Harvard Civil Rights Project Examines NCLB District Accountability

A recent study from the Harvard Civil Rights Project entitled “Changing NCLB District Accountability Standards: Implications for Racial Equity” reveals the tendency of NCLB district accountability to aggravate the difficulties faced by large, often urban districts with high-minority, low-income populations. The study analyzes the record of district sanctioning in six states: Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, Illinois, New York, and California, in order to identify trends amongst districts being identified as “In Need of Improvement” (INI) under the federal law. The researchers further identify elements of the law that may create the observed patterns of district success, and finally make recommendations for adjustments that might help improve the rigor and value of NCLB's district accountability provisions.

District Demographics

In comparing the districts identified as INI with those that made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in each of the six states under review, the researchers made several conclusive observations. Under NCLB, each state is responsible for defining its own proficiency standards and schedule for improving achievement. As such, each state required its districts to meet very different standards. Nonetheless, several consistencies emerged amongst INI districts. In almost every state examined, INI districts were substantially larger than those districts that had made AYP. Five of the six states studied reported higher percentages of minority and low-income students in their INI districts, and four out of six reported higher percentages of limited-English proficient (LEP) students.

To explain these consistencies, researchers probed NCLB's district accountability measures and their implementation. They first looked at AYP subgroup rules, which, though arguably the most essential piece of the Act, are a primary source of the racial and socioeconomic variations in district success in meeting AYP targets. Under NCLB, districts with a critical mass of students from a particular racial or socioeconomic group must meet achievement standards for that subgroup, in addition to their responsibility for meeting overall achievement targets. This means that large, diverse districts with more subgroups have more requirements to fulfill and more ways to miss AYP. This tendency is borne out by the statistics, as INI districts in Illinois, for example, were two to four times more likely to report Black, Latino, low-income, and students with disabilities subgroups than those making AYP, and seven times more likely to report an ELL subgroup. This disadvantage is exacerbated by the requirement that each subgroup meet achievement standards in both math and English in addition to a 95% participation requirement for each subject.

AYP Indicators

Another element of NCLB district accountability that has a disparate impact on large and diverse districts is the reliance on “mean proficiency” as a single indicator of academic success. Districts have the same complaints about this system as schools do, arguing that this singular focus ignores progress made by schools and districts that are seriously disadvantaged by their very low initial achievement scores. This is one of the primary criticisms of NCLB's school-level accountability provisions, and will likely be one of the most heavily debated when the bill comes up for reauthorization in 2007.

In order to handle the already strong protestations of the states over the strict and often inaccurate nature of the mean proficiency indicator, the federal Education Department (ED) has granted numerous states exemptions to the specific district accountability provisions by allowing them to use the “grade span” method of determining AYP. Under this method,

grade level test scores are aggregated within a grade span (i.e. test scores for grades 3-5 are aggregated, etc.). A district is identified for improvement only if it fails to make adequate progress in the same content area for all grade spans…[and] states using the grade span method only have to identify districts for improvement if they fail to meet the proficiency or participation targets in the same subject for two years.

Researchers investigated use of the grade span method in California, Georgia, and New York, where they found that the method worsened the pre-existing disparity between small, homogenous districts and larger districts with numerous subgroups. The grade span method is a reasonably arbitrary way of reducing the number of INI districts in a given state, and as such it is increasing the disadvantages faced by these districts without serving any discernible academic purpose.

The researchers also note that most state education departments lack the capacity to assist these INI districts in improving their achievement to the degree and at the pace necessary to avoid more serious sanctions.

Recommendations

Based on their analysis of the impact that NLCB's district accountability provisions have on districts of varying size and nature, the study's authors made four recommendations: 1) hold districts accountable only for progress they can reasonably be expected to make, rather than arbitrary achievement markers that they are unable to reach; 2) use multiple academic measures to determine AYP; 3) allow districts more time to implement reform strategies before imposing more stringent sanctions; and 4) limit the identification of those students who qualify for multiple subgroups to one subgroup only. Often, students are members of more than one subgroup, so their test scores are counted more than once. While it is important for every student to be counted, this over-identification unfairly skews AYP results, to the disadvantage of more diverse schools. The researchers write,

If we are to preserve the worthy goals of NCLB and its potential to achieve educational equity, we must reform the AYP system in a way that makes accountability decisions fair and meaningful and increases the capacity of states to intervene effectively in districts that are truly struggling.

As the date for NCLB's reauthorization moves closer, careful studies of the law's provisions and pointed recommendations for its future, such as those undertaken here, will become increasingly central to the debate over the law, which has rapidly become a highly contentious issue amongst educators, parents, politicians, and students.

Prepared by Nelly Ward, July 1, 2005