WHITE PAPER Working Smarter to Leave No Child Behind Practical Insights for School Leaders Brian Stecher | Laura Hamilton | Gabriella Gonzalez Prepared for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation The research described in this white paper was supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. ISBN: 0-8330-3477-4 RAND white papers are authoritative publications that draw on a strong body of prior research to summarize key findings relevant to pending decisions or policy problems. White papers are reviewed by RAND’s corporate management to assure that they adequately represent RAND’s best work in the subject as well as significant differences of opinion. RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND® is a registered trademark. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of its research sponsors. © Copyright 2003 RAND All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from RAND. Published 2003 by RAND 1700 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 1200 South Hayes Street, Arlington, VA 22202-5050 201 North Craig Street, Suite 202, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-1516 RAND URL: http://www.rand.org/ To order RAND documents or to obtain additional information, contact Distribution Services: Telephone: (310) 451-7002; Fax: (310) 451-6915; Email: [email protected] CONTENTS Figures ..................................................... v Acknowledgments............................................. vii Abbreviations ................................................ ix Chapter One INTRODUCTION .......................................... 1 Educational Reforms Address the Achievement Gap ................. 2 Accountability in Education .................................. 2 Other Forms of Accountability May also Improve Education ........... 4 Chapter Two THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT ............................. 7 The NCLB Accountability Model ............................... 8 Content Standards ......................................... 10 Assessments .............................................. 11 Achievement Standards...................................... 11 Adequate Yearly Progress..................................... 12 Incentives ................................................ 13 Technical Assistance ........................................ 14 Reporting ................................................ 14 Parental Choice............................................ 15 District and School Policy .................................... 15 Instruction ............................................... 15 Putting It All Together ....................................... 16 Chapter Three THE PRACTICAL CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR NCLB TO WORK ..... 17 Content Standards ......................................... 18 Assessments .............................................. 20 Achievement Standards...................................... 22 Adequate Yearly Progress..................................... 24 Incentives ................................................ 25 Technical Assistance ........................................ 27 Reporting ................................................ 28 Parental Choice............................................ 29 What Should Educators Do? .................................. 31 iii iv Working Smarter to Leave No Child Behind Chapter Four MAKING NCLB AS EFFECTIVE AS POSSIBLE ...................... 33 Building Capacity .......................................... 33 Using Standards to Improve Instruction ......................... 35 Using Assessment Results to Improve Instruction .................. 37 Creating Effective Incentives .................................. 40 Helping Parents Make Effective Choices ......................... 42 Going Beyond the Accountability Data ........................... 43 Conclusions .............................................. 44 References .................................................. 47 FIGURES 1. Elements of a Standards-Based Accountability Model ............ 3 2. Elements of the No Child Left Behind Accountability Model ....... 9 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work benefited immeasurably from conversations that were held at RAND in October 2002 during an event we called the Accountability Forum. We invited more than a dozen of the best thinkers on educational accountability to comment on a document we had prepared and to share their thoughts and experiences. It was a stimulating conversation, and we learned much that guided our thinking about this paper. The participants at that event included Jane Armstrong, Senior Policy Advisor, Education Commission of the States; Eva Baker, Director, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing; Gary Blasi, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law; Phil Daro, Executive Director, Public Forum on School Accountability; Chrys Dougherty, Director of Research, National Center for Educa- tional Accountability; David Ferrero, Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Founda- tion; Paul Hill, Director, Center on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington; Sally Mentor Hay, Denver Public Schools; Terry Moe, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; Jennifer O’Day, Senior Research Scientist, American Institutes for Research; William Porter, Executive Director, Grantmakers for Education; Merle Price, Deputy Superintendent for Instructional Services, Los Angeles Unified School District; Jorge Ruiz-de-Velasco, Program Officer, Education, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; Robert Schwartz, Professor of Education, Harvard University; Marshall Smith, Program Director, Education, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; and Adam Urbanski, President, Rochester Teachers’ Association. To all, we offer our thanks. We also want to acknowledge the additional contributions of Paul Hill and Phil Daro who formally reviewed this manuscript; their constructive criticisms sharpened our thinking and improved the presentation. Finally, we are indebted to RAND Research Communicator Shelley Wiseman for working with us to improve the material. Thanks also to the RAND Publications Department for its work on the editing, design, and production of this paper. vii ABBREVIATIONS AYP adequate yearly progress ESEA Elementary and Secondary Education Act NAEP National Assessment of Educational Progress NCLB No Child Left Behind Act ix Chapter One INTRODUCTION In December 2001, the U.S. Congress approved a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and renamed it the “No Child Left Behind Act” (P.L. 107-110, H.R. 1). ESEA was first enacted in 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson to supplement state and local efforts to provide all children with high-quality educa- tion. It has been reauthorized and renamed several times; in its newest incarnation as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), however, it has broader scope and is more ambitious than any previous federal school reform legislation. One of the major changes in NCLB is an emphasis on accountability based on student test results. Understandably, state policymakers, district administrators, school principals, and others who are responsible for implementing NCLB are looking for guidance to help them comply with the legislation and make their schools as effective as possible. The goal of this paper is to provide some of that guidance.1 With support from the Hewlett Foundation, RAND researchers examined the litera- ture on educational accountability systems and drew out the ideas that are relevant to states’ existing test-based accountability systems and to the accountability provi- sions in NCLB. We also convened a discussion forum of 16 individuals who have contributed to current discussions of accountability from a variety of perspectives and who were able to voice contrary visions in a constructive way. We tried to read, listen, and learn from all these sources; this paper represents our synthesis of the various points of view on accountability in education. We believe this paper will be of interest to all affected by NCLB, including education policymakers at the state and district levels, school administrators, teachers, and parents. It also offers insights for federal policymakers as they make refinements to the NCLB regulations in the future. This paper is organized as follows. • Chapter Two provides more background about NCLB, including a brief discus- sion of accountability systems in general and a description of the specific accountability components of NCLB. ______________ 1It is important to note that the NCLB legislation has a number of provisions that do not directly relate to the topic of accountability. These provisions include teacher quality, reading instruction, and scientifically based practice. We have omitted them from the present discussion to allow us to focus on the central topic of accountability. 1 2 Working Smarter to Leave No Child Behind • Chapter Three discusses the underlying conditions that we believe must be pres- ent for NCLB to work as intended. These represent unstated challenges that must be met for the reform to succeed. • Chapter Four provides some guidance, based on the analyses in Chapter Three, to help policymakers and educators better meet the goals of NCLB. EDUCATIONAL REFORMS ADDRESS THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP School reforms, including NCLB, were developed in response to the