School Accountability in California: An Early Evaluation

We assess the three main components of California’s recently adopted school accountability program. First, new content standards are highly specific and comprehensive. Second, the state has introduced a new norm-referenced statewide test, is phasing in criterion-referenced tests aligned with the content standards, and has introduced a high school exit exam which the graduation class of 2004 must pass. Third, California has implemented a complex series of rewards and punishments for school staff and students, including financial rewards to schools and teachers at schools that improve markedly, and scholarships to students who excel on the state test or Advanced Placement or equivalent tests. Notably, many of the financial incentives are aimed particularly at schools that initially rank poorly in student achievement. However, it is too soon to know how these incentives will affect both average student performance and inequality in student performance in California in the long run. We analyze recent trends in both the level and distribution of test scores and of school resources. We find that average student achievement in California has risen markedly over a three-year period. Schools that initially had the lowest test scores appear to have improved the most, although some of this could result from growing student and teacher familiarity with the state test. We find evidence that some of this improvement merely reflects volatility in test scores and “regression to the mean,” but alternative methods confirm that inequality in student achievement in California is falling. Trends in school resources are less reassuring. We find little evidence that the high school curriculum is being diluted by the new emphasis on preparing for tests. However, overall in California, teacher education, experience, and credentials have fallen over the three-year period since the accountability reforms began. More troubling, schools that originally scored in the bottom fifth in student achievement have experienced a far greater decline in teacher preparation than have schools originally in the top fifth of student achievement. We hypothesize that teachers’ concerns about the sanctions that await bottom-performing schools that fail to improve may have contributed to these adverse patterns in teacher mobility. Consequently, the state may have to redouble its efforts to improve teacher preparation and overall resources at schools with low achievement.