Failing-school burden shifts to states; rescue plans get low marks

Gov. Nathan Deal signs the First Priority Act, aimed at aiding low-performing schools, in Atlanta on April 27, 2017. (DAVID BARNES / DAVID.BARNES@AJC.COM)

Gov. Nathan Deal signs the First Priority Act, aimed at aiding low-performing schools, in Atlanta on April 27, 2017. (DAVID BARNES / DAVID.BARNES@AJC.COM)

Two years after Congress scrapped federal formulas for fixing troubled schools, states are producing only the vaguest of plans to address persistent educational failure.

So far, 16 states and the District of Columbia have submitted proposals under the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act. Georgia is not among them but is finalizing its plan. With few exceptions, the blueprints offer none of the detailed prescriptions for intervention, such as mass teacher firings or charter-school conversions, that were once standard elements of school reform.

Many in the education world, from state superintendents to teachers unions, applaud this hands-off trend. Each struggling school faces unique circumstances, in their view, and deserves a tailored solution shaped by community input, not a top-down directive from faraway bureaucrats.

But others fear a lack of clear road maps from states is a sign that meaningful change remains unlikely in schools that most need it.

“We don’t know what to do about chronically low-performing schools. Nothing has worked consistently and at scale,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “I suspect we’ll see most states and districts just go through the motions.”

On Aug. 1, Delaware became the first state to win federal approval for its plan, even though independent experts said its proposals are hazy and unlikely to make a significant difference. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will consider the other 16 plans in coming weeks. DeVos and President Donald Trump are pushing for far more local control of education.

The remaining 34 states, including Georgia, are expected to turn in plans next month.

Georgia collected public comment on its draft plan this summer and is reviewing the feedback. It proposes a "streamlined" school accountability measure. The current one, the College and Career Ready Performance Index, is based on a host of "indicators," including standardized test scores, absenteeism and graduation rates. There are 30 for high schools, 19 for middle schools and 21 for elementary schools. Those numbers would be nearly cut in half, reducing the complexity.

The state's draft plan also defines the formula for identifying schools subject to intervention under a new state law — the First Priority Act — that targets low performers.

Georgia Superintendent Richard Woods is expected to submit the final plan to Washington on Sept. 18.

Congress thought it had answers for the problem of low-performing schools with the bipartisan No Child Left Behind law of 2001, meant to fight what President George W. Bush called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It laid out a series of specific consequences for schools that failed to meet escalating performance targets.

A decade later, however, nearly everyone agreed the law was broken. Half of the 100,000 public schools were missing the targets, overwhelming the capacity of states and districts to help those with the most profound need for change. In many places, schools widely acknowledged to be failing continued plodding along.

President Barack Obama then devoted billions of dollars to turn around the bottom 5 percent of schools with one of four strategies: closing, reopening as a charter, firing staff or transforming school culture. A federal analysis released this year showed that, on average, test scores, graduation rates and college enrollment were no different in schools that received the money than in those that did not.

Those failures helped spur a bipartisan push for a new era of state and local control over education.

Under the 2015 law, states must continue administering standardized tests in grades three through eight and once in high school. But they have far more latitude to decide just about everything else and what they do about schools that fail.

Civil rights advocates have raised concerns about the support states plan to provide poorly performing schools, and about also how they identify those schools in the first place.

Liz King, an education policy expert with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said she worries that states are designing rating systems that will overlook the failures of schools where average student performance is high but certain groups, such as students with disabilities or English language learners, trail far behind.

Of the 17 accountability plans submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, an independent review found only two — from Tennessee and New Mexico — adequately addressed how to help low-performing schools. The review was conducted by Bellwether Education Partners, a Washington consulting group, and the Collaborative for Student Success, an advocacy group that has championed high standards and strong accountability.

“That doesn’t inspire confidence,” said Dale Chu, an education expert who participated in the independent review. The failure, he said, “could continue in perpetuity.”

John King Jr., who was Obama’s second education secretary and now heads the advocacy group Education Trust, said, “I certainly worry that there may be folks who are using the rhetoric of local control as an excuse for inaction in schools that are struggling or schools that have groups of students that are struggling.”

Staff Writer Ty Tagami contributed to this article