TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2009
(copyright 2009 Texas AFT)

Texas AFT Urges Full Rewrite of Proposed Federal Rules on School Improvement Grants

Yesterday U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan identified criteria for the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the principal federal law governing federal aid to public schools. In a meeting with education stakeholders, he said:

"In my view, we should be tight on the goals--with clear standards set by states that truly prepare young people for college and careers--but we should be loose on the means for meeting those goals. We must be flexible and accommodating as states and districts--working with parents, non-profits and other external partners--develop educational solutions. We should be open to new ideas, encourage innovation, and build on what we know works. We don't believe that local educators need a prescription for success. But they do need a common definition of success--focused on student achievement, high school graduation and success and attainment in college. We need to agree on what's important and how to measure it or we will continue to have the same old adult arguments--while ignoring children."

If Secretary Duncan really means what he said yesterday, then before he turns to the reauthorization of ESEA (also known as the No Child Left Behind Act) he will have to rewrite the Department's currently proposed rules for the allocation of federal School Improvement Grants. In Duncan's parlance, the draft rules are inappropriately "tight" on the means for meeting worthy educational goals. They are highly prescriptive, foreclosing important options and innovations. They are not based "on what we know works."

The "Overview of the Secretary's Proposal" that prefaces the proposed rules asserts that these rules aim to support "only the most rigorous interventions that hold the promise of producing rapid improvements in student achievement and school culture."  But the draft rules to a great extent appear to be based on policy predilections and fads for which a sufficient foundation in educational research is lacking--such as the use of students' standardized test scores to measure teacher effectiveness and a presumption in favor of charter schools as a reform model--and for which, we submit, a solid grounding in congressional intent is lacking as well.

Texas AFT President Linda Bridges backed up these comments in a letter to Secretary Duncan today with specific examples from Texas experience relating to these dubious policy ideas. She joined our national affiliate, the American Federation of Teachers, in pinpointing multiple defects in the proposed rules that will undercut the Secretary's aim of making "rapid improvements in student achievement and school culture" on struggling campuses.

Here's a good example: The proposed rules would require a "turnaround" campus to replace the principal and 50 percent of the staff in order to qualify for a federal School Improvement Grant. Yet the experience in Texas with similar arbitrary requirements for "reconstitution" or "repurposing" of campuses that repeatedly fall short of state achievement-test targets has shown that such requirements actually can interrupt progress already under way and drive away effective educators. That's why the Texas legislature this year felt compelled to restore some flexibility to state law on reconstitution and repurposing, allowing principals and teachers to be retained if in fact they are performing well. The proposed federal rules for School Improvement Grants now threaten to force state policy back toward counterproductive rigidity.

Another example:  Laced throughout the proposed rules we see unwarranted reliance on state standardized test scores in reading and math as the be-all, end-all measure of student learning. For example, we see it in the identification of low-achieving schools and in the evaluation of teachers' effectiveness for purposes of a so-called "transformational" intervention model. This narrow definition of relevant student learning perpetuates one of the widely recognized deficiencies of the No Child Left Behind Act at the very moment when such deficiencies should instead receive thorough congressional scrutiny in the reauthorization of ESEA.

As Texas AFT President Bridges wrote today to Secretary Duncan, on this point "the Texas experience again is instructive. Just this year the Texas legislature abandoned the much-ballyhooed provision of state law that formerly made grade-level retention the default option for third-graders who did not attain a passing score on the third-grade state achievement test in reading. Experience with this provision has taught state policy-makers that the assessment of student learning in this instance needs to encompass more than just one snapshot score on the standardized reading exam. From now on, such promotion decisions are to be based on consideration of multiple measures of student achievement, with the student's grades and teacher's professional judgment among the additional factors to be considered."

Bridges added:  "With regard to teacher evaluation in the context of our Texas equivalent of a 'transformational' intervention, state policy also has begun to recognize that rigidity and rigor are not the same thing. Thus, the state commissioner of education overturned a local school district's decision to terminate the employment of a teacher assigned to a campus undergoing reconstitution, in a case where the district defined teacher effectiveness largely in terms of standardized test scores and attributed those scores to the individual teacher. The commissioner concluded that the district lacked good cause to terminate the teacher's employment, because it arbitrarily discounted evidence that other factors in the school environment--poor student discipline, misguided instructional strategy dictated from above, and more--were the root causes of students' lack of achievement.

"As this example illustrates, a truly meaningful examination of effectiveness in promoting student achievement demands more than simplistic reliance on the metric of snapshot state achievement tests, without relevant context, and attribution of test scores to individual teachers. Federal administrative requirements for School Improvement Grants should not become levers for shifting state policy in the direction of administratively convenient but inaccurate gauges of school or teacher effectiveness."