A Decade of Learning: Education Reform in Massachusetts
Accomplishments, Challenges & Strategies

Workshop: Visions of Accountability

May 1, 2003

Moderator
S. Paul Reville, Executive Director, Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC and Lecturer, Harvard University Graduate School of Education

Panelists
Sheldon Berman, Superintendent, Hudson Public Schools; and President, MA Association of School Superintendents
David Driscoll, Commissioner, Department of Education
Joseph Rappa, Director, Educational Management Audit Council
Mark Roosevelt, Vice Chair, Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education
Rep. Marie St. Fleur, MA State Representative; Co-Chair, Joint Committee on Education, Arts, and Humanities

SUMMARY: The following is a summary of the main points of the forum. It is not an exact transcript and should not be relied upon. This summary was prepared by State House News Service and is reprinted here with their kind permission.

In Massachusetts, we have implemented a system of student accountability, but have not yet fully addressed how to hold adults responsible for their performance in providing students with full and fair opportunities to learn. This session will discuss the theory of practice and accountability. We will consider current practices as well as concepts and proposals for a more comprehensive system of educator, school, and district accountability.

Now that the MCAS exam is holding students accountable for a new minimum level of achievement, the next burning question facing policy makers is how to hold school districts accountable when large numbers of students don't pass the exam or show significant progress in learning.

"There is no clear answer, but the answer is not to do nothing," said former Boston Rep. and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Roosevelt, vice chairman of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and a co-author of the 10-year-old education reform law. "The state is going to have to take over or intervene in districts that have not improved. How are we going to do that? We will need to decide this in the next year." Roosevelt and a panel of experts debated the accountability question Thursday, May 1 at a forum to mark the 10th anniversary of the reform law. The forum was co-sponsored by MassINC's Center for Education Research & Policy and New Skills for a New Economy Campaign and hosted by FleetBoston Financial.

Event Transcript

Center for Education Research & Policy, Executive Director, Paul Reville: This workshop will focus on accountability. We hold students responsible but we have not done enough to hold adults accountable. It is a sensitive area with lots of resistance. We have an ideal panel to tackle this. We will look at what we are currently doing and then discuss that.

Department of Education, Commissioner, David Driscoll: It's pretty remarkable to see the people here today. We need a larger auditorium. There are real heroes in the audience. We need to remember how far we have come. Our act is very comprehensive. It follows things that have happened in Kentucky and other places. It's fair to say our progress on school and district accountability has lagged. We have held students accountable before adults. In most places you saw school and district accountability. EMAC [Educational Management Audit Council] does district accountability and it has worked out well, but there are delays. When you look at our law, the entire statute around underperforming schools is a major part of our law and ten years later we have not made the progress that many thought we could. We need to stop thinking about all of these things that divide us. We can have a gay old time debating those things. People have an idea about who Chester Finn is. We diffuse so much energy saying you're this and you're that.

I don't think you can walk into a school in America and not see teachers using and paying attention to data. That was not the case a few years ago. There are a whole variety of ways to track. Many remember the biggest annual event was when the special advocates came to Gardner Auditorium to beat back the standards. There were all those wheel-chair kids that were going to be protected under any standard. Since the standard has changed, has there been a revolution? I would say not.

What we need to do is think about those things that bring us together. There is a literature out there about what it is that makes schools effective. It isn't what to do, but how to do it well.

Educational Management Audit Council, Director, Joseph Rappa: My role is to build on the commissioner's comments. The room is full of pioneers. Accountability is not due to the Commonwealth. I think we are leading the nation in the way we consider school districts from the data and intervention standpoint. Our notion of accountability is emerging over the past two years. Governor Cellucci created a board by executive order to do financial audits through the Department of Revenue. We look at curriculum construction, student support services, assessment and evaluation programs, and leadership governance and fiscal and capital management. We look at those areas completely. Illinois has an excellent web site where you can get information on schools. Our process is to be part of a larger scheme. We identify low-performing districts and go in and try to determine how they are low performing.

Our role beyond that is to recommend to the state Board of Education a series of interventions. We are the referees if you will. We are using trained examiners with extensive experience in leadership and service in the field. You have to have ten years of field experience, three years of management and at least a master's degree. We are tailored to the realities of MCAS. It has provided us with a universal standard measure that can be used across the state. Our job is to describe the environment in clear and concise terms. We have concluded 17 district-wide examinations. There is fear, followed by denial and questioning and acceptance. Using data we are able to show the district how their performance has developed and changed or not changed over time. It's bringing information to the system, broad inspections and wrapping it up into a report. We find with new superintendents some sense of curiosity about the process. We are confident the process will have greater states of perfection but we are off to a great start. We are leading several other states in the aspect of looking at the role of school districts.

Tewksbury Public Schools, Superintendent, Christine McGrath: It's important to review measures of accountability. A key measure is assessment of students. We have the MCAS of course and other tests. We rely on the ITBS for the placement of students. We correlate all results to develop profiles of each learner. We incorporate test data into improvement plans and school and district report cards. We evaluate how many tests we administer. In terms of external accountability, we are involved in accreditation. We frame student expectations and our mission statement. We are working on detailed rubrics to assess student work. We are assembling boxes of evidence to look at student work and to make sure we are walking the talk of standards-based education. The timelines from the state department for information are rigorous.

I evaluate schools in the region and I see tremendous value in that. We submit to the independent audit each year. We have no audit exceptions. Last year we developed our third five-year strategic plan. Each year we publish a mid-year and end-of-year report. We are engaged in subject area review committees. We have an extraordinary number of people engaged in this work. The implementation of additional accountability measures will draw time away from internal measures in place. It is more effective for us to detail our system than to take on additional measures. The act promotes school-based accountability. We are not in need at this time of any additional measures. We need encouragement to continue to develop our internal measures. We are focused. We have ownership. Additional accountability models will diffuse our energy and reduce our ownership.

Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, Vice Chair, Mark Roosevelt: Let me step back. I hear about adult accountability and agree with that. If you look at the educational premise of education reform, constitutionally the state is obligated to educate its children. For the first time the state stepped up and met its obligation monetarily. Pre-93 there was no foundation budget and no state standards. The landscape change is dramatic. There is a missing piece.

What do you do with schools or districts that haven't been given what we have defined as sufficient resources and are not making discernible progress to improve student achievement? We are going to face that. Now it's remarkable the progress we made. There was an intellectual mistake in implementing education reform. The state's role has not been sufficiently developed. People don't like state interference. We have a long history of local control.

Saying the Department of Education is undermanned is about as politically popular as I am. [There was much laughter and Roosevelt said I didn't mean that to be that funny, and then, we could have won that election if we had about $20 million more dollars]. This is going to be where the rubber meets the road. Dr. Finn is right.

There is no clear answer but the answer is not to do nothing. The state is going to have to take over or intervene in districts that have not improved. How are we going to do that? I believe we need a beefed up department. We will need to decide this in the next year. We need to subsume a culture that has proven dysfunctional at accomplishing its core purpose of improving student achievement. It requires us to get over this institutional hurdle of local control. There will be a significant loss of local control in communities that can't do the job on their own. All of this is very tough politically. We are going to have to do this. I hope we can do this in cooperation with the unions and local government leaders. I think that is the next big challenge facing us all. It's going to take a lot of flexibility on all of our parts.

Joint Committee on Education, Co-Chair, Representative Marie St. Fleur: Wow. We are facing one of the most important issues as we move forward. Our kids have faced the challenge of accountability. It is now time for the adults to face the challenge of that. The question for me, is it kids centered and student-centered. That has to be the focus. I was happy to hear business, educators, elected officials and all of that. But parents have to be part of the conversation about accountability. I agree with most of what has been said. We have a larger job than perhaps our predecessors had. They did not have to make sure that every child had to learn. We do not have that option anymore. MCAS has shown a light, a level of deficiency that we all knew.

As we look at accountability, it's important that district accountability be independent of the Department of Education. The assessment is an indication of local success or failure and state success or failure. It's an indication of whether our state has been successful. For us to have a clear picture and a level of comfort, it's important to have a level of independence.

Funding continues to be important. Every letter I got said they wanted to get rid of accountability because it was too complicated and required too much paper. Some of that is true. But we need the data. We have kept some of the money in there. If what Mr. Roosevelt says is true, we are in trouble because we don't have the dollars to implement the MBAE accountability proposal. I listen to teachers and administrators. You need not say they're not good, but to make it easier to streamline. Finding ways to make adults accountable is what we don't want to talk about. It gets me in trouble.

I was at a hearing in Springfield. I heard one gentleman talk about a bill and whether parents and students can have input about evaluating teachers. I thought that was just done. But it's collectively bargained. Some districts have it. But where was the parent in the conversation? The parent that came before us felt he didn't have the option. We need to have a conversation about that. The Legislature should establish a baseline for parent involvement and it should not be something that gets bargained based on what districts do or want to do.

We have to look at adjusting the language that allows tenure after three years and look at professional development. We put $125 per teacher for professional development. Some use it. Others have other ways. It's all decided on the local level. But if the state is called on to be responsible, what role do we play for having a baseline? We have to have that conversation. We have the Hancock and McDuffy cases out there. We are called on to cherish local education. There is no other mandate for local aid. Where as a state do we exercise responsibility and accountability? That is where it butts against local control. In terms of underperforming schools we can make statutory changes but not in a vacuum. How do we determine what is an underperforming school? And how quickly do we turn them around?
We found underperforming schools in 2000. Those students are still in the classroom and needing an education. What do we need to put in place to make the turnaround faster? We have to look at school-level leadership and the role the state plays in that. We have to look at accelerating sanctions for underperforming schools and if not sanctions, what else? Students spend more time outside the classroom than in it. We have to look at time learning as a service-based technical society. I look forward to a dialogue on these issues.

Paul Reville: The notion of value-added accountability, the degree to which educators are responsible for progress, how do we assess that?

Audience Question: How can we separate accountability from adequate resources?

David Driscoll: You can't. You can't separate it from high expectations. It's all part of the mix. We know we face some cutbacks. To think it's not going to have an effect on the schools is pie in the sky. Money is not the total answer, but you can't do it without resources.

Marie St. Fleur: Yeah, we need more resources, but we need to identify the things we have to get done with limited resources. We need to figure out what are some of the things we have to accomplish and identify things that are absolutely a no-go because of resources. There are some schools that have still not aligned curriculums. Seven years and $4 billion later, I have a problem with that. Some schools still don't have the right leadership in place. Some schools are working properly and then we take everything out of it. It's not always resources, but attitude and commitment.

Christine McGrath: The House budget was far more favorable to Tewksbury. In an ideal world, that would have taken place in February and March, and we could have been very strategic. But that's just the cycle we are in. You just have to minimize the damage in fiscally constrained times.

Audience Question: Superintendent McGrath, why is assessment not more transparent. I don't even see the expectation of transparency?

Christine McGrath: I hope if you came and looked at our district, you would regard us as very focused. We have developed classroom-based assessments. There is a consistency in how the learning standard is translated into daily pedagogical practice. The information can be shared at meet the teacher night, sometimes called beat the teacher night.

David Driscoll: Planning is so important. As for resources, the strength of reform was not just $4 billion but predictability and not having ups and downs. We have 11 straight years of increases in scores. It's resources but the ability to plan. If there is anything do to, it's to somehow protect schools from the vagaries of the economy.

Audience Question: After you get past the thicket of accountability procedures, pretend you are in an underperforming district, what is of greatest value?

Christine McGrath: The number one variable is class size. We are at 18. We will go to 28, 29. It affects special education referrals. Class size is money.

David Driscoll: We have tremendous resources. We are learning the craft. The $64,000 question is how do you make permanent change. It's easier said, than done.

Paul Reville: Is "No Child Left Behind" going to overload us?

David Driscoll: We were on that path anyway. It is going to ratchet up what we are trying to do. It's too Draconian. In five years, you are going to have every school in American in need of improvement and what is that going to do? It reinforces what we are trying to do, but it needs adjustment because it's too Draconian.

Audience Question: I am a business consultant. I volunteer in the Boston School Department. Is the state involved in the business education collaborative to the extent it used to be? Lawrence did not embrace it at first, but it's now a wonderful resource.

David Driscoll: Absolutely. Collaborations with businesses have been a success. We have the skills that business wants all the way up. Support from the business community has been remarkable. It's an untold story of internships.

Audience Question: There are 11 pilot schools where students are doing well by standards. There's another initiative to break up high schools. The trend is national. They are giving schools more autonomy. We have proven that these schools work. What is your take on this huge reform going on?

David Driscoll: There have been great examples of success and mixed results. We have constitutional requirements. If schools are really getting results, why bother. It's the underperforming schools we really need to pay attention to. The idea of having kids connected in smaller learning units is very positive but there is an obligation for the state to step in when there is underperformance.

Marie St. Fleur: It's how you define local autonomy and state control. The state is responsible for all schools, whether through funding or a base curriculum or technical assistance. I don't care how you break up a school. Break up Dorchester High all you want, if you don't change the basic way of operating all you are going to do is recreate the same experience in a smaller way. There's a role for the state and we are not required to have that role.

Audience Question: About best practices, would you comment about why there is not a commitment to look at the best schools and look at collaboration? What kind of data do we collect about how money is being spent and whether resources are reaching classrooms?

David Driscoll: We have an obligation to look at places that are working well. We are collecting a lot of data. With respect to funding, we collect more than enough information about every dime that is spent. We produce those every year. There are trends. As money gets tight, most of the money gets spent on staff and things like professional development and maintenance go by the boards. You see layoffs because we don't have that much loose money around being spent. That's why schools are closing and teachers are being laid off.