Public Funds Fail to
Achieve Academic Improvement
San
Francisco: Approximately $1.25 billion in state public education
funding provided to schools to help improve student academic
performance has yielded little if any academic improvement,
even though these schools met the state Academic Performance
Index (API) requirements to exit the improvement program
as successful. This analysis comes just as the state is
set to carry out the agreed upon terms of last year's SB
1133 (Torlakson) and pour nearly $3 billion more into a
similar program.
This finding is included in a new study released by the
Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a free-market think tank
based in California. Failing our Future: The Holes in
California's School Accountability System and How to Fix
Them exposes the flaws in California's school accountability
system, the API, and makes recommendations to improve it.
The study, co-authored by James S. Lanich, PhD, president
of California Business for Education Excellence and Lance
T. Izumi, director of Education Studies at PRI, can be downloaded
free of charge at www.pacificresearch.org and at www.cbee.org.
The study reviews the API system and finds that it is not
an accurate or meaningful measurement of school and student
academic achievement. The study also looks in-depth at two
school improvement programs: the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming
Schools Program (II-USP) and the High Priority Schools Grant
Program (HPSGP).
Each program offers additional money to schools which, according
to the API, are low-performing. Review of student test scores
at the 1,620 low-performing schools that participated in
these programs over three years, versus low-performing schools
that did not participate, shows no significant difference
in academic achievement over time as measured by improvement
in grade-level proficiency on the California Standards Test
(CST).
Collectively these two programs have spent approximately
$1.25 billion or an average of $771,604 per school.
Despite this lack of improvement in achievement, these schools
met their API growth targets established by the state for
successful implementation with sufficient results for exiting
the program.
The lack of significant academic improvement by schools
participating in these programs is particularly troubling
given that the state is set to spend an additional $2.9
billion of state taxpayer funds to continue a program that
does not require higher rates of improvement. AB 1133 (Torlakson),
signed into law last year, uses the $2.9 billion settlement
from CTA, et al. v. Schwarzenegger, et al. to continue the
High Priority Schools Grant Program.
The study also finds the API's "growth" targets
are so minimal that simply by achieving the state required
"growth" each year, it would take a school with
a starting API score of 635 or less (3,423 of California
schools have this API) between 61 to 84 years to reach grade-level
proficiency.
"If we keep using the API as our benchmark for gauging
school and student academic improvement, we'll continue
to deceive parents and the public about how our students
and our schools are really performing academically,"
said Mr. Lanich. "We should be gauging academic achievement
on the single most important measurement: grade-level proficiency.
It's simple, it's understandable, and it's the standard
every parent expects and every student should meet every
year."
Mr. Izumi added that grade-level proficiency is not only
a more rigorous measurement than California's API, it is
more meaningful because it allows teachers, administrators
and parents to understand precisely what is working and
not working in our schools. "Under the API, we have
an 'accountability' system that isn't accountable."
Poor and Minority Children Left Behind under California's
API System
The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires that not only
a certain percentage of all students at a school attain
grade-level proficiency in reading and math every year,
but also that significant racial, ethnic, socioeconomic,
and other subgroups of students achieve those proficiency
targets as well. The eventual goal is to have 100 percent
of students reaching grade-level proficiency in reading
and math by 2013-14. Since the API system focuses on collective
school-wide performance and growth, there is no incentive
to intervene and improve schools with lower-performing students
as long as enough higher-performing students keep the school's
average scores above the API benchmarks. School-wide API
measures fail to detect or address stagnant or declining
minority student performance.
Recommendations
According to Failing Our Future, California should set higher
expectations for improvement for all schools, abandon the
complicated API, focus efforts on grade-level proficiency
as measured by the CST, and replicate the best practices
from high-performing schools, especially those with low-income
and minority populations. The study profiles two exceptional
California schools, the C.A. Jacobs Intermediate School
in Dixon and Laton High School in Laton.
"For state school accountability systems to be effective,
there must be swift interventions and meaningful consequences
for the performance or non-performance of schools,"
said Mr. Izumi, "Unfortunately, as our study shows,
California's system is severely deficient in this crucial
area."
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