Dive Brief:
- Agreeing with the California State Board of Education, current California Gov. Jerry Brown formally supports dropping the use of numerical Academic Performance Index (API) scores to rank schools, suggesting instead the use of "a concise set of performance measures," according to his new 2016-17 budget plan.
- It's not yet clear whether API use can be dropped, Ed Source reports, because ambiguities of ESSA's language still haven't been interpreted.
- California voted to stop calculating API scores two years ago, though their usage has never been formally dropped from lawmakers' books.
Dive Insight:
In 2013, California passed Brown's school funding and accountability law, the "The Local Control Funding Formula." It defined eight metrics by which the state's schools are currently graded. By using the word "concise," Brown is signaling his desire for streamlined metrics to the state Board of Education.
Since ESSA requires all states to identify and track their lowest-performing 5% of schools, California would potentially have to come up with another formula with which to rank its struggling schools.
Christopher Cross, an education consultant from Danville who served as an assistant U.S. secretary of education for educational research and improvement during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, told EdSource that he didn't think it would be possible for California to arrive at hard conclusions about its worst performing schools without an index.