NCLB rested on the
assumption that state educational agencies would have the capacity to implement
all of the requirements called for in the law and the ability to provide the
support and technical assistance necessary to help low-performing schools and
districts. Supporters of the law argued that federal policy should provide the
leverage to change how states allocate their resources and that an outcome
based reform strategy would create the professional and political incentives
for states to marshal the federal and state resources necessary to respond to
the accountability incentives. The law itself provided only modest resources
and paid little attention to how the state role would need to change if the
ambitious educational goals were to be achieved. One of the interesting
aspects of this study was the finding that state administrators did their best
to obey the law, at least by implementing the data collection and testing
requirements and the market-based sanctions. But when confronted with the much
more ambitious goals of ensuring large-scale educational changes and providing support
to low-performing schools, the states were much less adept and the resources
were few.
The aim of this
study was to examine how states are meeting the law’s requirements and if they
reallocate resources in ways that will meet the law’s ambitious educational
goals. This research was designed to test the assumption that state capacity
was adequate and that reallocation of existing resources would suffice to meet
the NCLB requirements. Two types of capacity are critical to understanding
states’ abilities to implement NCLB: (1) human and financial resources
available to the state and local agencies, including expertise in a broad range
of areas; and (2) organizational capacity, including the systems necessary to
meet the data management and testing requirements and the formal and informal
organizational networks between state and local authorities providing technical
assistance and support to local districts and schools. We pay particular
attention to the knowledge base and existence of suitable interventions for
improving performance in low-performing schools that would allow state
administrators to do what the law requires since the history of state failures
on a much smaller scale makes it difficult to understand how the states could
meet these challenges and raise concern about the resulting policies and
practices for minority schools and districts.
Within this
framework, we take into account three types of factors that facilitate or
constrain the activities state education agencies took in response to the NCLB
requirements. Structural factors are related to how the education system is
organized (i.e., through a multi-level governance system) and the limited
influence state actors have on schools and districts as a result of this
structure. Others are functional and related to state agencies’ primary
responsibilities, including monitoring for compliance, issuing regulations and
guidelines, and operating as a conduit for the distribution of federal and
state funds. The third set of factors are political and include the pressures
operating on states to undertake some activities rather than others, while
being pressed from Washington to comply with federal requirements.
Facing immense challenges, we found that states have tried very
hard to implement the more routine parts of the federal mandate and to avoid or
limit the consequences of federal sanctions for non-compliance (Sunderman, 2006). State education agencies have kept the machinery running while a political struggle over the future of the program is taking place around them. At the same time, the division of authority over education between governors, chief state school officers, and state legislatures has added complexity to the administrative tasks of state education agencies.
In this paper, we trace
the development of the state role in education and how this shaped both the
structure of the educational system and the functions that state departments of
education perform. This historical development reinforced the monitoring and
regulatory functions of state education agencies and increased the need for
people with specialized professional knowledge in particular areas. Next we
examine state responsibilities under NCLB. We then show how strains on state
capacity have resulted in the inability of many states to meet some of the most
basic requirements in NCLB. Here, we also examine how states negotiated
tensions between limited resources and increased demands. We conclude with
recommendations on how NCLB can address the issue of state capacity.
STATE CAPACITY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Although we
discuss educational issues on a national level and the local press tends to
cover school board conflicts and local leaders, public education in the U.S. is largely controlled by state laws. In important respects, we have 50 independent
state educational systems with 15,700 local variations at the district level
that are loosely regulated by the states (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006), p. 155). This variety is related to how different regions of the country developed historically, the demographic makeup of a state’s population and their ideas about how to provide for schooling, and the resources available to support public education in each state (Wirt & Kirst, 1982) It is reflected in differences in how state superintendents are selected and in their authority and responsibilities vis-à-vis the other state officials and agencies. Since legal authority for education policymaking is vested with the legislature and governor, the system is highly political. That state education systems took varied institutional forms was affected by their historical experiences. For example, New England states developed highly decentralized systems rooted in their opposition to state-center control that dates to before the revolutionary war
whereas southern states developed highly centralized systems following the
civil war, which devastated the ability of counties to fund or manage education
(Wirt & Kirst, 1982).
Much of state authority
over education derives from policies that determine who can teach, what must be
included in children’s education, and, in most states, what must be learned to
graduate and how it will be assessed. Historically, states have sought to
standardize education by passing compulsory attendance laws, lengthening the
school term, introducing the graded school, and using standardized textbooks to
improve the curriculum (Tyack & Hansot, 1982). They have regulated who can teach through state certification requirements and standards for pre-service teacher training programs. These policies strengthened the state’s legal authority over education, even when it was not exercised.
While states have played a
central role in expanding public education and developing policies to
standardize and regulate education, until recently state departments of
education have remained relatively small and weak, with little control over
most education decisions made at the local level. By the 1950s, local school
boards and superintendents, particularly in large districts, held considerable
decision making authority and operated relatively autonomously from state or
federal control. State education departments were small agencies that performed
a limited range of functions administering some federal grant programs,
distributing funds, and collecting statistics
This began to change in the
1960s with the Civil Rights Movement and the enactment of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965. The Civil Rights Movement focused
attention on achieving equity through improvements in the schooling
opportunities for low-income and minority students. For the first time, the
federal government became a significant player in education, largely through
increased federal aid to public schools. With the increased federal role, a
larger role for state departments of education developed, both as a way to
funnel money to local districts and to enforce and monitor the emerging federal
requirements. With the passage of ESEA, federal officials relied on states to
provide an organizational structure to administer federal funds, monitor
implementation of the law’s requirements, and divert attention away from
criticisms of federal control. The law provided modest but very important resources
to expand the professional state agencies, but in order to receive federal
funds under these statutes, states had to develop and implement policies
consistent with the requirements of the law.
The reform movements of the
latter half of the twentieth century strengthened the state role in funding and
regulating education. States responded to the school finance movement of the
1960s and 1970s and the standards movement of the 1980s and 1990s by
introducing laws and regulations designed to monitor local compliance with
federal and state requirements. By focusing on funding disparities between
districts, states moved toward a more comprehensive approach to funding
education. Under the reforms of the 1980s and l990s, when both federal and
state legislation embraced standards-based reform, states extended the scope of
regulations to include curriculum standards and expanded state testing. These
regulations were demanding but left districts with considerable discretion over
implementation and instruction. At the federal level, weak enforcement of the
Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 (IASA) allowed the federal government
to avoid state and local opposition to an expanded federal role in education.
By developing expertise in
particular areas that allowed them to enforce the federal requirements, enact
the state policies, and act as a conduit for the flow of federal and state
money to school districts, state agencies defined their role largely in
traditional bureaucratic terms (Elmore & Fuhrman, 1995). The bureaucratic structure of state agencies and the relative weakness of their staffs in the core areas of educational reform meant they focused less on issues concerning the academic content of the curriculum, assessment, school organization, and management, precisely those areas now demanding attention under NCLB (Elmore & Fuhrman, 1995).
NCLB furthers the trend of
making states central to implementing school reform efforts and relies on
assumptions about the professional capacity of all state departments of
education, which vary from extensive professional staffs in the largest states
to very modest operations in the smallest and poorest, to achieve unprecedented
educational progress and implement sanctions that will require deep
interventions in thousands of schools that do not meet the required annual
progress standards of the federal law. A fundamental question is whether state
agencies have the resources, knowledge, and organizational capacity to
intervene at the scale demanded by NCLB.
STATE
RESPONSIBILITIES UNDER NCLB
State
responsibilities under NCLB are extensive. States are required to develop and
administer an accountability system that assesses students annually and, on the
bases of those assessments, determines whether schools and districts are making
adequate yearly progress. States must create and implement curriculum
standards and assessments in reading, mathematics, and science in grades 3-8
and in at least one grade level in grades 10-12. These requirements increased
the number of tests in the three subject areas (reading/language arts,
mathematics, science) from 6 that were required under the 1994 ESEA reauthorization
to 17 under NCLB (Government Accountability Office, 2003) (Table 1). In addition to the tests in core subject areas, states must assess students with disabilities, providing both appropriate assessments and accommodations where necessary, and assess students learning English for English proficiency. Some assessments must be offered in a student’s native language while in other cases such assessments are prohibited. The law established a timeline for when these tests must be in place and determined that all students must score proficient on state tests by 2014.
Table 1: Number of Assessments in Three Subject Areas
Required by the 1994 and 2001 ESEA Reauthorizations
|
|
Number of
Required Assessments
|
|
Subject
|
1994 ESEA
|
2001 ESEA
|
|
Reading/Language Arts
|
|
7
|
|
Mathematics
|
3
|
7
|
|
Science
|
0
|
3
|
|
TOTAL
|
6
|
17
|
Source: Government
Accountability Office (2003).
Because NCLB expanded the
data collection and reporting requirements, states now need data collection and
information systems that can disaggregate student test scores by race, English
language ability, and disability status and that can use this disaggregated
data to make adequate yearly progress determinations. States must monitor
teacher and paraprofessional qualifications to insure they are all highly
qualified by a date specified in the law. The addition of timelines for when
states must have all students score proficient on state tests and when all
teachers and paraprofessionals must be highly qualified as well as the inclusion
of mandated sanctions are new with NCLB.
Three other changes to NCLB
from previous legislation significantly alter the state role by placing
additional demands and responsibilities on state departments of education.
First, requirements that all students, including all subgroups, must reach a
state’s proficiency goal by 2014 raises the expectations and goals of Title I
by requiring that states bring all schools and all subgroups to the same level
of performance within a relatively short period of time. NCLB requires
universal high achievement for all students and attaches sanctions that become
increasingly severe the longer a school or district does not meet the state’s
achievement goals. The law, which relies on outcomes rather than the provision
of additional resources to improve student performance, operates on the
assumption that state education agencies and boards will re-allocate their
state resources in ways that will allow all schools to meet this goal and that
it is possible to bring all students to 100% proficiency. It ignores huge
resource differences between districts that are closely related to the
socio-economic status of the students.
Second, states have a role
in helping schools and districts improve under NCLB, a requirement that
traditionally has not been a major state function. State agencies developed
the expertise and capacity to funnel state and federal funds to local districts
and to propagate regulations needed to monitor education. Requiring states to
intervene and force change in schools and districts requires a very different
sort of capacity and expertise than that required for monitoring or funneling
funds to local districts. The law requires states to “. . . establish a
statewide system of intensive and sustained support and improvement for local
educational agencies and schools” that have been identified for improvement
(NCLB, 2002, Sec. 1117(a)(1)). The law is very specific about what this must
include, yet the resources provided for this are limited at best. While the
law authorizes a separate program for school improvement, funds have never been
appropriated for this program. The other mechanism, a set aside where states
can reserve 1% of the Title I funds for administration, is insufficient and
reduces the funding that is available for other Title I activities (Center on Education Policy, 2006, February).
Third, the inclusion of
timelines for when states must meet the NCLB requirements mean all states must
be at the same place regardless of where they start. Under NCLB, states must
adhere to federally determined timelines for establishing an accountability
system and having assessments in place, identifying failing schools and
improving student achievement, establishing adequate yearly progress goals, and
ensuring teacher quality. The 1994 ESEA reauthorizations included the
possibility of timeline extensions, something not included under NCLB.
It also imposes strict timelines for improving the achievement of disadvantaged
students and mandates specific sanctions for schools not performing well.
STATE ACTIONS AND LIMITATIONS ON IMPLEMENTING NCLB
NCLB combines
extremely demanding educational goals with extremely limited administrative
resources. There is the assumption in the act that drastic change can and
should be imposed on the educational system but, at the same time, the law
reflects the anti-government, anti-bureaucratic assumptions of the conservative
political movement that created it. So state agencies are expected to make
unprecedented changes with a tiny fraction of one percent of the money in a school
district’s budget for the costs of supervision and intervention.
While NCLB
provided additional money, much of this increase came during the first year (FY
2002) when Title I funding increased 18.11% and total appropriations for
elementary and secondary education increased 17.43% (Table 2). Since then,
increases have been smaller and are negligible when factoring in inflation.
Appropriations for Title I actually decreased in FY 2006. The 3% increase in
Title I grants to local districts in FY 2005 did not keep pace with the 6%
increase in the number of children in poverty (Center for Education Policy, 2005, July). The president’s proposed FY 2007 budget held Title I funding constant while reducing overall appropriations for elementary and secondary education by 4.19%. These reductions came at the same time that the federal demands were increasing and states were required to raise proficiency levels, have assessments in
place, and insure all teachers
were highly qualified.
Table 2: Title I Grants to Local Education Agencies (LEAs)
and Total Elementary and Secondary Education Appropriations (in thousands of
dollars), FY 1998 – 2007
|
Fiscal Year
|
ESEA Title I Grants
to LEAs
|
% Increase From
Prior Year
|
Total Elem. &
Secondary Appropriation
|
% Increase From
Prior Year
|
|
|
$
7,375,232
|
1.09
|
$18,164,490
|
10.28
|
|
1999
|
7,732,397
|
4.84
|
20,951,877
|
15.35
|
|
2000
|
7,941,397
|
2.70
|
22,600,399
|
7.87
|
|
2001
|
8,762,721
|
10.34
|
27,316,893
|
20.87
|
|
2002
|
10,350,000
|
18.11
|
32,078,434
|
17.43
|
|
2003
|
11,688,664
|
12.93
|
35,113,253
|
9.46
|
|
2004
|
12,342,309
|
5.59
|
36,942,478
|
5.21
|
|
2005
|
12,739,571
|
3.22
|
37,530,257
|
1.59
|
|
|
12,713,125
|
-0.21
|
37,863,840
|
0.89
|
|
2007*
|
12,713,125
|
0
|
36,276,140
|
-4.19
|
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Budget History Table: FY 1980 – present. Retrieved August
15, 2006 from www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/history/edhistory.pdf
Note: *2007 President’s Proposed Budget.
While the law gave
states modest funding for administration, it simultaneously imposed major new
requirements.
At the same time, program changes and the set-aside requirements offset much of
the overall increases in funds states received. For the most demanding part of
the law—the requirement that states provide additional support for
low-performing schools and districts—the amount of funding appropriated under
NCLB was insufficient and did not represent additional money but rather a
re-allocation of Title I funds.
State
Assessments: One area where states did receive significant new resources
was for state assessments. These allocations helped offset some of the costs
covered by the state, at least in the initial years, but state officials were
concerned because there is no mechanism in NCLB for maintaining the testing system
over time. Because Title VI of NCLB does not have a supplant clause, states
were able to replace state funds for assessments with federal funds. For
example, Illinois reduced the amount of state funds devoted to state
assessments from $18.3 million in the 2002 fiscal year to $8.4 million in the
2005 fiscal year. However to achieve these cost savings, the General Assembly
amended the state’s testing legislation to eliminate all testing that was not
required by NCLB. This included dropping tests in writing and social studies,
an action that was widely criticized.
States that did not have a
testing system that met the NCLB requirements contributed substantial resources
to augment the federal funds. This was the case in Arizona, where the Arizona
Board of Education voted in March 2004 to issue a contract to develop and
administer a new test, the AIMS-Dual Purpose Assessment (AIMS-DPA), that would
replace its previous testing system (Arizona State Board of Education, 2004, March 29). The costs of developing this system were huge, and required the state to contribute over half of the funding needed for test development and administration. In FY05, the state faced a shortfall between the estimated cost of achievement testing and the amount of funds appropriated for testing by the state legislature. In addition to the costs of developing the testing system, Arizona officials were concerned with meeting the costs of achievement testing when the
federal funding ends, since the state has a growing school age population
requiring additional tests in future years.
System of
Support: A central component of NCLB requires states to provide additional
support for low-performing schools and districts. Even though this represents
a major challenge for states—the record on state intervention is poor—the
amount of funding appropriated under NCLB was insufficient and did not
represent additional money but rather a re-allocation of Title I funds. NCLB
includes two mechanisms for states to receive funds for school improvement
activities, one of which has never received appropriations. Section 1003(g) of
the act authorizes a separate program for school improvement where states could
receive grants that are awarded to districts for school improvement
activities. A portion of these grants (5%), if they were available, could be
reserved by the state for administration, evaluation, and technical
assistance. Since funds have never been appropriated for this program, school
improvement activities have come from the Title I basic grant to states as a set
aside.
The set aside
requires states to reserve a portion of their Title I funds for school
improvement (NCLB, 2002, Sec. 1003(a)). Beginning with the 2005-06 school
year, this reservation rose from 2% to 4%. Of this allocation, 95% must go to
local educational agencies to support school improvement activities for schools
identified for improvement (NCLB, 2002, Sec. 1003(b)). The remaining 5% may be
used by the state educational agency “to carry out states responsibilities . .
. , including carrying out the State educational agency’s statewide system of
technical assistance and support for local educational agencies” (NCLB, 2002,
Sec. 1003 (a)). Since this reservation is tied to the overall Title I
appropriations, the amount of the set aside is related to overall increases (or
decreases) in Title I funding; it does not represent additional funds.
Table 3 shows the
amount of school improvement funds available to six states for the 2005 fiscal
year. Since the federal legislation sets a ceiling on the amount of funds that
can be used for administration, states can convert some of these funds into
local assistance in the form of higher grants to districts. This is what the California legislature did, and instead of the $3.5 million that California could set aside
under the Title I guidelines, the state set aside $1.78 million and sent the
remainder to local districts. Prior to FY 2005, the set aside for school
improvement was often times less than 4%.
Table 3: Amount of Title I Budget Allocated for School
Improvement Activities, FY 2005
|
State
|
4% for School
Improvement
|
95% of 4% for
Districts
|
5% of the 4% for
State
|
|
Arizona
|
$ 9,957,899
|
$ 9,460,004
|
$ 497,895
|
|
California
|
71,061,718
|
67,508,632
|
3,553,086
|
|
Georgia
|
16,263,283
|
15,450,119
|
813,164
|
|
Illinois
|
21,532,907
|
20,456,261
|
1,076,645
|
|
New
York
|
49,067,048
|
46,613,696
|
2,453,352
|
|
Virginia
|
8,660,702
|
8,227,667
|
433,035
|
Source: U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/statetables/index.html
February 24, 2006. Calculations are based on the ESEA Title I Grants to Local
Education Agencies for FY 2005.
To put the set aside for state administration of school
improvement in perspective, we compared the allocation to the number of schools
and districts identified for improvement (Table 4). If each school that was
identified for improvement were to receive an equal portion of the school
improvement grants, an unlikely event since the grants go to the district,
which will likely use some for their own administrative costs, the allocation
per school ranged from $626,490 in Arizona to $26,713 in Virginia. Dividing
the amount that the state can retain by the number of districts in need of
improvement gave states $4,431 per district in Illinois to $67,764 per district
in Georgia. Except for Arizona, these are not large amounts when you consider
they barely, if at all, cover the costs of adding just one staff person for
every school or district needing improvement.
Table 4: Allocations for School Improvement Grants to
Schools and Districts Per Number of Schools or Districts Identified for
Improvement, 2004-05
|
State
|
Allocation for
School Improvement Grants FY05
|
Schools Identified
for Improvement 2004-05
|
Allocation Per
School
|
State Allocation
for School Improvement
|
Districts
Identified for Improvement 2004-05
|
Allocation Per
District
|
|
Arizona
|
$ 9,460,004
|
151
|
626,490
|
$ 497,895
|
78
|
6,383
|
|
California
|
67,508,632
|
1600
|
42,193
|
3,553,086
|
150
|
23,687
|
|
Georgia
|
15,450,119
|
354
|
43,644
|
813,164
|
12
|
67,764
|
|
Illinois
|
20,456,261
|
661
|
30,947
|
1,076,645
|
243
|
4,431
|
|
NewYork
|
46,613,696
|
501
|
93,041
|
2,453,352
|
58
|
42,299
|
|
Virginia
|
8,227,667
|
308
|
26,713
|
433,035
|
79
|
5,481
|
Data
Reporting: To meet the NCLB data collection and reporting mandates
required states to develop a new student information system that allowed state
officials to track students over time as well as collect the student
demographic data essential for disaggregating test scores by subgroups. Among
the six states, only California had an existing system that included student
level information. Still, California added several data fields to their system
in order to collect the data they needed for NCLB.
In addition to
developing the state systems, state officials cited data integrity as a major
challenge in meeting the NCLB reporting requirement. Since data was
self-reported, the quality of data varied considerably between districts. Many
districts simply lacked the infrastructure necessary to collect the required
data or their systems were not compatible with the state system. To fully
implement a student information system often required providing resources to
districts that did not have the local resources, technology or staff to develop
and implement such a system. For example, Illinois officials estimated that
about 25% of the districts in Illinois did not have an electronic way of
tracking enrollment, attendance, or demographic information. Georgia spent an estimated $26 million (out of $50 million appropriated by the state
legislature) to develop the district level infrastructure necessary to
establish a student information system.
Although the law
focused on outcomes, the limited resources were often absorbed with collecting
data on inputs and tests, leaving little time for using data to facilitate
educational reform. Consequently, staff devoted their time to collecting,
correcting, and analyzing the data for NCLB reporting purposes but did not have
the time or resources to analyze data for program effectiveness. For example,
to meet the data reporting requirements of NCLB, the policy and evaluation
division of the California Department of Education reallocated staff time to
complete NCLB tasks and gave up doing research studies using the data they
collected, responding to outside studies using California data, or providing
analyses to the Superintendent, legislature and news media. Because of the
increased amount of data required under NCLB, insuring the integrity of the
data and responding to school and district challenges to improvement status
consumed staff time.
“We end up crunching 4 ½ or 5
million student records and creating massive reports and with 20% of the
schools, the data is wrong. So they go back, correct it . . . and then send it
back and we re-crunch it again, and on and on and on. . . . And it’s gotten
even worse with the high stakes of NCLB. Districts and schools are going back
more and more to make sure all the data are correct. . . . This whole concept
of getting good data into the department is loosely coupled and that’s that
biggest point of breakdown, which keeps us busy constantly.” (Personal
Interview, California Department of Education, 2-16-05).
Since the data
states collected was used to comply with NCLB, not the separate and preexisting
state reforms, it provided statistical data that was often not very useful to
state officials or district educators. In Illinois, districts questioned the
usefulness of the data since it did not tell them which programs worked or how
it would help their schools. For example, the state collects data on the
number of students taking advantage of the transfer option, but does not
provide information on “what it means in the long run in terms of policy. The
data tells us which [supplemental educational services] vendors are chosen more
frequently than others, but it doesn’t really speak to the issue of which
programs are more effective than others. . . .” (Personal Interview, Illinois State Board of Education, 1-26-05).
Federal grants to
support the development of longitudinal data systems have done little to
address the capacity differences between states. To qualify, states had to
demonstrate that considerable capacity already existed, including the capacity
to support research on student academic growth, to exchange data across
institutions within the state, the capacity to provide reports and analysis to
stakeholders, and that they had the staff and technical and monetary resources
to sustain the system over time (U.S. Department of Education, 2005, April 15). Moreover, the number of grants awarded were limited to 14 states (Kennedy, 2006, February 2).
Figure 1: Staffing Count, Illinois State Board of Education, New York Office of Elementary, Middle, Secondary, and Continuing Education, and Georgia Department of Education, FY 1995 to FY 2005
Source: Illinois State Board
of Education. (2005), p. 11; New York State Education Department of Human
Resources Management (2004); Georgia Department of Education personal
communication (September 2005).
State Capacity to Intervene in Schools and Districts
NCLB incorporates
not only requirements for achievement gains and for assessments, but also
directives about what to do when districts and schools fail—a litany of
state-driven reforms that appear in the law as if they were well documented
methods of improving schools and as if the states have the resources and
knowledge and leadership to effectively implement them. These range from state
takeovers, state advisors, state decisions to convert failing schools to
charter schools, mandates to develop a new school level reform plan, and, of
course, implementation of supplemental educational services and transfer
options for families in the many schools not making “adequate yearly progress”
for all subgroups of students. The basic idea was to provide an array of strong
tools states could use to force change in failing schools and districts and to
demand that state and local officials do something to produce changes.
The idea of
drastic action by states was not new in NCLB. As is true in NCLB, there is the
assumption that reform is often blocked by recalcitrant local forces and that
it can be imposed more successfully in some cases by a distant force less
entangled in local pressures, antiquated institutions, and politics. In fact,
29 states have the authority to take control of a district and simply override
local authorities under specified circumstances and about a third of the states
also have the authority to cease control of individual schools and impose
changes (Education Commission of the States, 2006). The actual record of state interventions is surprisingly long and extensive but also disappointing.
The idea of state
takeovers blossomed in the reform era in the late l980s and became widespread
in the following decade. It often began in cases of financial collapse where
the state was forced to step in, in court orders, in cases of massive
corruption, or, as the standards-based reform movement became more intense, in
cases of persistent academic disaster. New Jersey was the first state to
takeover a district for poor academic performance but there were major efforts
in a number of states, including California, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, New York, Connecticut, and others. A study by the Education Commission of the States, a
compact of state education agencies hardly hostile to or critical of the idea
of a vigorous state role in education policy, concluded in a 2004 report that
takeovers were “yielding more gains in central office activities than in
classroom instructional practices” by helping to straighten out accounts and
business practices and upgrading facilities (Education Commission of the States, 2004, March). Little progress was noted on academic gains, certainly nothing like the gains required by NCLB: “…student achievement still oftentimes falls short of expectations…. In most cases, academic results are usually mixed at best, with increases in student performances in some areas…and decreases in student performance in other areas” (Education Commission of the States, 2004, March).
Congress might
have thought about spectacular examples such as the U.S. Capital, Washington D.C. where Congress displaced the local school authorities and appointed
outsiders to implement their own reforms in the mid-1990s with little visible
impact. Or the story of Connecticut, where the state removed the local board,
where an attempt to turn the district over to a private contractor failed and
where a state-appointed board with extra funds failed to make significant
changes. Or the frustrating experiences of New Jersey in taking over several
of its major urban districts, of Maryland, in Baltimore, of Illinois in East
St. Louis and Chicago, of Ohio in Cleveland, of California in Compton, Richmond
and Oakland, New York in the Roosevelt District in Long Island, and a number of
others. There is just very little evidence that any state is capable of
achieving the vast transformations and rapid progress for all subgroups
required by NCLB (Hunter, 1997; Mathews, 2000; Strauss & Loeb, 1998; Weizel, 1997; Wyatt, 2000).
With NCLB,
Congress was requiring changes no state had been able to accomplish with its
own takeovers, even though they involved far fewer schools and districts that
were facing sanctions under NCLB. The assumption that there were practical
remedies in the reach of state agencies had very little empirical grounding.
Not surprisingly, when it
came to developing a system of support for school improvement, state efforts
were limited at best. State efforts to provide support for school improvement
or to intervene directly in schools and districts prior to NCLB were limited
and not very effective (Mintrop & Trujillo, 2005; O'Day & Bitter, 2003). Most efforts, apart from federal school improvement monies for comprehensive school reform models, stemmed from state accountability requirements. These programs were typically characterized by voluntary participation of schools and served a limited number of schools. While some included on-site personnel or intervention teams, they were more likely to rely on a school-based improvement planning process and school improvement plans, comprehensive school reform models, or external audits of school performance. For example, a California program that was designed as part of the state accountability system to help a
limited number of schools that failed to demonstrate significant growth allowed
for voluntary participation. In Georgia, districts could request a School
Effectiveness Review for a school, but any recommendations coming from this
review were left up to the school or district to implement. In Illinois, state officials assigned an Educator in Residence to a poorly performing school,
but did not define their responsibilities and later abandoned this program. Arizona did not provide school intervention services prior to NCLB. The success of state
efforts, where they did exist on any scale, was also limited.
The low level of federal
investment in state school improvement under NCLB limited what states could do
to compliance and monitoring activities and forced states to prioritize which
schools or districts would receive support. They could only serve schools
already identified for improvement and could do little for schools that were at
risk of being identified for improvement. Because of limited federal and state
resources, states put the burden for school improvement on districts, relied on
regional centers to provide assistance to schools and districts, and made
schools central to their own improvement through the school improvement
planning process. Officials cited a lack of available strategies to improve
the achievement of English language learners and special education students,
the two categories that most often caused a school or district to be identified
for improvement, and insufficient time for schools to make improvement under
the NCLB timelines as constraints on their ability to help schools.
Most often, state officials
filled a management function. According to a California official: “I don’t
think the state can do it alone . . . I think we can help them identify areas
that are of need and make them better consumers of the product that is likely
to be the next step . . . and then maybe be a broker using our county office
partners and other partners” (Personal Interview, California Department of
Education, 2-16-05). Since the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) did
not have the staff to go out and work directly with schools or districts,
Regional Educational Service Providers (RESPROS), already under contract with
the state, were given primary responsibilities to work with schools and
districts. Developing school and district improvement plans was a central
component to the improvement process and staff time at the state level was
devoted to reading these plans. Georgia developed a regional support team to
bring the Regional Education Service Agencies and other entities together to
coordinate and collaborate on school improvement efforts. The state played a
management role in coordinating the services a school might receive from
different entities in order to avoid duplication or conflict between different
types of services. State officials recognized that as districts moved into the
corrective action phase of the NCLB sanctions they might have to become more
involved, but since they were not there yet, they had not addressed that issue.
The very dramatic sanctions in the Act were not yet being used and a law that
was highly regulatory was, so far, being administered largely as data
collection and technical assistance functions much more compatible with normal
state-local relations.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
With a modest and
temporary infusion of additional federal aid funds, the most conservative
government in generations suddenly adopted policies that required levels and
kinds of educational gains for every group of students within every school that
had never been achieved anywhere. The requirements were set down as
non-negotiable and major progress was required under deadlines that did not fit
what research had shown to be the preconditions and time required for
successful reform. The fact that the law attached very strong sanctions and
embarrassing publicity about educational failure for not reaching goals that
many schools and districts soon learned they could not meet rapidly deepened
the conflict over the law.
Most educational
professionals were good soldiers, trying to implement the policies, treating
them as possible goals, at least in the early stages, and thinking positively
about complying with as many provisions as possible. Most state officials,
though they were being asked to play a role that was new and very difficult,
perhaps objectively impossible, collected data and released findings of
widespread “failure” as defined by NCLB. Some saw the law as a lever to
increase their own reach and power in pursuing goals that were congruent with
those of NCLB.
This study shows
striking good faith at the administrative level but also a striking lack of
resources and knowledge to accomplish the extraordinary goals. At least the
data collection, testing, and checking on the qualifications of teachers have
been initiated and a great deal of attention has been focused on sensitive
achievement data that previously was not available.
The study shows
that the focus was on the data and procedural parts of the law because they
were things administrators could actually do, spheres of action that they could
actually control. For the most ambitious goals of large scale drastic
educational interventions that produced fast and consistent gains, the law
provided few resources, often absurdly small amounts of money and staffing, and
the previous experience of the states in dealing with much smaller numbers of
schools and districts was usually deeply disappointing. It is not surprising
that the administrators put off facing these problems in favor of those they
could actually solve. Nor is it surprising that the initiative increasingly
passed from professionals to politicians as the implications for the image of
local schools, teachers, and communities were put at risk and the educators
threatened with sanctions that often seemed disproportionate and
counterproductive.
This story is far
from over and may well end on the floor of Congress or in a new White House,
but the important lessons of the first five years are now apparent. It is
clear that the idea of a relatively closed system of favorable congressional
committees and powerful interest groups of local educational agencies and
teacher organizations had been displaced by policy makers who were outside this
traditional system and believed they could impose radical change rapidly from Washington. They surely won the battle and changed the agenda. By pressing too hard and
neglecting to enact specific policies or goals that were feasible, however,
they seemed on the path to losing the war, as signaled by the sudden surge of
policy modifications and compromises in the second administration of President
George W. Bush (Sunderman, 2006). If that were to happen a basic lesson would be to design a policy that recognizes both the realities of policy possibilities as known by professionals and the necessity in a federal system of leading by persuasion and incentives more often than threat and negative sanctions.
States are facing the need to formulate
sanctions and interventions for large
numbers of schools in spite of negotiated changes, which reduced the number of
reported districts and schools failing AYP. Although there is an
extensive record of state takeovers and other interventions for more than two
decades, no state has ever successfully implemented the kind of large-scale
changes the NCLB demands.
It is
clear from our research that the NCLB has provided the states with very limited
resources to undertake such a massive responsibility and that their officials
are swamped with other NCLB mandates. We recommend:
1. A serious independent,
federally funded analysis of what it takes in administrative and financial
resources for states to have a reasonable chance of turning around
low-performing schools. This should include considering the role states
should play in this effort, the level of resources that are necessary given the
number of low-performing schools, the record in states with a history of such
interventions, the probability of failure, and the length of time needed for
schools to improve and sustain that improvement in those cases that have
succeeded.
2. Congressional oversight is
needed to determine if the deadlines and standards mandated by NCLB are helping
and, if not, to determine what models could provide the help low-performing
schools need to improve.
3.
If state intervention in schools is to
have any chance of succeeding, additional resources for school improvement are
needed. One way to meet this is to give state and local officials control
of the 20% set aside now targeted for supplemental educational services and
transfers, two interventions with little or no research documenting their
effectiveness and with obvious implementation problems. (We would, however,
support a different kind transfer option, rarely available now, that would give
students a real opportunity to transfer to high achieving schools across
district boundary lines.).
4.
Congress should request a study of the judgment of state and local
educators and researchers about an appropriate mix of
assessments, sanctions and rewards and an appropriate time frame that
would produce greater gains by schools with weak results.
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