An era of educational accountability

North Idaho public schools ought to be assessed, partially, on the literacy rates of its elementary school students, according to many community members who expressed their concerns to the Idaho State Board of Education Tuesday evening.

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act requires every state to implement an accountability system for schools by the 2017-18 school year. The new system will include ways to measure academic and school quality, including test scores, graduation rates and other measurements Idaho decides are important.

The end result will be a dashboard where legislators, school officials and community members can see how different schools perform in the measured areas.

Tuesday, Blake Youde and Tracie Bent from the State Board of Education came to Coeur d’Alene to hear public comment and suggestions on what the new system should look like.

“It’s important to lay out all the indicators as well as descriptions of each school so people can know where the school is and what populations of Idaho it serves,” said Youde, chief communications and legislative affairs officer for the SBE. “It comes down to the circumstances of a school to get an accurate picture of that school.”

The current framework for the system, which may change based on public comment, suggests kindergarten through eighth-grade schools measure student “next level readiness.” This includes measuring the number of elementary students who are ready to advance to middle school and the number of middle school students ready to shift to high school.

How to measure the “readiness” has yet to be determined.

Some people used the brainstorm meeting to talk about their concerns with Idaho’s education system in general, but some constructive suggestions were made. Many community members brought up the issue of third-grade literacy being very important, and perhaps using that as an assessment of how schools are serving their students.

Community member Norm Gissel, who has been very active helping students in the Coeur d’Alene School District improve their reading levels, suggested the accountability system should set goals for districts as well.

“The state has been looking at reading progress and programs. We look at statewide assessments for reading, but is there a goal level?” he said. “The issue is we need to have goals. We need goals in order to insist on academic excellence.”

Another idea proposed was measuring parent engagement. Many people expressed interest in this, noting how important parent involvement is to a student’s education.

Youde and Bent spent some time explaining how the SBE envisions the new system. They said it is not meant to grade schools and districts or give them ratings, however, the state is required to identify schools that perform in the bottom 5 percent of state schools and the schools in the top 20 percent.

“Somehow we have to do that without assigning grades,” Youde said.

Youde also specified how the new system would break schools into three levels: kindergarten through eighth-grade schools, high schools and alternative high schools.

The framework currently suggests measuring not only four-year graduation rates at alternative high schools, but five-year graduation rates as well. The SBE also wants to measure how alternative high schools help their students recover credits.

“We want to make sure the measurements are meaningful, while not increasing work for districts,” Bent said. At the end of the night she added, “all feedback is good feedback. Obviously reading literacy is important so we have to figure out if we can fold that into the accountability system.”

Kay Rice, who has taught in public schools in Washington, California and abroad, said she felt like the meeting was productive but there was still a lot to discuss.

“I think our concerns were heard,” she said. “However, the real issues still need to be addressed by the State Board of Education.”