Educators want concrete data to build new API indicators
In the search for a more perfect school accountably system, classroom teachers and district administrators joined school advocates in a call last week for more concrete indicators – like daily attendance, fitness marks and discipline records.
The hearing in Sacramento is one of six that will be held statewide to get input from the field on legislative requirements to include ‘college and career readiness’ components as part of the current high school accountability system.
A commission appointed by the California State Board of Education has grappled with the question since November – but the clear message sent last week suggests that educators are uninterested in pursuing more unstructured measurements and instead want to concentrate on data that is already tracked and recorded with the state.
“Currently there are four data streams already being collected so they could easily be integrated into the scoring system and those are chronic absence, fitness results, graduation rates and suspension/expulsion rates,” said Stacie Cruz, representing the California Center for Civic Participation, a non-profit that works to empower high school students to participate in decision making processes at all levels.
“If chronic absence is indicated on the API scores, that will strongly encourage schools to focus on providing
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