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A state-level accountability program can lead to significant improvement in school performance, according to recent studies by UW-Madison Education Professor Carolyn Kelley. She found that Kentucky schools successfully meeting student achievement goals in the state's school-based performance award program did so by making considerable changes in curriculum and instruction.

Kelley found distinct differences between award-winning schools and non award-winning schools in the Kentucky Accountability Program. She studied 16 schools, selected to represent elementary, middle, and high schools in various geographic regions and reaching various levels of success in their accountability goals (see sidebar).

The Kentucky accountability program aims to produce school-level improvements in student performance on the state's authentic assessment instrument, the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS). Both the accountability program and the assessment instrument were created as part of Kentucky's state education reforms in 1990.

The accountability program combines KIRIS results at the individual student and school levels with measures based on student attendance, dropout and retention rates, and transition to adult life.

Strategies for meeting accountability goals

Studying the 16 schools, Kelley wanted to determine what differentiated the award-winning schools from the non-award-winning ones, and how some schools that had received a poor score the first year changed to perform as successful schools the next year. Kelley found that the most successful schools:

• aligned curriculum with the assessment instrument;
• incorporated writing and other test-taking skills into the regular curriculum; and
• focused high quality professional development activities on gaps in teacher knowledge and skills.

Principal leadership and a focus on achieving rewards were critical factors in achieving reward status, except in the highest achieving schools. In these schools exceptionally skilled and professionally connected teaching staffs worked with principals to focus the curriculum and instructional program. The schools receiving rewards in both the first and second cycles all had extraordinarily skilled teaching staffs and were professionally "in the loop." They had direct contacts with the state's accountability program through professional ties and as current or past members of state committees. As a result, these schools were more likely than others to know how to use and interpret the considerable amount of information the state issued as a guide to help schools improve practice. They used draft curriculum guides and analyzed test results from previous assessments to modify their curriculum to address weak areas.

Although principal leadership was not a major characteristic of the schools receiving awards in both years, it was an important characteristic of other successful schools. One explanation for this, Kelley says, is that the schools receiving awards both years had such strong teaching staffs that the principal could function as a facilitator rather than as a director.

The low success schools lacked the characteristics and strategies of high success schools. For example, the elementary school in reward status the first year but in decline the next did not incorporate KIRIS goals into its curriculum program. Teacher leaders in this school made no attempt to modify curriculum and instruction to KIRIS goals. The principal was more a nurturing figure than a strong instructional leader and chose not to exercise leadership to overcome teacher preferences for more traditional curriculum and instructional approaches.

The reward/decline middle school had a stronger professional culture, but had several major educational reform initiatives underway that competed with KIRIS and absorbed the attention of teachers in the school.

Some poorly performing schools were able to achieve reward status in the second cycle. They did so by implementing an accountability program with a strong developmental intervention. Schools identified as in decline received financial resources and were assigned a Distinguished Educator who provided developmental guidance. The combination of rewards, sanctions, and developmental interventions seems to provide a powerful package that has the potential to address organizational and individual barriers to successful organizational change, Kelley says.

What motivated teachers

In 1993-1994 the maximum cash bonus paid to teachers in rewards schools was $2,600 per teacher, with the minimum award set at $1,300. For most teachers in reward schools, the cash bonus was a nice acknowledgment of work well done, but not an incentive that drove their behavior. At the same time, the cash award has an important indirect effect on motivation, given the level of attention to the accountability program, and the level of attention paid to achieving reward status. The bonus seemed to provide an important signal to teachers, principals, district administrators, and the public about what educational goals the accountability program valued.

Teachers were also motivated to avoid sanctions for their schools (having to submit a transformation plan to the state and being assigned a Distinguished Educator) because of the resulting negative publicity. This motivation was particularly strong in rural areas, where school news dominates the newspaper coverage. A few teachers and principals also said they were motivated by fears of losing professional autonomy or job security. But many were motivated by professional pride; they wanted positive public recognition and they wanted to see their students achieve.

Kelley found that elementary schools were significantly more successful in achieving reward status than were middle and high schools. In the first accountability cycle, most of the reward winners were elementary schools, followed by middle and then high schools. In the second cycle, most of the reward winners were again elementary schools, followed by high schools and then middle schools. "In general," says Kelley, "the success of elementary schools was due to the smaller organizational structure, the cross-disciplinary nature, and teachers' greater malleability and willingness to try new things."

Implications

The Kentucky accountability program created a crisis or galvanizing event that research suggests is needed for meaningful organizational change to occur, Kelley says. Her research provides important information on the responses of teachers and schools to the accountability program. The program provided teachers with clear, specific, and challenging goals to strive for, and enabled them to focus curriculum and instruction on these goals rather than any of the other myriad possible goals. The program outcomes that provided a meaningful incentive for teachers included fear of negative publicity, a desire for positive public recognition growing out of a sense of professional pride, intrinsic rewards associated with seeing students achieve and, for a smaller proportion of teachers, a fear of loss of professional autonomy from having a Distinguished Educator assigned, and a fear of job loss.

Several other studies of various aspects of Kentucky education reforms provide support to suggest that the findings here may be generalizable within Kentucky.

For more information contact Kelley at kelley@education.wisc.edu.

Funding was provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement.