Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

New Accreditation Standards Cover Up Failure

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by

James A. Bacon
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Source: Cranky’s Blog. Click for more legible image.

John Butcher offers a more severe assessment of the Virginia Department of Education’s new accreditation policy than I do. Last year, 19 of 44 Richmond schools were denied accreditation, he notes. This year, all Richmond schools (indeed all Virginia schools) are accredited — even though assessment scores deteriorated last year. Here’s what he has to say on Cranky’s Blog:

How did the Board of “Education” produce these bizarre results?

It all goes back to Petersburg, which has been operating under Memoranda of Understanding since 2004 and which was denied accreditation for 2006. And has been denied accreditation ever since.

The Board has demonstrated beyond doubt that it does not know how to fix Petersburg (and admitted as much…). Faced now with the ongoing Petersburg debacle and with accreditation disasters in Richmond and elsewhere, the Board punted: They adopted a new, emasculated accreditation regulation.

I commented on that regulation at the proposal stage, pointing out, inter alia, that the changes “make it almost impossible for a school to be denied accreditation.”

To read the entire regulation is to earn a PhD in masochism. … Blessedly, the important parts are short:

  • If a school does not meet a standard and does not come close to meeting it (the regulation dilutes the 75%/70% benchmarks to 66%) for four consecutive years, it falls to performance Level Three.
  • A school at Level Three must develop a “corrective action plan.”
  • If a school (or division) fails to adopt and implement a corrective action plan “with fidelity,” it can be denied accreditation.

In short, in order to lose accreditation, a school must foul up badly for four consecutive years and then tell the Board to go to hell.

That is not a problem, however; that is a feature. The regulation imposes a sterile paperwork smokescreen to hide the Board’s incompetence as to the inadequate schools in Petersburg and Richmond (and elsewhere). And, not at all beside the point, to make the Board and all those awful schools look better than they are in fact.

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10 responses to “New Accreditation Standards Cover Up Failure”

  1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
    Reed Fawell 3rd

    GOD BLESS CRANKY!

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    I’d posit that it’s folks like Cranky that have motivated these changes.

    And again it goes to the idea that any rating system that has a knife-edge of “failure” vs pass just enables the boo birds to run amok.

    It’s never that way – a lot of schools in low-income neighborhoods have their hands full and some of them (not all) work their tails off to get better – but the demographics are such that the reality is they’re never going to get to where those schools in neighborhoods with college-educated parents.

    Richmond was not the only district with accreditation problems.

    There was a significant number across the Commonwealth and most of them had similar issues – neighborhood schools with higher numbers of low-income ( free or reduced lunch).

    The question is how do we fairly allow these schools to work to get better without basically labeling them as “failures” because they still do not meet minimum standards of academic achievement.

    Finally – what exactly would the critics recommend INSTEAD to deal with these schools? What is their better approach?

    Seriously? I’m ALL FOR other approaches – including non-public schools as long as we hold them to the same standards of accountability. So what is the alternative path? Not some cockamie foolishness like voucher schools but no accountability or they don’t have to take low-income kids.

    Provide some realistic alternative and the criticism is constructive. Otherwise, what is the point of the criticism?

    1. Acbar Avatar
      Acbar

      Yes, accredition should apply equally to all schools.

      1. Acbar Avatar
        Acbar

        *accreditation. Applied equally to both private and public.

        But you also say, “I’d posit that it’s folks like Cranky that have motivated these changes. . . . Provide some realistic alternative and the criticism is constructive. Otherwise, what is the point of the criticism?”

        I don’t agree. It’s constructive criticism to say, “You failed to provide an adequate education to your students,” even if the cause is intractable poverty and social collapse. That does NOT mean the local school system is to blame for not trying, or that the odds weren’t stacked against it. It simply means they didn’t make it over the goal line. And that should highlight the need for government and private intervention on the root causes — even if we don’t yet agree on how to proceed — not blame for schools that don’t and can’t achieve the impossible.

        It is no solution to accreditation failures merely to move the goal posts so that everyone makes the goal and failure is never highlighted. Otherwise why have standards and goals? DMV objectively tests the competence of licensees to drive an automobile — is the competence of our schools any less important?

    2. TooManyTaxes Avatar
      TooManyTaxes

      Larry – low-income schools in Virginia get extra money from the feds and from the State. And some localities, including Fairfax County, add to that pot. We spend more money on low-income kids than we do on middle class kids. Can’t we expect some better results for the extra tax dollars? If we cannot, then I’m for scrapping any public financing of public schools that goes to the schools themselves. All federal, state and local money should got to the student and his/her parents to spend at any accredited public or private school.

      Also, people who send their kids to school have an obligation to push their kids to take advantage of an educational opportunity. Of course, not every kid will be an academic superstar. But they should understand the basics and able to read and do math at grade level. They can learn personal self-control and respect for others. They can take career and vocational education courses instead of advanced chemistry if that better fits them. But everyone who receives an education has a personal obligation to try to the make the most of it.

  3. Acbar Avatar
    Acbar

    How can such a substantial failure of government ever be remedied if it is not promptly and fully identified and spotlighted?

    How can young people receive the education they deserve unless their educators are held accountable by the State for failure to provide an accredited educational intitution?

    How can “accreditation” mean anything if the measure of “accreditation” is whatever measure the entity being accredited commits to seek “with fidelity”?

    How can the BOE do its job without having standards applicable to all schools under its jurisdiction, and requiring them all to meet those standards or to be identified as failing, even if the BOE hasn’t a clue what to do to remedy that failure?

    These are obvious questions. Why should any citizen have to ask them?

    1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
      Reed Fawell 3rd

      Acbar – I agree with your assessment.

  4. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    let me respond point by point:

    ” But you also say, “I’d posit that it’s folks like Cranky that have motivated these changes. . . . Provide some realistic alternative and the criticism is constructive. Otherwise, what is the point of the criticism?”

    I don’t agree. It’s constructive criticism to say, “You failed to provide an adequate education to your students,” even if the cause is intractable poverty and social collapse. That does NOT mean the local school system is to blame for not trying, or that the odds weren’t stacked against it. It simply means they didn’t make it over the goal line. And that should highlight the need for government and private intervention on the root causes — even if we don’t yet agree on how to proceed — not blame for schools that don’t and can’t achieve the impossible.”

    It’s not impossible – it’s just a tough problem that takes a lot of resources to address… PreK and Title 1 do make substantial inroads but it’s costly and many localities lack the resources themselves.

    The implication here and in other blog posts is that older, more disruptive kids are hurting the non-disruptive kids and if removed – will help the others. Many schools already have separate (alternative) programs but the other kids – if they do not achieve reading competency by the 3rd grade – they will struggle from then on and become disengaged from – learning – because without reading – learning is not going to happen.

    it’s a systemic problem that is associated with poverty but yourself seem to think it’s not something the schools can fix. A LOT of it CAN be helped a lot with PreK and Title 1 type help and it’s a proven approach where it is done but it is expensive and it does take highly qualified people.

    “It is no solution to accreditation failures merely to move the goal posts so that everyone makes the goal and failure is never highlighted. Otherwise why have standards and goals? DMV objectively tests the competence of licensees to drive an automobile — is the competence of our schools any less important?”

    They STILL very much have standards – they STILL NOTE where schools fall below standards but instead of threatening them with further sanctions and punishment – they are giving them credit for success even if it is limited and not a total fix..

    By doing that, they are giving credit to efforts to get better.

    “How can such a substantial failure of government ever be remedied if it is not promptly and fully identified and spotlighted?”

    Poverty and it’s effect on people and taxpayers is not a systemic failure of govt is there is progress made but it’s not “fixed”.

    It’s like saying that Govt has failed because VDOT has failed to fix congestion or that we still have crime even though we spend money hand over fist for police.

    I do not buy it. It’s a dark view of – not only govt but our institutions that we all rely on every day. Some of us want to systemically tear their down without really giving a fair assessment of success and failure as well as efforts that have some success but are not total fixes.

    “How can young people receive the education they deserve unless their educators are held accountable by the State for failure to provide an accredited educational intitution?”

    I’m a little confused here.. Yous said earlier that education is not responsible for all of it especially poverty -then you say here they are…

    There is SOME success … there is still a lot of failure to meet standards – that’s not exactly “no kid is meeting standards” type failure.

    We want the schools that are making some progress to be credited for that progress rather than being labeled as failures which then feeds on itself in
    terms of motivation to do better.. to attract better staff… no one wants to work at a school hat is labeled a failure and threatened with sanctions… they leave in droves and the Adminstration ends up staffing with newbies and teachers that other schools don’t want.

    That’s recipe for MORE failure…

    “How can “accreditation” mean anything if the measure of “accreditation” is whatever measure the entity being accredited commits to seek “with fidelity”?”

    Fidelty means granularity not a knife-edge of success or fail.. when there is some success for some kids… something IS working.. but not good enough.

    “How can the BOE do its job without having standards applicable to all schools under its jurisdiction, and requiring them all to meet those standards or to be identified as failing, even if the BOE hasn’t a clue what to do to remedy that failure?”

    You have the standards. They do show which schools don’t meet those standards but they also do recognize the granularity that we see with SOME success as opposed to everyone in the school failing to meet standards.

    “These are obvious questions. Why should any citizen have to ask them?”

    Because the quick and dirty approach of labeling Failure even when people are working hard and having some success – destroys their motivation to continue their efforts or try to get better.

    It’s like labeling anyone a failure for anything while not recognizing the achiements they did succeed at. That’s especially important with children and their teachers. Kids do not succeed without continued efforts of a commited teacher and if you label the entire school as “failure” even though
    you are teachers committed to their task working hard every day – and they help half their kids to actually meet standards then you blame the teacher for the “failure” to teach the other half. What does that teacher do?

    Well.. they leave. They go to a school where their classroom is NOT full of at-risk kids… and where they WILL get credit if MOST of their kids pass – even though some do not – that teacher – that school does NOT get labeled as a complete FAILURE.

    It’s totally legitimate – even imperative that we do give partial credit for different levels of success rather than label everyone who fails to achieve what is an arbitrary “pass” number as “failures”.

    I just don’t think the systematic criticism is constructive. It does not take us to what we can do to get better.

    So let me finish with an example of what I am talking about:

    ” Three local early childhood programs to benefit from grant funds from the
    Three Fredericksburg-area early childhood education programs will benefit from grant funds from the state to improve the kindergarten readiness of their students.

    The Virginia Early Childhood Foundation announced that it awarded a one-year grant of $41,147.19 to Smart Beginnings Rappahannock Area, a nonprofit that works with community partners to ensure that all children from birth to age five have an equal opportunity to access educational resources that will prepare them for school.”

    it’s a limited funding pilot: ” “If [the PALS pre-k program] is successful for these three sites, this is something we can have ready and provide to our level two programs in the future,”

    https://www.fredericksburg.com/news/education/three-local-early-childhood-programs-to-benefit-from-grant-funds/article_f0e5205a-9215-590e-95bb-edb3a2f8b931.html

    they’re working UP the levels with tougher standards as they go up.

    But we’re NOT classifying them as a “failure” because they have not yet achieved the higher levels.

    Read the article .. to achieve those higher levels:

    ” She said most local early childhood programs are at level one, which means they are in compliance with state basic health and safety regulations, but they get stuck moving to level two. To achieve this qualification, at least 50 percent of lead teachers must have certifications in early childhood development and the director must have an associate’s degree.

    “To get to level two is really a feat because they have certain educational qualifications for the director and staff that can be a challenge in this field,” Clark said.

    The cost of further education can be a barrier for employees of childcare programs, who are typically paid low wages.”

    So Acbar – let me ask you – when have you seen a blog posting like the above article on PALS Pre-K instead of the relentless ones here about Accreditation “failure” and the ones from Cranky on the many/endless “failures” in Richmond.

    let me repeat this excerpt: ” The cost of further education can be a barrier for employees of childcare programs, who are typically paid low wages.”

    So.. NO.. I totally reject the sentiments ” We’re all gonna die because govt and our other institutions are failing and lying about it”.

    We got more than enough boo birds who want to accentuate “failure” because we FAIL to have 100% success.. A POX on them all!

  5. hemcomm Avatar
    hemcomm

    I am with Cranky on this one: the only people who are going to benefit from these changes are administrators who will be able to claim success in achieving 100% Accreditation. Of course there will be a asterisk on that, but don’t worry — people read headlines, not footnotes.

  6. djrippert Avatar
    djrippert

    Government institutions and employees (including politicians) HATE accountability. They despise the idea of being held accountable for anything. We should just give them an ever increasing percentage of our money and hope they do well.

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