An Era of Educational Accountability in California

Abstract

reform from rules and processes to student achievement and accountability. In this high-tech, high-information century, educators face the daunting challenge of ensuring that all students demonstrate higher levels of learning than ever before. Given the size and scope of education in California, with 8,000 public schools of vast geographic and demographic differences, creating an accountability system that positively affects the quality of education is a formidable charge. The California educational reforms of the 1980s and early 1990s reflected a broad scope of efforts related to rigorous curriculum, performance assessments, restructuring, charter schools, and increased professional development opportunities. How those individual priorities and reforms affected student learning in a coherent and systemic way was not clear and led to spirited discussions among parents, policymakers, educators, business leaders, and community members about most effective practices. Along with those discussions, the poor scores of California students on the 1992 and 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress galvanized legislators to enact a multifaceted set of reforms that focused with laserlike intensity on evidence of improved student performance. By 1998, major reforms in California included class size reduction in grades K-3, development of state academic standards, and adoption of new instructional materials and increased funding for districts to purchase them. Central to the effort to improve student achievement in California are the State Board of Education's K-12 core academic content standards in four curriculum areas: English-language arts, mathematics, history-social science, and science. The K-12 content standards identify what students need to know and do at each grade level in each of the four subjects and are the basis for the standards-aligned tests that are currently being developed for California's student assessment system. The accompanying discipline-based subject matter frameworks elaborate and clarify the standards, providing a blueprint for organizing instruction so that every student can achieve high levels of mastery. The frameworks specify guidelines for the development and evaluation of instructional materials and provide recommendations for the design of curricula, instructional delivery, and professional development plans. By the end of 1998, this comprehensive first step toward accountability defined the rigorous of knowledge and skills that students need to learn at each grade level to meet or exceed standards. Even with the range of these reforms, there was no statewide system of accountability in place for holding schools and districts accountable for how well or poorly their students did, nor were there agreed-on definitions of student success. In 1998, Governor Gray Davis ran and was elected on a platform centered on educational improvement. Education became the governor's (and really everybody's) first, second, and third priority, and the booming California economy provided substantial new resources for education. The governor immediately called on the legislature to enact reforms, launching an era of higher expectations for California schools. New legislation outlined accountability for