At Real Clear Education: Anemic Accountability and How We Can Fix It

At today's launch event for RealClearEducation, I was able to share my thoughts on the present state of school accountability and its future outlook. But I only had four minutes--and 10 slides (more exactly, 24 seconds per slide). Not as easy as it sounds, especially with a topic as nuanced and complicated as accountability. As Blaise Pascal put it, "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

Since there's not yet video of the event, and all of the intriguing presentations, here's a summary of my remarks:

How can they raise standards with one hand, while removing accountability for meeting them with the other?

As we've already heard ad nauseam, states are raising standards. Students need to be college- and career-ready. But while governors and Secretary Duncan talk about raising expectations, they are simultaneously leading the most significant erosion of school accountability in twenty years.

How can they raise standards with one hand, while removing accountability for meeting them with the other?

The answer lies with waivers from No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Over 40 states have received one from the federal government and used them to design new accountability systems. Waivers provided welcome relief from NCLB's most outdated and ineffective provisions.

After all, student achievement is better, but not dramatically so, since NCLB adoption. And most low-performing schools stayed that way, despite NCLB's sanctions. The only thing dramatically increasing was the number of low-performing schools identified, more than what most states had capacity to support.

So in 2011, the U.S. Department of Education made a deal with states: you can identify fewer schools and choose how you identify them, but you must improve the rigor of the interventions that occur there.

Sounds like a reasonable trade-off, in theory. But now, states are reneging on part of the bargain, and the Department isn't enforcing it, leading to weaker school accountability overall.

Here's what we know is happening: waiver states are identifying fewer low-performing schools. Of course they are! That part is easy.

But this isn't because of some new loophole states found in the waiver policy. Rather, this is happening intentionally because of how waivers were designed.

The U.S. Department of Education only requires waiver states to identify 15 percent of their Title I schools as low-performing, even if that number is far lower than what they were previously doing under NCLB. In my research, I found that states are just following these directions.

Very few states deviate from the 15 percent suggestion in their waivers. What is different, however, is how the 15 percent are identified.

States are turning to relative measures. Essentially, they're grading schools on a curve. So long as schools escape the bottom 15 percent, they can also escape most of the consequences from accountability... even if their students are below grade-level, progressing at slower rates than similar students statewide, or needing remediation in college.

But just because low-performing schools are identified differently with waivers, and there are fewer of them, doesn't prove my point that waivers weakened school accountability. These low-performers could be improving in a way we would never have seen with NCLB's ineffctive sanctions.

That's why we must also examine the second part of the bargain: the interventions. This is the not-so-easy part. Are the interventions today more rigorous and meaningful? Are l0w-performing schools getting better?

Unfortunately, we don't have great information on waiver implementation. And what we do know is troubling.

The Department of Education has been monitoring waiver states, and out of sixteen so far, only three states could ensure that all of their low-performing schools received robust interventions aligned to the waiver guidelines. And one of the three had other problems with identifying schools in their accountability system.

In the worst cases, this means schools could have been low-performing in name-only... identified as struggling, or even "failing," but not receiving the help and attention they need and deserve.

But if the Department knows this is happening, why don't they just revoke a waiver and take back the bargain?

The trouble is that the Department prefers waivers--even implemented poorly--to NCLB, because of the other reforms that go along with waivers, like teacher evaluations and higher standards.

And states like waivers too. They just don't always like all of the waiver rules.

If we borrow from game theory for a moment, it's clear how we ended up with such anemic school accountability under waivers. If the Department revokes a waiver for state non-compliance, they go from their 2nd favorite outcome to their least favorite outcome. It's an irrational decision.

And states are pretty happy. They have a waiver and can do what they want with it, more or less, with few consequences.

But is this outcome the best we can hope for from the NCLB waiver game? Is this producing the best accountability policy?

Right now, we don't know what's working and what isn't. The best way forward, therefore, isn't through more policy, or even an immediate reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. Rather, we need more collective research.

Waivers are massively complicated. They are hundreds of pages long. And now we have waivers... of waivers. Any effort to figure out what is working will also be massively complicated and beyond what any one organization or individual, has capacity to produce.

Instead, the education field--policymakers, analysts, researchers, philanthropy, and journalists--must come together and first, recognize the weakened accountability state. Then, we need to identify and discuss viable alternatives. I hope there are some, because new policy will only emerge once there is knowledge and consensus of what works.

For an even closer look, you can also download the PowerPoint. And stay tuned to EdCentral for more NCLB waiver coverage.