A Letter from Phil Kirk
Accountability
at heart of school improvement
 North Carolina public schools are on the cutting
edge of accountability, continually receiving high marks from outside
groups who rate states’ efforts at improving schools.
Our state, for example, is the only one to have made any progress in
closing the achievement gap between its highest and lowest performers,
according to a recent analysis by the National Education Goals Panel.
This year, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) presented one of its highest honors, the Daisy Bates
Educational Advocacy Award, to the Department of Public Instruction
for its efforts to improve access, equity and accountability in
education.
President George W. Bush’s education plan draws heavily from the
school accountability model in North Carolina, as well as in his home
state of Texas.
We believe there is no question that North Carolina schools are better
today than they were 10 years ago and that the state’s
accountability efforts have played a major role in these improvements.
Students are more likely to be at grade level than at any time since
end-of-grade testing began in 1993. The curriculum and individual
school-level courses are more rigorous, and the number of high schools
offering advanced placement courses grew from 42 percent in 1988 to
67.7 percent in 2000.
SAT scores in our state continue to rise. North Carolina has gained 40
points on this important measure since 1990, nearly double the gains
of the nation overall, and a larger gain than any other state that
tests a large percentage of its students.
The state’s accountability program, which holds individual schools
accountable for student achievement growth and for the percentage of
students at grade level, has pressed many schools and school districts
to more closely examine what they teach, how they teach and how to
meet the educational needs of all students.
For a small handful of high-performing school districts, these
improvements are not new. But for many districts, this increased focus
is new and has provided important dividends in student learning. Even
in our most high-achieving school districts, the additional
information that North Carolina’s test program has provided about
the performance of minorities and other groups has helped these
districts recognize that all students may not be learning as well as
the averages indicated for so many years.
Having given due credit to the positive results of North Carolina’s
accountability model, education officials acknowledge that it is time
to step back and take a look at how our testing and accountability
model can be improved. Some of this review has been prompted by the
recent difficulties in setting the achievement levels for the new
mathematics end-of-grade tests given this year. But, much of this
impetus also comes from an overall sense that any 5-year-old effort
needs review.
Last May, State Superintendent Mike Ward and I wrote a letter to the
leadership of the General Assembly expressing our support for their
efforts to look at the issue of testing in North Carolina. The State
Board of Education has now eliminated three tests that are not a part
of the ABCs accountability program.
There is also a concern that the reputation of the entire
accountability program has been tarnished by the single recent
problem, and an external, third-party audit of the testing and
accountability program is now under way. The audit will cover two key
phases: a review of the technical, standard-setting process by
national experts in this field; and review of the testing and
accountability decision-making processes by an independent body.
To return to a time when state standards were loose and accountability
virtually non-existent would be a disservice to the students of this
state. In a perfect world, accountability and testing would not be
needed. Every teacher, every student and every school would master
rigorous coursework at a high level without any nudges from a state
accountability program. For more than 100 years, we operated as though
this were true. It wasn’t, and so we have reached the current bend
in the road.
North Carolina must continue to improve and strengthen its
accountability program if we are going to serve the educational needs
of students, address the testing concerns of parents and teachers, and
assure that we are measuring what we intend to measure.
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