SCHOOL RANKING PROBLEMS MAY HINDER REFORM; NO EXISTING WAY TO GATHER DATA.

Byline: Terri Hardy Sacramento Bureau

Ranking the performance of California's 8,000 public schools as envisioned under Gov. Gray Davis' high-stakes accountability plan is impossible with the state's information-gathering system - throwing into doubt the cornerstone of the reform package that Davis will finish signing into law this week.

Although state Department of Education officials have some ideas on how to cobble together an interim index to compare schools, no plan will be presented until September. The Department of Finance estimates that fixing the problem could add tens of millions of dollars to the $195 million plan.

State officials downplay the dilemma, and Education Secretary Gary K. Hart vowed that the governor's much-touted accountability measure, which sailed through the Legislature last month, would not be hindered.

``There will be an index by June of 2000 - without fail,'' Hart said in an interview.

But there are growing concerns among education groups and some lawmakers that any stop-gap measures will result in a school ranking that is irrelevant. That is unacceptable, they say, given the importance attached to the index.

``If data used for discipline is flawed, then the rights of teachers and principals are going to be trampled on,'' said Mike Myslinski, a spokesman for the California Teachers Association.

Under the bill, which the governor plans to sign on Monday, all schools will be placed into 10 groups, from highest to lowest in performance.

A rewards-and-sanctions plan will be implemented, and 430 underperforming schools will be put on an improvement program. If those schools fail to increase their ranking, they could eventually be shut down and the principals reassigned.

Schools will be ranked by an ``academic performance index'' according to pupil and teacher attendance, graduation rates, and how well their students place on the statewide Stanford 9 achievement test. The legislation also requires the schools to be ranked according to socioeconomic level and the number of special education and English students.

But the attendance and graduation rates pose a large problem because the state does not collect that data.

The only student attendance rate gathered by the state is ``average daily attendance,'' a count that is taken on one day in October. This number provides no information about whether an individual student is in attendance on an ongoing basis and cannot be used for the index, said Bill Padia, director of policy and evaluation for the Department of Education.

No systematic count of teacher attendance is taken, either.

The state does collect the number of graduates, but it does not track information that would make the number a statistically valid rate - the number of students who start at the high school, how many have moved and whether those who left graduated elsewhere, said J. Richard Whitmore, the state's chief deputy superintendent for educational policy, finance and accountability.

``Tracking individual students is key to calculating an accurate high school graduation rate,'' Whitmore wrote in a warning letter to Sen. Dede Alpert, D-San Diego, who authored the accountability bill.

Nor does the state gather the other breakdowns required, such as graduates' socioeconomic status.

While some districts, like the Los Angeles Unified School District, put together their own attendance and graduation rates, Padia said the state cannot simply gather all those numbers for the index.

``Not everyone does it in the same way,'' Padia said. ``For the numbers to be valid they must be comparable and uniform. There has to be an even playing field.''

Whitmore's letter, dated March 16, was the first official warning about the information collection problem.

Hart said the letter was his first notice of the problem and complained that the warning came ``very late in the process.''

``No one imagined that those rates weren't available,'' Hart said.

Padia said Hart's staff was told about the problem long before March 16, during a meeting with Department of Education officials. Padia said the letter was sent because the Department of Education realized that their warnings weren't sinking in.

Out of the loop

Assembly Republican Leader Rod Pacheco, R-Riverside, said the problems would have been avoided if Davis had consulted with state Superintendent Delaine Eastin before his reform plans were mapped out.

``It's a backward way to do it,'' Pacheco said. ``The superintendent was kept totally out of the loop on these education reforms. Now we're finding that she would have been able to offer some very valuable information, if she had only been asked.''

As a result of the letter, the problem was discussed during the legislative debate but not at length. The Governor's Office encouraged the expedited passage of bills before the Legislature recessed the special session last month.

Assemblyman Tony Strickland, R-Camarillo, argued in the Assembly chamber that using anything other than test scores in the performance index would result in a flawed measure that would mislead parents about how well the school was progressing.

``Using nonacademic data affects its validity and reliability,'' Strickland said. His efforts to push for an amendment that would solely use exam scores on the index was summarily voted down by opponents without any discussion.

The state could revert to using Stanford 9, also known as STAR, test results solely. But many lawmakers and union groups fought that as the bill went through the Legislature, saying it was unfair to focus only on exam results - especially since the proposed test is not linked to state standards and does not necessarily test what is taught in the classroom.

Hart said that using other factors in addition to test scores gave a ``richer'' picture of school achievement.

Alpert's bill was amended to allow state Superintendent Delaine Eastin by Sept. 1 to recommend to the Legislature ``any necessary action to implement an accurate reporting system.''

Possibility for chaos

Padia concedes that asking districts to comply with a slew of new reporting procedures - on top of other state dictates - is likely to result in some chaos. One idea, for instance, is to collect student attendance data by registering that rate on each student's Stanford 9 test.

``Teachers would have to go through their grade book and calculate each student's attendance rate,'' Padia said. ``We're not saying it's going to be easy, but we think it is possible.''

Myslinski, of the California Teachers Association, said such measures are an added burden on already overworked instructors and can be inaccurate. If those numbers lead to employee discipline, the state could be open to lawsuits and union action, he said.

Padia and others are hopeful that some problems with the index will disappear once schools throughout the state adopt a new computer system called California School Information Services. However, the program is not mandatory and only would be used in high schools.

It is unlikely that schools will be required to implement the CSIS system, because then the state would be responsible for footing the bill. It is unclear when or if schools will have that upgraded capability, Padia said.

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PHOTO Gray Davis

Critics fault haste