NCLB LITE:

England Refines
Accountability Reforms (Lynn Olson, May 5, 2004, Education Week)

[T]he Conservative government crafted the Education Reform Act of 1988, which mandates a national curriculum for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as well as national- curriculum tests at ages 7, 11, and 14. (Scotland, which has greater autonomy over its education system, has no prescribed national curriculum.)

The law also permitted schools in England, with the consent of a majority of parents, to secede from the local education authority and receive funding directly from the national government. (Those "grant maintained" schools have since been reabsorbed into their local authorities.)

As envisioned by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the changes would combine much greater control from the central government with the use of market forces to improve schools by permitting parents to choose among schools, in part on the basis of test results.

The national government released the first set of results in 1992, and the information appeared in newspapers in the form of school rankings, or "league tables." That same year, the government also set up the Office for Standards in Education, or OFSTED, which regularly inspects schools and produces high-stakes reports on their performance that are published in print and online.

When the Labor government came to power in 1997, it built on that framework, pursuing a strategy that embraces both pressure and support for individual schools. Most notably, the government has provided about 5 percent real growth in education spending, over and above the rate of inflation, every year since. In return, it has demanded results: national achievement targets that help determine goals for individual schools and the local education authorities, or LEAs.

"No government would spend this much money without demanding something in return," observed Michael Barber, the head of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, which was formed in 2001 to help ensure that the government meets its targeted outcomes in education and other public services. Mr. Barber, who formerly directed the standards and effectiveness unit in the Department for Education and Skills, was one of the principal architects of Prime Minister Blair’s education strategy.

"The accountability system," Mr. Barber said, "is the way we prove, collectively, to the public that the system is improving."

In a heady political moment, the government pledged that 80 percent of 11-year-olds would pass national English tests by 2002—achieving a "level 4" or higher on the exams—and that 75 percent would pass national math exams.

The government also launched national literacy and numeracy strategies for primary schools that included detailed teaching programs for ages 5 to 11, extensive professional development for teachers, and extra help for children who fell behind. It also further devolved budgetary decisions to individual schools.

Michael Fullan, dean emeritus of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, in Canada, evaluated the national literacy and numeracy strategies for the British government. He describes them as "the most ambitious large-scale educational reform initiative in the world," designed to change teaching practice and improve pupil performance in all of England’s nearly 20,000 primary schools. In 2000, the government launched a similar strategy for ages 11 to 14, aimed at England’s 3,500 secondary schools.

Last year, for the first time, the government produced performance tables for every primary and secondary school in England, based on how much progress schools made with individual students, in addition to publishing raw test results.

"This is a government committed to education, and they sometimes drive you up the wall," said Alan Steer, the head teacher of the 1,360-student Seven Kings High School in east London. Still, he added: "In all my 34 years of being a teacher, they’re actually the only government I can honestly say has made education a national priority. And that’s wonderful. It’s hugely beneficial."

From 1997 to 2000, those efforts appeared to be working. In 2000, 75 percent of 11-year-olds reached the expected level 4 in English, up from just 57 percent in 1996, before Mr. Blair took office. In mathematics, the figure jumped from 54 percent to 73 percent. Moreover, some of England’s most disadvantaged schools and local education authorities made the greatest gains.

"So we got something quite rare," said Mr. Barber, "which is, across a whole system, to get rising average standards and a narrowing of the [achievement] gap."

But since 2000, progress for 11-year-olds has hit a standstill, although test scores for 14-year-olds have continued a slow, steady drift upward.

Trying to figure out the reasons for that plateau, and how to move off it, has become the driving force behind the government’s recent education initiatives.

"I would make no apology for what Michael et al. did in 1997," said David Hopkins, a university academic who succeeded Mr. Barber as head of the standards and effectiveness unit at the national education department. "For the first time in 50 years, [primary] standards increased."

In 1998, Mr. Hopkins noted, only two local education authorities had at least 75 percent of 11-year-olds at level 4 in English; by 2003, a majority did. "If there’s any justification for doing what Michael Barber and Tony Blair did, it’s that, in my mind," he said. "It has to be a stunning achievement."

"But," added the amiable professor, who has spent 25 years working on school improvement issues, "and this is a big but, that was only the first stage in a long-term, large-scale reform. And one of the reasons why we’ve stalled is that more of the same will not work."

Few deny that the government’s efforts to date have had an impact. Although the strategies for primary school have been criticized by some as too prescriptive and centralized, particularly in their initial version, most admit that standards and teaching in the early grades have improved.

"Overall, I think it dragged up the bottom layer," said Susan Scarsbrook, the head teacher of Sudbourne Primary School in south London.

That's probably as much improvement as you'll get if you aren't serious about bringing market pressures to bear on the system.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 5, 2004 8:51 AM