Andrew McEachin

The Waive of the Future? School Accountability in the Waiver Era:

Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have recently received waivers to the school accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). As the prospects for reauthorizing the Act in the near term are dim, these new accountability systems will be law for at least several years. Drawing on a four-part framework from the measurement literature, we describe and critique the approved waiver accountability plans, comparing them to the NCLB accountability rules. We find a mixed bag—some states have made large improvements and others have not. Overall we conclude that states missed opportunities to design more effective school accountability systems that might minimize negative unintended consequences of these policies. The article concludes with suggestions for state and federal policy in light of the available literature.

Aiming High and Falling Short: California's Eighth-Grade Algebra-for-All Effort

The United States is in the midst of an effort to intensify middle school mathematics curricula by enrolling more 8th graders in Algebra. California is at the forefront of this effort, and in 2008, the state moved to make Algebra the accountability benchmark test for 8th-grade mathematics. This article takes advantage of this unevenly implemented policy to understand the effects of curricular intensification in middle school mathematics. Using district-level panel data from all California K–12 public school districts, we estimate the effects of increasing 8th-grade Algebra enrollment rates on a 10th-grade mathematics achievement measure. We find that enrolling more students in advanced courses has negative average effects on students’ achievement, driven by negative effects in large districts.

Accountability Under Constraint The Relationship Between Collective Bargaining Agreements and California Schools’ and Districts’ Performance Under No Child Left Behind

The authors examine how the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiated between teachers’ unions and districts is associated with schools’ and districts’ performance under accountability pressures in California. They find that CBA restrictiveness is associated with the increased likelihood that districts will be in Program Improvement (PI) and at higher levels of PI, and with lower school- and district-level proficiency and graduation rates. They also show that strong contract schools and districts that have higher proportions of minority, low-income, and low-achieving student are even less likely to meet performance targets and have even lower proficiency rates.

We Are the 5%: Which Schools Would Be Held Accountable Under a Proposed Revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act?

This article uses data from California to analyze the results of the proposed accountability system in the Senate’s Harkin-Enzi draft Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization. The authors analyze existing statewide school-level data from California, applying the accountability criteria proposed in the draft law. Comparing the proposed system to the No Child Left Behind Act’s Adequate Yearly Progress provisions, they draw conclusions about the stability of the proposed identification schemes and the types of schools likely to be identified. They conclude with several policy recommendations that could be easily incorporated into the law, based on their analysis and the existing literature.

Who Enters Teaching? Encouraging Evidence That the Status of Teaching Is Improving

The relatively low status of teaching as a profession is often given as a factor contributing to the difficulty of recruiting teachers, the middling performance of American students on international assessments, and the well-documented decline in the relative academic ability of teachers through the 1990s. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, a number of federal, state, and local teacher accountability policies have been implemented toward improving teacher quality over the objections of some who argue the policies will decrease quality. In this article, we analyze 25 years of data on the academic ability of teachers in New York State and document that since 1999 the academic ability of both individuals certified and those entering teaching has steadily increased. These gains are widespread and have resulted in a substantial narrowing of the differences in teacher academic ability between high- and low-poverty schools and between White and minority teachers. We interpret these gains as evidence that the status of teaching is improving.

The Politics of Elementary and Secondary Education Act Waivers.

Executive leadership of the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) initiated a flexibility offering from No Child Left Behind. Our work explores specific design decisions made in these state-specific accountability systems as associated with state political environments, resources, and demographic characteristics. Our analysis, focused on 42 states with approved flexibility waivers, provides some evidence that design decisions are associated with prior education policies, political leanings, and financial resources within each state. Policymakers should also take note, as these results suggest that state political factors may influence how state policymakers will react in future negotiations with the USDOE.

School Choice, Student Mobility, and School Quality: Evidence from post-Katrina New Orleans

In recent decades, school choice policies predicated on student mobility have gained prominence as urban districts address chronically low-performing schools. However, scholars have highlighted equity concerns related to choice policies. The case of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans provides an opportunity to examine student mobility patterns in a choice-based district. This paper analyzes student mobility between and within the various sectors and school types using a multinomial framework. We find rates of student mobility in post-Katrina New Orleans to be similar to other traditional urban school districts. Overall, our results indicate that high-achieving students switch to high-quality schools whereas low-achieving students transfer to low-quality schools. It is clear some students are taking advantage of the ability to choose a high-quality educational option, although many students are still not. Policy implications, especially for education policy makers implementing or considering school choice policies, and areas for future research are discussed.

Student Enrollment Patterns and Achievement in Ohio’s Online Charter Schools

We utilize state data of nearly 1.7 million students in Ohio to study a specific sector of online education: K–12 schools that deliver most, if not all, education online, lack a brick-and-mortar presence, and enroll students full-time. First, we explore e-school enrollment patterns and how these patterns vary by student subgroups and geography. Second, we evaluate the impact of e-schools on students’ learning, comparing student outcomes in e-schools to outcomes in two other schooling types, traditional charter schools and traditional public schools. Our results show that students and families appear to self-segregate in stark ways where low-income, lower achieving White students are more likely to choose e-schools while low-income, lower achieving minority students are more likely to opt into the traditional charter school sector. Our results also show that students in e-schools are performing worse on standardized assessments than their peers in traditional charter and traditional public schools. We close with policy recommendations and areas for future research.

Waivering as Governance Federalism During the Obama Administration

This article analyzes how the Obama administration used executive power to grant waivers from federal education policies and assesses whether they used this power differently than previous administrations and in other sectors (e.g., health or welfare). The executive use of waivers to shape state policy is not a new trend. However, we find that recent education waivers differ in purpose and specificity from past education waivers, as well as waivers in other social policy arenas, and that the Obama administration is using this executive power to further its policy objectives in ways that often circumvent congressional intent. As the executive branch continues to utilize waivers as a policy lever, this research has important implications for the future of federal involvement in educational policy and provides critical background for Congress’s reaction to waivers in the recently reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Detracking and Tracking Up Mathematics Course Placements in California Middle Schools, 2003–2013

Between 2003 and 2013, the proportion of California eighth graders enrolled in algebra or a more advanced course nearly doubled to 65%. In this article, we consider the organizational processes that accompanied this curricular intensification. Facing a complex set of accountability, institutional, technical/functional, and internal political pressures, California schools responded to the algebra-for-all effort in diverse ways. While some schools detracked by enrolling all eighth graders in algebra, others “tracked up,” creating more advanced geometry opportunities while increasing algebra enrollments. These responses created a new differentiated course structure that is likely to benefit advantaged students. Consistent with the effectively maintained inequality hypothesis, we find that detracking occurred primarily in disadvantaged schools while “tracking up” occurred primarily in advantaged schools.