SACRAMENTO, CA – In his recent State of Education address, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell made several good points. He stressed the importance of high expectations for all students, the centrality of the state’s rigorous academic standards, and the use of data to guide policy. His main focus, however, was on closing the achievement gap between whites and Asians on the one hand, and African Americans and Hispanics on the other. That leaves a key question: how will he close this gap?

O'Connell is a close ally of the state teachers unions, staunch foes of real education reform in California, but he is on the right side of some important fights. For instance, he and Gov. Schwarzenegger are strong supporters of the state’s high-school exit exam, under attack by minority-group activists.  Although the test itself is too easy to pass, O’Connell was correct when he said, "As a result of the exit exam, students are working harder, learning more and persevering in school." There were other important highlights in his speech.

On the state’s academic content standards, O’Connell pointed out, "Real measurable progress has been made since the institution of standards-based education," and, "[R]eal lives have been changed and improved as a result of our rigorous standards."  Indeed, much research now shows that implementing the state standards in the classroom is a key element in raising the achievement of low-income and minority students.

"We need data to guide us more quickly to achieve results," he said. Although some have rightly criticized the state’s slowness in creating a database of individual test-scores to inform reform efforts, O’Connell, who is largely not responsible for the delay, correctly stated that such a data system will "provide a clearer picture of dropout and retention rates, and a clearer assessment of what’s working to help students succeed."

Discussing the achievement gap, O’Connell observed that far fewer Hispanic students graduate from high school than Asian and Filipino students.  O’Connell correctly noted, "All students must continue to improve, but to close the  [achievement] gap, we need to find strategies to ensure that those who are struggling the most actually learn and improve their achievement at an even faster pace."  

O’Connell failed to address one of the main reasons why the state and schools are not getting minority students to improve at a higher rate. The superintendent emphasized that today we are holding ourselves accountable for the results of "all children." That is not true. 

As detailed in Pacific Research Institute’s recent study Failing our Future: The Holes in California’s School Accountability System and How to Fix Them, a school’s score on the state’s Academic Performance Index (API) and its ranking based on that score are calculated using a schoolwide average of student scores on state tests. These average scores fail to take into account the performance, or lack thereof, of particular student subgroups. Thus, a school may appear to be doing well or improving because whites and Asians at the school are performing at a high level, while the performance of African Americans and Hispanics may be increasing at lower rates, stagnating or even declining. This masking phenomenon carries an important consequence.

Eligibility for the state’s improvement programs for low-performing schools is based on schools’ API scores and rankings. Schools experiencing the masking phenomenon may therefore be ineligible for the improvement programs and elude interventions and sanctions. As a result, lower-performing minority students do not receive added assistance, improved instruction or better schooling options. Further, since participation in the improvement programs has been voluntary, many low-performing schools have never participated, thus allowing the perpetuation and worsening of achievement gaps.

To his credit, O’Connell said in his speech that he and his advisory team "will lay out clear goals around what it’s going to take to narrow the gap and then we will set clear benchmarks for success – benchmarks with which we will hold ourselves accountable for results." 

This is a commendable objective. Advice to the superintendent: overhauling the state’s school accountability system would go a long way toward meeting his goal. 

Lance T. Izumi is Director of Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute. He can be reached via email at lizumi@pacificresearch.org.