President's Report: Accountability: Should students be the bottom line?
By Joan E. Schmidt
11/08/2005 — School boards across the nation have been stymied by a disparity between the reporting requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and their ethical obligation to provide meaningful information to students, parents, families, and community leaders.
Recent policy discussions in the United States have focused on accountability based on high-stakes tests. This is not surprising, given that present-day accountability amounts to a sledgehammer, poised and ready to punish schools that fail to meet NCLB’s arbitrary standards for adequate yearly progress (AYP). The public deserves better.
Current research on education accountability indicates that the public accepts standardized tests but believes other means of gathering and reporting information are also needed. Indeed, if we as a society believe that a fundamental purpose of public education is to prepare students for citizenship in a democratic society, the current AYP reporting mechanism seriously misses the mark.
A recent initiative by one of our Canadian partners offers sound insights for school districts seeking a better way to report to their communities.
Two years ago, the Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA) set out to identify ways that school boards could use accountability reporting as a tool for raising student achievement.
ASBA’s mission and belief statements provided a starting point for this project. The mission of “promoting excellence in public education” is supported and enhanced by the belief that an effective accountability framework for schools will have clearly defined outcomes, will be comprehensive and multi-faceted, and will promote a balanced approach.
The resultant Students Are Our Bottom Line report envisions a web-based reporting tool for providing the public with meaningful information about student achievement using a variety of broadly based measures. The data would be dichotomous in nature and intent, simultaneously reporting to the community what has been happening and informing school board planning for future student improvement.
A team of six Alberta school boards worked with consultants to clarify issues and develop a mechanism for communicating with the public.
ASBA pilot-tested a prototype reporting tool during the 2004-05 school year. This online district report card disclosed student outcomes, not only in terms of academic achievement, but also in a variety of other areas, including citizenship, wellness, and morality/ethics.
Project team members noted that it is relatively easy to use test scores as a measure of academic achievement; however, it takes a concerted effort to develop appropriate mechanisms for assessing performance in other domains. The key is to refine the assessment over time.
There are examples of valid subjective evaluation. In the February 25, 2003, issue of the Calgary Herald, a staff writer noted, “The arts community has found a way to score everything from literary works to dance to figure skating and uses judging panels for greater reliability.”
According to ASBA Executive Director David Anderson: “The Students are our Bottom Line project is all about parents and taxpayers and talking to them, in language they understand, about how students are performing academically and in the all important ‘soft skill’ areas. For example, one of our responsibilities is to create good citizens — let’s show them what we are achieving.”
Maureen Kubinec, the current president of ASBA, adds, “We as school boards owe it to our clients and those who support us financially to account for the work that we do and how well we do it.”
ASBA members view accountability as an ethical obligation to society. I daresay that school board members throughout the United States would agree.
We are accountable to our constituents.
We can transcend the narrow AYP reporting requirements in NCLB — and student achievement absolutely must be the bottom line.
Joan E. Schmidt is 2005-06 president of NSBA.
| Reproduced with permission from School Board News. Copyright © 2005, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789. |