The Push to Proficiency:
State Strategies for Meeting the Needs of Schools & Districts

Friday, April 22, 2005
8:30 AM –- 10:30 AM

Massachusetts State House, Hearing Room A1
Boston, MA

Presenter
David Driscoll, Commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Education
Robert Schwartz, Chair, Educational Management Audit Council; Lecturer on Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Susan Follett Lusi, Education Consultant based in Rhode Island

Research Presentation
Paul Reville, Executive Director, Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC; Lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Moderator
Blenda Wilson, President & CEO, Nellie Mae Education Foundation

Session Overview
Today, large numbers of schools and districts are being identified as low performing. No Child Left Behind legislation mandates that the state provide remediation and support services to these schools and districts. The February 2005 Hancock v. Driscoll decision affirmed the need for a stronger state role and recognized the Legislature’s legal obligation to keep education reform moving forward. Improving state supports to low performing schools and districts is the central challenge of the next phase of education reform.

At this event, the Rennie Center released and discussed findings from a report entitled, “Reaching Capacity: A Blueprint for the State Role in Improving Low Performing Schools and Districts.” The report and its recommendations are based on the Rennie Center’s analysis of statewide interviews with policymakers, Department of Education officials, superintendents, principals, and other key leaders in the education field.

Responding the Rennie Center’s research findings, panelists offered constructive ways in which the state can better support low performing schools and districts. Panelists discussed opportunities and obstacles to an enhanced state role, considering both the Massachusetts context and national trends.

The following is a summary of that discussion, not a verbatim transcript.

S. PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER FOR EDUCATION RESEARCH AND POLICY: We will have to use our loudest voices in this room today. We are challenged here. I want to thank the Education Committee for hosting us. What we are talking about is very much a matter of education policy and recommendations will be decided one way or another in this building. I thank the Noyce Foundation and Dave Driscoll, who cooperated with us and collaborated with us in this research. I acknowledge our director of research, Dr. Celine Coggins, who has just had a baby in the past month. She really led our effort on this and wrote the bulk of this report. Blenda Wilson, our moderator, is a leader in education.

MODERATOR BLENDA J. WILSON: I know this will be a rich dialogue. I extend our appreciation to Paul Reville and his colleagues for their continuing commitment to improving public education in Massachusetts. It plays a critical leadership role by facilitating public discourse. We are eager to gain insights above positive approaches and pervasive inequities. We will focus on the role of the state in addressing issues more effectively. Paul will present the research findings that pose serious challenges and opportunities around state policy. Three panelists will comment on the report and then we will have a dialogue among them and with you.

S. PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER FOR EDUCATION RESEARCH AND POLICY: Glancing at the report, it’s about developing a more robust state function and capacity in assisting districts and schools in meeting the challenge of education reform – getting all students performing at a higher standard. The argument goes back to the origins of reform. Many recommendations, based on research, are things we really should have given more thought to when we promulgated the law in 1993. The reforms are long overdue and the recommendations reflect what people in the field say they believe needs to happen. It’s support from the department or a state-supported entity to close achievement gaps. We have had 12 years of reform and done a good job. We have a lot to celebrate. At the same time, we have persistent achievement gaps. It’s those gaps that constitute the challenge for the next chapter of education reform. We have developed accountability systems and with their strengths and weaknesses, have identified 376 schools and 132 districts that are in need of improvement and need to improve performance.

So why take an interest in this in the first place? One, the achievement gaps. Two, accountability. The Education Reform Act sets clear goals and then develops assessments and accountability that visits consequences upon students and schools and educators. There is a commensurate responsibility to work with districts and schools to help boost performance. This is a logical outcome of a form of state-led education reform. We need a more active state engagement to help the locals meet the goals. Perhaps the state needs to be a bit more targeted about smart spending. Support needs to be more than just financial as we go forward. There are undeniable financial needs. It just can’t be unrestricted Chapter 70 funding. It makes sense to do some targeted spending. This area has to do with the state function in education and there is no constituency group there. Every time you put a dollar on the table, most local leaders want to take it for themselves rather than give it to the state. At the same time, local leaders will say we do need the help, we’ve done our utmost. We think there’s a need for someone to step up and say let’s look at the state function.
Our central question was what components are needed in the state system to support schools and districts. We interviewed superintendents and principals and the Department of Education and policy makers, and we looked at other states and what they are doing about intervening in low-performing districts. We looked internationally. We did an extensive look at the literature and some preliminary cost analysis work.
What do we mean by capacity building? We mean building the expertise of local educators to be as effective as possible in raising student achievement for all children. By a state system, we mean the state Department of Education, which had been focused on meeting state regulations to a department that plays a leadership role in setting standards and using the bully pulpit. The state department is necessary but not sufficient to doing the kind of work that needs to be done.

Superintendents said the number one need was professional development and curriculum guidance. Time on learning is something they focused on. Some students need more time. Early childhood and special education were frequently mentioned. In addition, when we asked what do you need to get this more ambitious job done last fall, the median response was give me an extra eleven percent in terms of funding and I could get the job done. This surprised us. It was a more modest estimate. Forty-three percent saw the budget as a critical situation.

The key strategies we selected to develop were clear functions of the state department. The functions are curriculum and professional development, data assessment, leadership and strategic planning and to provide students who need it more time on learning. The challenges we found with the state system were challenges with existing capacity to review and intervene.

The DOE is quite limited by virtue of the number of people available. The size and funding of the department are a challenge. We could investigate only ten percent of the 132 districts where a yellow flag was raised. Staff at the department had been twice or three times what it is now. They have triple the responsibility. They had had 990 employees and now have 510. Massachusetts has 25 percent fewer staff than some comparable states. The administrative budget of the department was about half of one percent of all the state spent after education reform passed and is now less than a quarter. In real dollars, there’s been a modest increase over all that time.
It’s difficult for the department to be competitive with the salaries local school districts are offering to top educators. You will have a longer commute, longer hours and a longer year. In each of the recommendations, we don’t put out a definitive list of what the department should be doing but we make suggestions.

The budget suggestions, as thoughtfully done as they were, are a kind of back of the envelope calculation. There are key considerations about which programs to offer.

On professional development and curriculum, the call is for increased state guidance. We are not arguing for a statewide curriculum, but there ought to be a default curriculum. We know there’s lots of professional development going on, but almost no quality control. Guidance in professional development is needed especially in math and science, where we know we have difficulty. The state can point to effective providers. In terms of data and assessment, teachers are saying give us regular feedback and it isn’t enough to get MCAS results six months later. They need more timely and immediate results that are value-added and which can be used to change classroom strategies. In the same vein, we need to work on a value-added, growth-oriented system statewide. In terms of leadership and strategic planning, the most urgent needs are in urban districts. We need to make this kind of thing more broadly available. We need to create state-level incentives to strengthen local leadership. It means providing flexibility for schools and districts to form teams and make decisions about personnel and pay and flexibilities in a highly distressed school district or school. The state is in the field helping school districts. That needs to be strengthened.

We need to make services available regionally, not necessarily through a department but through partners. We need a stronger research component to state work. We are not using data to drive our policy assessments and directions in the way we should. Finally, we need to work with turnaround partners – there are a host of non-profits and universities and regional collaboratives who can help in doing this kind of work. There are a host of other considerations. But we know students need more time. We are delighted by the commitment to early education.
We did do a look at the cost. I am apprehensive about getting hung up on the numbers. We made assumptions about program distributions in a relatively arbitrary fashion. We just wanted to get some numbers on paper because we felt it would be the responsible thing to do for policy makers. At a minimum, it would be $43 million. A good portion of that money is in House One. So there’s a margin of about $14 million. But we are talking about a more robust state function to help schools to prevent themselves from falling into the category of underperforming. The focus here has been on providing an intervention the Legislature could make in respect to state leadership. We think this is affordable and politically non-controversial. It’s based on research from the field and is urgently needed. It’s 12 years overdue. We have to get serious about providing support to those at the state level to assist educators in the field.

MODERATOR BLENDA J. WILSON: David Driscoll will comment first. The report talks about the department playing a leadership role. This is the gentleman playing that role.

DAVID DRISCOLL, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION COMMISSIONER: I want to begin by commenting that many have heard me say that being the commissioner is an awesome responsibility. What the board and I have done affects the next generation of students. As awesome as it is, being commissioner is not as difficult as being a superintendent or a principal. I just left my colleagues in Washington. No commissioner has more support in any state than I do.
Paul has been able to bring people together. We have to keep it up because this is a very crucial time. We are almost in neutral in some ways but still moving forward in others. This is an extremely thoughtful report that I will look at consistently. There are a lot of challenges and truisms. It raises the right challenges. I am worried that it gets reduced down to the simple. And it’s complicated. We joke about the school committee that had to hire a superintendent and said we’d like to have a superintendent with one arm. They said the last person said on the one hand we will do this and on the other that. We need someone with one arm so we can move forward. Remember the complexities this report brings.

I take issue with one generalization. The department, while we have trouble attracting people and don’t pay well and it’s a pain to get to Malden, we have terrific staff. When jobs open, I get 1,000 resumes. Everyone thinks they can work for the department. We are getting people with doctorate’s and certainly master’s degrees.

The theory I want to talk about is this relationship between the state and the local. We have a tug of war in statute and in practice. It’s a result of what the state looks like. New England has a lot of local control. In New Zealand, 30 percent of students are minority. It will be majority minority in 2030. Their schools are run by councils. They are ahead of us on the international tests. So local control is not a bad thing.

We have become far more intrusive than I ever thought we’d be. Before they give us a dime though, I think I would rather see it go into the foundation budgets. I am tired of seeing schools cut our art and music. Before we talk about default curriculum, I want to be a little bit more thoughtful about that. We need districts that are thoughtful about how they pick their textbook series. It may be that we need to start to be more definitive in that area.

On the practical level, there are so many issues to grapple with. Should there be statutory changes in collective bargaining and changing the local control and rights of teachers? One district to avoid a strike gave our raises and laid off their newest teachers because what they gave at the table they couldn’t afford. We do have 376 schools identified for improvement and only 7 districts that didn’t make AYP in the aggregate. How many of the 376 didn’t make it because of the rules that we know from the secretary of education are going to change? Isn’t the system supposed to identify them for improvement so they can make improvement? We make AYP in the aggregate as a state. On turnaround partners, show me one that is more effective than a good superintendent? We are all trying to grapple with this together. We have made great progress. Our scores are up but too many kids are not getting to proficiency. I am not anxious to move the floor up. Look at failing work on our web site. You will know that is not passing work. Some of the things claimed here to be in the budget are not in the budget.

MODERATOR BLENDA J. WILSON: Susan, put the recommendations in a broader context.

SUSAN FOLLETT LUSI, EDUCATION CONSULTANT: I am pleased to be here. I look at this from a national perspective today. I was asked to be quick. A comment, I commend the Rennie Center for asking the question about state capacity. I agree it’s a key area of need. We know identifying low-performing schools is not enough to help them improve. The question of where capacity will come from is a question that is pretty much not sufficiently addressed.
The first suggestion I have is to emphasize the importance of helping all the districts around a clear theory of action and clear focus. It has to get at how classroom practice has to be changed. It is not enough to talk about strategic planning and professional development. We know what characterizes successful schools is an excruciatingly clear focus that helps the whole become greater than some of its parts. I agree with the emphasis that the state has to be more than just the department and has to include partners. We need to think carefully about avoiding contradictory signals and maximizing the bang for the buck. We need to be rigorous about thinking about how we want educators to spend their time, their most valuable resource. I would not want them to be going through multiple state reviews. I love state departments and I know how fond we are of planning. Every time a local provides us with a plan, think about what they are not doing as they developed that. The strategy of strategic alignment of efforts is absolutely crucial.
My second comment is prioritizing the need for joint learning, across organizations and across different levels of a system. Improvement is a technical and adaptive problem. Technical problems are solved through expertise and adaptive problems are solved through leadership and working through people - those kinds of problems we don’t know how to address very well. New York is working through multiple networks on low-performing schools. Chicago allowed schools to choose their own providers and they worked in multiple directions and did not always address crucial needs. I look forward to the discussion.

ROBERT SCHWARTZ, EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT AUDIT COUNCIL: I have an interesting insider and outsider perspective. I worked here in the late 80s as the education policy advisor to the last Democratic governor. I left the state and worked on national issues in Philadelphia. I came back in 1996 and spent several years looking at these issues in other states. This state has made very significant progress and done very well. It’s important to begin there.
That said, there is a lot more to be done. I agree with the thrust of this report. The state needs to take a stronger leadership role. Almost everyone working in education is working for the right motives. The challenge is to build the capacity of teachers and schools and districts to do something we have never asked them to do before. We spent the last several years trying to get virtually everyone into the needs improvement category. Now we have to get people up to proficiency. The emphasis on curriculum and assessments and leadership and training make sense.

I don’t view this as calling for the state to mandate things but to provide stronger forms of assistance. Like say for example, here is what a stronger curriculum might look like. I would argue for multiple examples of model curriculum to get kids to proficiency. There are three sets of issues. First the problems of eight or ten large urban districts where the majority of low-income and minority kids are. Any support strategy should work with and through those districts. Be cautious about asking the state to reach around districts to work with schools.

A second problem I underestimated is just how many districts we have with problems that are too small to have much capacity to attract quality leadership or do things that district offices do. The state board has declared three districts as underperforming. Two are very small. I think we need some form of regional strategy, some incentives to work collaboratively. One thing that is screwy is we have one superintendent working with separate school committees in five, six or seven towns. They are not really focused on the work of the schools.

The third area is schools doing pretty well but we need a strategy that says the name of the game is continuous improvement. A couple of more specific comments. We have put more emphasis into fact-finding and district review than into intervention. We really have to change that balance. Massachusetts decided to separate organizationally the group that conducts the reviews from the department. I am not sure that governance system makes sense. The notion that the state has 376 schools and 132 districts that are in trouble is highly misleading. EQA has focused on districts with the highest concentration of low-performing schools. Most of the schools and most of the kids in need of help are in districts that are being reviewed or have been reviewed.

MODERATOR BLENDA J. WILSON: No one disputes that there are chronically underperforming schools. What is the state’s role there?

DAVID DRISCOLL, STATE EDUCATION COMMISSIONER: The reason we wound up with this system, surprisingly in Massachusetts, had to do with politics. The department could have the function or there could be a separate agency. I think it can work. The one thing the department can do is go down two paths. First, take the fact-finding and establish some minimal requirements. It’s just unreal that people don’t have aligned curriculum. Secondly, we have to get out in front with other partners. We have wonderful opportunities with colleges and universities and foundations. What’s it going to take for high schools to really change? What’s it going to take for the school year and school day? I think we should have districts. Our compass schools in every instance, the principals pointed out the support of the superintendent and central office. It’s going to be the small places that are really having difficulty.

SUSAN FOLLETT LUSI, EDUCATION CONSULTANT: The state role has to bring increased clarity. Schools and districts are bombarded by multiple impulses. We ask for greater student achievement and have to think clearly about helping them focus.

ROBERT SCHWARTZ, EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT AUDIT COUNCIL: There are lessons to be learned from Boston. They cleaned up their governance. The accountability flows back to the mayor. They put together a couple of structures that enable higher education and community-based networks to work collaboratively. Boston has unique community resources, but the notion of building networks in other urban districts seems to me to be important. That is something the state could do. The challenge for the department is to play a more effective role in organizing the state’s human resources – management consulting – and then trying to figure out a brokering strategy.

S. PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER FOR EDUCATION RESEARCH AND POLICY: We need at this point, knowing there are limited resources, to identify the biggest needs and greatest gaps and what is envisioned is a state initiative to offer tools – professional development or data or leadership tools. You could take them all or you might have to match or have a partnership to do the problem solving.

JOSEPH BURKE, SPRINGFIELD SUPERINTENDENT: Dave talked about the lack of a district structure in Australia. They have a national curriculum and we have more or less a free for all.

I would like to comment on Susan’s thoughts on the theory of action. It’s important to consider the state’s role in helping districts to really design a theory of action and an effective plan to get at changes in instructional practice as it related to closing the achievement gap. We know how that can happen in individual classrooms, but how do we get systemic change? That is a key to this process. The state may have to have some greater intervention opportunities to make that happen. If the state is going to have a greater capacity to impact some of these things – value-added assessment for example – there are a couple of enablers to be put in place. One is an integrated student information system statewide to effectively compare student performance from district to district and year to year. An integrated system is critical for the state to monitor the actual delivery of services from district to district. The state has guidelines on 900 hours of instruction. How do you know that is happening if you don’t have a mechanism to measure that? We don’t know. In some states there is a mechanism in the accountability structure to look at an effective way of looking at the bang for the buck. You can take dollars per pupil and match that with outcome results and have a way to build that into the accountability structure and rate districts differently than we are doing now. You could rate districts not just on their current status against proficiency but against expenditures per pupil and have a relational factor with the proficiency index. It would give you a different model to convey– this is what you are investing and this is what you are getting. I would prefer that to be built into the accountability structure in how we measure what districts are producing. There are ways this can be structured in a fair and equitable process. Some other states are doing this and have this built into their accountability structure.

REP. MARTY WALZ: I may be the skunk of the garden party. The report is essentially a gift to the Department of Education to increase funding. Yet the commissioner would rather have the money go to the districts.

S. PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER FOR EDUCATION RESEARCH AND POLICY: I think Dave would welcome the addition of capacity in the department. Prior commissioners have been unable to advocate in this building for money because they have been given a cap in terms of what the executive branch believes is allowed. There are a number of areas where additional support would be helpful.

DAVID DRISCOLL, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION COMMISSIONER: The governor’s budget includes $1.1 million for school district intervention and value-added systems. We have increased capacity. We do need more capacity. I wasn’t saying one versus another. I am just very worried about what is happening locally. I want to be sensitive to the fact that we are asking schools and districts to do a lot more. As I go to cities and towns, they are hurting. That was my point, not to turn down any money.

ROBERT SCHWARTZ, EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT AUDIT COUNCIL: I would simply urge legislators to think about the relationship between monies set aside to manage and lead and ensure that the state has the capacity to make sure the goals of these reforms are being realized. If there were the political will to reduce the number of districts, we might not need this. The state had a regional office structure in the late 80s when we did not have these expectations. One by one we closed these offices. I am not necessarily making the case to build those back up but there has to be some kind of structure for these small districts to get support.

MODERATOR BLENDA J. WILSON: The report is a gift to the department in the sense that it says we have figured out how to set standards and we are real clear about accountability, now we need to do the leadership and support piece.

AUDIENCE STATEMENT: It’s good to be back in Massachusetts. Usually superintendents don’t speak well of departments of education. I do think the Department of Education has a critical role to play around equity and access. One piece is important form a practitioner’s perspective. Departments need to forge their agenda with more clarity. I need to know as a superintendent what it is that you stand for. I also know that when the district and state and community are aligned in a shared vision, that’s our best bet. I refer to Providence, an incredible opportunity for the school district to work in tight terms with the department. They did such a great job in helping us. The agenda was one agenda. There was a seamless partnership. You can do a tremendous role at the state in assessing quality. Everything is not of equal quality.

DAVID DRISCOLL, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION COMMISSIONER: I don’t think either Joe Rappa or I have ever been accused of being too nice. We are developing a strategic plan, and we have an obligation to empower districts. I meet with urban superintendents every month, and we have gotten an awful lot done because of it.

AUDIENCE COMMENT: I like the model of looking at individual schools rather than larger districts. I taught in Indiana and California and here in Marblehead and Lynn. I found the state department’s foundation spending analysis very helpful. Defining quality in an index is helpful. Sometimes the ranking is not. I also encourage the state to look at its teacher certification process.

AUDIENCE COMMENT: I want to commend the report’s author for identifying three critical leverage points. We need to build the capacity to use the tools. The role of the state in building capacity is central.

SUSAN FOLLETT LUSI, EDUCATION CONSULTANT: Sometimes people simplify the issue of brokering services. If you can agree on a theory of action, then you can figure out which battles you can take on most effectively. A challenge of working with limited resources is knowing what battles you need to pick and those that you don’t. If we all have the same recipe in our heads, I don’t know that it gets us there.

S. PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER FOR EDUCATION RESEARCH AND POLICY: A number of districts are adopting formative data systems. Some districts are well suited to support teachers to interpret and understand and implement findings. Other districts have no capacity to present the data and support teachers. They may have a great data system. There have to be process requirements at the schools and district levels.

DAVID DRISCOLL, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION COMMISSIONER: We now included in our testing for regular education teachers questions on special education inclusion. The referendum was the second biggest change mandated, after the first being special education. In the case of ELL, we have no money essentially to implement a change that is going to come to a lot of classrooms, as students are being immersed. The law is really too restrict in suggesting that in one year a student is going to be mainstreamed. That is a tall order.

AUDIENCE COMMENT: I have been a public education advocate. One thought is regionalization – I think you all agree it’s necessary. Systems felt they had people not just demanding accountability, but offering technical assistance and a place to come and share their challenges and problems and solutions. It’s relationships between teachers and staff and students that allow high expectations to happen. We don’t focus on professional development having to do with relationship. IEP was the answer for children at risk. It was our hope that that would be a model to deal with all children – to bring social services into the schools to help children at risk. I see it all over the state. The pressure of life in this day and age is putting such stress on kids from good families and dysfunctional families. The teacher is unable to deal with the learning process because that student has needs.

AUDIENCE COMMENT: What responsibility does the community have? This has all been about internals.

S. PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER FOR EDUCATION RESEARCH AND POLICY: At the State House, we tend to focus on policy. It’s natural. We miss all those other influences beyond the boundaries of schools that make a difference. We ignore those things at our peril. Communities get the schools that they demand for the most part.

AUDIENCE COMMENT: I commend the commissioner about saying the one thing we are going to do is to go down two paths. It’s a compliment. ELL is really huge right now. We have many, many children going into this system. I am really worried about it. The Hispanic community can often be overlooked. The other question I have is the most important factor in achievement is a good teacher – how does the report suggest improving teachers?

S. PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER FOR EDUCATION RESEARCH AND POLICY: Nothing is more important than the quality of teaching. We could do a whole report on that. That was not our focus here, but to ask superintendents what they need to move to proficiency. But you are quite right.