Introduction

“A deal is a deal.  Every state that took Title I money starting in 1995 committed to implement [standards, assessment, and accountability systems.]  My responsibility is to help them do that and to hold them accountable for doing that…These are the requirements that come along with taking federal money.”[1]

Michael Cohen, Former Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education

 

In 1994, Congress made a deal with state and local education officials.  It offered to provide “greater decision-making authority and flexibility to schools and teachers in exchange for greater responsibility for student performance.”[2]  It delegated to states major new responsibilities to develop standards, aligned assessment and accountability systems to ensure that all students, but especially disadvantaged students, made real academic progress.  Now, over five years after the deal was made, Congress is poised to rewrite the rules for Title I, its largest educational assistance program for elementary and secondary schools.   Once again, it is time to assess the extent to which the parties fulfilled their ends of the bargain – a bargain that was struck for one overriding purpose:  to provide an equal opportunity for all students to obtain a quality education.[3] 

In this report, the Citizens’ Commission revisits several of the key questions it examined in its 1999 report, Title I in Midstream:  the Fight to Improve Schools for Poor Kids, including:

 

·        Have all states set standards for student performance?

 

·        Are all states measuring attainment of the standards with assessments that meet Title I requirements for:

*    Alignment with the standards?

*    Inclusion of students with disabilities?

*    Inclusion of students with limited English proficiency?

*    Disaggregation of assessment results?

 

·        Have all states developed the accountability systems called for in the law, including:

*    A definition of  “adequate yearly progress?”

*    Help and support for low-performing schools?

*    Corrective action for persistently low-performing schools?

 

The answer to all of the above should be an unqualified “yes.”  This is because the Title I statute, and accompanying regulations and guidance issued by the Department of Education, (the Department) specify that all these steps were to be taken by states before or by this current (2000-01) school year. Congress allowed states a generous “transition” period within which to fully develop, test and implement the standards-based system.  This period has now expired. Title I in Midstream evaluated state compliance and federal enforcement midway through the process of implementing the reforms.  This report provides an update on how states have met their ultimate responsibilities.  It also evaluates the important role of the Department in seeing to it that states adhere to major terms and conditions of the aid – provisions that are essential to ensure that poor and minority children have real opportunities to learn and are not left behind.

The stakes are higher now than they were during the period 1997-99 when the Commission last reviewed state plans for compliance and found most of them deficient.  A new Congress and Administration are debating competing proposals for Title I reauthorization and competing visions of the federal role in education.  In the judgment of the Commission, though, parents and students have been asked to wait far too long for better schools.   It is now up to each set of actors in this complex drama to take responsibility and to act with a sense of urgency to see that real education reform takes hold in our nation’s poorest schools. 

First and foremost, the states should muster the political will to do what is right for poor and minority youngsters by implementing the 1994 reforms and providing sufficient resources to poor schools to enable students to meet high standards.

The new Administration should not let another day slip by without aggressively enforcing provisions in current law designed to ensure no child is left behind.  These include provisions for fair and inclusive final assessments that should have been in place last October, and accountability systems, which all states should have in place by this spring.

Finally, the Congress should ratify the principles of standards-based reform contained in the 1994 amendments to Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act by reauthorizing the Act for at least five more years. Congress should take additional steps to improve the capacity of high-poverty schools and school districts, including targeting additional resources, improving accountability for poor and minority students, and taking bold steps to address growing problems of teacher quality.

 

 

The Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994

The Title I program is the federal government’s largest program of educational assistance to elementary and secondary schools, providing over $8 billion annually to meet the needs of disadvantaged students.  Title I now serves more than 11 million students, of whom 30% are Hispanic and 28% are African American. Nearly one in five Title I participants have limited English proficiency, and close to one in ten have disabilities.[4]

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1994, called for a major overhaul of the Title I program.  The overhaul was designed to shift the program’s focus from remediation and basic skills to high standards and high achievement.  Significantly, the new law called on all states to establish standards in the core subjects, to develop and administer assessments to measure attainment of the standards, and to hold Title I schools and school districts accountable for making adequate progress toward achieving the standards.  Other critical components required states and school districts to identify districts and schools in need of improvement and to take corrective action in cases of persistent academic failure.  Finally, additional measures enacted in 1994 provided for an expansion of schoolwide programs, for increased targeting of Title I dollars to poor communities, and for states to take steps to improve the capacity of schools to deliver high-quality instruction.

Relevant portions of the 1994 law are appended to this report.

 

Background on Federal Enforcement and State Compliance

The Citizens’ Commission has long advocated that federal officials take seriously their duty to enforce the civil rights laws in education and to ensure that recipients of Title I, and other federal funds targeted to the disadvantaged, do not maintain dual systems of public education based on race or economic circumstances.  In its 1999 report, Title I in Midstream, the Citizens’ Commission was highly critical of the Clinton Administration’s enforcement of reforms enacted in 1994 that were designed to shift the focus of the Title I program from remediation in basic skills to high standards and higher achievement for all.  Title I in Midstream detailed a “massive failure of will and nerve” on the part of federal officials between 1994 and 1998.  During this time, the Department of Education resisted taking effective enforcement action against states which, for example:

 

·        Did not comply with federal requirements to adopt performance standards.

 

·        Were slow in identifying low-performing schools and districts and in mapping out plans to take corrective action against those with chronic failure.

 

·        Did not develop plans to include all students in assessment and accountability systems, including disabled students and those with limited English proficiency.

     

The Citizens’ Commission is pleased to report, however, that in the last year of the Clinton Administration, in part as a response to adverse publicity generated by the Commission’s reports, the Department of Education actually began to enforce the law.  Under new leadership in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Department issued clear and comprehensive guidance to states on the requirements for final accountability systems.[5]  Early on in the process, the Department sent messages to states that full compliance would be expected by the 2000-01 deadline.

 

 

Preliminary Review of Final Assessment Plans

In addition to publicly releasing guidance in November 1999, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education undertook a pilot study of four states’ final assessments to identify glitches in state systems and to prepare the staff for a workable review of all 50 states’ final assessment plans.[6]  Significantly, the Department found deficiencies in all four states, although it eventually approved Wyoming and Kentucky after those states corrected the problems.  As a result of the pilot reviews, the Department also flagged a number of problem areas with respect to state compliance.  These included:

 

·        Inclusion of Limited English Proficient (LEP) Students.[7]  The Department found that three out of four of the states “did not fully meet the requirement to include all students in the assessment system, particularly LEP students.”  In an April 6, 2000 letter to chief state school officers Assistant Secretary Michael Cohen emphasized his expectation that all states would comply with Title I’s unambiguous requirements for full inclusion:

 

“While we recognize the challenge this may present, our review indicated that meeting this very clear inclusion requirement is not beyond the capacity of state assessment systems.”[8]

 

·        Alignment with Standards.  Although the Department had previously indicated the use of norm-referenced tests as the primary Title I assessment could be problematic because these tests were not criterion referenced, the states included in the pilot review all utilized or proposed to utilize criterion-referenced tests aligned with state standards.  Nonetheless, the Department indicated it would carefully evaluate state submissions for evidence of alignment.[9]

 

Following its pilot review, the Department also issued further guidance on the requirements for full inclusion of LEP and disabled students in state assessments.[10]  This guidance made clear that very few exemptions, if any, would be tolerated under the new law, and that LEP and disabled students were entitled to appropriate assessment accommodations.  Finally, the guidance affirmed the statutory requirement that LEP students be tested in their native language “if it is the form of assessment most likely to yield valid results.”

 

 

Federal Review of Title I Final Assessments

Over the course of its last year, the Clinton Administration required all states, pursuant to the 1994 law, to submit detailed plans for final Title I assessments to the Department for review and approval.  The deadline for all states was October 1, 2000, although a number of states submitted their plans earlier.  Each state’s plan was subjected to a peer review process, after which the Department negotiated with the states to correct deficiencies found by the reviewers and the staff.   The Department sought to determine whether states were meeting key requirements in current law, e.g., for alignment of assessments with standards, for technical quality, and for inclusion and appropriate assessment of all students (including those with disabilities, or limited English proficiency and students attending charter schools). 

By January 19, 2001, (the Administration’s last day in office) the Department had issued decision letters to 34 states.[11] [See Figure 1.]  Significantly, but not surprisingly, the Department found that only eleven states were in compliance with Title I assessment requirements and safeguards.  It also determined that 20 states had deficiencies serious enough to warrant only “conditional approval” or to compel them to seek a waiver of the spring 2001 deadline for full compliance. Moreover, three states – California, West Virginia and Wisconsin – were so egregiously out of compliance that the Assistant Secretary determined they would need to enter into compliance agreements with the Department in order to keep federal funds flowing to the states.   Finally, the Department did not complete its reviews of 16 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. 

The new Administration has not gotten into gear on this process.  The Citizens’ Commission has found no evidence to date that the Department of Education, since January 20, 2001, a) has acted on any additional states, or b) has taken the enforcement measures specified in the 20 decision letters identifying deficiencies in state plans. [Figure 2]  The Citizens’ Commission is particularly concerned about the three states identified for compliance agreements. 

 

 

Accountability Reviews Deferred

Regrettably, the Clinton Administration decided not to review states’ accountability systems, including their definitions of “adequate yearly progress,” even though the same deadline (the 2000-01 school year) was set for compliance with these provisions.  Instead, in October 2000, the Department circulated “Draft Title I Accountability Review Criteria,” and told states they would need to submit evidence of their accountability systems by December 1, 2000.  Then, the Department changed its mind, perhaps as a result of pressure from the states or perhaps in recognition that the incumbent administration had virtually no prospect of acting on the submissions before it left office.  States were informed they would not need to submit their accountability plans until March 1, 2001.  In doing this, the Clinton Administration virtually assured that the plans would not be acted upon in time for this spring’s administration of state tests.

The only exceptions to this deferral on accountability occurred with respect to states submitting applications for Ed-Flex status.  Because the Ed-Flex law requires such states to have approved assessment and accountability systems, the Department reviewed those states’ accountability plans. (See discussion, section VII, infra.)

 

On the following pages, we explain what current Title I law requires and why each of these provisions is important for civil rights reasons.  Then we provide specific examples of how some of the states listed above have failed to meet their obligations.  All references are to decision letters, peer review reports and other public records obtained by the Citizens’ Commission from the Department of Education.[12]

 

 

 

Figure 1

 

Federal Action on State Title I Assessment Plans (As of 1-19-01)

 

Decision	Number of States	States
Full Approval	11 States	Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming
Conditional Approval (Full approval expected by Spring 2001)	6 States	Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Washington
Timeline Waiver	14 States	Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota
Compliance Agreement	3 States	California, West Virginia, Wisconsin
Still Under Review	18 States	Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, Tennessee, Utah

Source:  U.S. Department of Education, January 19, 2001.

 

Figure 2

 

Deficiencies in State Title I Assessment Systems

 

Requirement	Number of States	States
Inclusion of limited English proficient students	22 States	California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Virginia, Wisconsin, West Virginia
Inclusion of students with disabilities	14 States	California, Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin, West Virginia
Disaggregated Reporting	30 States	California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, West Virginia
Finish Standards-based System	11 States	California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, North Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia

Source:  U.S. Department of Education, January 19, 2001

 

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