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As members of Colorado's state Board of Education take on new responsibilities for overseeing school accreditation, they should put the report Quality Counts '99 on their must-read list.
It's the third in an annual series published by the newspaper Education Week, and the theme this year is ''accountability.'' The summary of what the 50 states are doing as they ride madly off in all directions is rich with cautionary tales.
Former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker of Arkansas, for example, led the campaign to establish an examination students had to pass to graduate from high school. The first time it was given, in 1996, 80 percent of high school juniors failed the math part and 51 percent the reading/writing part. This came as quite a shock to the parents of Arkansas students.
Tucker ''didn't lay an adequate base of preparation or get the public support,'' said a state legislator. ''When I saw the results I knew (the exit exam) was dead meat.''
The exam, and Tucker, are both gone.
Quality Counts has adopted a six-part framework for school accountability: statewide tests; ''report cards'' describing schools; a rating system for schools; rewards for success; assistance for struggling schools; sanctions for failing schools. Colorado has the tests, as does every other state except Iowa and Nebraska. Work on the other parts is just beginning, as a result of the school accreditation act passed last year.
(Web browsers can find Quality Counts on the newspaper's Web site, www.edweek.org; the text of the accreditation act, which was House bill 1267, can be located through the General Assembly's site or in the revised statutes, www.intellinetuse.com/statmgr.htm, where it's Article 11 of Title 22.)
The law tells the state board of education to establish an accreditation system for districts based on such indicators as results on statewide assessments and other tests, attendance, dropout and graduation rates and enrollment in Advanced Placement courses. And it requires each school board to negotiate a contract with the state board setting out what the district has to do to earn accreditation.
But the law doesn't specify acceptable levels on these indicators, nor say how the state board should determine accreditation categories. So the law could end up a pussycat or a tiger, depending on the board's choices.
States face tough choices in how high to set the bar, Quality Counts reports. Do they give schools with a large proportion of hard-to-educate kids credit for a tough job? Indiana organizes schools into ''leagues,'' roughly matched by size, socioeconomic status, and children's scores on statewide tests. Tennessee has a ''value-added assessment'' to separate the effects of schooling from other factors. Or is that just a surrender to permanent inequality for disadvantaged students? Texas tackles disparities head-on; to be recognized as exemplary, a school has to demonstrate excellence in all its separate ethnic populations.
Trying to make everything fair often just makes everything complicated, which can erode confidence in the results.
''My first rule is if you can't explain it to a policymaker or a parent or a teacher in five minutes without their eyes glazing over, it's no good,'' said Edward Roeber, former director of student-assessment programs for the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington, D.C.
Colorado certainly intends its accreditation program to have teeth. It can put a district on probation for failing to fulfill its accreditation contract, and if the deficiencies aren't remedied, eventually deny accreditation to the district. But whether that will ever happen, or whether anyone will care if it does, is an open question.
It's also a very political one. Refuse to accredit Denver schools? If there are real penalties, that could be difficult. Rather than pick a fight, officials might opt for a protracted, and largely invisible, minuet over how many tiny steps toward improvement are improvement enough to stave off sanctions for another year.
Accountability is a worthwhile goal, but it's a long way off. ''States have completed only the first few miles of a marathon,'' Quality Counts says. Call QC99 a training guide.