Two years later, answers still elude API update panel
(Calif.) The state’s Academic Performance Index should retain its simplicity as a tool for public comparison of schools, the state’s liaison to an advisory committee working to restructure the accountability system urged Tuesday.
But the Public Schools Accountability Act Advisory Committee still had more questions than answers after a day-long hearing exploring the next steps. Perhaps the biggest question is how to retain the system’s existing symmetry while adding other indicators that will fulfill legislative ambitions to have the API reflect far more than just student test scores and instead communicate college or career readiness or both.
“One thing API was designed to do was to provide a single measuring stick by which basically all schools would be measured,” said Keric Ashley, who oversees the California Department of Education’s Analysis, Measurement & Accountability Reporting Division.
Ashley and his staff have guided the work of the PSAA panel, convened to make a recommendation for changes to the API to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and, in turn, the California State Board of Education.
The changes being contemplated are required by state law approved two years ago and call for reducing the influence of test scores – which today account for 100 percent of the API – to 60 percent. The remaining 40 percent of the formula must be calculated using graduation rates and other indicators that show how well-prepared high school completers are to enter college or the workforce.
Further complicating the committee’s work is the knowledge that top education officials are also seeking to diminish the API’s status as the predominant indicator of how well students are learning by rolling it into comprehensive Local Control Accountability Plans, which districts must complete under the state’s new school funding system.
For more than two years now, the advisory committee has met almost monthly to identify Two years later, answers still elude API update panel :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:
Bond scofflaws get extension for filing disclosure fix
(N.Y.) Smaller bond issuers – which include many of the nation’s school districts – have been granted more time to consider participation in a streamlined settlement initiative for violators of disclosure rules.
