School Accountability in Chicago
High-churn schools have high rates of student mobility, chronic absenteeism and homeless students. Accountability systems are biased against these schools. They rank, sort and label schools on social factors that are external to performance.
It’s time to recognize the distinctive leadership challenges of high-churn schools. The pandemic experience should spur us to action—to strengthen leadership of policy & practice for schools we have long struggled to serve equitably and to treat with dignity.
High churn heightens the difficulty of school improvement work to boost student achievement. Recognition of high-churn schools raises important policy and practice questions for the school district (CPS), city (Chicago), state (Illinois/ISBE), and federal government (ESSA).
High-churn schools draw attention to high rates of student mobility, absenteeism and housing instability (homeless students). These factors are associated with poverty. They can affect all racial groups. They are linked to historic and ongoing racism in Chicago and have an impact on student learning and social-emotional development.
High-Churn Schools:
Investigation #1
I completed an extensive investigation of high-churn schools using publicly available administrative data from CPS and ISBE. A summary of highlights was published by the University of Illinois Chicago. The work was presented at a symposium captured in this YouTube video. Hear school principals speak to leadership challenges starting with this playlist. See my blog for discussion of deeper implications of the work.
Neighborhood Poverty:
Investigation #2
Using a neighborhood poverty measure developed by the National Center for Education Statistics to learn what it adds to the descriptive profile for high-churn schools.
Cultural Responsiveness:
Investigation #3
Exploring how a focus on high-churn conditions can be informed by new and developing ideas that foreground equity in evaluation work: Equitable Evaluation Framework, AEA Competencies and Standards, CREE, and more.
High-Churn Schools and NWEA MAP
In this presentation at the 2021 conference of the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment, I describe trends in the Chicago Public Schools accountability system from 2014 to 2018 and implications for equitable evaluation (see data below). My colleague Paul Zavitkovsky examines NWEA MAP data, the backbone of Chicago’s accountability system since 2014, and how it misled practitioners in their understandings of learning progress and needs, with serious consequences for Black student achievement. Laquita Louie discusses these concerns from her perspective as a practicing principal leading a high-churn school in Chicago.
Seeing the system that produces the problem: How assessment and accountability practices exacerbate systemic inequites
Good Standing % 2019
Good Standing by Rating Level %
The chart above represents almost all CPS stable schools and less than half of CPS high-churn schools. The majority of high-churn schools were unable to sustain a Level 2+ for two years in a row and so were not in Good Standing. For more data, see blog, CPS and ISBE Data to Hold School Accountability Systems Accountable for High-Churn Schools.
Evaluator Competencies, CONTEXT, Domain 3.0
CONTEXT involves site/location/environment, participants/stakeholders, organization/structure, culture/diversity, history/traditions, values/beliefs, politics/economics, power/privilege, and other characteristics.