Accountability

Promising Proposals for Funding and Accountability in New Mexico

Lindsey Luebchow — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:00:00 -0400

The New Mexico legislature has been working to increase and better target K-12 education funding to school districts with high-need students. Governor Bill Richardson and the legislature appointed a Funding Formula Task Force in 2005. The Task Force commissioned a comprehensive study of New Mexico’s public school funding formula, including an estimate of how much it would cost the state to provide a "sufficient" education to all students.

The American Institutes of Research released the New Mexico funding study in January, and concluded that "sufficient" state funding for education would require an increase of $335 million ($1,034 per-pupil), or 14.5 percent above the current $2.5 billion in spending. When the legislative session ended in March, the legislature was in the middle of considering legislation to boost spending and overhaul the state funding formula. This week, the Legislative Education Study Committee is meeting to discuss the impact of the proposed formula.

New Mexico included a critical step in this process that other states have too often left out: accountability. Without accountability, there is no way to ensure that school districts use increased funds efficiently and effectively. Any sustainable argument for additional resources requires accountability.

New Mexico, in contrast, has embraced the need for accountability measures, as Michael Rebell noted on his blog EdFunding Matters. One of the funding study's recommendations was that the state require districts to align their spending plans with their current "Educational Plans for Student Success (EPSS)." An EPSS is a strategic plan developed by every school district and individual school in New Mexico that "sets clear goals, implementation strategies and evaluation measures" for student achievement and school improvement. They include achievement benchmarks for NCLB reading and math tests and specific strategies and interventions for reaching those benchmarks. The new legislation would expand the EPSS to include achievement in other areas, such as career and technical education and special education.

The EPSS system appears to be similar to the Contracts for Excellence in New York, an accountability program that was put in place after the New York legislature approved a significant increase in state education funding last year. 55 New York school districts—those that have schools in need of improvement and receive a certain amount of the new state aid—have filled out Contracts for Excellence. The Contracts require districts to target their new funds to at-risk students and proven programs, to set performance targets for improvement, and to publicly report the results.

In moving forward with any new state funding plan, New Mexico—and all other states—should wholeheartedly embrace and emphasize accountability in a fashion similar to New York. Individual district accountability plans give school districts the flexibility to define their own goals and to select the best route to achieve them. But the state retains the power of quality control, as it must approve and monitor how the district chooses to spend its funds. And there must be total transparency for the public about the spending choices and results.

Unfortunately, a few school officials in New Mexico have already started to express concerns that any revamped EPSS system would be too much of an administrative burden.

Here’s a warning to those officials: if you want more money on a consistent basis, year after year, it would be extremely wise to accept and support increased accountability measures. If schools don’t prove to the public and the state legislature that the new money is producing results, lawmakers will take it back much faster than they gave it up.

Tired of Waiting for Reauthorization, the Department of Education Regulates

Lindsey Luebchow — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:00:00 -0400

On Tuesday, the Department of Education unveiled a new set of proposed regulations on No Child Left Behind. The major announcement was details about the new, uniform graduation rate formula that all states will have to use for NCLB accountability purposes going forward. In addition, the Department outlined new requirements for district implementation of the Supplemental Educational Services (SES) provision.

In general, the proposed regulations focus on greater transparency for what's already happening in each state. At a briefing in Washington D.C., U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Ray Simon said that the Department wants to make sure states and districts can justify what they are doing on assessment and accountability. He also raised concerns that districts are not adequately implementing NCLB's restructuring and SES requirements, and said that the Department wants to detail and reinforce what is already required by the law.

Here's a quick summary of the new proposed regulations, which were published today in the Federal Register and will be open for comment for 90 days:

Uniform Graduation Rates

By 2012-13, states, districts, and schools would have to use a "cohort graduation rate" formula, consistent with the National Governor's Association's formula.
Because it will take time for many states to collect the necessary data, they would have to use an "averaged freshman graduation rate" (AFGR) in the interim.

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP): States currently require schools to show some improvement (generally only a minimal amount) in graduation rates in order to make AYP under NCLB. The Department wants to require that states set a specific goal and a timeline for improvement in graduation rates.

Disaggregation: By 2012-13, states would also have to report disaggregated graduation rates and use them in AYP calculations. In the meantime, disaggregated AFGR rates would have to be reported; however, because the AFGR is not accurate enough for small data groups, disaggregation would not be used for accountability purposes at the school level until the more accurate rate is available.
Transparency & Clarification
"N" Size: States are currently allowed to set their own minimum subgroup sizes ("N" sizes) for AYP reporting. The Department is concerned that too many students are being excluded in some states with large N sizes, and proposes requiring states to justify their N sizes and other technical AYP components in their accountability workbooks. These explanations would then undergo a peer review.

Restructuring: The Department wants to clarify school restructuring requirements, which it believes aren't being effectively implemented. Districts would have to show that schools in the restructuring phase are receiving much more comprehensive, tailored interventions than schools in earlier, corrective action phases.
Supplemental Education Services and School Choice
Parental Notification: Schools would have to notify parents of their school choice options at least 14 days before the start of the school year. When schools send out notices of SES eligibility, they would have to be "clearly distinguishable" from other NCLB information.

State Approval and Monitoring: The Department wants states to provide more information about how they approve and evaluate SES providers. In addition, the Department wants to expand the list of factors that a state must take into account when approving or monitoring the effectiveness of providers.

Title I Funds: Districts are not allowed to count the costs of parental outreach towards the 20 percent of their Title I grant that must go to SES and school choice. The Department proposes permitting districts to count those costs, up to 0.2 percent of the total Title I allocation. In addition, districts would have to prove that they have sufficiently exhausted SES and school choice opportunities before they could reallocate any remaining funds to other purposes.

What's Behind Standardized Graduation Rates? Data System Investment

Lindsey Luebchow — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:00:00 -0400

Last week Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced that the Department of Education will begin requiring all states to use the same method to calculate high school graduation rates. NCLB already requires states and high schools to report graduation rates, but it allows states to craft their own formulas to do so. The result: states inevitably found ways to inflate graduation statistics. And the state-by-state patchwork of methods used makes it impossible to compare graduation rates across states.

Spellings' announcement is an important, smart move following years of pressure from education and civil rights organizations to improve graduation rate data. Without comparable, meaningful data to expose low graduation rates, states can continue to ignore the drop-out crisis that is plaguing low-income communities—especially in urban areas—around the country.

But Spellings' announcement also raises some important questions: Do states have in place the data systems they need to calculate new, standardized graduation rates? And, if not, how will they pay for new state data systems? So far, neither Spellings nor news articles covering the new regulations have addressed these issues in any detail.

Where State Data Systems Stand

The first step toward accurate graduation rates is a student unit record data system that can track individual students. These systems assign a unique identification number to each student in the state, so that the state can follow individual students from the time they enroll in ninth grade through high school graduation—even if they transfer between schools or school districts.

An accurate graduation rate formula (such the one adopted by the National Governor's Association, which appears below) measures the percent of students from an entering ninth grade cohort who graduate with a standard diploma in four years. This is commonly known as a "cohort" method of calculating graduation rates.

According to the results of a 2007 survey by the Data Quality Campaign, 36 states have the full data system capability to calculate this formula. Seven other states have student unit records in place, but lack a robust data audit system. Robust audit systems ensure that districts report valid dropout data, and they are necessary to remedy past documented problems with unreliable district reporting.

All 43 states that have already invested in data systems to track individual high school students should be prepared to comply with new federal graduation rate measures within the next four years. Some states that implemented these data systems only recently may need time to accumulate four years of student data (from the time the first ninth grade class enrolls until they complete 12th grade) to calculate a cohort graduation rate.

But seven states that don't have the necessary data infrastructure to calculate accurate graduate rates are going to have to play catch up—and that will likely be expensive.

Laggards Face Data System Costs

The exact costs of establishing a student unit record data system depend on the data infrastructure a state already has in place, but they are substantial. The Data Quality Campaign estimates that putting in place the structure for these systems costs between $1 million and $3 million annually over several years of development—not including ongoing maintenance costs after the system is in place or staff time at the district level.

These seven states may not be eager to spend money on K-12 data initiatives. One reason they don't have them already is that they've been unwilling to pony up the necessary funds in the past. But soon they may not have a choice—although if the history of NCLB and IASA implementation is any guide, they will likely drag their feet. And they may complain about more "unfunded mandates" from the federal government.

NCLB does provide funding to help states cover the costs of developing and administering state assessments and standards—$409 million in fiscal year 2008, distributed to states based on their share of students ages 5 to 17. Once a state meets all of NCLB's assessment requirements, it can use the grant money for "support for data reporting." But given the limited amount of money available in this pot (average state grant: $7.6 million), many states don’t have a lot left over after annual testing costs. The Bush Administration's 2009 budget request did not propose any increase in funding for state assessments. And Secretary Spellings hasn't indicated that the Department of Education will provide additional funding to help states implement new graduation rate standards.

A Worthwhile Investment

States that haven't already invested in student unit record data systems may not want to pay the costs to do so. But in the long run, student unit record data systems are an incredibly valuable investment that every state should make. If new, standardized graduation rate standards require lagging states to improve their data systems, that will be an additional benefit of these requirements.

Even states that already have the framework in place for graduation rates could do a lot to further develop their systems—for example, tracking all students from pre-kindergarten through higher education, or performing more extensive coding of student characteristics and outcomes. This type of data is invaluable in education research and accountability efforts.

That is, if states actually use it. According to the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, only 16 states used a cohort formula for NCLB accountability purposes in 2006-07, while others preserved their old formulas even if they had accumulated the data to use a more accurate cohort formula. In many cases, the less accurate measures produce inflated graduation rates that make states look like they're doing better than they actually are. Standardizing graduation rate measures will result in more accurate data—and make sure state taxpayers are getting their money's worth from new data systems.

Lift the Veil

Stephen Burd — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:44:00 -0400

As Congress works to finalize legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act for the next five years, higher education lobbyists are making one last ditch effort to dissuade lawmakers from requiring colleges to provide even the most basic information about how they spend their own institutional financial aid dollars.

At issue are provisions in both the House and Senate reauthorization bills that aim to provide prospective students, their families, and policymakers with more detailed data about their aid policies, as well as other types of consumer information, such as graduation and retention rates. Both bills ask colleges to report the average amount of grant aid that the institutions award their students and the proportion of students who receive these grants. The House legislation goes a much-needed step further, and requires colleges to provide a breakdown by income of students who receive institutional aid.

The two bills also differ on how this consumer information is to be reported. Under the House measure, colleges would be required to provide the data to the Education Secretary who would then publish it on the U.S. Education Department's College Navigator website, which the agency hopes prospective students will use when picking colleges. In contrast, the consumer reporting provisions in the Senate bill would be completely voluntary. Colleges that chose to participate would publish the information on their websites, using a model form developed by the Education Department.

College lobbyists, not too surprisingly, favor the Senate's voluntary approach. "Institutions provide a substantial amount of data to the U.S. Department of Education through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) each year, and we applaud efforts to assure that this information is used," the American Council on Education (ACE) wrote in a letter in late February to the leaders of the House and Senate education committees on behalf of itself and 13 other college groups. "However, many data elements specified in both bills are not currently collected through IPEDS in the form specified. Mandating that they be provided would create a significant new reporting burden for institutions."

If, however, Congress decides to make the reporting mandatory, ACE wrote, then it should "limit the data elements" required to those that the Department already collects through IPEDS. The groups know, of course, that such a limitation would continue to cloak colleges' institutional aid policies in mystery, as the Department currently asks the institutions little about how they spend their own aid dollars.

At Higher Ed Watch, we believe that colleges should be required to provide more detailed information about their institutional aid policies. The federal government, which spends tens of billions of dollars a year to help low- and moderate-income students gain access to college, has a right and responsibility to know whether institutions of higher education are helping or hindering public policy goals. Are colleges, for example, using the new influx of federal Pell Grant dollars that Congress and the Bush Administration have provided to supplement their own institutional financial aid and insure that low-income students don't have unmet financial need? Or are they using the new federal funding to replace institutional aid dollars they would have spent otherwise and using that money for other priorities, such as building fancy new dorms and athletic centers or providing merit aid to attract better, and often wealthier, students?

These are important questions for policymakers to be able to answer. Hopefully as lawmakers complete work on the Higher Education Act reauthorization legislation, they will stick to their guns and make colleges' financial aid practices more transparent. As we've said before, a little sunshine almost never hurts.

Earmarks Galore! More Transparency, But Still Flourishing

Lindsey Luebchow — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:00:00 -0400

Last week, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a database of higher education earmarks for fiscal year 2008. A number of the earmarks are related to K-12 initiatives at colleges and universities, and many of the programs sound valuable and work toward positive goals. Members of Congress are certainly skilled at justifying them. But don't let these justifications sway you—earmarks mean no accountability to taxpayers and no concrete proof of program effectiveness.

The Office of Postsecondary Education routinely receives the most earmarks in the Department of Education, including some for K-12 initiatives such as teacher training programs. The Chronicle database also includes higher education earmarks distributed through the Office of Innovation and Improvement's Fund for the Improvement of Education (FIE), such as grants to support partnerships between colleges and local school systems.

When you look through the Chronicle's list of earmarks, many of the K-12 projects sound, on the surface, like worthwhile efforts. $120,851 for professional development for school teachers in mathematics and science? Great! How about $191,593 to create a Principals Institute, to train and certify all Maryland school principals? Sounds promising!

It's hard to argue that there isn't a need for these type of projects. But because there are no standards for earmarks, the type and quality of the funded programs varies widely. In addition, it can be difficult for taxpayers to get any detailed information about what the projects actually do.

For example, there is a $383,187 earmark for California State University at Northridge for the "development of an assessment-and-accountability system for K-12 teachers." Ed Money Watch wants to know more about that project, but a call to Rep. Brad Sherman's (D-CA) office, one of the sponsors of the earmark, yielded no response (as did most of our calls to Congressional offices). Or how about $286,899 to the Mississippi University for Women "for outreach and research to local school districts." The sponsor Senator Roger Wicker's (R-MS) office had no information for Ed Money Watch, and told us to try contacting the school. After several calls to the school, we finally figured out where the money is going, but it sure wasn't easy.

Of course, there's also the issue of judging whether the earmarked programs are actually effective. Members of Congress do not use a competitive process to distribute earmarks; it's all about special constituent interests. And once the earmark is out the door, there is no accountability for how the funds are spent.

It's good to see that the Chronicle and the Office of Budget and Management have started to publish earmarks in searchable databases, following the mandate of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. Transparency forces Members of Congress to at least validate their earmark spending, and maybe even pushes them to keep closer tabs on the money.

The public needs to ask tough questions about earmarks and not get caught up in Congressional spin—unless, maybe, a new President and new Congress get rid of earmarks for good. Wishful thinking from Ed Money Watch.

Smart Ideas on Early Elementary Accountability From UFT

Sara Mead — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:02:00 -0400

Last week United Federation of Teachers (New York City's teachers union) President Randi Weingarten gave a major speech proposing a new accountability framework to replace the controversial school report cards that NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein instituted last November.

In contrast to Klein's report cards, which assigned schools a single letter grade based primarily on student test scores, UFT's proposed alternative would offer parents and the public a matrix of indicators concentrated in three areas: academic achievement; safety, order and discipline; and teamwork for student achievement. Each schools report would also rate the NYC Department of Education on the quality of support it provides the school.

What we like about Weingarten's proposal is the effort it makes to include indicators that reflect how well schools are educating students in grades K-2. Too often, school report cards and accountability systems totally ignore the early grades, because those systems are based on test scores and K-2 students dont typically participate in state assessments. The result is an information black hole for parents and policymakers at the time when schools should be putting in place the fundamental groundwork to support childrens later learning. It also makes it harder to recognize or reward highly effective K-2 teachers. But the solution isn't to extend testing down to younger students--because the kind of standardized assessments we use under NCLB arent appropriate or necessarily reliable for younger children.

The UFT plan takes some sensible steps to include K-2 students in accountability reports:

First, it used third grade test scores to evaluate K-2 academic performance. We've previously argued that all elements of the PK-3 continuum need to be judged based on their contribution to the ultimate goal of proficiency by third grade, so we can really get behind this idea.
Second, UFT's plan would use independent on-site observations and surveys to evaluate the quality of K-2 learning environments, including the extent to which they provide a rich, age-appropriate curriculum for K-2 students. Because there is a strong research base about what works in early education, what young children need to know, and the kind of teacher interactions that contribute to student learning, on-site observations make a lot of sense as a quality measure in the early elementary years.
Third, UFT 's plan would evaluate elementary schools on the extent to which K-2 students display "school readiness skills, such as effort, cooperation, responsibility and respect." We think this proposal is on the right track, because fostering the kinds of social and emotional development skills that it mentions should be a critical goal of PK-3 instruction. But we fear the language UFT chose to use here may confuse parents and the public. The phrase school readiness here suggests the UFT plan would rate schools based on characteristics children bring to school with them, not the contribution schools make to students' acquisition of these skills. It also implies that the early grades aren't themselves school--a position we're pretty sure UFT doesn't hold. We'd be a lot happier with this part of the proposal if UFT called it "K-2 social and emotional development" rather than "K-2 school readiness." We'd also like to know more about the kind of indicators and assessments that would go into this measure, because evaluating social and emotional development in the early years, while critical, can be tricky.

We also like the UFT proposal's emphasis on teamwork among educators and effective school leadership as a part of a school's evaluation. In order to offer an aligned PK-3 education experience to students, schools must have strong leadership and collaborative relationships between teachers both within and across grade levels and subject areas. Creating incentives to build such collaborative relationships is smart.

Eduwonk and Leo Casey offer further analysis of the overall plan on their blogs. In general we agree with Eduwonk's comment that, while accountability consequences should be based on a relatively few, narrow and clear-cut indicators, parents, educators and the general public all benefit from systems that provide information about a variety of school performance indicators. Leo says UFT hopes the "proposed framework initiatives a vigorous debate over both the ends of accountability and the best means to achieve those ends." We're pretty sure they'd also like to see some concrete changes to make the NYC report card system look more like this proposal. As that debate unfolds, we hope it includes serious discussion of how NYC, and other school systems, can do a better of providing parents and the public with information about how schools are educating students in the early elementary school and pre-k years.

The College Quality Fight

Lindsey Luebchow — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Colleges have won their battle with the Bush administration over accreditation reform. After two years of being chastised and pressured to better report on student learning, and then being threatened with new federal accreditation regulations, colleges turned to their longtime allies in Congress and found support. The Higher Education Act reauthorization bills, as passed by the Senate and the House, would prevent the Department of Education from issuing regulations on the accreditation process.

[slideshow] But while this is a victory for colleges, they would be wrong to think that the college quality issue has been put to rest. The heart of the matter—meaningful accountability for higher education institutions who receive billions of dollars in federal money—still has yet to be addressed. While the Bush administration failed to pursue a politically viable process for reform, the need for stronger accountability still remains highly visible to many members of Congress, and likely future members of the next Department of Education.

Where Spellings and Bush Went Wrong

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings began federal-level discussions on college quality through the work of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education in 2006. One of the Commission’s goals was to determine how to increase transparency in higher education and give students and families more information about college in general. Spellings wanted to make higher education more "consumer-friendly" and force colleges to prove to potential students that their schools are worth the investment.

These are all noble goals, and ones around which the Department of Education possibly could have developed a bipartisan consensus. As college tuition skyrockets, members of Congress are becoming more and more concerned about how the federal government can ensure that its investment in higher education isn’t being wasted. And addressing college quality is an appealing course of action, because (a) accountability and fiscal responsibility are easy concepts to sell; (b) constituents would love more and better information on colleges; and (c) improving higher education results can be linked to a slew of other issues: international competitiveness, loss of jobs in a declining economy, etc, etc.

But the Bush administration attempted to force accreditors to take student outcomes into account when making accreditation decisions. Specifically, Secretary Spellings tried to do so through the federal regulatory process, and thus, without the input of Congress. That proved to be a political error, allowing those opposed to accreditation reform to argue process over substance and giving cover to those substantively uneasy with the entire idea.

In terms of substance, Republicans have always struggled with the tension between government accountability and intervention. If the federal government is going to make large investment in something, then it should be able to monitor the results of this investment. But monitoring results tends to require federal intrusion into the localized management of education—the enemy of free-market, small-government Republicans.

So many Republicans in Congress were not thrilled with administration’s attempts to press accountability on higher education (and were likely a little wary after being reprimanded by their constituents for No Child Left Behind’s federal involvement). In response, the Bush administration toned down its rhetoric on accreditation over time (Spellings told the federal accreditation advisory panel in December: "Let me repeat: No one-size-fits-all measures, no standardized tests.") But it was still left fighting that battle by itself, and it lost. Too little compromise and too late.

War Should be a Last Resort

The college quality issue, however, has not died (as much as many colleges may want to see it move out of the spotlight), and it will not die. Substantively, key members of Congress and likely Republican or Democratic political staffers in the next administration's Department of Education will still want to push colleges to find and utilize better measurements of quality. Increasingly, they will be encouraged by business and the media, just as they were on elementary and secondary education reform.

We are encouraged that some colleges and higher education associations have begun voluntarily to address the need to measure student outcomes, which puts them in a better position to constructively engage and negotiate with the government. Colleges should be prepared to deal with how, not if, Congress and a new Department of Education proceed on the college quality issue. And be it through accreditation or another process, federal policymakers should be prepared to work with as opposed to against the higher education community to further the goal of heightened college quality.

Maybe the two groups can't agree on a policy to improve college quality, and a political war will be necessary. But if nothing else, this administration should have learned long ago, going to war should be a last resort and one engaged with well-armed troops.

College Football PR 101: Academic Bonuses

Ed Policy — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

When Louisiana State University coach Les Miles was carried off the field after winning the National Championship game last night, his smile likely reflected more than the pure joy of winning. Miles had already garnered $400,000 in football bonuses for making it to the game. After winning the title,

Note: This post pre-dates Higher Ed Watch's shift to a new publishing system. For the complete original post, including any comments, please click here.

Roundup: Week of October 29 - November 2

Ed Policy — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:00:00 -0400

Ed Dept. Asks for Details on Lender Relationships From 55 Schools; Releases Final Regulations

The U.S. Education Department announced on Wednesday that it is stepping up its investigation of whether some colleges have violated federal law by

Note: This post pre-dates Higher Ed Watch's shift to a new publishing system. For the complete original post, including any comments, please click here.

Accountability for All...Except the Department of Education

Ed Policy — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:00:00 -0400

The Department of Education loves to talk the talk about accountability. But when it comes to walking the walk, it's failing-and pretty spectacularly.

Case #1

Front and center is the Department's handling of a student loan subsidy payment scandal. In an interview with the Washington Post published this weekend,…

Note: This post pre-dates Higher Ed Watch's shift to a new publishing system. For the complete original post, including any comments, please click here.