EDUCATION ACCOUNTABILITY:
First the School Systems, Then the Students

"Education accountability" is the latest school reform wave to engulf America’s public schools. Over the last decade and a half, urban schools have experimented with everything from top-down to bottom-up reform. Now states are trying "tough love" — loftier academic standards and high stakes tests. The Clinton Administration recently joined the fray with its proposed Education Accountability Act that would mandate an end to so-called social promotions by school districts that receive federal aid.

The National Urban League does not fear holding our children to high academic standards. We know from research and practical experience in real schools that African-American children can achieve on par with other children. Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford documented this fact in her important book, The Right to Learn.

But to have a fair shot at succeeding, the education our children receive must be on par as well. That is precisely the problem with the "tough love" approach that President Clinton endorses and many states are implementing with carefree abandon. We staunchly oppose the Administration’s insistence that school districts end social promotion within four years, fully a year before districts are required to staff every classroom with a qualified teacher.

According to Professor Darling-Hammond, urban and rural minority children are caught in an unconscionable trap between lofty standards and lousy schools. We say the trap is unconstitutional as well. Why? Because it’s the states that set the standards and it’s the states that bear ultimate responsibility for low-performing public schools. Ninety-five percent of school-aged black children attend public schools. Their future rests on improving the performance of public education, not on tearing it apart.

Our children are caught in the crossfire between advocates of accountability and the forces of inertia. Between politicians who view school reform as a barrage of slogans and sound bites, arrayed against cynical educators who think this latest school reform wave, too, shall pass. Between state and federal overseers, on the one hand, and local educators who prize their autonomy, on the other. Between those who believe in reforming the system versus skeptics who view market-oriented alternatives, like school vouchers, as the only salvation for urban children.

The National Urban League insists that our children not be used as cannon fodder in the raging education accountability wars. Politicians and school administrators are going about the business of improving schools completely backwards. The head of the Virginia School Boards Association hit the mark when he said:

"The state insisted on testing first, training teachers second and purchasing new books and teaching materials third, which is the exact opposite of what we need to do."

No well-managed corporation would modernize its product line this way. Of course, it must know where the bar for beating its competition is set. The next logical steps are to design prototypes, retool plants and manufacturing procedures, transform the organizational culture, retrain workers and exhaustively test its new products -- all of this before mass-producing its new products for the market.

Fairness and common sense dictate that the accountability movement should be guided by sound pedagogical practice, not reckless political expediency. It’s time to pause in the pell-mell rush to high standards and high stakes tests. Time to make certain all children receive high quality education before holding them accountable for tough standards. In other words, it’s time to hold the adults who are responsible for public education accountable for their performance before sanctioning youngsters for their failure to perform.

Much of President Clinton’s plan is right on target. The Administration wants Washington to help finance the hiring of new teachers, reduction of class sizes and school construction. The federal government would also require that all classrooms contain certified teachers and would underwrite local efforts to turn around faltering schools.

Some states, like Connecticut and North Carolina, have enjoyed significant achievement gains by coupling high standards with increased investments in instruction.

Unfortunately, these examples are the exception rather than the rule. Five years ago, the New York City Board of Education imposed tough new standards to improve student performance in high school math and science. Yet a recent appraisal by City Comptroller Alan Hevesi reveals that the school system is hampered to this day by shortages of qualified teachers and adequate laboratories. Worse yet, since the standards were imposed, the percentage of uncertified science teachers has nearly doubled, from 16.5 percent to 30.4 percent. According to the Comptroller:

"The school system’s tough new standards for math and science are a step in the right direction. But we are setting up our kids to fail if we don’t give them the tools they need to learn and meet those standards, including qualified teachers and working laboratories."

Urban school districts that go about accountability backwards will confront the educational debacle that New York City now faces. If the English standard that takes effect next year were in force today, more than a third of the city’s 11^th graders would fail and be ineligible to graduate from high school. Diane Ravitch of the Brookings Institution worries that in some neighborhoods, fewer than five percent of the high school seniors will qualify for diplomas.

Can the city close the gap at this late date? Will the city or the state foot the bill? Can the schools absorb those who fail and for how long? Can they absorb several years’ worth of aging under-performers?

Thoughtful politicians and educators who genuinely want children to achieve should ponder this scary picture and pause to make certain that they put the horse back in front of the cart. To avert this spectacle of failure and frustration, the education accountability movement should be guided by the following principles:

• Education accountability starts with educato
• Quality education now, student accountability next
• Ending social promotion is a "day late and a dollar short
• Focus henceforth on the fundamentals

1. Education accountability starts with educators

Kati Haycock, head of the Education Trust, goes right to the heart of the League’s concern about education accountability. If students fail, she observes, "there are already serious consequences for the kids, but not for the adults. "

Historically, state education agencies have overseen school districts, but averted responsibility for the schools’ performance. Protected by union contracts and tenure, school boards, administrators, principals and teachers have sidestepped accountability as well. Academic failure by poor minority students was explained away by socioeconomic status or, worse, scientifically discredited and downright racist theories of inferior intellectual capacity.

After two decades of promising school reform demonstrations, these excuses by the adults who preside over public education no longer hold water. The abundant examples of high achievement by low-income minority children confirm that they will meet society’s expectations of them, if adults will meet their obligations to them.

To begin with, states should shine a bright spotlight on how well individual schools do in lifting the achievement levels of minority children who’ve chronically lagged behind. Public exposure helps jolt educators out of their lethargy.

It may be necessary to invoke more draconian measures. Teachers and principals who are inadequately trained and unsuited for urban schools should be retooled, counseled out or, if need be, removed.

Schools that habitually fail their students should be placed on probation or treated much the same as other bankrupt but salvageable enterprises. Remove the management, replenish the staff with capable replacements, and institute a recovery plan.

Students who chronically lag behind and those who are stranded in schools that are beyond resuscitation should be free to enroll in other public schools, in charter schools or other alternative public school settings more suited to their unique needs.

The ultimate sanction that captures attention is shutting off financial support. Federal aid should be used to spur poor school districts to improve, not merely to subsidize their routine operations.

Without attempting to micro-manage the affairs of local school districts, Washington should mandate that school districts receiving federal aid under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act actually close the achievement gaps that separate poor and minority children from their more advantaged peers. If the school districts don’t make progress, then impose financial penalties until they get the point.

We who believe ardently in universal public education should mark my prediction. If those who preside over public education waver on holding themselves accountable, then the idea of offering vouchers or so-called education savings accounts to children in failing schools will gain momentum. Pragmatic parents who are determined that their children receive a decent education will tune out the philosophical appeals to preserve universal public education.

2. Quality education now, student accountability next

In fairness to students, accountability begins with quality education. Few urban districts can claim that the key ingredients are available to all students, especially low-income minority pupils.

How can urban children possibly meet high standards when, according to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, as many as half of their teachers have little background in subjects like math and science? The typical suburban student isn\'t saddled with incompetent teachers. One science teacher in Carroll County outside of Washington, DC recounts that the only college math course he took was pre-calculus. Yet his high school assigned him to teach math.

A recent survey of 4,000 teachers nationwide found that only one in five felt they were well qualified to teach in a modern classroom. The need to replace 2.2 million retirees over the next 10 years, coupled with rising student enrollment and the pressure to reduce class size means that even more marginally skilled people may be enlisted to teach.

How can black and Latino children possibly meet exacting academic standards when they\\\'re systemically excluded from rigorous courses geared to those standards? According to the Education Trust, high scoring white and Asian students are twice as likely as high scoring black and Latino youngsters to be assigned to college prep courses.

School districts that receive federal aid under ESEA, and in particular Title I, must not tolerate any discriminatory educational practices towards African-American and other children of color. This we define as:

• tracking African-American and other children of color into dead-end, non-college preparatory courses;

• placing disproportionate numbers of such youngsters in special education classes;

• holding back of disproportionate numbers of such children;

• permitting disproportionately high rates of suspension and expulsion of minority children.

ESEA should include specific language prohibiting such practices and authorizing that federal education aid be withheld from school districts that countenance such practices and fail to correct them.

The best way to boost scholastic performance is to institute — and then honor -- an "Academic Bill of Rights" for children that is based on solid lessons from research and real-world experience. In the League’s view, every American child has a right to:

• Quality pre-school education that gets them off to a solid start;

• Qualified teachers who genuinely believe their pupils can learn;

• Access to challenging courses that help them reach their fullest potential;

• Schools that are organized and outfitted for teaching and learning instead of maintaining order; and

• After-school and summer programs that promote academic and social development while keeping youngsters out of trouble.

If the federal and state governments truly believe in accountability, they too must hold themselves to account for mobilizing the will and the wherewithal to deliver on this Academic Bill of Rights. That means recruiting a new generation of qualified teachers and principals, equipping those now in place with effective mentoring and professional development, and investing in state-of-the-art schools and constructive after-school programs.

Beyond implementing these principles, more mundane steps must be taken as well. As two former state education commissioners, Thomas Boysen and Thomas Sobol, wrote recently in Education Week, teachers must be afforded an opportunity to become familiar with new instructional material and acquire new techniques. Students should have ready access to up-to-date textbooks, functional laboratories and state-of-the-art learning technologies.

If these essential ingredients of quality education are missing, then Boysen and Sobel are absolutely right that sending urban youngsters forth to meet new high standards is a prescription for failure–and an injustice to the students involved.

1. Ending Social Promotion is "a day late and a dollar short"

In the sage words of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, ending social promotion "moves the burden of failing systems from the adults who run them to the children who aren’t making it." Besides, previous experience with ending social promotions should give those who mindlessly endorse it pause.

To begin with, school districts already refuse to promote thousands of students. Professor Robert Hauser, author of High Stakes: Testing for Tracking, Promotion and Graduation, reminds us that retention rates were already on the rise before politicians began lambasting schools for indulging in social promotion. The jury is still out on whether this recent wave of tough retention rules actually work.

Previous experience provides scant cause for optimism. In the early 1980s, New York City tried ending social promotions. The school system hired 1100 more teachers, equipped them with special training and placed them with the failing pupils in smaller classes.

The well-intentioned effort flunked. Within a few years, the students who’d been held back were no better off academically than the low achievers in previous years who were allowed to pass to the next grade. Even more troubling, the dropout rate for detainees was much higher than that of similar students who didn’t stay back.

New York’s experience echoes the research findings from other districts. According to Professor Darling-Hammond, dozens of studies show that holding students back:

"…actually contributes to greater academic failure, higher levels of dropping out, and greater behavioral difficulties. Instead of looking carefully at classroom or school practices when students are not achieving, schools typically send students back to repeat the same experience. Little is done to ensure that the experience will be either more appropriate for the individual needs of the child, or of higher quality."

Those who clamor for holding students strictly accountable seem oblivious to the known downsides of ending social promotion. That’s why we say that, wittingly or not, they are using low-achievers as cannon fodder in the education accountability wars.

Extending the school year to provide additional doses of high caliber instruction makes sense. Mandating summer school may hoist students who just missed clearing the bar. But there’s little reason to believe that youngsters who are lagging way behind will catch up with six weeks of remedial classes that are cobbled together by panicked school districts. There simply is no educationally sound alternative to investing in high caliber teaching and learning up front.

The infatuation with tests these days distorts instruction by pressuring educators to teach to the test instead of teaching to a core academic sequence. School districts must be guided in the proper use of gate-keeping tests. At a minimum, they should be required to follow the guidelines established by the National Research Council on High Stakes Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation. Furthermore, until a school district can demonstrate that there is equal access to quality education, it should be prohibited from instituting a test- based promotion plan.

The National Urban League’s bottom line is that federal and state bureaucrats ought not micromanage local decisions about who moves from fourth grade to fifth. Leave that call to parents and educators whose decisions are guided by the children’s best interests instead of catchy slogans.

2. Focus henceforth on the fundamentals

In their frantic search for the Holy Grail, urban school boards and administrators have embraced successive innovations that, when they’ve worked, have proven the point that low-income minority children can achieve. But these approaches have not lifted achievement levels district-wide.

Now that we know from countless demonstrations that urban children can achieve, the emphasis in school systems must shift to seeing to it that vastly more youngsters succeed academically. This means moving beyond the latest school reform fad and focusing on the rudiments of quality education.

In his provocative new book entitled Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform, Frederick Hess argues that: "The professional and political interests of urban school leaders need to be hitched to the long-term performance of urban schools." We must evaluate educators on results, not promises, on outputs not inputs.

In fairness to educators, states obsessed with accountability have inundated teachers with detailed standards, exhaustive and exhausting curricular guidelines and repetitive standardized tests.

Exasperated educators like Memphis superintendent Gerry House, the recently designated "Superintendent of the Year", complain that test preparation and test-taking are encroaching on time that is badly needed for basic instruction.

For instance, a fifth grade teacher in Oklahoma City, whose students are studying Macbeth, questioned why his students must take three sets of standardized exams annually that cover much of the same content. One set for assessment and accountability purposes should suffice, freeing up time for this teacher and his charges to tackle additional challenging material that will equip them to excel academically.

With so much riding on the results, teachers devote increasing amounts of the school day to "teaching to the tests." Middle class parents enroll their youngsters in test prep courses that poor and working class parents cannot afford. This further solidifies the achievement gaps that divide them.

Two years ago, the National Urban League proclaimed that it was time to enter the "NO EXCUSES" era of urban school reform. Education accountability begins with educators. It ends with children, who will enjoy the benefits of solid academic preparation or else pay the ultimate price of failure. The education accountability movement must begin at the beginning — with the adults who preside over public education.