Mobilizing to Upgrade Education Accountability Systems

Allie Kimmel

For the past two years, the leadership on upgrading accountability systems to respond to the needs of over-age and under-credited students has been growing among practitioners – some from alternative schools that are deemed under-performing in rigid school accountability policies, some from online schools that are often expected to be performance-based but are increasingly used as a door for struggling students to re-connect with their education, and some from the charter school authorizers under pressure to monitor schools serving large populations of re-enrolling students.  In fact SIATech, RAPSA, and its partners are hosting the next Alternative Accountability Policy Forum this month in California.

We are now seeing federal policy being developed that can incentivize states to update their state accountability and information systems. Representative Polis’ Dropout Recovery bill includes redefining accountability for programs serving out-of-school youth (which includes over-age and under-credited students in school):

SEAs receiving grants under this section shall develop a fair, valid, and reliable accountability system for the purpose of measuring the effectiveness of any program serving students of whom at least 90 percent are out-of-school youth and shall include the following indicators:

(a)  Extended year graduation rates

(b)  Attendance rates

(c)   Individual student growth rates for assessment scores

(d)  Postsecondary enrollment rates

(e)   Career and technical education enrollment rates

(f)    Persistence and advancement rates

(g)  Course credit accumulation rates

This is a great example of local leadership identifying issues and helping to shape the solutions, and national leaders picking it up and taking it to the next level.

However, we have to be honest with ourselves that our infrastructure is weak at the state level, requiring local leaders to find each other in order to advance improved policies. Education advocacy organizations have never embraced dropout recovery and many of the major foundations funding education have failed to understand that, until we close the system, all the other high leverage strategies will have limited impact.

We’ve got a great opportunity here -- We can mobilize around this bill as a mechanism for informing state policymakers about what is needed to upgrade state education policy. 

Thanks to hanks to Andrew Moore, National League of Cities, Allie Kimmel, Representative Jared Polis legislative assistant, Kathy Hamilton, Boston PIC and Steve Dobo, Zero Dropouts for their leadership.