Richard Carranza
September 20, 2015

EdSource_RedesigningAccountability_v2.2

The CORE Districts began in 2010 as a collaboration across school districts exploring means to better pedagogy and learning. In 2013, several school districts in the Core consortium received a federal waiver from some provisions of the No Child Left Behind law and are working together to develop a new School Quality Improvement Index to provide more and better data about schools and the learning needs of students. The process for creating the Index has been challenging and complex, including finding the all-time way to mensurate success in reclassifying English learners as proficient in English. In this piece, San Francisco Unified Superintendent Richard Carranza, who is a member of the Core Districts Board of Directors, explains how they dealt with this issue.

Office Three: Measuring Success with English language Learners

Richard Carranza

San Francisco Unified Superintendent Richard Carranza

Most 1.five million students in California – most one in four public school students – aren't fluent in English language. Here in San Francisco, more than 16,000 students are learning the English language language. Enquiry shows that if they don't become fluent within a certain time period, they won't have access to college prep curriculum, will be two to three years behind in math and English language arts (ELA), and are likely to have a GPA that's lower than ii.0. This huge achievement gap betwixt native English language speakers and those 1.5 meg English learners was the master motivation for the CORE districts to include an English learner metric as an important chemical element in the new School Quality Improvement Organisation.

The need to have the Index include the rate at which schools and districts reclassify English learners as expert was an like shooting fish in a barrel decision to brand, but harder to implement than we expected. Most school accountability models don't include reclassification rates at all. While most districts track the rate, the number is but a reported statistic, only is not included in how schools or districts understand or measure their performance.

Devising a measure that worked across all CORE districts, while serving students best and avoiding the unintended consequences of reclassifying students at the wrong fourth dimension, was no piece of cake task. To tackle the problem we brought together policy, assessment and information experts from our schoolhouse districts and looked at the English learner reclassification method used by the country. California's rate is determined by looking at the total number of students to reclassify in a particular year, divided past the full number of English language learners enrolled the twelvemonth prior. This calculation didn't work for us, still, considering it doesn't highlight the time it takes to reclassify.

Enquiry indicates that after five to 7 years of didactics, students should develop the skills necessary to exist reclassified as Fluent English Good, meaning they no longer demand additional support in the classroom. In California, an English learner is considered "long-term" when he or she has received six years of U.Due south. public school teaching in the United States and still is not proficient in English.

Later on much discussion, nosotros landed on a five-year marking as the point at which English learners should exist reclassified every bit English proficient. Even though non everyone initially supported it, the Core districts came to this decision for a few reasons.

First, there's the practical timing aspect. If you're reclassifying simple age students past five years, most students will accept moved from elementary to middle school, and we wanted to ensure that all schools were jointly responsible for this work. Additionally, shedding low-cal on kids at the five-year mark allows for earlier intervention, because one time by that six- or 7-year marker, kids are almost destined to never grab up academically, and are more probable to never exist reclassified.

If the five-year point allows for early intervention, 1 could as well debate a four- or even iii-twelvemonth goal would be even better. Research doesn't support this, even so, and finds that students often need 5 total years of language support earlier they can be reclassified. Our challenge was designing a system that provided an incentive for schools to reclassify their English learners as rapidly as possible, but did non encourage them to do then before students were prepare.

So in mid-2014, the Cadre districts decided we would determine the reclassification charge per unit by calculating the number of students with more than v years of U.South. pedagogy who are reclassified as fully good English learners, divided by the total number of long-term English learners and reclassified students. (Twelvemonth 5-plus Reclassified Fluent English language Proficient (RFEPs)) ÷ (Year 5-plus ELs & RFEPs)

This formula would allow us to remain agnostic effectually how apace students should exist reclassified within the kickoff five years, but say definitively that students needed to be reclassified when they began their sixth year in our schools.

This made sense to u.s. every bit a reasonable compromise to get to our goals. Notwithstanding, after reaching out for more feedback from district staff, parents, teachers and others, we became enlightened of pregnant concerns. Some thought the formula was non transparent, and that it was too complicated and hard to understand. They also worried that some schools might move in the opposite direction. Schools might feel they had less of an incentive to reclassify every bit rapidly as possible if they wouldn't "get credit" for reclassifications that took less than 5 years, regardless of how quickly they moved students.

In the spirit of continual improvement, nosotros went back to the drawing board, reworked the formula and eventually came to what the Core board voted to adopt in late 2014. To obtain a meaningful English language learner reclassification rate, Cadre districts would count all the English learners who are reclassified at a school site in the electric current year, regardless of their years of U.South. instruction, and divide them past the number of all the English learners who are reclassified at a school site in the electric current yr plus all those English language learners who, after v years, were not reclassified at that school.

For instance, if an elementary school reclassifies 10 English learners during the school year, but has one English language learner with more than five years of U.Southward. education, the school'due south rate would be calculated every bit 10 ÷ (10 + 1) = 91%. And that school, with a 91 percent reclassification rate, would be considered a high-performing school, at least on this metric.

In contrast, an elementary school that reclassifies x English learners during the school year, but has eight English learners with more v years of U.S. educational activity, would have a reclassification rate calculated every bit 10 ÷ (ten + 8) = 56% and would be regarded as an average-performing school on this metric.

We believe this formula provides valuable information and appropriately holds united states responsible for reclassifying English learners who take more than than 5 years of U.S. instruction, while crediting schools with any reclassifications made in less fourth dimension than that. This method too encourages schools to reclassify students in a timely manner, without creating incentives for reclassifying as well early or later on than desirable.

This metric will be role of the larger School Quality Improvement Index score that will be published for the start time after this fall. It is still far from perfect. While our districts agreed on a five-year marking, there are still those who would accept rather aligned with the state and kept a six-year marker.

There accept also been questions as to the overall legitimacy of the English language learner metric score, because each district uses somewhat different criteria to determine if a student is ready to reclassify. Districts use multiple state-required measures, as well every bit other local district-determined criteria. For instance, in San Francisco we also consider teacher evaluation for English learners who demonstrate basic skills in English language Language Arts in addition to proficiency on the state'south English language language development test. But a similar argument could be made for our graduation rate metric, equally districts have differing graduation requirements.

While well-nigh of the concerns surrounding the English learner metric accept been resolved, our districts and schools remain challenged past issues such as which school to give credit to when a student reclassifies in the fall afterwards transferring to a new school. Nosotros chose to align with the state's approach of associating students with the school that completed the reclassification, simply this remains contentious considering many students who are reclassified in the fall do and then based on test operation from the prior school twelvemonth.

In the end, we are proud of the fact that schoolhouse districts in Core take voluntarily stepped upward to hold ourselves answerable for the timely reclassification of English language learners. We know that we have more piece of work to do and, like everything with our new system, it is a piece of work in progress. But we hope that this work to identify high-performing and struggling schools volition result in shared learning and, ultimately, improved educatee learning. We look forward to beingness office of a larger conversation around how best to serve our English learners in a loftier-quality accountability model.

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Richard A. Carranza is a CORE Board Fellow member and Superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District.

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