCC and SBAC are intended to ensure that educators, parents, and the general public will have accurate and cutting-edge tools to gauge mastery of these new standards. The reason that states were able to adopt the Common Core to meet the Recovery Act requirements is that these assessments are intended to provide a consistent standard for performance of college and career readiness.

Neither the standards nor the accompanying in-development assessments are without controversy. Many standards’ advocates, as well as the Obama administration, believe that the nation can no longer afford for individual states to have individual standards with little or no connection to what is happening in other states. They believe that


ESEA should tie federal Title I funding to acceptance of CCSS or, at the very least, provide significant incentives for adoption of these standards. Opponents of this proposal believe that it is inappropriate for the federal government, which supplies a relatively small percentage of the overall funding for education, to direct states to adopt one set of standards and assessments—which will ultimately drive curriculum—over another. Congressional and other observers have speculated that national standards—especially when accompanied by a national assessment—would be tantamount to a national, federal curriculum.

Others have compared the Common Core to NAEP. NAEP has not, in more than 40 years, resulted in a national curriculum. But the key difference between NAEP and the Common Core is that the Common Core will be a high-stakes test used for school accountability, student promotion and graduation, and quite possibly, teacher evaluation. While schools do not change their curriculum to respond to NAEP, they certainly do so to respond to the state’s high-stakes tests.

The next few years will be critical in resolving this controversy and balancing the federal and state roles in establishing student expectations.

Current Research and Practice

TN State Test,Reading, 93%

Student Prociency in Tennessee

TN State Test,Math, 90%

TN State Test

NAEP

NAEP,Reading, 26% NAEP,

Math, 25%

Nearly all state standards and performance expectations are inadequate relative to what students should know and be able to do in today’s global economy. Each time an international assessment is released—such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)—countless news stories and analysts point out the number of countries whose students outscore the United States.

Even the widely accepted NAEP, used since 1969, demonstrates an example of the stark differences in achievement on states’ tests used for NCLB accountability with NAEP.

This example, using the state of Tennessee, shows a 67% difference in reading proficiencies and a 65% gap in math proficiencies.5 Tennessee is not unique in this instance. The Center for American Progress and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for a Competitive Workforce issued the 2007 report, Leaders and Laggards, with similar findings for many states.6 In May 2011, the Institute for a Competitive Workforce published The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, a 50-state snapshot comparing education in nine categories. In the “student achievement” category, all 50 states were rated “ugly,” based on the fact that no state had more than 60% of its students proficient on the 2009 NAEP fourth and eighth grade reading and math exams.


Mathematics

Shanghai-China 600

Singapore 562

Hong Kong-China 555

Korea 546

Chinese Taipei 543

Finland 541

Liechtenstein 536

Switzerland 534

Japan 529

Canada 527

Netherlands 526

Macao-China 525

New Zealand 519

Belgium 515

Australia 514

Germany 513

Estonia 512

Iceland 507

Denmark 503

Slovenia 501

Norway 498

France 497

Slovak Republic 497

Austria 496

Poland 495

Sweden 494

Czech Republic 493

United Kingdom 492

Hungary 490

Luxembourg 489

United States 487

Ireland 487

Portugal 487

Reading

Shanghai-China 556

Korea 539

Finland 536

Hong Kong-China 533

Singapore 526

Canada 524

New Zealand 521

Japan 520

Australia 515

Netherlands 508

Belgium 506

Norway 503

Estonia 501

Switzerland 501

Poland 500

Iceland 500

United States 500

Liechtenstein 499

Sweden 497

Germany 497

Ireland 496

France 496

Chinese Taipei 495

Denmark 495

United Kingdom 494

Hungary 494

Portugal 489

Macao-China 487

Italy 486

Latvia 484

Slovenia 483

Greece 483

Spain 481

Science

Shanghai-China 556

Finland 539

Hong Kong-China 536

Singapore 533

Japan 526

Korea 524

New Zealand 521

Canada 520

Estonia 515

Australia 508

Netherlands 506

Chinese Taipei 503

Germany 501

Liechtenstein 501

Switzerland 500

United Kingdom 500

Slovenia 500

Macao-China 499

Poland 497

Ireland 497

Belgium 496

Hungary 496

United States 495

Czech Republic 495

Norway 494

Denmark 494

France 489

Iceland 487

Sweden 486

Austria 484

Latvia 483

Portugal 483

Lithuania 481

Selected Countries’ Performance in Mathematics, Reading, and Science, 2009

Significantly above

the OECD average

OECD average

Significantly below the OECD average

PISA focuses on young people’s ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. This orientation reflects a change in the goals and objectives of curricula themselves, which are increasingly concerned with what students can do with what they learn at school and not merely with whether they have mastered specific curricular content.

Source: OECD PISA 2009 database

Source: Data from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2011 Annual Letter, http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/2011/Pages/excellence-in-teaching.aspx, accessed August 2011.


Education research has consistently shown that high expectations and rigorous standards are critical to achieving positive academic achievement outcomes. Studies have confirmed that if students aren’t challenged in what they are expected to know and how well they demonstrate this knowledge, they will not achieve the levels necessary to be college- and career-ready. 7 The variability in the quality of state standards puts some students at a disadvantage.

Increasingly, experts are concerned that students are either not prepared for or are not pursuing postsecondary education. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, two-thirds of new jobs over the next decade are expected to be filled by workers with at least some postsecondary education.8

Or as the U.S. Department of Education puts it, “60 percent of the new jobs that will emerge in the 21st century will require skills possessed by only 20 percent of the current workforce.”9

Students held to different goals in different states may be hindered in pursuing employment or college admission in states with higher expectations. Or once they are admitted to college, students who thought they were prepared may struggle and require costly remediation. The Harvard Graduate School of Education recently published Pathways to Prosperity, which argues for a shift in how schools prepare students for the future. It notes that 7 in 10 Americans don’t earn a bachelor’s degree by their mid-20s. Only slightly more than 20% of students who enroll in community colleges obtain a two-year associate degree after three years.10

Eighty-seven percent of new high-wage jobs will require more than a high school diploma. CCSS is intended to help ensure that all students are held to a set of uniform high standards tied to college and career readiness and are prepared to fill the high-wage jobs of the future.

The economic impact of denying today’s students adequate preparation to be tomorrow’s workforce can be devastating not only for our nation but also for our communities. For example, if America’s low-performing states performed on par with high-performing states on NAEP, in 2008 the United States would have had $425 billion to $700 billion in higher economic output, or 3% to 5% of GDP.11 At a local level, if half of the estimated 70,900 students who dropped out in the Los Angeles metropolitan area had graduated in 2008, they would have earned an additional annual combined income of $389 million.12 This increased income would have likely produced an increase of $273 million in spending and $103 million in investment. CCSS, if implemented as designed, is intended to respond to these challenges by holding students to the higher expectations needed to reverse these negative trends and boost the economy while ensuring that all students in our nation benefit from these high expectations.

The Policy Environment

State Level

CCSS remains the largest and most significant effort at the state level around academic standards and college and career readiness and may be a step forward from the standards many states developed under NCLB. In 2010, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute graded the quality and rigor of each state’s English language arts and math standards. Fordham found that CCSS was superior or at the same level of most states’ existing standards. Fordham gave the Common Core a B+ in English language arts and an A- in math. The quality and fidelity of state implementation of these standards over the coming months and years will largely dictate the success of the CCSS initiative.13

Perhaps the most important decision point will occur in 2014, when the assessments that are aligned to the Common Core will be finished. At this time, states will have to demonstrate commitment to not only implementing CCSS but to communicating and handling the reality that student scores will likely drop—in some cases, dramatically—as the state transitions to not only more rigorous standards but to more rigorous assessments. States with the largest gaps between NAEP and their own tests may face the largest challenges.


Another challenge is changing leadership. In the time between the initial standards adoption and the finalization of aligned assessments, numerous states have experienced changes in governance and more change is yet to come. New leaders may lack the commitment of those who participated in the earlier stages of this collaborative effort. Until assessments are ready in 2014, states must demonstrate their continued commitment to CCSS by putting these standards into practice and preparing teachers, including involving colleges of education so that new teachers are prepared when they enter the classroom.

Federal Level

To date, federal support for common standards, and for assessments to measure progress toward meeting those standards, has been through ARRA. To further support the Common Core, or higher, college- and career-ready standards, the most significant and palatable legislative vehicle is the reauthorization of ESEA. ESEA, as mentioned previously, has long required states to adopt their own academic standards, though not common standards, and assessments.

In its blueprint for reauthorization, the Obama administration strikes a delicate balance—not formally supporting the Common Core per se—but endorsing the sentiment behind the Common Core: “Following the lead of the nation’s governors, we’re calling on all states to develop and adopt standards in English language arts and mathematics that build toward college and career readiness by the time students graduate from high school. States may choose to upgrade their existing standards or work together with other states to develop and adopt common, state-developed standards.”14

In addition to ESEA, the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act is also up for reauthorization in the 112th Congress. Career and technical education programs can provide additional avenues for students to achieve college and career readiness. Consideration of changes to this law provides Congress and the administration with another opportunity to reinforce an ESEA agenda that seeks to strengthen standards and their link to college and career readiness.

Promising Proposals

A number of promising policy proposals are being implemented to ensure that state academic standards are tied to college and career readiness. With the adoption of CCSS by 44 states, many efforts have shifted toward implementing these standards and developing assessments to measure the achievement of these standards. Included among these efforts are:

James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy (Hunt Institute)

In the past few years, the Hunt Institute has conducted a number of workshops and undertaken other critical work in support of implementing more rigorous standards and assessments, specifically CCSS.

In 2011, the Hunt Institute published the report Defining Alignment and Achieving College Readiness, addressing the roles of higher education organizations and leaders in implementing CCSS. The involvement of the colleges that prepare teachers is a critical component to ensuring the success of CCSS. More information on these efforts can be found at http://www.hunt-institute.org.

The Common Core Curriculum Mapping Project

In 2010, the Common Core, a group separate from the standards development initiative, published Curriculum Maps in English Language Arts that translates the new CCSS for kindergarten through 12th grade into unit maps for


teachers. According to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Common Core recognized that these important and influential standards would have the potential to raise achievement for many students if they were paired with first-rate curriculum materials. The intention was therefore to set out to create tools that teachers could use to develop strong, CCSS-aligned English language arts (ELA) curricula. The result is Common Core’s Curriculum Maps in ELA. The maps are available free of charge and are supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. More information is available at http://www.commoncore.org/maps/index.php/maps.

Pearson Digital Content Project

In April, The Pearson Foundation announced a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support America’s teachers by creating a full series of digital instructional resources. Over the next three years, the Pearson Foundation will develop 24 courses covering math for grades K–10 and reading/English language arts for grades K–12. The courses will enable teachers and students to access the latest and most effective digital learning technologies as they prepare to meet the internationally benchmarked college readiness goals of CCSS. The courses will be made available in 2013. Funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will support four courses to be offered as free, open educational resources, with the intent of widening access and spurring innovation around the Common Core.

Conclusion

Questions of how to raise student achievement, starting with the expectations set by both standards and assessments, are increasingly paired with America’s position in the global economy. Currently, Congress must vote to allow scientists and professionals from other countries to fill positions in U.S. companies and provide them with special visas because the U.S. is not producing sufficient numbers of its own students to fill these jobs. “In the United States … only a third of students are graduating from high school prepared to succeed at college-level work, and even fewer are going on to get a degree that will help them compete for a good job. No one should feel comfortable with those results,” Bill Gates wrote in his 2011 annual letter. Gates is a strong supporter of the Common Core. In late 2010, he told the Council of Chief State School Officers, “The Common Core builds a foundation for defining and measuring excellence—and that will give traction to many reforms that follow. Others have asserted standards before, but yours are better. They are more relevant—because they’re based on the knowledge and skills people need. They’re clearer—so you can test whether a student knows them. And they’re consistent across the states that adopt them, so educators can work together to improve our schools.”

Whether or not the Common Core is the right answer to solving the problems of raising student achievement, it is promising that so many states are engaging in the difficult work of increasing standards and creating new assessments to better measure student achievement.


Endnotes

1. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Education and the Workforce; “Education in the Nation: Examining the

Challenges and Opportunities Facing America’s Classrooms,” testimony of Ted Mitchell, president and CEO, Newschools Venture

Fund, February 10, 2011, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg64229/pdf/CHRG-112hhrg64229.pdf, accessed July 2011.

2. Education Week, Quality Counts 2011—K-12 Achievement, January 13, 2011, http://www.edweek.org/media/ew/qc/2011/16sos.

h30.k12.pdf, accessed July 2011.

3. Sheila B. Carmichael, Garbrielle Martino, Kathleen Porter-Magee, and Stephen W. Wilson, “The State of State Standards—

and the Common Core—in 2010,” Thomas B. Fordham Institute, July 21, 2010, http://www.edexcellencemedia.net/

publications/2010/201007_state_education_standards_common_standards/SOSSandCC2010_FullReportFINAL.pdf, accessed

July 2011.

4. Alliance for Excellent Education, “Percentage of U.S. Students ‘Covered’ by Common Standards,” www.all4ed.org/common-

standards, accessed August 2011.

5. Alliance for Excellent Education, “Tennessee: The Case to Adopt Common College- and Career-Ready Standards and

Assessments,” May 2011, www.all4ed.org/files/Tennessee_cs.pdf, accessed July 2011.

6. Center for American Progress and Institute for a Competitive Workforce, “Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State

Report Card on Educational Effectiveness,” February 2007. http://www.cpec.ca.gov/CompleteReports/ExternalDocuments/

USChamberLeadersandLaggards.pdf, accessed July 2011.

7. J.P. Johnson, M. Livingston, R.A. Schwartz, and J.R. Slate, “What Makes a Good Elementary School? A Critical

Examination,” Journal of Educational Research 93, no. 6 (2000): 339-345.

James H. Stronge, “Qualities of Effective Teachers,” Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2002.

8. The Aspen Institute, “Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nation’s Children,” February 2007. Original citation:

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. “Career Guide to Industries,” 2006–07 Edition, Educational Services,

November 2006. http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs034.htm, accessed July 2011.

9. Yash Gupta, “We Must Help Students Reach College,” Education Week 30, no. 35 (2011): 26, Accessed July 2011.

10. Harvard Graduate School of Education, “Pathways to Prosperity,” February 2011, http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/

features/2011/Pathways_to_Prosperity_Feb2011.pdf, accessed July 2011.

11. McKinsey & Company, “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools,” April 2009, http://www.

mckinsey.com/app_media/images/page_images/offices/socialsector/pdf/achievement_gap_report.pdf, accessed August 2011.

12. Alliance for Excellent Education, “The Economic Benefits of Reducing the Dropout Rate for Students of Color in the Los Angeles-

Long Beach Metropolitan Area,” July 2010, www.all4ed.org/files/LosAngelesLongBeachCA_lebsoc.pdf, accessed July 2011.

13. Shelia B. Carmichael, Gabrielle Martino, Kathleen Porter-Magee, and Stephen W. Wilson, “The State of State Standards—and the

Common Core—in 2010,” Thomas B. Fordham Institute, July 21, 2010, http://www.edexcellencemedia.net/publications/

2010/201007_state_education_standards_common_standards/SOSSandCC2010_FullReportFINAL.pdf, accessed July 2011.

14. U.S. Department of Education, “A Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,”

March 2010, http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/blueprint/blueprint.pdf, accessed August 2011.


Institute for a Competitive Workforce

In Focus:A Look Into Teacher Effectiveness

A Look Into Turning Around Failing Schools

Moving From Data Systems to Data Use

Standards Implementation and College and Career Readiness

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for a Competitive Workforce

1615 H Street NW Washington, DC 20062

Phone: 202-463-5525 www.uschamber.com/icw