Interventions Loom

CDE Identifies 188 "Low-Achieving Schools" on Monday, Then Revises List on Wednesday

By Jeff Hudson - March 11, 2010

After several delays, the California Department of Education (CDE) released a “preliminary” list of 188 California public schools identified as “persistently low-achieving” on Monday – and then revised the list of secondary schools (Tier II) substantially late Wednesday.  The revised Tier II list was effectively approved late Thursday morning when the State Board of Education (SBE) unanimously approved a set of waiver requests relating to the federal School Improvement Grant program.

The process left many educators up and down the state feeling exasperated, as schools in their district were initially labeled as “low-achieving” and subjected to considerable negative media scrutiny -- and then taken off the list a few days later.

Marylou Wilson, Director of Instructional Support Services with the Fairfield-Suisun district, told the SBE on Thursday that when the preliminary list – including Fairfield High School – was released on Monday, “the press had a field day. Our school has been labeled.”

Fairfield High came off the list when the revised version of the document was released late Wednesday.  But Wilson told the SBE that “the damage has been done” in the eyes of the community.  She went on to ask the SBE to put Fairfield High back on the list, so that the school could receive some of the federal grant money intended to turn around low-achieving schools.  (The SBE, however, did not put Fairfield High back on the list.)

SBE President Ted Mitchell acknowledged that “there is no putting the toothpaste back into the tube once a declaration has been made” and a school has been widely described as “low-achieving” in the news.  Mitchell laid some of the blame at the door of the federal Department of Education, saying “This is a situation where we felt we were being whipsawed by our friends in Washington.”

The schools on the revised list now face a choice of four different intervention models – including replacing the principal and up to half of the school’s staff, conversion to a charter school, and flat-out closure of the school.

According to the CDE, the schools identified as persistently lowest achieving must engage in a school intervention model as required by state and federal law.  The schools may also be able to attract anywhere from $50,000 to $2 million in grant money as a result of being placed on the list.

“This is an opportunity to make dramatic changes at chronically underperforming schools,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction. O'Connell.  “The intervention choices provide an opportunity to make systemic changes that improve teaching and learning.”

Bonnie Reiss, recently appointed by Gov. Schwarzenegger as his Secretary of Education, said “The parents and students of these underperforming schools deserve all our support in providing intervention choices to help transform these schools to better serve them and their communities.”

Bob Wells, executive director of the Association of California School Administrators, took a different stance in comments offered in response to the CDE announcement. “Just singling out a principal for blame when scores don't improve fast enough isn't fair,” Wells told Associated Press. “Pretty soon you'll have trouble recruiting new principals to take these jobs.”

State and federal laws associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program require California to identify the state's low-achieving schools and to require the persistently lowest-achieving five percent of those schools to implement one of four school intervention models. The identification of the five percent of persistently lowest-achieving schools in California is a multi-step process that is informed by both federal and state law (SBx 51) by Senator Darrell Steinberg, (D-Sacramento).

Schools identified as the lowest five percent of the state's persistently lowest-achieving schools are required to implement one of the following four school intervention models:

1. Turnaround Model: The local educational agency (LEA) undertakes a series of major school improvement actions, including but not limited to, replacing the principal and rehiring no more than 50 percent of the school's staff; adopting a new governance structure; and implementing an instructional program that is research-based and vertically aligned from one grade to the next, as well as aligned with California's adopted content standards.
2. Restart Model: The LEA converts a school or closes and reopens a school under a charter school operator, a charter management organization (CMO), or an education management organization (EMO) that has been selected through a locally determined rigorous review process using state educational agency provided guidance. (A CMO is a non-profit organization that operates or manages charter schools by centralizing or sharing certain functions and resources among schools. An EMO is a for-profit or non-profit organization that provides "whole-school operation" services to a LEA.) A restart model school must enroll, within the grades it serves, any former student who wishes to attend the school.
3. School Closure Model: The LEA closes a school and enrolls the students who attended that school in other schools in the LEA that are higher achieving. These other schools should be within reasonable proximity to the closed school and may include, but are not limited to, charter schools or new schools for which achievement data are not yet available.
4. Transformation Model: The LEA implements a series of required school improvement strategies, including replacing the principal who led the school prior to implementation of the transformation model, and increasing instructional time.

LEAs and school districts are responsible for ensuring that one of the four school intervention models is implemented at each school identified as persistently lowest achieving. To fund these turnaround activities, LEAs may use funds provided through ARRA and SIG funds per the SIG program guidelines.

There were some patterns in the 188 schools identified on the preliminary list that was released on Tuesday, including:

--Schools in districts that have had serious financial problems in the last ten years. Oakland Unified had five schools on the list, Compton Unified had seven schools, Vallejo City Unified had two schools.

--Big urban districts, including Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco Unified, San Jose Unified, and Santa Ana Unified, as well as several districts clustered near the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay

--Schools in communities that have been particularly hard hit by home foreclosures. Stockton Unified had seven schools on the list, and the nearby communities of Lodi and Modesto also had schools on the list; there was also a cluster of schools in Southern California’s Inland Empire region (San Bernardino County and Riverside County).

--Districts in agricultural valleys on the Central Coast, where schools have an enrollment that includes a high percentage of English Learners who come from lower-income households. Pajaro Valley Unified in Santa Cruz/Monterey Counties ultimately ended up with five schools on the list, seven other districts in Monterey County had at least one schools on the list, the Santa Maria-Bonita district in Santa Barbara County had three schools on the list.

--Districts (both large and small) in the San Joaquin Valley, including schools in Tulare County, Fresno County, Kern County, and Kings County.  There were also a few schools on the list from the Sacramento Valley to the north.

To view the list of schools identified as persistently lowest achieving, and for more information about the identification process, visit Persistently Lowest-Achieving Schools - Accountability.

Editor’s Note: Jeff Hudson is the editor of EdBrief and an award-winning education reporter and writer in print, radio and television media.