New York officials are gearing up to announce which schools are low-performing enough to need intervention from the state — the first time schools will be identified under a sweeping new accountability system.
Under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, signed in 2015 by President Barack Obama, states got more leeway to figure out which schools are underperforming and how to support those that don’t measure up and even have some say in what metrics should go into that determination.
Now, after years of planning and incorporating feedback from educators, parents, and policy experts, state officials are finally about to say which schools are considered struggling under the new framework. A school’s standing with the state can have big implications: It can steer parents toward some schools or away from others and can result in more stringent oversight by the state and escalating consequences for schools — theoretically including closure, although this threat has seldom materialized — if they don’t show eventual improvement.
The state’s new approach is designed to emphasize criteria beyond test scores and graduation rates, factors that were weighted heavily under No Child Left Behind, the 2002 law that previously governed school ratings nationwide. Although those measures will still predominate, New York is now free to elevate several other metrics to capture a more nuanced portrait of schools.
New jargon will replace labels that once defined levels of performance — such as “priority” or “focus” schools. (New York City at one point assigned letter grades to individual schools, but the state never embraced such report cards, which it will continue to avoid.)
As the state is set to release the new ratings, here’s what you should know about the new system, the new terminology for schools that measure up or don’t, and how it could affect schools in the city and across the state.
How will schools now qualify as struggling?
One of the biggest changes is a greater emphasis on student growth. Under the old framework, the state focused primarily on absolute thresholds on state exams — such as whether a student was proficient in reading by the fourth grade.
Schools will now receive separate ratings for growth and proficiency on a 1-4 scale; if their combined rating on those measures is still considered a “1” — an indication the school is among the bottom 10 percent statewide — the school can be designated as needing extra intervention. (In addition to reading and math, science exams will now be included in the overall proficiency rating.)
The emphasis on growth is designed to encourage schools to consider the needs of all students — not just those on the cusp of proficiency, whom some schools used to concentrate on under the old system in hopes of inching these students over the proficiency threshold.
Schools will also get more credit for making progress even if students remain below the proficiency cutoff for multiple years, a recognition that students who start off substantially behind aren’t realistically going to hit targets immediately but should show continued improvement.
Depending on how schools perform on those academic measures, other new metrics will also kick in, such as how much academic progress schools are producing among English learners and rates of chronic absenteeism, defined as the share of a school’s students who miss 10 percent or more of the academic year; in time, New York also intends to factor in student suspensions.
For high schools, getting students to graduate is still the major benchmark. But state officials are placing less emphasis on the four-year graduation rate and will be looking instead at whether 67 percent of students graduate between four and six years. This threshold is significantly below the current citywide average. Schools that still can’t clear this relatively low bar will automatically face state oversight, which has raised concerns among alternative schools that serve students who are unlikely to graduate on time (though individual schools may appeal).
The state will also look at how prepared students are for college or career once they graduate, including how many earn an advanced diploma, career certificates, or take accelerated coursework.
What are the consequences of not measuring up?
State officials say that the new framework is meant to move away from severe consequences to support.
“This is not about naming and shaming schools,” said Ira Shwartz, an associate commissioner at the state’s education department.
As a result, ESSA is is introducing all new terminology, without the punitive connotations of the past, for the four new broad bands of school performance. At the bottom, representing schools that will receive the most oversight from the state, are Comprehensive Support and Improvement Schools, followed by those needing Targeted Support and Improvement.
Schools in these bottom two tiers will be required to submit self-assessments that explain the ways their schools are falling short and craft a plan, including “evidence-based” approaches — such as “looping,” the practice of having the same teachers stay with a cohort of students for multiple years, state officials said — and additional teacher training. Schools in the bottom-most tier must also set aside at least $2,000, a fund that students and families can vote on how to use in a process known as “participatory budgeting.”
If these interventions don’t lead to progress, schools then have to submit more detailed information to the state and may receive help from outside organizations. After three years of insufficient progress, schools already in the bottom tier can end up in a separate, existing program known as Receivership. It gives districts more latitude to restructure schools by making staff changes that may involve sidestepping union rules, the only scenario under the state’s new framework that calls for potential personnel changes. And two years after that, schools that continue to miss their goals could face takeover or closure.
Schools in the “targeted” support category, or second-lowest rung, will face less direct oversight from the state and will be identified primarily on whether a specific subgroup of students — such as different racial groups, students with disabilities or English learners — are particularly low-performing. The idea is to coax schools to reduce the performance disparities that can exist between subsets of students. Local districts will primarily oversee the improvement plans of these schools (instead of the state). This year, only schools identified under the old accountability system are eligible for “targeted” support, state officials said, though schools across the state will be eligible next year.
Will any schools actually face severe consequences for not meeting New York’s ESSA goals?
Probably not.
Even under the old, more stringent system, officials were reluctant to pursue overhauls of specific schools. The state’s education department has steadily reduced the number of schools in the current Receivership program, for instance, and has moved to close just one school in New York City in recent years.
Without big consequences will schools have an incentive to work to improve?
Some of the plan’s supporters insist yes, saying ESSA will nudge schools to pay attention to a wider range of factors, such as chronic absenteeism and student growth, that can have an impact on student performance, increasing the chances they will be addressed.
Ian Rosenblum, the executive director of the advocacy organization Education Trust-NY, who has followed the development of the new accountability system closely, thinks schools will respond. “When the state says that it is going to hold schools accountable for student achievement plus other important outcomes like college and career readiness and reducing suspensions and chronic absenteeism, it sends a powerful and valuable message about where schools and districts should focus their energy,” he said.
But given the new system’s complexity and unfamiliarity — all the new jargon and strategies educators must grapple with after more than a dozen years of No Child Left Behind, which was also greeted with optimism — it’s not clear if school leaders have an appetite for this new matrix of assessments. Also unclear: how long it might realistically take before schools can pinpoint and execute interventions that can help move the needle.
Al Marlin, a spokesman for the New York State School Boards Association, said in an emailed statement that “while the process for making these determinations is complex, it may need to be so in order to account for the broad variety of local circumstances and student needs in schools around New York.”
State officials plan to create a dashboard that summarizes a school’s benchmarks so parents understand how their school stacks up, but it is not clear when that will be publicly released.
What about schools that decide to boycott state exams?
It’s possible that schools where more than 5 percent of students sit out state exams over multiple years will eventually have to come up with a plan to boost test participation. But officials said there are no other consequences for high opt-out rates, and they would likely have little impact in New York City, where relatively few students boycott the tests.