Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig Accountability, Community-Based Accountability, English Language Learners

Has community-based accountability been impactful for English Learners?

What is community-based accountability? In 2012, I first conceptualized community-based accountability in the post Accountability: Are you ready for a new idea? Over the past several years, California has undertaken this new approach for its more than 4 million students (See all posts on community-based accountability).

Local control has been a bedrock principle of public schooling in America since inception. In 2013, the California Legislature codified a new local accountability approach for school finance. An important component of the new California Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) approach is a focus on English learners (ELs). The law mandates that every school district produce a Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) to engage the local community in defining outcomes and determining funding for ELs.

This week Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA) just published a special issue, Education Finance and English Language Learners: Examining Challenges and Opportunities to Improve Education Policy and Practice, guest edited by Oscar Jiménez-Castellanos. EPAA/AAPE is a peer-reviewed, open-access, international, multilingual, and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and development analysts concerned with education policies.

In this issue I published a new study seeking understand the impact of the new local accountability approach on English Learners with Lisa Romero (California State Sacramento) and Megan Hopkins (University of California San Diego). Based on an exploratory analysis of a representative sample of LCAPs, we show that, although California’s new approach offered an opportunity to support locally-defined priorities and alternatives to top-down accountability, few if any districts had yet took full advantage of the opportunity. That is, the school districts in our sample had not yet engaged with the local community to facilitate significant changes to accountability or redistribution of funding and resources to support educational equity for ELs.

You can read our entire article online here: Vasquez Heilig, J., Romero, L. & Hopkins, M. (2017). Coign of vantage and action: Considering California’ local accountability and school finance plans for English learners, Education Policy Analysis Archives, 25(15), 1-24.*

Please also check out the other articles in the EPAA issue Education Finance and English Language Learners: Examining Challenges and Opportunities to Improve Education Policy and Practice below…

English Language Learner education finance scholarship: An introduction to the special issue Oscar Jiménez-Castellanos

Equity and efficiency of Minnesota educational expenditures with a focus on English learners, 2003-2011: A retrospective look in a time of accountability Nicola A. Alexander, Sung Tae Jang

The politics of schools and money: Building awareness about channeling practices for supplemental resource allocations to serve English language learners Irina Okhremtchouk

State and institutional policies on in-state resident tuition and financial aid for undocumented students: Examining constraints and opportunities Gabriel R. Serna, Joshua M. Cohen, David H. K. Nguyen

Check out and follow my YouTube channel here.

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

Want to know about Cloaking Inequity’s freshly pressed conversations about educational policy? Click the “Follow blog by email” button on the home page.

Twitter: @ProfessorJVH

Click here for Vitae.

Thank you for reading Cloaking Inequity.

 

 

 

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig School Discipline

School Discipline: Equity at Issue

Extensive peer-reviewed research has demonstrated that students with frequent suspensions are more likely to become involved in gangs, drop out of school and become part of the juvenile justice system.

Years of suspicions about inequity in school discipline have also been investigated by a spate of reports. One by the UCLA Civil Rights project in 2011 revealed that in 2006, 28 percent of African American male middle school students were suspended at least once, while the  rate was just 10 percent for white males.

Following that, another review by  UCLA researchers in 2012 pegged suspension rates for African American students at 17.7 percent—more than twice California’s overall rate at 7.5 percent. And African Americans were three times more likely to be suspended than whites.

Probably some of the most shocking statistics I have seen were in the report “Breaking School Rules” which found 83% of African American males and 74% of Latino males in Texas were suspended at least once in grades 7-12.

UCLA Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civvies  researchers have argued that excluding students from school while being disciplined causes them to miss important instructional time, and may result in a “greater risk of disengagement and diminished educational opportunities.”

There is data to support that claim: students disciplined more than 10 times have only a 40 percent chance of graduating from high school, according to Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a national organization of law enforcement leaders, attorneys and survivors of violence. The organization also reports that dropouts are eight times more likely to end up behind bars.

Recently some school districts in California have changed their student discipline policies to emphasize use of alternative practices like restorative justice , counseling, drug treatment and other social services within the school setting.  For further background, see this review of the suspension/expulsion issue from the California School Boards Association. Has it worked?

The most recent study from The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles entitled Closing the School Discipline Gap in California: Signs of Progress finds that,

The number of suspensions declined from 709,580 total suspensions in 2011-12 to 503,101 in 2013-14. The rate of suspensions in California’s public schools declined over these three years from 11.4 per 100 students enrolled in 2011-12 to 8.1 per 100 students enrolled in 2013-14. This rate reduction represents 206,479 fewer suspensions, which means that far fewer students will incur the added risk for dropping out and juvenile justice involvement associated with suspension from school.

Dan Losen characterized the findings in a personal communication.

We say “signs of progress” because in the national context there really are important steps being taken in California. However, the report does highlight that huge and disturbing inequities persist.
The new ESSA bill allows for new dashboards for school success in a variety of new areas. Losen relayed,
In light of ESSA’s passage it’s important to encourage other states to include school climate and discipline as the other indicator as LCAP does to some degree.

For more on California’s existing Local Accountability (LCFF and LCAPs) approach click here.

Finally, to discuss the issue and discipline options with less punitive effects on students, former Assembly Member Roger Dickinson – who in 2014 carried legislation to eliminate “willful defiance” as a reason for expelling students – will be at Sacramento State at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 19. He will be joined by a local school board member and superintendent, who will comment on the policy and practical impacts of Assembly Bill 420, which goes into effect July 1, 2018.

See all of Cloaking Inequity posts on school discipline here.

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others. Want to know about Cloaking Inequity’s freshly pressed conversations about educational policy?

Click the “Follow blog by email” button on the home page.

Twitter: @ProfessorJVH

Click here for Vitae.

 

Special thanks to Kristi Garrett for contributing to this post.

image003

 

 

 

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig Community-Based Accountability, High-Stakes Testing, Teacher Quality

Community-Based Reform and Accountability Measures for States and Communities

The impending death of No Child Left Behind has the potential to create more space for community-based reform. As federal standardized tests have fallen out of favor, many states have explored alternative community-based measures to improve the success of schools, districts and students. For the past decade, the predominant NCLB-inspired educational policy discourse has focused on top-down policies. This webinar focused on introducing a set of community-based approaches for education reform.

Screen Shot 2015-12-04 at 7.45.04 PMDuring a recent Council of State Governments West eCademy webcast (available below), presenters reviewed alternative measures for school accountability, community schools, teacher quality assessment and student achievement assessment. A national cadre of experts discussed steps legislators and communities can take, from a policy standpoint, to encourage and support local assessment and accountability measures.

The facilitators of the discussion were:

Idaho Representative Wendy Horman, Chair, CSG West Education and Workforce Development Committee (welcome remarks and webinar background information)

New Mexico Senator William Soules, Vice Chair, CSG West Education and Workforce Development Committee (presentation of panelists)

Panelists:

Julian Vasquez Heilig, Ph.D., Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (School accountability)

Monty Neill, Ed.D., Executive Director, National Center for Fair & Open Testing (Fair Test) (Student assessments)

Cheryl Dultz, Teacher San Juan School District (Teacher evaluations – PAR)

Ken Zarifis, President, Education Austin (Community schools)

For more on community-based student assessment see EdWeek Series Beyond Rhetoric: If Not a Bunch of Tests… Then What Instead?

For more on Travis Heights and community-based charters see How to Create a Community-Based In-District Charter and Photo Essay: This Charter School is Lovely

For all posts on Community-Based (local) Accountability click here. Also read Accountability: Are you ready for a new idea? This was the first post where I publicly introduced the idea of bottom-up Local Accountability multiple-measure (dashboard) plans.

For more on evaluating teacher quality via Peer Assistance and Review check out Can we Evaluate #Teachers Without Using High-Stakes #Testing?

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

Want to know about Cloaking Inequity’s freshly pressed conversations about educational policy? Click the “Follow blog by email” button on the home page.

Twitter: @ProfessorJVH

Click here for Vitae.

 

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig Accountability, Community-Based Accountability

Local Accountability: Community Input in Education Funding

Will a community-based approach to accountability and school funding work? This piece will contain a lot of acronyms and include some of my insights on the implementation of Local Accountability.

I’m a classroom teacher in Sacramento City Unified School District, and large urban local in California (43,000 students, 38% are English Learners, and over 60% are low-income). I am also active in my union local, Sacramento City Teachers Association, and I was elected as a representative to the State Council of the California Teachers Association (CTA). The opinions in this piece are only my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of either my school district, my local, CTA or NEA. I also blog at Reflections on Teaching.

california flagThis discussion centers around the new funding formula being used to allocate how California gives money to local school districts. For a host of reasons (lawsuits requiring funding-equity, Proposition 13 affecting local property taxes as a funding base for education, etc.) school monies in California for most districts come from the state. Traditionally, that has been in the form of base funding, and what are called categoricals, or specific funds for specific purposes, like English Language Acquisition funds, Foster Youth Programs, Migrant Programs, etc. Governor Brown has come up with a new formula that will allocate extra money, but allow local districts to come up with plans for how it will be spent. This is called Local Control Funding Formula or LCFF. The plans that districts have to write are called Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs).

The commentary from a previous guest blogger here on Cloaking Inequity and their discussion about Local Accountability pretty much agrees with what I’ve seen. Implementation of LCFF in the first year is all over the map throughout the state. Dictatorial and controlling districts are writing LCAPs that do not have any meaningful stakeholder input. Other districts are involving teachers representatives in a variety of areas of discussion like curriculum and instruction. Some districts have already had contract provisions for this, and for site-based decision making. Some districts have had well functioning school site councils (which included teacher, community and parent representatives) that are able to contribute to this process. Others sadly, still have SSCs that are a rubber-stamp for the site administrator or the district. Many districts are just confused.

Two things will likely need to be “tightened” in how LCAPs are created. First, the implementing language says districts must “consult” with stakeholders (teachers, parents, community). That word, consult, has lost any meaning at this point. For example, a district will hold a town hall on a issue, present their side, and take some questions. They will then proceed with their original proposal, without any changes or input from this meeting, and claim they “consulted” the public.

Michelle_RheeThis happened in DC with Rhee, and in districts run by Broad Superintendent (it’s in their rule book) and gone on to be a widespread practice. Consult has come to mean, “We’ll tell you what we’re doing, listen to you whine about it, then do it anyway.” This was a concern that I heard more than once at CTA State Council in March of this year.

They will either need to define “consult” better, or add other language like “based on a consensus of opinion from stakeholders” (this  language suggested by one State Council member). The state and CTA are saying we need to give the process time and look at it after the first year and that’s fair enough. But, I don’t think these problems will resolve themselves without districts being forced to change how they do business.

The next part that needs fixing is the structures for input at districts (SSC, District Advisory Committees, etc.) need to be strengthened. In my opinion, this will require more advice, direction and oversight from the state (something they have scaled back on with the horrific cuts to education that occurred during the recession). They will definitely need to beef up their oversight, BUT rules alone will not make this so. There will need to be an effort on the part of community groups and teachers unions to organize and demand that these committees be democratically created, democratically run, and listened to. If we want democracy, we’re going to have to demand it.

Sacramento_CapitolA previous article on Local Accountability alluded to “problems” with the LCAP in my district in Sacramento. Recent agreements with the district leave me more hopeful that future versions of our LCAP will be driven by teacher and community input. These changes came about because of a grass-roots effort between the community and unions.

I’m in one part of this, the teachers union. I can say that these efforts dovetail nicely with the approved strategic plan adopted by CTA. It calls on locals to do outreach and engagement not just to members, but to the greater community. I think this is the right direction, and will be the only way to make LCFF/LCAPs work. If this new system just turns into a way to funnel money to inside players, and students are not getting the services they need this will fail and we’ll be back in the land of categorical funding with the state telling local districts how they can and can’t spend money.

Alice Mercer, Teacher

See all of Cloaking Inequity’s posts on Community-Based Accountability here.

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

Want to know about Cloaking Inequity’s freshly pressed conversations about educational policy? Click the “Follow blog by email” button in the upper left hand corner of this page.

Twitter: @AliceMercer

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig Accountability, Community-Based Accountability

Devil is in the Details: Teacher Tells Us What’s Up With Local Accountability

The current form of Texas-style No Child Left Behind high-stakes testing and accountability has run its course. It is very clear that after 20 years in Texas and 10 years across the nation, the sanctions and rewards (the rewards disappeared a long time ago) system never produced an education miracle in Texas (as posited by President Bush and Secretary Paige) and did not result in all students across the US being proficient by 2014.

In 2012, I first proposed a new bottom-up form of accountability in the post Accountability: Are you ready for a new idea? I have written extensively about this new form of locally-controlled accountability that I have called Community-Based Accountability here. Or see the post A Refresher: What is Community-Based Accountability?

Here are Community-Based Accountability Executive Summary and Key Features. Please forward and circulate widely.

As discussed previously here on Cloaking Inequity, California has implemented Community-Based Accountability as a new reform for school finance and called it Local Accountability (See Bear in the Details: Codifying Community-Based Accountability’s Process). Over the past several weeks, folks from the education sector in California have reflected on the implementation of Local Accountability in California in the posts Local Accountability and Astroturf: Local Control without the Local Control and D.C. are you listening?: A New Local, Community-Based Approach for Accountability. Today Alice Mercer, a classroom teacher in Sacramento, reflects on the implementation of Local Accountability.

This piece will contain a lot of acronyms and include some of my insights (for what they are worth), so I’m going to start by introducing myself, and explaining a few of the basics here. My name is Alice Mercer, and I’m a classroom teacher in Sacramento City Unified School District, and large urban local in California (43,000 students, 38% are English Learners, and over 60% are low-income). I am also active in my union local, Sacramento City Teachers Association, and I was elected as a representative to the State Council of the California Teachers Association (CTA). The opinions in the article are only my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of either my school district, my local, CTA or NEA. I blog at Reflections on Teaching.

This discussion centers around the new funding formula being used to allocate how California gives money to local school districts. For a host of reasons (lawsuits requiring funding-equity, Proposition 13 affecting local property taxes as a funding base for education, etc.) school monies in California for most districts come from the state. Traditionally, that has been in the form of base funding, and what are called categoricals, or specific funds for specific purposes, like English Language Acquisition funds, Foster Youth Programs, Migrant Programs, etc. Governor Brown has come up with a new formula that will allocate extra money, but allow local districts to come up with plans for how it will be spent. This is called Local Control Funding Formula or LCFF. The plans that districts have to write are called Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs).

The commentary from the earlier guest blogger pretty much agrees with what I’ve seen. Implementation of LCFF in the first year is all over the map throughout the state. Dictatorial and controlling districts are writing LCAPs that do not have any meaningful stakeholder input. Other districts are involving teachers representatives in a variety of areas of discussion like curriculum and instruction. Some districts have already had contract provisions for this, and for site-based decision making. Some districts have had well functioning school site councils (which included teacher, community and parent representatives) that are able to contribute to this process. Others sadly, still have SSCs that are a rubber-stamp for the site administrator or the district. Many districts are just confused.

Two things will likely need to be “tightened” in how LCAPs are created. First, the implementing language says districts must “consult” with stakeholders (teachers, parents, community). That word, consult, has lost any meaning at this point. For example, a district will hold a town hall on a issue, present their side, and take some questions. They will then proceed with their original proposal, without any changes or input from this meeting, and claim they “consulted” the public.

This happened in DC with Rhee, and in districts run by Broad Superintendent (it’s in their rule book) and spread out to be a widespread practice. Consult has come to mean, “We’ll tell you what we’re doing, listen to you whine about it, then do it anyway.” This was something I heard more than once at CTA State Council.

They will either need to define “consult” better, or add other language like “based on a consensus of opinion from stakeholders” (this  language suggested by one State Council member). The state and CTA are saying we need to give the process time and look at it after the first year and that’s fair enough. But, I don’t think these problems will resolve themselves without districts being forced to change how they do business.

The next part that needs fixing is the structures for input at districts (SSC, District Advisory Committees, etc.) need to be strengthened. In my opinion, this will require more advice, direction and oversight from the state (something they have scaled back on with the horrific cuts to education that occurred during the recession). They will definitely need to beef up their oversight, BUT rules alone will not make this so. There will need to be an effort on the part of community groups and teachers unions to organize and demand that these committees be democratically created, democratically run, and listened to. If we want democracy, we’re going to have to demand it.

The previous article alluded to “problems” with the LCAP in my district in Sacramento. Recent agreements with the district leave me more hopeful that future versions of our LCAP will be driven by teacher and community input. These changes came about because of a grass-roots effort between the community and unions.

I’m in one part of this, the teachers union. I can say that these efforts dovetail nicely with the newly approved strategic plan adopted by CTA. It calls on locals to do outreach and engagement not just to members, but to the greater community. I think this is the right direction, and will be the only way to make LCFF/LCAPs work. If this new system just turns into a way to funnel money to inside players, and students are not getting the services they need this will fail and we’ll be back in the land of categorical funding with the state telling local districts how they can and can’t spend money.

p.s. Check out the 12 minute “TED-style” talk about Community-Based Accountability on PBS in the post New Community-Based Approach to Accountability Featured on PBS-TV EdTalk

Also see Weingarten and Darling-Hammond Call for a New Accountability

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

Want to know about Cloaking Inequity’s freshly pressed conversations about educational policy? Click the “Follow blog by email” button in the upper left hand corner of this page.

Twitter: @ProfessorJVH

Click here for Vitae.

Please blame Siri for any typos