holding schools ACCOUNTABLE for equity.

Good reform ideas can have harmful results if their impact on equity is ignored. As we implement California's accountability system, we must address equity from the start -- locally and statewide.

The Census 2000 is officially heralding in an era that those of us working in California schools have known for some time -- that there is no longer any single majority group in our state. The remarkable and increasing diversity of California has sent educators scrambling for the past decade to understand the implications of that diversity, and to build the capacity to respond to the needs of cultural, linguistic and national diversity.

That challenge would be difficult in any case. But California has been struggling to do so within a nation painfully divided over what the role of schools should be with regards to immigration, language unity, multiculturalism, affirmative action and nearly every other policy issue related to responses to diversity.

On top of that, there has been a virtual avalanche of school reform initiatives: whole-school restructuring, academic standards, an end to social promotion, class size reduction, a new High School Exit Exam bringing with it new high stakes for students, and initiatives like Proposition 227 that limit programmatically what may happen in our schools.

It's difficult to implement even one reform well, but the pace of these reforms has been relentless. There have been insufficient resources to implement the reforms, and little coherence between the initiatives.

It's these two trends -- demographic changes in our population and implementation of new school reforms -- where tremendous opportunity and real danger lies, particularly for those of us concerned with equity and with creating schools that really do work for all students.

What needs to happen to be sure that we design and implement reforms in ways that work for all students, and that once and for all close gaps between groups? We don't have a strong track record on this. The major reforms of the past decade have largely bypassed or left intact disparities between groups, and in some cases have resulted in exacerbating the exclusion of English Language Learners.

Good reform ideas in general (class size reduction, site-based decision-making) end up being harmful reforms when their implementation and impact are examined through an equity lens. It happens because of ignorance about what is known about effective schooling for language minority and culturally diverse student populations. It happens because reforms are being implemented on an already uneven playing field without addressing fundamental disparities. It happens because we aren't sufficiently asking questions about the likely equity impacts of new reforms.

Now, from the White House to the statehouse, the call for "new accountability" has been center-stage in school reform dialogues. Here in California, a cornerstone of Gov. Davis' reforms has been the Public Schools Accountability Act and the creation of a state accountability system. Perhaps we can learn from the past, and implement accountability reforms in ways that address equity from the start.

Many educators and advocates throughout the state who have been concerned about issues of equity for a long time welcomed a new focus and system of accountability. It seems particularly long overdue in this state, where in the past decade gaps have increased between racial/ethnic groups and the disparities in conditions in our schools from community to community have actually grown.

Those who attend schools in rundown, crumbling buildings with disproportionately high numbers of untrained and emergency credentialled teachers, with fewer computers or science labs and where lower expectations prevail continue to be disproportionately children of low-income families, children of color and English learners.

Will the new state school accountability system turn this around? In what ways does it give us new tools to use for school improvement? What has to happen at the state and local levels to utilize the accountability system as a tool for real improvement, and what kind of advocacy and local work has to occur in order to prevent the damage and equity nightmare that can result from all of the new reforms we have in California?

To answer those questions, we need first to visualize the characteristics of an equity-focused accountability system, and assess what we have in place based upon those characteristics. This is equally important for site, district and state systems, and is applied in this article to the California state system. While this critique does imply some improvements in the state system, it also is a call to action for the deeper local work necessary to realize new levels of accountability for equity.

1 Does the system produce data and use that data in ways that increase awareness of persistent low achievement?

Yes, our state system has very successfully created attention and (no question) has gotten across that it matters how well students do. The power of this focus is a tool administrators have in working for school improvement, as long as we guard against the focus being primarily on ranking and scores. Locally, administrators must switch the focus to achievement, teaching and learning.

2 Does the accountability system use a consistent set of measurements statewide, allowing for comparison to other locales?

Yes, the state system compares similar schools across the state. Within a district it is equally important to analyze data comparing schools across all schools and neighborhoods in the district. Only then can we hold ourselves accountable for providing the same high level of education to the children of lower-income families as we do to the children of higher income families.

3 Does the accountability system measure improvement and growth over time?

Yes, this is the basis of the thinking behind "growth targets." Locally, it is most helpful to keep historical data so that comparisons over a five-year period are possible. This kind of data can be a good tool to battle complacency and to trigger celebration, and help us begin to answer questions about whether new reforms are paying off in student achievement.

4 Does the accountability system make clear it's not just overall achievement that matters, but also the size of gaps between groups?

Yes, the state accountability system measures not only improvement in achievement overall, but also the improvement of "numerically significant subgroups" of students. However, at the state level, the decision not to include English Language Learners as one of the groups whose progress specifically needs to be monitored makes this somewhat dubious as a system that hold schools accountable for meeting the needs of this population. It also makes it incumbent upon local accountability systems to incorporate meaningful measures and data analyses that focus specifically on the improvements in achievement of English learners.

5 Is the system designed and implemented in a way that helps educators improve instruction?

The state system does not. An accountability system that uses tests and measures that are not aligned to state standards or to the curriculum that is being taught cannot tell a teacher whether students are mastering what she is teaching. Furthermore, once-a-year measures can't help teachers adjust their teaching of particular students. The kind of regular assessment data and accountability systems, and the processes and habits for using data to inform instruction, is something that must be created at the local level.

6 Does the accountability system use measures that have meaning for ALL students that it tests?

No, the state system does not. Despite initial intentions to use multiple measures, at this point the SAT-9 as a single measure results in a simplistic and misleading picture and does so dangerously in this increasingly high-stakes environment. This is true overall, but is particularly a problem for the well over a million and a quarter English Language Learners in our state.

Given the history in which court and federal intervention have often been necessary to create access to education for this population, we need to be particularly vigilant that accountability systems allow educators to monitor and hold themselves accountable for the achievement of English learners.

Shortly after passage of the new accountability legislation, the California Department of Education's technical advisors declared that the SAT-9 is neither valid nor reliable as a measure of achievement for LEP students and should not be used. Simply put, if they can't understand the language of the test, they can't demonstrate what they know. If they can't read the English language word problems on the test of math, they can't demonstrate their skill at doing math operations in context. But in the rush to get the system going, the advisors were ignored. This means districts must develop their own strong systems for assessing English learners' achievement, and that administrators have to let their voices be heard that the state system must be modified to include a meaningful measure for LEP students.

There is a good opportunity in the new state English Language Development test. It is specifically designed to measure progress of English learners. It is still unclear, however, in the highly politicized and polarized climate around English Language Development instruction, whether or not the test will be used as part of the STAR system and for calculating APIs. Until some meaningful measure is included, however, there is effectively no accountability for the education of our English learners.

The lack of statewide meaningful data makes informed dialogue about programs for this population difficult. Until we have such data, we remain frighteningly at the mercy of often uninformed opinions in the public arena about the impacts of our programs. And, as we know from the past set of elections, the public weighs powerfully on these issues. It has become imperative that California has strong reliable, valid and consistent measures and accountability for the education of our English learners.

7 Does the accountability system trigger support for changes and improvement for those schools where achievement is low?

To some degree the state system does this through the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program, although this encompasses a relatively small number of schools. The resources allocated overall for school improvement are not sufficient for the task at hand. Teachers can't produce better achievement if they don't have the training and support that helps them learn how to do so. Better educational outcomes can't be accomplished simply by insisting teachers teach better or faster.

The API rankings increase the number of educators who feel a sense of urgency about improving achievement, but it doesn't help them know what to do differently. If they knew what to do and how to do it to improve achievement, most would already be doing it.

Standards-based instruction is not easy to implement. It takes time. Teachers need support that is sustained through the long process of coming to understand the standards, align curriculum with the standards, and become proficient at standards-based instruction. This is particularly true for educating English learners. The majority of teachers in California still don't have adequate understanding, knowledge base or skills in second language acquisition, or in teaching students who are not yet fluent in English.

At the local and state level, resources and dedicated time for professional development is directly proportional to the degree of improvement you can expect. Professional development needs to be not just in instructional strategies, not just in becoming familiar with new standards, but also needs to include coaching and facilitation so educators can learn how to engage in inquiry and how to use data as a tool for improving achievement.

8 Does the accountability system work to ensure that children in different communities of the state have equal opportunity to master high standards? Does it ensure that the conditions for teaching and learning are present in every school (i.e., adequate materials, good lighting, safe classrooms, sturdy roofs, libraries, computers)?

The state system does not hold schools accountable for what they give students. It simply assumes that if schools know they are low performing, they will give students what is needed to improve instruction.

It doesn't work that way in real life. Improvement also requires resources, enabling policies, expertise and support from beyond a school site. Decisions about resource allocation, about facilities, about teacher assignment and principal placement are not site decisions. The state accountability system focuses on the school site as the unit being held accountable. In truth, the district, local school boards, the state Legislature and the state Board of Education need to be accountable as well.

Local accountability systems need to add to their data collection about student achievement a strong component of data collection about facilities, teacher qualifications, materials and resources. Only then can a student's achievement or a school's improvement rate be adequately understood.

9 Does this accountability system measure what we believe are the most important things we want for our children?

This is a soul-searching question. I believe that these days achievement is being defined far too narrowly in California -- limited only to that which is measured on the state assessment. Basic literacy and math are important, no question. But even these are tested only in the narrowest sense. There are broader visions of what our children need, deserve and should get from school.

The high stakes accountability climate has led to a frantic focus on what is in the tests. As the scramble for raising test scores continues, many subjects and activities are being squeezed out of the curriculum to make room for more emphasis on what is being tested. Many of the rich aspects of literacy development are being cut out to focus on reading skills alone. Social studies and science and art and music are fast disappearing in many elementary schools -- particularly in inner city, high minority schools. Is it necessary to have one area of development and knowledge lose out in order to more effectively educate in another area? What about other goals for our children: to become critical thinkers; to develop scientific curiosity; to be exposed to the arts; to be fully bilingual and biliterate.

Yes to all of the above

This era offers the promise of high academic standards that could establish high expectations for all students. This era offers the opportunity to step up to the challenge of being the nation's first no-majority state and offer a model of what it can look like when we hold ourselves accountable for the education of the children of all of our diverse communities. A good state accountability system (one that could answer "yes" to all of the above questions) could hold us all to those high standards.

There is a start in the system in place, but we've all got our work cut out for us to push for the changes in the state accountability system that are needed. In the meantime, it is in the work of local administrators and teachers that the true test of implementation will occur. Are you providing the leadership, the vision, the resources and support so that at the local level we as educators hold ourselves accountable for equity?

Laurie Olsen is chief program officer for California Tomorrow, which works with schools, communities and other groups to facilitate change in the areas of equity and access. For more informationaccess www.californiatomorrow.org.