On the other hand, Columbus is a large metropolitan community in an industrial region, and it has students from underprivileged economic circumstances, recent immigrant students, and a large population of students with special needs. In addressing the educational needs of its students, the Columbus Public School System has insufficiently addressed student populations which fall outside the conventional curricular and instructional foci and many students are not as well served as they should be. Responses by district educators to heightened demands for accountability have led to an expanded level of programmatic diversity. Principals' school improvement plans include a plethora of responses to the need for improvement, and serious incongruity across the system. These responses by individual contradict the demand for databased decision-making and improvement which is defined by data.
Data have a specific contextual referent, that is, the assessments or tests from which they emanate.
The connection between assessments and curriculum has not been well understood in previous years by educators in Columbus, though many are feeling the effects of the recent demands for change and the requirements for accountability for results in an accelerated pace which is demanding and often frustrating at times. Moreover, the curriculum itself is expressed in courses of study, but curricula are insufficiently defined to direct teaching. Teaching cannot be focused unless what students are to learn is clearly explicated and defined by board policy and in curriculum guides for teacher use. Most principals demonstrate a lack of understanding on how to monitor and measure what is taught in classrooms, thereby contributing to a fragmentation of effort in addressing key learner expectations. The system's assessment and feedback mechanisms are inadequate, despite considerable investment in such activities in the past.