‘Avoidable Losses’

There are unintended consequences of education reform efforts, and then there are “avoidable losses.”

In a study of 271,000 Texas public high school students, Rice University researchers found that the state’s accountability system, the model for NCLB, has succeeded wildly…in producing more dropouts. Disproportionately minority student dropouts.

How bad was it? The study found that 60 percent of the African American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of ESL students did not graduate within five years.

Judy Radigan of Rice explains to the Houston Fox affiliate how students were discouraged or held back in an effort to improve passing rates on state tests — the scores of which were the basis for ranking schools and rewarding principals.

The most damning paragraph in the study’s summary goes against the very spirit of NCLB, high-stakes accountability, and efforts to close the achievement gap:

The reporting of student test scores by racial categories resulted in the singling out of the lowest-achieving students in these historically underserved subgroups as potential liabilities to the school ratings, increasing the incentives for school administrators to allow these students to quietly exit the system, rather than to provide them with the quality education necessary for them to succeed.

According to Linda McSpadden McNeil, director of Rice’s Center for Education, “High-stakes, test-based accountability doesn’t lead to school improvement or equitable educational possibilities. It leads to avoidable losses of students. Inherently the system creates a dilemma for principals: comply or educate. Unfortunately, we found that compliance means losing students.”

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