API Scores Are Only the First Step
When the Missouri Board of Education voted last month to revoke the Kansas City school district’s accreditation, it must have sent a chill down the spine of every educator. A court order that had infused money and resources--$2 billion over 15 years for a district of 30,000 students--resulted in no discernible effect on student performance.
Despite smaller classes, higher teacher pay, new buildings, magnet schools and enrichment programs, the district’s graduation rate was just 56.5%--20 points below the state’s average. Only 11% of 7th-graders were proficient readers. The consensus among educators is that Kansas City’s $8,956-per-pupil expenditure, which is higher than that of 47 states, had been wasted on a program that had built buildings but not standards, and had created resources but not accountability.
While other schools in Missouri saw scores rise under new state standards, Kansas City and St. Louis schools, exempt from standards under the court’s supervision, stagnated. Their failure is an object lesson in how to squander an opportunity.
Today the scores for California’s new Academic Performance Index will be released, and we will have a fair idea of just how far our schools still must go for a quality education for every child. The purpose of the API is to establish a benchmark to measure, not to punish. It matters less where a school ranks today. What really matters is whether students improve from one year to the next. We will reward any school that demonstrates at least a 5% improvement with cash awards of up to $150 per student.
With the release of this set of scores we will have taken the vital signs of each school and set a target against which a school’s future improvement will be measured. Critics charge that the API--and the SAT 9 exam upon which it is presently based--is an imperfect measure. That’s true but no reason to delay. In its first two years, the API will be based solely on scores from the SAT 9 exam, the best gauge of educational quality available to us in California and the only statewide measure we have. Over the next few years, other indicators will be added to the API, including scores from a test based solely on California’s rigorous new academic standards, and such measures as school attendance and graduation rates. We do not have the luxury of time to wait for a performance index with more than one indicator. The failures in Kansas City show the folly of pouring resources into schools without concurrent accountability.
California’s K-12 enrollment--the largest in the nation--grows by 60,000 students a year and is expected to reach 6 million by 2003. We owe it to those schoolchildren and their parents to begin fixing the schools now, using the best measures we have available.
Critics also have charged that our use of the API will cause teachers to “teach to the test,” that is, teach less of what is valuable to the students and instead concentrate on teaching material that will help students score high on the test. What the critics fail to see is that we are testing precisely those skills that are vital to the students’ future. The SAT 9 tests students on their grasp of essential skills: reading, writing, language arts, math and, in high school, science and the social sciences. These are the core elements of a quality education.
Meanwhile, nothing is more important to our school reform efforts and, by extension, our state’s future than our call to arms for teachers. To those who agree to teach in lower-performing schools, we’re offering forgivable college loans, graduate fellowships and down payments on new homes. This coupled with expanded curricula and financial rewards for teaching excellence will draw talented new recruits into the teaching profession.
Education will have the first claim on new revenues. But, practically, I understand the difficulty of paying public service salaries, like teaching, that are competitive with private sector salaries. So, I want to change young people’s perception about joining the teaching profession so that they see it as a great and noble cause. I hope many of them will stay on in teaching as a lifetime career. But I believe that if they commit even a part of their working lives to the classroom, they will have made a crucial contribution to education.
Through these initiatives we will show our determination to do everything within our means to recapture California’s rightful place at the head of the class.
