It is clear from the state’s waiver application that they desired equity, using the phrases
“every student” and “all students” dozens of times in that document. State policymakers intend for all students to improve over their baseline results every year. The design of the incentives under the waiver, however, did not necessarily align with those intentions and created competing incentives for districts, school leaders, and teachers. Furthermore, despite speaking in depth about equity concerns regarding schools who narrowly target bubble students, GCPS provided the data and encouraged schools to focus on bubble students before the state test. State policy influenced the district rules governing their TAIP program, which affected equity of access to support and resources because schools selected students for interventions based on state incentives.
The use of aggregate proficiency rates for students in grades three through eight did not “mitigate an overemphasis on grades three and seven” (ESEA Flexibility Request, 2012, p. 42). The state recognized that measuring schools based on single grades might lead schools to behave strategically, including in the waiver application that “[u]nderstanding that [annual measureable objectives] drive behavior, we added aggregate grades 3-8 Math and Reading measures to mitigate an over-emphasis on 3rd and 7th grade” (ESEA Flexibility
143
Request, 2012, p. 42). While recognizing that measuring school performance on individual grades might lead schools to focus on students in those grades, policymakers’ fix—including the aggregate score—did not work. Every TAIP school targeted third or seventh grade students with interventions. This emphasis on individual grades appears to be driven directly by the state accountability system because none of the district’s communication to the schools included mention of which grade to target. An important takeaway for state and federal policymakers is ensuring that the policy metrics and incentives match their intentions. This state appears to have learned its lesson, including in the subsequent accountability waiver application that “based on feedback gathered from stakeholders, measures that focus on individual grades (i.e., 3rd and 7th grade) are eliminated” (ESEA Flexibility Request, 2015, p. 45).
Proficiency rates caused schools to focus on bubble students. While the district encouraged schools to target Priority students, school leaders were allowed to determine the focal students for interventions. The Priority label alone represents a strong signal to schools that these are the important students, and 93% of schools followed this signal by targeting bubble students. Even though some of these schools also supported other students, nearly seven in ten schools focused interventions solely on students close to proficiency.
This focus on bubble students reflects both district and state accountability incentives that rate districts, schools, administrators, and teachers (and students), at least in part, based on proficiency rates. The state used proficiency rates in the waiver accountability system to (a) hold districts accountable, (b) identify the lowest-performing 5% of schools statewide, and (c)
comprise 15% of principal and teacher evaluation scores. The waiver shifted individual school accountability from the state to districts, and GCPS’ school accountability framework included multiple indicators, with 15% of school ratings determined by the school’s proficiency rate.
144
The focus on bubble students is understandable, given the design of the accountability incentives. For example, because the state held districts accountable for proficiency, it makes sense that district leaders would want schools to know who their bubble students were so they could focus on students close to that line. In addition, the lowest-performing 5% of schools risked possible takeover by the state, a possibility determined solely by proficiency rates. Given that the schools with TAIP funding were amongst the lowest-performing in the district, it makes sense that these schools would want to increase this metric to avoid being in the bottom 5% of schools in the state. Despite including student growth metrics in the policies, the use of
proficiency rates in both state and district accountability appears to have led directly to the TAIP program in GCPS where schools focused on bubble students. While I cannot extrapolate these behaviors beyond GCPS, or even beyond the schools that received TAIP funding, it is not difficult to imagine that more schools across the state felt that their rating would benefit through this type of focus.
Students in need are left behind. Schools did not simply focus on bubble students, however, but on bubble students in grades that counted twice. Micro-targeting third- and
seventh-grade bubble students leads to equity concerns, especially regarding the students who do not get access to needed supports and are left behind. For example, in all of the TAIPs, because the schools targeted their interventions only for third- and seventh-graders, students in other grades may not receive needed additional support.
Only one in four TAIP schools expanded their TAIP interventions to include low- performers, with even fewer providing enrichment for high-performers. The district labeled the lowest-performing students as needing a “Multi-Year Plan” to meet proficiency. Yet the district did not require that schools turn in a plan for those students, only a proposal for how schools
145
would target Priority students. By not asking schools to detail how they will improve outcomes for the low-performing students, and by labeling these students as “Multi-Year Plan” and color- coding them red in Figure 2, the district implicitly wrote off those students. Low-performers being neglected is a major concern regarding educational triage and has equity implications in this district. In order to get additional resources to support their learning, students needed to be in an important grade and to score right around proficiency on the benchmark. This is concerning because schools appear to be making instructional decisions based on the metrics used to rate them and not necessarily on student need.
The limited expansion of support to other students is at odds with a stated goal in the waiver, which describes a “focus on growing every student, every year” (ESEA Flexibility Request, 2012, p. 43). The state designed the evaluation system to incent individual teachers and principals to focus on student growth by making 35% of teacher and principal evaluation scores based on value-add metrics. That only a handful of TAIP schools targeted students across the test score distribution, however, suggests that the incentives regarding proficiency rates might be stronger than those regarding growth metrics.
The TAIP analysis indicates that incentives matter. There appear to be multiple external pressures that led many schools to micro-target bubble students in third- and seventh-grade. This behavior suggests a narrow focus on the measured aspects of schools, as Campbell (1979) would have predicted. The TAIP proposals reflect the language and metrics from both the district and the state, which points to how carefully members of these role groups should consider the messages they send to those who implement the policy at the school level. This study indicates that policymakers can affect equity of access to enhanced learning opportunities through the incentives and metrics in accountability systems.
146