UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access

Mintrop examines the degree to which California’s systems of public school accountability and state oversight enable the state to ensure that students in the state’s lowest performing schools have educational opportunities equal to those in other schools. He finds that California’s current system of state oversight lacks standards of adequacy for learning conditions that can potentially be evaluated statewide and that schools can use to evaluate themselves. While the state’s accountability system as currently constructed defines standards of student and school performance with the help of the academic performance index (API), the state lacks mechanisms to identify performance barriers systematically across schools that do not meet adequate performance standards, as defined by API growth targets. Many performance barriers encountered by schools are systemic, that is, caused by district (and state) policies, yet the current school-based accountability system ignores this. As a result, the state has no way of knowing what statewide policies and local interventions are needed to move underperforming schools to adequate performance levels. Further, oversight and support to schools and districts that are in need or distress according to the state’s own performance criteria are insufficient. Large numbers of schools that qualify for the state’s Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP) are not reached through state oversight or support. Moreover, there is little evidence that the state has developed effective intervention systems for a sizable number of schools and districts that have not improved sufficiently according to the state’s own performance criteria. Mintrop concludes that California lacks standards for adequate school operations, systematic mechanisms to detect performance barriers, and sufficient provision of support and intervention.