District/School Administration Administration
The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

School and District Accountability and Assistance System - Next Steps

Background

As reported to the Board in previous meetings, the Department has been undertaking a redesign of the framework for school and district accountability and assistance (see Attachment 1 for highlights of the progress made to date on accountability redesign). The purpose of the special session on June 22nd is to present the Board with the proposed framework and facilitate an in-depth discussion of its implications for regulatory change. I hope that the Board will provide the feedback needed for Department staff to be able to draft regulations for a September vote.

While there may be questions about the implications of the framework's "Co-Governance" concept (Level 5), it is important that we focus on Levels 1 - 4 for this special session: this content is clearly developed, does not require statutory change, and has an impact on the vast majority of districts and schools in the Commonwealth. Board approval of Levels 1 - 4 of the framework is a high priority for the Department in this special session to avoid delaying implementation of a redesigned school and district accountability and assistance process beginning next fall after 2009 MCAS results are released.

The attached documents form the basis for discussion at the June 22nd Board meeting. Below is a description of each.

A. Annual District Data Review

Beginning in fall 2009, every district and school will be evaluated annually on more than forty quantitative indicators through a District Data Review. Numerous stakeholders have indicated that the district reports completed by the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability (EQA) included visual displays of data that districts found informative and useful. The Annual District Data Review will build on the set of indicators used in the EQA reports and expand the scope of this analysis to include a "snapshot" of five-year trend data for all districts and schools every year. The Data Reviews will be publicly accessible through the Department website and are being designed to be easily understood by all audiences. The Annual District Data Review will also include a "comparison" tool to allow users to compare schools or districts to any other school or district in the Commonwealth so that they can identify trends as well as promising practices in settings with similar challenges. (See Attachment 2 for list of indicators being developed for fall 2009 District Data Reviews).

B. District Standards and Indicators

The proposed framework for accountability and assistance required integrating the Department's process for reviewing underperforming schools and the EQA's process for conducting district reviews. Neither process diagnosed deficiencies in the district's role in improving its underperforming schools. The proposed framework includes a new set of district standards and indicators to address this shortcoming. These new district standards and indicators were designed with the intent, also, of providing a foundation for an aligned system nimble enough to be not only summative (by serving as a tool to hold districts accountable through the district review process) but also formative (by serving as a tool for district and school improvement). Unlike the EQA review process, the Department's district review process results in the review team offering recommendations based on its findings of district performance against standards.

In re-examining the list of seventy-two indicators that EQA used in district reviews (see Attachment 3), Department staff identified the following concerns:

1. The large number of separate indicators contributed to fragmented findings;
2. Some indicators were redundant and/or overlapping;
3. No indicators explicitly addressed the responsibility of districts to intervene in their struggling schools; and
4. No indicators addressed the need for districts to develop economies of scale and regional collaboration.

In response to these concerns, we propose to maintain the existing standards but revise the indicators for each of the six standards (see Attachment 4) as follows:

1. To allow the indicators to be used as a basis for both accountability and assistance, they have been aligned with the standards and indicators used by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), the Essential Conditions for School Effectiveness (see below, section C), and a well-regarded national district self-assessment tool and planning template being used now in several states;
2. The number of indicators has been reduced to thirty-five by combining related, isolated indicators while preserving the comprehensiveness of the seventy-two EQA indicators (see Attachment 5 for a matrix identifying where the EQA indicators can be found in the new district indicators); and
3. Certain indicators have been emphasized as "priority indicators" by means of an asterisk, to inform district review teams of priority areas for their reviews, as well as inform district staff of priority areas in the improvement planning process.

C. Essential Conditions for School Effectiveness

The proposed framework is designed to provide districts and schools with clear, research-based guidance on how to improve student performance. The Essential Conditions currently in Board regulation (see Attachment 6, 603 CMR 2.03(6)(e)) called for structures to improve underperforming schools, but did not adequately define the content of those structures and omitted several key conditions essential to school success such as "Effective Leadership".

The proposed Essential Conditions for School Effectiveness (see Attachment 7) are necessary conditions for schools to educate their students well. They have been developed in direct consultation with participants from the Accountability and Assistance Advisory Council, the Stakeholder Working Group, and various other stakeholders to represent a research and practice-based consensus of best practices for effective schools. The Essential Conditions are central to the Department's proposed system for accountability and assistance: they are included among the indicators to be used in district reviews by the Center for School and District Accountability; they will be the foundation for assistance provided to districts by the Center for Targeted Assistance; and they will guide the prioritization of resources and technical assistance by every other Department center and office, including Special Education and Curriculum and Instruction.

Districts at Level 3 of the accountability and assistance system (see below, section D) will be required to conduct a self-assessment developed by the Department and based on the Essential Conditions to inform their improvement planning; this self-assessment will also be made available for use by districts at Levels 1 and 2. Districts at Levels 4 and 5 will be required to implement all of these Essential Conditions in their Level 4 or 5 schools. In particular, a district's plan to improve student performance in a Level 4 school must focus on the achievement of all eleven of these Essential Conditions or provide a compelling rationale acceptable to the Commissioner for alternative approaches designed to achieve comparable or superior results.

D. Framework for District Accountability and Assistance

The proposed framework for district accountability and assistance (see Attachment 8) describes the roles of and expectations for the Department and districts in all levels of performance. The framework strategically aligns the Department's systems of support and intervention with our accountability requirements and priorities. In an effort to focus Department resources used in our accountability and assistance work, the priority for assistance and degree of intervention is built on a continuum that directly links to the severity and duration of identified problems.

The framework is consistent with the Department's theory of action: that the district is the entry point for our accountability and assistance work. In this proposed framework, the underperformance of even one school in a large district can be enough to place it into Level 4. All current NCLB accountability designations are encompassed in Levels 1, 2, and 3. Levels 4 and 5 are reserved for the districts requiring the most substantial state intervention and assistance; therefore Level 4 designation is based on criteria distinct from federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) determinations. This shift is driven by the Department's commitment to provide meaningful and comprehensive assistance to the Commonwealth's lowest-performing districts-the rising number of districts and schools unable to make their AYP targets requires that we develop an alternative set of criteria to identify the districts and schools in greatest need of intervention. These more selective criteria will be based on absolute achievement, annual student growth rate, and improvement trends as measured by MCAS. Level 5 designation will be based on both quantitative and qualitative factors (see Attachment 9 for a more detailed description of the framework).

Department uses of the term "Level 4 School" will be used in place of "Commonwealth Priority School" and "underperforming school". Currently there are 204 Commonwealth Priority Schools - we anticipate identifying a subset of these schools in fall 2009 to match anticipated Department capacity to provide adequate assistance. The remaining schools will be in Level 3 depending on their district. Co-Pilot Schools (Commonwealth Pilot Schools) will be considered "Level 4 Schools" in fall 2009.

At the presentation, we will focus on Levels 3 and 4 of the Framework (see Attachment 10 for a flow-chart outlining the accountability and assistance process at these levels).

Deputy Commissioner Karla Baehr and Associate Commissioner Lynda Foisy will respond to Board members' questions and outline anticipated next steps.

Enclosures:

	Accountability Redesign: Highlights of Progress to Date
	Annual District Data Review: Indicator Availability Fall 2009
	EQA School District Examination Standards and Indicators 2007-2008
	District Standards and Indicators
	Matrix of Review Indicators
	603 CMR 2.03(6)(e) [Original Essential Conditions]
	Essential Conditions for School Effectiveness
	Framework
	Gateways between Levels 3, 4, and 5
	MGL Chapter 691J and 1K
	Description of the Framework for District Accountability and Assistance
	District Intervention at Levels 3 through 5
	Accountability and Assistance Advisory Council Findings and Recommendations, June 23, 2009