A Need for Management Supervision in Education Systems
A Need for Management Supervision in Education Systems
The issue of accountability within the educational field has been brought to the forefront in the State of California with the passage of the Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999. Passed in March of 1999, SB 1X provides a comprehensive method of measuring growth of a school’s performance over time as well as a way to rank schools on an annual basis. The major component of this bill is a ranking index called the API or Academic Performance Index. This index gives each school a ranking on a scale from 200 to 1000, with the average goal (or “performance target”) for each school being 800. Along with the API, there are incentives for growth (a 5% “growth target”) for those schools who scored below the 800 goal. The positive incentive which is given to those schools who have met the growth target is an allotment of up to $150.00 per student in discretionary funds. The negative incentive is to have an external evaluator come and conduct a needs assessment and improvement plan for the school.
Overall, the API has been met with mixed results. The California Teacher’s Association (CTA) is extremely cautious at this point, whereas polls indicate a positive response by the average California voter.
I first got involved in this process as a response to a phone call from a concerned parent. As a private school, North Hills Christian Schools is not required to participate in this ranking procedure. The parent, however, asked me where North Hills ranked among public schools in our area. This started me on a search as to what was the nature of API, how the process of ranking was calculated, and comparing our scores to the schools in our immediate area so we could come up with a comparative score.
After doing much research, I found out that the scale used (API, 200 - 1000) was loosely related to how each school scored on their SAT 9 tests. (Mean Scaled Score) More interestingly though, was that the vast majority of people at my school really wanted to know the “Rank” score (1-10) which was also given to each school. This score placed a school basically in a percentile ranking, with a “1" being in the bottom 10% and a “10" being in the top 10%. (Obviously, this was a lot easier for...