A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Goals 2000: Increasing Student Achievement Through State and Local Initiatives - April 1996

State Leadership For Local Improvement

I can say directly that the current partnership between federal, state and local educational institutions gives me hope for major progress. A new balance is being forged with the focus on local communities and the other levels in support roles. It is the right balance. It recognizes that no single level can succeed alone in providing the services needed for America's students. Partnerships are the model for a successful future.

-- Bill Randall, Commissioner of Education in Colorado⁷

Although Goals 2000 has only been in effect a short time, the program has changed the face of education as we know it. I applaud your efforts to help children everywhere reach the high academic standards we have set for them.

-- Tommy G. Thompson, Governor of Wisconsin⁸

The Goals 2000: Educate America Act provides seed money to schools, districts, and states to improve education for every child. Simply put, it is used to raise academic standards, to design ways to measure student performance and hold schools accountable, and to help improve teaching and learning in ways that reflect the needs of each state, community, or school. There are many ways to help every child reach challenging academic standards, and Goals 2000 provides resources and flexibility to support a wide range of strategies.

While the bulk of Goals 2000 funding is provided to schools and school districts, states have a critical role of leadership and support for effective local innovations. States are defining clear academic standards that challenge every student, developing assessments to measure student learning, and strengthening school accountability. All of this work is accomplished by involving citizens across each state and by maximizing flexibility for local districts to design strategies that best meet the needs of their students. Some key facts regarding state participation so far:

Forty-eight states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and all of the outlying areas received funds in the first year of Goals 2000; primarily for designing or updating their education improvement strategies. (See Appendix A for state allocation amounts.)
Forty states, DC, Puerto Rico, the BIA, and all of the outlying areas but Guam have received second-year funds, and most of the other states are expected to apply for second-year money before the June 30th deadline.
Twenty states and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have submitted comprehensive improvement plans for review. (See Appendix B.)
The law requires each state to distribute at least 60 percent of first-year funds to local school districts. Some states awarded more than 60 percent. For instance, Utah devoted more than 90 percent of its first-year funds to local activities, Connecticut more than 86 percent, and Arizona gave 80 percent of its first-year funds to districts.
By statute at least 90 percent of second-year Goals 2000 state grants will go to local school districts and schools.

Building State Partnerships To Improve Education

At the state level, Goals 2000 planning activities have created and strengthened partnerships and support for learning. Over the past two years, governors and chief state school officers have together assembled broad-based planning panels representing viewpoints from across their states -- including state and local policymakers, educators, business, parents, and community members. These panels assess the current state of education, and design a plan for raising student achievement. Many states that already had commissions or task forces in place used them for the Goals 2000 planning process. In addition, states that already had comprehensive reform plans could utilize them to meet the Goals 2000 planning requirements.

In New Mexico the Goals 2000 planning process was a catalyst for bringing together many participants in the education system. During Goals 2000 planning, the state panel learned about local projects sponsored by organizations such as the Panasonic Foundation, the Education Commission of the States, the Carnegie Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. They brought these project leaders together for the first time, enabling them to begin to collaborate, reduce duplicative efforts, and leverage small grants to have a larger impact.

State planning panels vary in size, but each is representative of the state, and each reaches out to even greater numbers of citizens. Numerous town meetings, public hearings, written feedback, and partnerships have helped shape state improvement plans. In turn, the plans include strategies for increasing public involvement in education.

As intended, states have built their plans on their own goals and strategies. Thus, you will not see the title "Goals 2000" in every state. Instead you will see such state-driven initiatives as "New Directions for Education" in Delaware, "Academics 2000" in Texas, the "Green Mountain Challenge" in Vermont, or "Education for the 21st Century" in Oregon. Each state also tailors its use of Goals 2000 funds. For example, Texas' plan supports its newly revised state education code, and its Goals 2000 grants to schools focus on improving reading in early grades. Oregon is focused on helping districts implement school improvement strategies to help all students reach the standards incorporated in the state's Certificates of Initial Mastery and Advanced Mastery. And several states -- such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan, and Arizona -- have used Goals 2000 funds to support public charter schools, as an integral part of their overall school reform efforts.

Vermont's Green Mountain Challenge⁹

Goals 2000 builds on the comprehensive reform effort -- the Green Mountain Challenge -- that Vermont launched in 1991. Vermont's challenge is simply stated: high skills for every student, no exceptions, no excuses. Recognizing that such a vision would require dramatic changes, the state has actively engaged citizens throughout Vermont in school improvement.

The Green Mountain Challenge calls for the development of world-class academic standards, comprehensive assessments, and an education system that provides every student an opportunity to meet the standards. In 1993 Vermont adopted a Common Core of Learning that describes 20 "vital results" (learning goals), after more than 4,000 Vermonters actively provided input. Work is under way to develop a framework for curriculum and assessment that includes concrete standards of performance as well as suggested types of learning experiences. Local districts will determine how best to reach the state standards. Vermont also has an annual school report night when the community is invited into schools for a discussion of student performance.

Goals 2000 has afforded Vermont an opportunity to review, assess, and improve its reform activity to date. The state has used Goals 2000 to target three areas of weakness in its education system: dropout prevention, accountability, and local reform activity. The state designed a comprehensive prevention program to reduce its dropout rate. It also developed a Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities, which consists of indicators to measure educational progress at the school, district, and state levels. Now a report is available that compares all schools in Vermont on 24 indicators. Local Goals 2000 grants have focused on developing and implementing school plans that support the achievement of high standards by all students and address weak school indicators.

Developing Challenging Academic Standards

Students and schools respond to the expectations we have for them. Educators have learned a lesson from business and industry: a key to success is defining clear, high standards of performance and a system that measures results in relation to those standards. Therefore the development of challenging academic standards is the linchpin of local and state improvement activities under Goals 2000. Once developed, academic standards provide a target for students, teachers and parents. Similarly, they provide a focal point for rigorous assessments, better curriculum and instruction, improved teacher training, and accountability.

"Our youth will continue to pay the price if we fail to articulate clear expectations for knowledge and competence. Young people with high school diplomas may think that they have a passport to the future, but too few are qualified for employment againts the high standards required in the global economy. The stark reality is that youth who cannot perform against high workplace expectations are not going to be employed."

--Business Coalition for Education Reform
May 10, 1995 letter to Congressman Goodling

The call in Goals 2000 for high academic standards is not new. It reinforces and encourages the acceleration of state and local efforts that began in some states and communities well before the passage of this Act. Momentum behind implementing high academic standards and related assessments is mounting. A 1995 Phi Delta Kappan poll indicated that 87 percent of the public supports higher standards in core academic subjects.¹⁰ The call for raising expectations was heard again at the 1996 National Education Summit that brought together the nation's governors and business leaders.

What Is a Standard?¹¹

Academic standards describe what every student should know and be able to do in core academic content areas (e.g. mathematics, science, geography). They also define how students demonstrate their skills and knowledge.

An Example of Math Standards in Massachusetts¹²

Students in Massachusetts must master several areas of mathematics. In grades 5 through 8, the Number and Number Relationships Learning Standards ask students to engage in problem solving, communicating, reasoning, and connecting to:

represent and use equivalent forms of numbers, including integers, fractions, decimals, percents, exponents, and scientific notation;
apply ratios, proportions, and percents;
investigate and describe the relationships among fractions, decimals, and percents; and
represent numerical relationships in one- and two-dimensional graphs.

Examples of student learning include:

Students use a spreadsheet to work with ratios as they consider cooking recipes for small and large groups.
Students solve a mathematical problem such as: As part of yearly fundraiser, student volunteers are selling pizzas. Six-inch individual cheese pizzas were $2.75 last year and will be the same this year. What is a fair price to ask for their new 12-inch family cheese pizza? Students justify their answers.
Students go to a supermarket to record prices of different size containers of identical products. Later their data are used to determine the best buy. As students justify their reasoning, using ratios and comparisons, factors such as food spoilage and storage are also considered.

Goals 2000 honors the variety of approaches to developing and implementing challenging standards that satisfy different state and community needs. For instance, some states are developing a single set of state standards for all districts and schools while others are developing model state standards against which locally developed standards will be measured and approved.

Developing Local Standards
In Windsor, Colorado

As part of its reform plan, which is heavily focused on local district activity, Colorado awarded a $21,238 Goals 2000 grant to Windsor to deve lop standards and assessments with maximum community involvement so that teacher s, adminstrators, parents, and community members would understand and be able to implement new academic standards.

All of the district's staff and 100 community members (of this town of 6,000) pa rticipated in developint final academic standards in language arts, math, scienc e, and social studies. More than half of the staff helped create assessments of writing tied to standards.

According to the district, "From the start, we knew that we wanted our local sta ndards to come not only from the teachers, but from the parents and community me mbers themselves. ... Our approach required more trust on the part of district s taff and more responsible dedication on the part of parent volunteers."

In order to ensure that parents and community members were as involved in the de velopment of academic standards as educators, the community created a standards development committee made up of parents and community representatives who worke d independently to develop a set of priorities for academic standards. Teachers wr then able to draw upon the work of parents and community members throughout t heir entire standards development and implementation process.

Goals 2000 does not specify a particular approach, but instead focuses on creating a common expectation for all students to reach challenging academic standards.

Delaware is implementing high standards statewide as the centerpiece of New Directions for Education, a statewide improvement initiative launched in 1992. Curriculum framework commissions spent three years developing internationally competitive standards in English/language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies with four benchmark points -- grades K-3, 4-5, 6-8, and 9-10. The state has targeted more than $940,000 of its Goals 2000 funds to enable schools to design and pilot-test their own curriculum geared to achieving the new state academic standards.
Colorado has a strong history of local control over education decisions, so the state legislature passed legislation in 1993 that called for the development of model state standards while giving districts flexibility to develop their own standards that "meet or exceed" the state model. The state established a Standards and Assessment Development and Implementation Council that spent two years developing a model set of state content standards with the input of 14,000 citizens throughout Colorado. Schools and districts are now in the process of developing or revising their own standards -- often with the assistance of Goals 2000 funds -- to ensure that they meet or exceed the state's standards.
Texas has long had a set of "essential knowledge and skills" that includes broad state goals for student learning. The state is currently using about $2.1 million in Goals 2000 funds to evaluate and revise the state's standards, making them more relevant to the knowledge and skills students will need to be successful in the 21st century. Essential Knowledge and Skills Clarification Teams, comprising 325 individuals from across Texas, have been established in each academic subject area to review and revise the state's standards to ensure that they are rigorous and focus on the knowledge and skills that students should demonstrate.
Nevada's comprehensive improvement plan, Nevada 2000, outlines key strategies, benchmarks, and timelines for developing challenging standards in each of the state's core academic subjects. As a result of its Goals 2000 planning process, the state has established a Teaching and Learning, Standards, and Assessments Advisory Team that includes educators, parents, legislators, business and industry representatives, and community members to evaluate and revise Nevada's Course of Study to include challenging standards for student performance in each subject area by 1999.

States and school districts are assisted in their standards-setting work by models from other states, by voluntary national models in various subject areas, and by other federal grants to develop challenging standards. For example, Colorado, Massachusetts and Delaware are currently benchmarking their standards against each other--as part of the independent New Standards project--to ensure that they are challenging for all students. Goals 2000 encourages and supports such multi-state collaboration.

Developing Assessments of Student Learning

The flexibility that Goals 2000 provides for schools, districts, and states to design ways to help all students reach high standards is coupled with responsibility for showing student learning results. Measuring student achievement against challenging standards is a critical part of continuously improving instruction and holding schools accountable. Goals 2000 provides support for the development of good assessments of student performance that can provide key information to students, teachers, parents, school and state administrators, policymakers, and the general public regarding the level of student learning and effectiveness of schools.

With few exceptions, current testing programs are not yet designed to reflect state academic content standards, nor do they measure the kinds of rigorous learning experiences that students should have in school. Districts and states need better forms of assessment that are linked to what students are expected to know and be able to do. While 43 states used some sort of statewide assessment program in 1994-95, most have not developed or adopted assessments that are connected to their tougher standards. One of the reasons most often cited by states is that the cost of developing these better forms of assessments is high.

Assessment Development Grants
Delaware	201,785
Maryland	224,707
Michigan	257,228
Minnesota	253,257
North Carolina	80,267
North Dakota	223,039
Oregon	322,019
Pennsylvania	181,014
State Consortium*	242,684
	----------
TOTAL	$1,986,000
*This consortium of 22 states is managed by the Council of Chief State School Officers

States have used the Goals 2000 planning process to further their assessment development activity, but most of the Goals 2000 grant money goes directly from states to school districts for local activities. One way the U.S. Department of Education supports the development of state assessments is through a discretionary grant program that was funded with first-year Goals 2000 national leadership monies. In the Fall of 1995, Goals 2000 leadership money was used to provide assessment development grants to a small number of states, as authorized under Section 220 of the Act. Applications for this competitive program were received from 40 states--either individually or as part of a consortium. The Department made nine awards--to eight individual states and a consortium of 22 states. The funded projects range from developing statewide English/language arts assessments to developing tests for high school graduation. Although the impact of such recent awards cannot yet be assessed, many of the projects focus on an area of particular difficulty for districts and states: designing testing accommodations that allow limited English proficient students and students with disabilities to be assessed against the same standards as all students. For example:

Delaware is using Goals 2000 funds to design assessments for special education students. The state is currently developing the Inclusive Comprehensive Assessment System to measure how well all students are meeting the state content standards in language arts, mathematics, social science, and science. Delaware's assessment development grant will help the state design, develop, and evaluate assessments to best meet the needs of students with disabilities and limited English proficiency, in mathematics at grades 3 and 8, and in science in grades 5 and 10.
Minnesota is currently developing a rigorous set of graduation standards for high school students. The state is using its assessment development grant to modify new assessments so that all students, including those with disabilities and limited English proficiency, can participate in the state's assessments and graduation standards.

Strengthening School Accountability

Once schools and communities have in place challenging academic standards and assessments that measure student performance against those standards, they can improve their school accountability systems and target assistance to help schools improve academic achievement. States, school districts, and schools can develop more accurate and useful information for the public regarding school performance. They can also more effectively develop rewards for high-performing schools and intervene in those that are low-performing, as Maryland and Kentucky are doing as part of their overall reform efforts. Furthermore, when states have a system for holding schools accountable for student achievement, they can provide additional flexibility to schools to innovate and remove barriers to student learning.

Already some states are promoting greater school accountability as part of their Goals 2000 efforts. For example:

Based on performance on 4th- and 9th-grade proficiency tests, Ohio has identified 127 districts for targeted assistance. These districts will receive Goals 2000 grants to help improve student achievement. Each district has made a public commitment to challenging performance standards, including 75 percent of their students passing all sections of the Ninth Grade Proficiency Test by the end of the 9th grade. An Ohio Department of Education liaison works closely with each district as a broker of services and a "critical friend" to help them think through improvement strategies and link communities with other districts and service providers.
New Mexico has built its Goals 2000 plan around its new accountability system. Every community and school is now required to develop its own education improvement plan, with widespread community input, that is tied to challenging academic standards. Every year schools and districts report student achievement in relation to community goals. State accreditation is being completely redesigned to reflect accountability for community-defined learning results rather than compliance with a state-defined checklist of what should be in a school.

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[Introduction]

[Local Improvements in Teaching and Learning]