Early Implementation of State Differentiated Accountability Plans under the &quot;No Child Left Behind Act&quot;
Author: Charles, Karen
Date: 2012-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Program Implementation,State Standards,Statewide Planning,Accountability,Educational Legislation,Federal Legislation,Educational Improvement,Pilot Projects,School Restructuring,Governance,Educational Planning,Educational Strategies,Educational Indicators

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) launched a differentiated accountability pilot to allow states to distinguish between those schools identified for improvement in need of substantial help and those closer to meeting achievement goals. In July 2008 and January 2009, the Department approved waivers to give nine states the flexibility to implement differentiated accountability pilot plans creating more nuanced systems for identifying and assisting Title I schools identified for Improvement, Corrective Action, or Restructuring. The Department approved waivers for Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and Ohio in July 2008 and for Arkansas, Louisiana, and New York in January 2009. Under this pilot, participating states could change the structure of the school improvement categories used for schools that have missed adequate yearly progress (AYP) based on the lengths of time and reasons for missing AYP. This report describes the early implementation of differentiated accountability in the nine pilot states, based on interviews at the state and local levels and on review of extant documents. The study was designed to address three central issues: (1) How have states used their waivers to change their school improvement categories?; (2) How have states responded to their waivers in terms of proposed plans for school interventions?; and (3) What challenges are states, districts, schools, and school support providers experiencing in implementing differentiated accountability? This report examines how the pilot states planned and began to implement differentiated accountability, both in terms of changing the school improvement categories and in terms of changing states' strategies for helping improve performance in targeted schools. This study gathered information on the implementation of the differentiated accountability pilot through interviews at the state and local levels and through review of extant documents, such as states' differentiated accountability plans, and other public documents. Key findings of this short-term study include the following: (1) Under the differentiated accountability pilot, eight of the nine participating states determined school improvement status based on both the percentage of AYP indicators the school had met and the number of years the school had been under an improvement plan; (2) Although most changes enacted were allowable prior to the waiver, state respondents reported that the differentiated accountability pilot provided an impetus for their states to implement strategies intended to better coordinate, target, and expand their technical assistance services; and (3) Implementation of the differentiated accountability plans varied across the pilot states.