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State of Education State Policy Report Card 2013
A man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
Theodore Roosevelt
Thanks for taking the time to examine our state policy report cards and the accompanying national report, which look at how education policies in our states are serving students and schools. As Ive traveled around the country visiting schools and meeting with educators, parents, and students, its been heartening to see so many committed individuals working to improve the schools in their communities. But time and time again during these visits, moms, dads, teachers, and others have expressed frustration over policies in their states that are standing in the way of progress. Obstacles exist in every state to varying degrees, and they are often only there to preserve a status quo thats not working for children. The interests of children and adults do align at times. But when they differ, schools should be putting the needs of children first. We firmly believe that every child can learn at high levels, regardless of his or her background or socio-economic circumstances, when he or she is in a supportive, enriching, and strong educational environment. Of course, poverty and home environments can greatly impact student success, but they dont have to pre-determine it. The existing achievement gaps between groups of children in this country, most notably poor and minority kids and their wealthier, white peers, are simply unacceptable. Great schools can make an enormous difference in the lives of all boys and girls. With that in mind, weve set out to grade the states on the policies they have in place to create an environment in which schools thrive and students are given their best shot at success. We believe the nation as a whole has a long way to go toward building the kind of world-class school system our children deserve. But you will find in these report cards bright spots in which states are enacting bold policies that are making real change. We hope states will continue to build off of that momentum and hope those receiving poor grades will be encouraged to improve. StudentsFirst focuses our work on three areas: elevating teachers, empowering parents, and spending resources wisely. These are not the only areas that impact student achievement, but as these are the issues we focus on, these are the topics addressed here. Knowing the critical role our teachers play in our schools, weve taken a close look at policies impacting teacher quality, including the hiring, development, and compensation of educators. School leadership is also absolutely essential, and weve also reviewed how states evaluate and build a strong principal corps. Everyone knows great school systems encourage parental involvement, so weve examined the degree to which state policies empower parents with rich and meaningful information about their childrens schools and with the tools to take action when schools arent meeting students needs.
I think education is one of the most important drivers of positive change in this country, and it would be great if we had endless resources to devote to improving student learning. But we dont, and our schools have to use public dollars wisely and in ways that help kids grow and succeed, not in ways that are wasteful and expand already bloated bureaucracies. Thats why youll also see a close examination of the fiscal and governance policies impacting our schools. Its important to keep in mind that this report card is a snapshot in time of whether we, as a nation, are creating the right overall policy environments to allow kids and schools to succeed in the 21st century. This is not a reflection of a states individual schools or the aptitude of our kids. After more than a century of doing things in education the same way, we think its time to challenge the status quo and make sure every policy impacting our schools is there to serve and benefit all kids. Creating that kind of environment wont be easy and it wont happen overnight, but it is a goal we absolutely must pursue and it is the reason we have started this bipartisan grassroots movement for reform. I hope this report encourages states to make necessary changes and contributes to the debate over how to create the kind of schools that are truly worthy of our children.
Michelle Rhee Founder and CEO
Table of Contents
5 11 Executive Summary Introduction
11 14 Putting Students First in Education Policy Purpose of State Policy Report Cards
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The Approach
16 18 Anchor Policies Nuances in Approach
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Findings
21 23 26 29 31 Overall Findings Elevate the Teaching Profession Empower Parents with Data and Choice Spend Wisely and Govern Well Looking Forward
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Policy Agenda: The Big Picture

34 42 55 Why Elevate Teachers Why Empower Parents Why Spend Wisely and Govern Well
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Appendix A: 2013 Methodology

65 65 66 68 Evaluation Process Development of the Rubric Sample Calculation Evaluation Rubric
Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.
Malcolm X
Executive Summary
Why a State Policy Report Card?
Many factors contribute to the strength of our public education system, but without a doubt, state policies provide the strong foundation on which great school systems are built. State policies must empower parents to make the best choices for their children, and they must enable schools to recognize, reward, and retain the best educators. States must provide school and district leaders with opportunities to truly lead, innovate, and reform schools so they work well for all the kids they serve. StudentsFirst created the State Policy Report Card to evaluate each states education laws and policies and determine what states are doing to create a better education system one that meets the needs of all children and puts them on a path toward success. The report card does not assess student achievement, school quality, or teacher performance, but rather the policy environments that affect those outcomes. StudentsFirst believes based on experience, research, and evidence that education reform at the state level can have the most powerful impact on schools and students. Therefore, StudentsFirst advocates that state leaders do away with antiquated policies that obstruct progress and fail to help children learn. States must then adopt new principles and policies focused on ensuring student needs come before any other special interests. These new policies should emphasize high standards, robust educational options for families, transparency, and accountability. It is through this lens that the report card assesses each state and whether it is fulfilling its essential role in improving schools by putting studentcentered laws and policies in place.
Approach & Methodology

The State Policy Report Card assigns an overall AF letter grade to each state based on how well that states policies align with the StudentsFirst policy agenda. To do this, StudentsFirst designed a rubric, grouping its 24 policy objectives into three policy pillars: Elevating the Teaching Profession, Empowering Parents with Data and Choice, and Spending Wisely and Governing Well. Each of these three pillars includes a number of policy-specific categories: Elevate the Teaching Profession
Meaningful Evaluations for Teachers and Principals
State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013
Use of Evaluations for Personnel Decisions Professional Pay Alternative Pathways to Certification
Empower Parents with Data and Choice

Giving Parents Meaningful Information Increasing Quality Choices Providing Comparable Resources
Spend Wisely and Govern Well

Governance Flexibility Spending Resources Wisely Teacher Pensions
For every policy objective, a team of analysts researched and assessed each states statutes, regulations, and state-level polices according to the elements of the policy rubric. Based on the information they found, each state was assigned a grade-aligned score for each policy objective. Of the 24 policies on the StudentsFirst Policy Agenda, 12 of them are considered to be anchor policies foundational levers that, standing on their own, can have a significant impact on schools and student achievement or are key to unlocking other important policy objectives. Thus, in evaluating each states education policies, these policies were assigned an overall weight of three times the regular policies for scoring purposes. Based on the grades for individual policies, each state received a grade for its performance on each of the three policy pillars and an overall state grade point average (GPA) that reflects a comprehensive assessment of how well that states policies are serving its students.
Findings
While there is great momentum for reform in a number of states, nearly every state has a long way to go in terms of reforming its policies, as reflected by overall low grades on the State Policy Report Card across states. No state received an overall grade of A. More than two-thirds of the states received a D or F overall. Twelve states received a C or B overall. These results are not surprising given that many of the state policies reviewed are built around an education system that has been in place for a century. Yet this trend in overall grades should not overshadow the important fact that a significant number of states have enacted important reforms over the past five years and that the momentum of policy change has been growing. Florida, Indiana, and Louisiana, for example, each passed bold reform legislation in 2011 and 2012 that earned these states higher overall grades than any
other states in the country. Not every important story is found at the top of the list either. Importantly, the State Policy Report Card highlights a number of states that have not yet accomplished broad reforms but have nonetheless demonstrated momentum for making change in specific policy areas and are beginning to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack. At the other end of the spectrum are the bottom ten states, whose scores reflect a failure on the part of state leaders to enact laws or policies that would change the status quo with respect to education policy. In these states, teachers are not treated like professionals, information and options made available to parents are limited or non-existent, and there is little to no accountability for ensuring that resources are being used wisely. Here are some highlights from each policy pillar:
Elevate the Teaching Profession

This policy pillar reflects a great deal of policy change over the past five years. From sweeping reforms to incremental steps forward, well over half of the states have adopted policies designed to elevate the teaching profession. The top two grade earners in this policy pillar are Florida and Louisiana. These are exemplary states in terms of instituting laws and policies that elevate the teaching profession. Both states have moved aggressively to ensure that teacher effectiveness drives all personnel decisions. Other states that scored well in this policy pillar have adopted stronger statewide models for educator evaluations that make student growth a significant factor in determining effectiveness, and they are moving districts to do more to identify, recruit, reward, and retain effective teachers. These states have also opened up high-quality alternative pathways into the teaching profession.

Overall, the nation has a long way to go in terms of empowering parents; this is reflected in the fact that only five states earned a C- or better on this pillar. Choice is growing and expanding across states, but where it exists, it is still often limited and not adequately focused on quality. Public charter schools usually are not provided comparable resources to serve their students, and very few states have opportunity scholarship programs. Strong, robust accountability for additional options for families is distressingly neglected. Further, most parents across the country dont have the information they need to make informed decisions on behalf of their kids. The top five states in this pillar are Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio. These states have demonstrated a priority for empowering parents by creating a variety of education options that are supported and held accountable for student learning. The lowest scoring states in this pillar Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia all have yet to allow any additional public school options, including public charter schools, opportunity scholarship programs, or a parent trigger policy.

Grades in this policy pillar demonstrate wide variation among states. While policies that allow governance flexibility and ensure resources are spent wisely are linked, the policy objectives themselves are often distinct. Thus, states that have strong policies in place
for spending wisely (allowing districts to take advantage of management alternatives, for example) may not allow for a strong model of state governance intervention or may limit district spending flexibility by requiring class-size restrictions. Yet given the role of governance and that resources are and will continue to be limited in most states, strengthening these policies is critical to enabling schools and districts to maximize the impact of other education policies in place. Michigan and Rhode Island earned the top grades in this policy pillar. These two states provide schools and districts with the spending flexibility they need to best serve their students, and they are transparent in their accounting. These two states also allow for flexibility in how schools are governed, so that changes can be made when schools and districts fail to meet objectives. In total, 18 states earned a C- or higher, mainly because they offer some sort of governance flexibility and do not require that schools make staffing decisions based on class size. The worst-performing states in terms of spending wisely and governing well are Montana, New Hampshire, and North Dakota; these states restrict how districts use their resources yet dont allow for state or district intervention when schools and districts fail to perform. In sum, the education policy landscape across the country reflects a new momentum for change. The 2013 State Policy Report Card shows that many states have started on the path toward a student-centered policy environment, but nearly every state still has a very long way to go in making real change for kids. For an overview of how all of the states performed, see Table 1 on the next page.
Going Forward
The State Policy Report Card provides an assessment of the quality of state education policies and the degree to which those policies enable educators to make positive changes on behalf of children. Each states individual report card can serve as a roadmap for reform. The information empowers parents, teachers, and other stakeholders in education to tell their state lawmakers about the kinds of policies they want enacted. In turn, policymakers can use the State Policy Report Card to guide their decisionmaking processes and ensure the policies they do adopt meet a high bar for rigor and potential impact. Because state law and policy are constantly evolving, StudentsFirst will release the State Policy Report Card annually. Each year, the report card will reflect the progress made by states in shaping their policies to fit the best interest of students. At the same time, StudentsFirst will continue to reflect on and refine its policy agenda to keep pace with innovation happening in the field and relevant policy research. The country is in the midst of an incredible moment of opportunity for change, and state leaders are embracing it. Expect to see more states putting students first over the coming year.
Table 1: 2013 State Policy Report Card Summary

Overall Elevate Teaching Empower Parents Spend Wisely & Govern Well Rank Grade GPA Rank D+ 1.54 25 D 1.22 34 39 C+ 2.56 4 11 C 2.00 13 25 D+ 1.33 26 25 D 1.11 38 32 C 2.00 13 38 C 2.11 10 20 C 2.11 10 6 C+ 2.56 4 4 C 2.00 13 11 D+ 1.33 26 5 C 2.11 10 39 D+ 1.33 26 39 C+ 2.44 6 1 C1.78 16 44 C1.78 16 39 C+ 2.33 7 44 D 1.22 34 2 C1.78 16 22 D0.89 45 15 D+ 1.44 25 17 C+ 2.33 7 34 B 3.00 1 20 D0.89 45 22 D 1.11 38 9 D0.89 45 44 F 0.56 50 44 D 1.00 41 28 D 1.11 38 24 F 0.56 50 28 D+ 1.33 26 6 D+ 1.33 26 34 C+ 2.67 3 33 D+ 1.67 19 44 F 0.67 49 3 C 2.22 9 18 D+ 1.56 24 34 D0.89 45 28 D+ 1.67 19 8 B2.78 2 11 D+ 1.67 19 44 D 1.00 41 9 D+ 1.33 26 28 D 1.22 34 18 D+ 1.67 19 44 D 1.00 41 34 D+ 1.33 26 11 D+ 1.67 19 44 D 1.22 34 15 D+ 1.33 26 39 D 1.00 41
State Grade GPA Rank Grade GPA Rank Grade GPA National Average D 1.22 D+ 1.49 D0.70 Alabama F 0.67 43 F 0.55 46 F 0.53 Alaska D0.75 39 F 0.50 50 F 0.12 Arizona C1.85 8 C+ 2.41 8 D 1.06 Arkansas D 1.15 26 D+ 1.55 21 F 0.53 California F 0.69 41 F 0.64 43 F 0.53 Colorado C1.83 9 B2.86 5 F 0.41 Connecticut D+ 1.35 18 C1.95 12 F 0.18 Delaware C1.75 11 C+ 2.36 9 D0.76 District of Columbia C+ 2.40 4 B2.95 3 D+ 1.59 Florida B2.73 2 A3.64 2 C1.94 Georgia D+ 1.42 15 C1.73 18 D 1.06 Hawaii C1.88 7 C1.91 13 C1.71 Idaho D0.71 40 D0.91 34 F 0.12 Illinois D 1.13 29 D+ 1.36 27 F 0.12 Indiana C+ 2.46 3 B2.82 6 C+ 2.35 Iowa F 0.58 45 F 0.55 46 F 0.00 Kansas D0.83 36 D0.77 37 F 0.12 Kentucky D0.88 35 D+ 1.41 25 F 0.00 Louisiana B2.88 1 A 3.77 1 C 2.29 Maine D 1.23 21 C1.77 16 D0.71 Maryland D+ 1.38 17 D+ 1.64 20 D 1.00 Massachusetts D+ 1.54 14 D+ 1.68 19 D0.94 Michigan C1.94 6 B2.77 7 F 0.29 Minnesota D 1.15 26 D+ 1.55 21 D0.76 Mississippi D 1.00 32 D 1.18 32 D0.71 Missouri D0.94 34 D0.73 39 D 1.24 Montana F 0.44 48 D0.73 39 F 0.00 Nebraska F 0.44 48 F 0.55 46 F 0.00 C1.86 14 F 0.47 Nevada D 1.23 21 New Hampshire F 0.69 41 D0.77 37 F 0.65 New Jersey D 1.23 21 C1.77 16 F 0.47 New Mexico D 1.15 26 D0.73 39 D+ 1.59 New York D 1.23 21 D+ 1.36 27 F 0.29 North Carolina D 1.00 32 D 1.23 31 F 0.35 North Dakota F 0.40 51 F 0.59 45 F 0.00 Ohio C1.77 10 D+ 1.41 25 C 2.00 Oklahoma D+ 1.58 13 C 2.18 11 D0.82 Oregon D0.81 37 D 1.18 32 F 0.29 Pennsylvania D+ 1.33 19 C1.86 14 F 0.47 Rhode Island C+ 2.33 5 B2.91 4 D+ 1.35 South Carolina D 1.02 30 D0.73 39 D 1.06 South Dakota F 0.60 44 D0.91 34 F 0.00 Tennessee C1.75 11 C+ 2.32 10 D 1.24 Texas D 1.02 30 D+ 1.36 27 F 0.47 Utah D 1.21 25 D+ 1.32 30 D0.82 Vermont F 0.48 46 F 0.64 43 F 0.00 Virginia D0.77 38 D0.91 34 F 0.29 Washington D+ 1.40 16 D+ 1.55 21 D 1.06 West Virginia F 0.44 48 F 0.45 51 F 0.00 Wisconsin D+ 1.31 20 D+ 1.55 21 D 1.00 Wyoming F 0.48 46 F 0.55 46 F 0.12
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
Abigail Adams
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Introduction
Putting Students First in Education Policy
Students in the United States face an enormous challenge. Over the past few decades, the world has grown increasingly competitive. Technology and globalization have forever changed the composition of todays workforce, and companies and services now have widespread choice when it comes to recruiting and hiring workers. The marketplace for employers and employees alike is global and highly skilled. Whereas in the last century, American students had an advantage in competing for jobs, today U.S. students must compete for most jobs with students in western Europe and emerging powers in South America, China, and India. These changes have had a demonstrable impact on our society and culture. American society has grown more complex, and in order to fully participate in it, a person must have a higher degree of skill and knowledge than ever before. Mastery of the basics is a critical prerequisite for our youth as they move through their school years, but that only provides a foundation on which students need to further build a wide variety of skills and talents that allow them to compete in todays marketplace. Expectations for what students must know and must be able to accomplish have risen dramatically. Still, two things have not changed. First, access to equal educational opportunity still escapes far too many children. The denial of educational opportunity divides along fault lines of race, wealth, and class. More troubling, however, the lack of opportunity today comes in subtler forms than in the past, where students were simply locked out of certain schools. Rather, today it manifests itself in significant gaps in student learning, which severely limit lifetime options and opportunities. There are no boundaries to these inequities by region or state or by the rural, suburban, or urban makeup of communities. A vibrant public education system is the bedrock of a thriving economy and reasoned democracy. But more fundamentally, these unconscionable achievement gaps deny too many children, mostly poor children and children of color, access to the fundamental American promise equality of opportunity. Even in Massachusetts, the highest-performing state in terms of student achievement, only half of the states students are proficient in reading and math. Thats not just not good enough; its wrong. Second, public education in nearly every town and city in every state resembles the same public education system that was established more than a century ago. While the rest of the world and virtually every industry have changed, our public education system has not
The denial of educational opportunity divides along fault lines of race, wealth, and class ... There are no boundaries to these inequities by region or state or by the rural, suburban, or urban makeup of communities.
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kept up. Public education still takes place mainly in brick and mortar school buildings, in classrooms lined with desks, with teachers standing up front. Schools are organized into systems and governed by locally elected boards of education, completely independent from the rest of government. School systems are treated as silos or islands unto themselves, often immune to the accountability attached to other public services and disconnected from other efforts to support children and families. The teaching profession resembles an industrial-era workforce where all teachers are treated identically, regardless of differences in the quality of their work with children. Career progression means staying with the same district year after year in order to move up the salary step-ladder. For students, progress means moving through school according to grade levels that directly correlate to their age, rather than their level of success or subject matter proficiency. To be fair, there have been some very small changes. Both states and the federal government are investing more resources in public education. Options for families stuck in failing schools are slowly growing, and today 43 states have public charters schools. But those schools still only account for about 5 percent of overall schools. Students and teachers are using some classroom technology, although in most cases technology is treated as an add-on to traditional books and materials rather than a powerful tool that is integrated throughout the curriculum. Therefore, it is little wonder that while investment in public education has risen steadily, results have largely remained flat and the United States as a nation has fallen further behind. When U.S. students took the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment test, the results were unsettling: U.S. students ranked 25th in math, 17th in science, and 14th in reading in comparison with their international peers. The status quo is failing our kids and failing the nation.
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Underpinning this failing system is a dynamic where for too long policymakers have been making education policy centered on the needs of the special interests with a vested stake in maintaining the status quo rather than putting student interests at the center of all education policy decisions. A survey of state policies illuminates this fact; most states have set up their education systems how they are governed and funded, how personnel are managed, how schools and student are measured (or not) in remarkably similar ways. These policies tend to preserve the existing systems and protect the adults who work in them rather than first looking after the needs of the students. The urgency of the nations educational crisis, however, has created a greater consensus among the general public regarding the need for a fundamental change in how to approach public education in this country. New reforms that shift the focus of decisionmakers from what has always been done to what is best for students will be the key drivers of this change. StudentsFirst holds the fundamental belief that all children can learn and achieve, regardless of socio-economic conditions, if provided the proper educational environment that prioritizes their interests and needs. StudentsFirsts mission is to put policies and leaders in place that put the needs of kids first. Accordingly, the StudentsFirst Policy Agenda articulates three student-centered policy pillars that have proven to help students learn: Elevating the Teaching Profession and Ensuring Every Child Has a Great Teacher; Empowering Parents with Meaningful Information and Choice; and Spending Resources Wisely and Governing Well. Each pillar will be explained in detail later. StudentsFirst focuses on state-level policies as the key levers for education reform. Over the past several years, the greatest amount of change in education policy has happened at the state level. Simply put, states are leading the way. State policymakers have recognized both the urgent need for reform and their critical role in driving it. While the role of federal policy is important and, in fact, has spurred much of the state-level change taking place states are better positioned to create greater impact at the local level. In many cases, existing state policy hampers improvement efforts. Barriers to prioritizing teacher effectiveness or using resources in flexible, innovative ways can act as a ceiling that prevents schools and districts from climbing higher. In other cases, states can do more to encourage and incentivize bolder decisionmaking, particularly in schools where low student achievement has become the accepted norm. States have an obligation in both of these situations to re-examine their education policies. For districts and schools that are already focused on student achievement and are aligning their policies and resources in a way that ensures every student learns, state policy can support and enhance those efforts. At the opposite end of the spectrum, where local school leaders fail to make progress or address their most critical needs, states must exert strong, active leadership that demands change. At a high level, states must adopt policies that set high expectations for school and student achievement and then hold districts and schools accountable for meeting objectives. This does not mean it is necessary to be prescriptive in how to get there in every case; in fact, there are many avenues to raising student achievement. Rather, states must focus on the outcomes achieved and enable district and school leaders to innovate, create, grow, and deliver results free from bureaucratic and burdensome obstacles. Parents should have a variety of high-quality options; policies forcing any child to attend a low-performing school
U.S. students ranked 25th in math, 17th in science, and 14th in reading in comparison with their international peers. The status quo is failing our kids and failing the nation.
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are unacceptable. Districts need freedom to recruit the best educators through multiple pathways and make staffing decisions based on what is best for their schools and students. Teachers must have the opportunity to develop and work on a high-functioning team that recognizes and rewards excellence, and leaders must be empowered to build great instructional teams and should be held accountable for the results. Administrators must have the flexibility to invest in what works. And every educational policy should be primarily designed to increase student learning and educational opportunity.
Purpose of State Policy Report Cards

To determine whether the right policy environment exists in a state for all students to learn and succeed regardless of socio-economic circumstance, StudentsFirst has developed a state policy report card that will grade each state based on how student-centric its polices are and the direction the state is taking. The intent is to provide clear, useful information that drives discussions about what states are doing to build a better education system. The StudentsFirst State Policy Report Card serves as guides for parents, educators, and community members regarding the strength of education policies in their states. For policymakers who want to make their schools places where all students have a chance to succeed, the State Policy Report Card provides a roadmap for how to get there. There is also an accountability element here as well. The more a states policies focus on what is best for students, the higher the grade the state receives. Likewise, if a states education policies act more like barriers to reform and protections for the status quo, the State Policy Report Card calls attention to that. States can be compared to one another. A state may believe that it does well in elevating its teaching profession, but an assessment of its policies in comparison to another states may tell a different story. By building awareness of where states fall short, StudentsFirst seeks to mobilize parents, students, teachers, school leaders, and policymakers behind a common set of goals and a demand for change. It is also important to note what the State Policy Report Card is not. It is not a report card detailing the quality of a states schools or the level of student achievement in that state. The State Policy Report Card is focused solely on the policies that are adopted by states policies that, as explained later, focus on eliminating the achievement gap and ensuring student interests are paramount in decisionmaking. Thus, the State Policy Report Card is not about identifying whether achievement gaps exist but about identifying what kind of policy environment the state is creating so that schools can erase such gaps.
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The Approach
For each state report card, StudentsFirst evaluated each state based on how well the states laws align with a rubric of student-centered policies. The state report card assigns a letter grade for each policy pillar described the previous section and an overall grade for the state. The grades range from A to F with A being the best possible grade. The policy grade reflects the status of the laws as of July 30, , 2012; it does not address proposed legislation or policy being planned. A complete explanation of the methodology, as well as the policy rubric, can be found later in this report.
As StudentsFirsts understanding of how various policies were adopted, articulated, and implemented across states, it became clear that the 37 policy objectives in the StudentsFirst Policy Agenda could not all be treated in the same way. In several instances, it made more sense to combine single objectives into one for evaluation purposes. For example, both the removal of arbitrary caps on public charter establishment and the establishment of alternative authorizers for public charter schools work toward the same goal of allowing for and encouraging the healthy growth of public charter schools. In other cases, policies were too complex or had not fully developed to be included and scored in a coherent manner. As an example, digital learning is an innovative tool for expanding choice options for students and parents, and eliminating seat-time restrictions is a part of StudentsFirsts policy agenda. Yet states vary widely in how they regulate seat time, whether they allow certain exceptions for particular programs or schools and even how digital learning is treated generally. Is it a separate program? Is it just a mechanism for delivering content that any school can utilize? For many states, there is no clear answer. The policy evaluation rubric being used and the data collected were not sufficient to assign an accurate, rational grade for each state, and so that policy objective was removed from the report card. Ultimately, the State Policy Report Card (SPRC) measures 24 policy objectives. Here is a breakdown of those StudentsFirst policies that were adjusted or excluded for purposes of the report card: Objectives combined for SPRC Scoring Reduce legal barriers to entry into teaching profession and permit alternate certification programs to provisionally place teachers in the classroom Pay structures based on effectiveness and performance pay
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Parental notification and parental consent for student placement with ineffective teachers Remove arbitrary caps on public charter establishment and establish alternative authorizing and fast-track process for high-performing public charters Provide comparable funding and prohibit authorizers from charging fees from public charter schools for oversight and administration Objectives removed due to need for further examination and potential revision of policy Eliminate financial penalties to districts for recruiting teachers from alternate certification programs Allow certification for online instruction Dedicate resources to develop a state-level growth model Objectives removed due to insufficient data Dedicate resources for a longitudinal data system Provide for open enrollment systems Modify or eliminate seat time laws Require digital learning to align with common core standards Remove caps on individual budget categories
Anchor Policies
Not all policies are created the same. StudentsFirst believes that all of its policies can function as levers for reform and, as a whole, represent a comprehensive set of changes that states must make to ensure the achievement gap is eliminated and the United States regains its place among the top third of countries in terms of student performance. There is a smaller subset of policies, however, that are critical for states to adopt as well. These policies, called anchor policies, are foundational levers that alone can have a tremendous impact on students and schools. When combined with each other, the impact of these anchor policies is potentially exponential. For instance, changing how teachers and principals are evaluated and then using those evaluations to inform personnel decisions will bring an immediate, positive impact to the classroom because districts will be focused on ensuring students have only the most effective teachers. Likewise, states which provide parents meaningful information about school performance through school report cards and which provide a robust array of quality choices to families shift school enrollment from something that districts decide to something parents decide. This kind of radical transformation of the public education system is the kind of aggressive change students and families need and deserve.
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StudentsFirst has designated the following policy objectives anchor policies:

Require meaningful teacher evaluation based on multiple measures, including student growth. Require meaningful principal evaluation based on multiple measures, including student growth. Reduce barriers to teaching through alternative pathways. Pay increases for teachers should be based on multiple factors of effectiveness, primarily student achievement. Ensure that schools have the authority to build and maintain an effective instructional team, including having autonomy over hiring decisions and the dismissal of ineffective teachers. Require staffing decisions, including layoffs, to be based on teacher effectiveness and prohibit seniority from driving personnel decisions. Require that all K12 schools receive a letter grade annually based on student achievement and growth in learning. Provide publicly funded scholarships for low-income students in low-performing schools that include accountability requirements for participating schools. Provide comparable per-pupil funding for all public school students to the school in which they are enrolled. Strengthen charter accountability by creating clear, strong mechanisms for closing low-performing schools and holding authorizers accountable. Allow for mayoral and state control of academically low-performing schools and districts. Provide teachers employer-sponsored retirement options that are portable and treat all teachers fairly.
Anchor policies receive a weighted score in calculating the grades for states in the report card. This is explained in full in the methodology section later in this report.
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StudentsFirst believes that all of its policies can function as levers for reform and, as a whole, represent a comprehensive set of changes that states must make to ensure the achievement gap is eliminated and the United States regains its place among the top third of countries in terms of student performance.
Nuances in Approach
StudentsFirst developed the State Policy Report Card, 2013 to be responsive to the wide range of approaches that states take in articulating state-level education policy. As a result, the report card relies on a few key principles to ground what otherwise needs to be a somewhat flexible analysis. First, for several policies, the design of the policy rubric reflected a sliding scale encompassing three approaches: restricting reform through barriers, enabling reform through permissive or silent policies, and mandating reform through prescriptive criteria. For instance, consider the policy objective of eliminating seniority-based or quality-blind layoffs. The worst policy for a state to have would be to require districts to implement senioritybased layoffs, a policy that is bad for students. Slightly better would be for the states law to be silent on how districts implement layoffs; the state neither prohibits nor requires seniority or performance as driving factors in the determination of layoff order. In this case, most districts would likely still use seniority-based layoffs as that is the predominant policy and certainly the policy that unions negotiate to be in place. Better state policy would be that the state actually requires districts to use performance as the predominant factor in determining which teachers are dismissed if they must implement a reduction in force. Policies generally evaluated according to this principle include removal of evaluation from collective bargaining, performance pay, eliminating forced placement, eliminating senioritybased layoffs, and pension reform. Second, when determining whether a state has a policy in place, the State Policy Report Card looks first to the statute and then to state-level regulations. With the StudentsFirst Policy Agenda, the thinking behind most of the policies is that states would adopt them through legislation, and thus far, that has been the primary focus of StudentsFirsts advocacy agenda. In examining all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, it becomes clearer that the state-level authority for education policy varies from state to state and, in some cases, among issues. Many states do in fact pass laws to enact certain policies. In other states, the State Board of Education or State Department of Education adopts policy through regulations that apply to all districts and schools in the state. Enacting policy through formal, legal adoption is certainly the preferred route for purposes of creating a state policy report card. With some policies, however, there are states that find ways to implement the policy without any statutory or regulatory authority other than the general authority granted to state education officials. For example, a number of states, such as Florida, Indiana, and New Mexico, have adopted laws requiring school report cards with AF letter grading. Other states, such as Ohio and South Carolina, have adopted the same policy as part of their Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) waivers, to which local districts have agreed. In both scenarios, the state has a policy in place that empowers parents with useful data regarding school performance. Thus, these states receive similar treatment in terms of policy scoring. It should be noted, however, that there are many moving parts concerning the ESEA waiver process. States must remain committed to implementing what they have agreed to in their waivers.
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In another example, the Rhode Island Board of Regents adopted Basic Education Program (BEP) regulations that require, among other things, that each district maintain control of its ability to recruit, hire, manage, evaluate, and assign its personnel, which includes a directive to establish policies to recruit, support, and retain highly effective staff. Using this broad authority, the state commissioner issued mandatory guidelines that prohibited basing layoffs and other staffing decisions solely on seniority and required the use of performance as a key criterion. In these cases, examining only whether the state has formally adopted policies in statute or regulation would not provide an accurate assessment of the policy environment in that state. In the spirit of the report card mentioned earlier, StudentsFirsts goal with this project is to provide accurate, useful information for the public and policymakers alike. Thus, StudentsFirst endeavored to find policy implementation through state department of education websites, reports from other organizations, and other sources of information and to credit those states that demonstrated that a given policy was in place. Of course, by opening up analysis beyond what is clear and transparent in the state code, there is the risk that the report card will miss situations where a state is implementing a policy and neglect to credit the states work. When the new information is made available, StudentsFirst will update its analysis periodically in the online version of the report card data and in subsequent reports. Finally, implementation can only help states in terms of their policy grades. States were not penalized for the failure of districts to implement a policy that provided authority for reform. Likewise, the report card does not take into account whether districts are implementing a bad policy even when state law is silent. For instance, a state may fall short of prohibiting forced placement of teachers, but state law could be silent with respect to teacher assignment. In this case, districts could implement a policy of mutual consent in teacher placements, which requires the agreement of both the teacher and the principal, or districts could implement forced placement. States get credit for having the silent law and permitting districts to implement a reform policy, even if no district takes advantage of the latitude. As mentioned earlier, the intent of the StudentsFirst Policy Agenda is to create a policy environment that enables and supports district and school efforts to prioritize the needs of students, and the State Policy Report Card grades states accordingly. StudentsFirst is considering evaluating states progress and impact in implementing student-centered policies, but that is not the subject of this project.
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Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
Albert Einstein
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Findings
Overall Findings
Overall Grade Distribution
28
10 0 A 2 B C D
11
Rank
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
State
National Average Louisiana Florida Indiana District of Columbia Rhode Island Michigan Hawaii Arizona Colorado Ohio
Grade
D BBC+ C+ C+ CCCCC-
GPA
1.24 2.88 2.73 2.46 2.40 2.33 1.94 1.88 1.85 1.83 1.77
As expected when assessing current policies in the context of more than 100 years of taking a non-student centered approach to public education policy, overall state grades were very low across the country. More than two-thirds of states received a D or F overall. Twenty-eight states received a D (ranging from D+ to D-), and 11 states received a grade of F, nearly equaling the combined number of states that received a grade of C or B. No state received an A. This reflects the fact that the status quo in the majority of states is a set of policies focused on antiquated systems, bureaucracies, and various adult interests.
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This is not to say that there is no momentum for reform. In fact, just the opposite is the case. Among the top ten states, each one has enacted reforms in the past five years and most have adopted broad reform measures in just the past three years. Florida, Indiana, and Louisiana all enacted bold, sweeping reform legislation in 2011 and 2012 that put them ahead of the rest of the country. These states had already built solid foundations for reform policies, including embracing choice, in prior years. Even states with lower grades have demonstrated momentum in recent years. While the top states were successful in enacting broad reforms, governors in several other states, such as Connecticut, Nevada, and New Jersey, all proposed similar comprehensive education reform packages, but they were less successful in getting them passed in full through the legislature. The wins that were achieved, however, are reflected in the state grades and indicate a national climate of change when it comes to education policy. Individual state report cards reflect momentum for policy areas in which states have undertaken significant reforms. Conversely, the bottom ten states reflect near total inaction on the part of state leaders to enact any reforms that would change the status quo with respect to education policies. These states are stagnant. Even in states where policy discussions are taking place, such as Alabama, Iowa, and California, state leaders have failed to act. In these states, teachers are not treated like professionals, parents options are limited, and resources are not being used wisely and effectively. Interestingly, in many states that faired poorly on the report card, state policy appears to have a strong predisposition toward local control. In states such as Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota, there is very little in terms of state regulation of schools. This makes sense in that states have a strong role in promoting reform-minded education policies, and where they fail to take an active role, their grade is lower. This is premised on the fact that in every state there are schools and districts that have underperformed for years, if not decades. In these states, the education system has failed students and families by the tens of thousands, and local authorities have not done what is needed to improve education. StudentsFirst believes in the need for states to establish policies that are good for students and to intervene when districts fail to achieve results. At the same time, it makes sense to examine the data further and determine whether the policy rubric, and the policy agenda generally, strikes the right balance between creating the right guidelines to ensure school leaders prioritize students and providing the appropriate flexibility for school leaders to innovate and do what they need to do to raise student achievement.
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Elevate the Teaching Profession

Elevate Teaching Distribution
24
11 2 A 5 B C D
Rank
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
State
National Average Louisiana Florida District of Columbia Rhode Island Colorado Indiana Michigan Arizona Delaware Tennessee
Grade
D+ A ABBBBBC+ C+ C+
GPA
1.52 3.77 3.64 2.95 2.91 2.86 2.82 2.77 2.41 2.36 2.32
Top Five States

Each state that scored well in Elevate Teaching had several points in common. State policies treat teachers as true professionals recognizing that teachers are vital to student success, acknowledging that not all educators are the same, and requiring districts to implement systems to identify, recruit, reward, and retain effective teachers. States that scored well here often allow for multiple pathways into teaching for highly qualified professionals and reward teachers for excellent work as measured by meaningful teacher evaluations that factor in the teachers impact in the classroom. In the past few years, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Rhode Island have adopted strong statewide models for educator evaluations that make student growth the predominant factor in determining effectiveness. Colorado, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia deserve special recognition for blazing the trail for other states to follow as early adopters of stronger evaluation systems, these states have already provided valuable lessons learned that are helping to shape policies in the next round of states. Most significantly, states like Louisiana and Florida have moved aggressively to ensure that effectiveness is the primary driver in all personnel decisions, from teacher placement to compensation to dismissals. These two states are exemplary and top the list for Elevating the Teaching Profession.
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Meaningful Evaluations for Teachers and Principals
Exemplary states include both Louisiana and Florida. The policies in those states are direct and unambiguous in prioritizing classroom effectiveness over all other factors.
Only two states, Colorado and Louisiana, received a score of 4 for their Teacher Evaluation policies. Fifteen states received a score of 3 for teacher evaluations. The distinguishing characteristics were the requirement for districts to include student survey data as a factor in the overall rating and the level of weight assigned to student growth in the overall rating. Notably, only nine of these states prohibit evaluations from being subject to collective bargaining, which should protect districts ability to implement a rigorous, meaningful evaluation system without getting bogged down in protracted negotiations. Thirteen states require meaningful evaluations for principals. In nearly every state that adopted a new teacher evaluation policy within the past three years, a new principal evaluation system was adopted as well. Of these 13 states, only Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Rhode Island, and Tennessee explicitly require that school-wide student growth count for 50 percent of a principals overall rating. In some states, implementation or design of the model trails the development of the teacher evaluation. StudentsFirst advocates for states to adopt both systems concurrently, as improving educator effectiveness requires a holistic approach that focuses jointly on teachers effectiveness in the classroom and principals effectiveness in managing and developing effective teachers in order to raise student achievement school wide.
Use of Evaluations for Personnel Decisions

The best states understand that identifying effective teachers and principals is only the first step. If districts do not use these data as the basis for making personnel decisions, then there is no way that they can ensure that every child has an effective teacher in the classroom and a strong leader for every school. In fact, by maintaining existing policies and not aligning performance with decisionmaking, effective teachers are always at risk; districts are guaranteed to lose great teachers. Unfortunately, the political will in most states appears to want to tackle reforms incrementally, changing one or two policies at a time rather than enacting broad changes that serve to elevate teachers across the state. For instance, only seven states have adopted strong measures to retain great teachers in each of the relevant policy objectives dismissal, placement, layoffs, and tenure. Exemplary states include both Louisiana and Florida. The policies in those states are direct and unambiguous in prioritizing classroom effectiveness over all other factors. These states truly put students first by focusing on enabling schools to hire, develop, and retain excellent educators. Fifteen states prohibit seniority from driving layoff decisions, yet only five states Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, and Michigan require that performance be the predominant factor and prohibit seniority from determining layoffs at all except in the case of a tiebreaker between equally ranked teachers. When it comes to reforming tenure, 15 states have policies that require teachers to earn tenure through consistently high performance. Only 11 states make tenure revocable based on ineffectiveness. In the District of Columbia, the sole school system has adopted personnel policies based on effectiveness through its collective bargaining agreement. As a result, the state has effectively eliminated senioritybased layoffs, forced placement, and tenure.
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Professional Pay
Valuing teachers for their contributions to student success through pay systems aligned with performance is key to attracting and retaining the very best talent in the teaching profession. Here, states again demonstrate a variety of approaches, but the main dividing line is between states that do not expressly prohibit performance pay and those states that have gone the extra step of requiring that district pay scales include some connection with performance. Nearly every state permits performance pay in some form. Only seven states require districts to consider a teachers effectiveness in the classroom when setting compensation. Meanwhile, 20 states still tie salary increases to attainment of a masters degree or other higher education, even though there are more effective ways to invest in great teachers.
Alternative Pathways to Certification

Most states have opened up some pathways. Variations fall into three major categories, all related to the quality of a program and its potential impact. First, many states do not require alternative pathways to have sufficiently higher selectivity criteria than traditional programs. Second, states vary greatly in terms of their requirements for demonstrating content expertise needed to teach a given subject. Too many states still require candidates to demonstrate content knowledge by having an undergraduate major in the subject, without allowing more flexible (and often more meaningful) options such as passage of a content exam. Third, only five states Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas have clear, rigorous standards for authorizing and reviewing alternative certification programs that link teacher effectiveness in the classroom with program performance and provide the state the authority to decommission those programs that do not produce effective educators.
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Empower Parents Distribution
28 18
5 0 A 0 B C D F
Rank
1 2 3 4 5 6 6 8 9 9
State
National Average Indiana Louisiana Ohio Florida Hawaii District of Columbia New Mexico Rhode Island Missouri Tennessee
Grade
DC+ C C CCD+ D+ D+ D D
GPA
0.70 2.35 2.29 2.00 1.94 1.71 1.59 1.59 1.35 1.24 1.24
Top Five States

States earned high grades in this policy pillar by demonstrating a priority for empowering parents to make the best decisions for their children by creating a variety of educational options that are supported and held accountable for student learning. These states on the whole are rejecting the status quo of requiring any child to be trapped in a low-performing school. The top states for Empower Parents with Data and Choice are Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio. Notably, Indiana earned the highest grade in this policy pillar, a C+. Indiana provides parents access to vital information about the quality of schools and teachers. Additionally, Indiana has multiple publicly funded education options, including public charter schools and an opportunity scholarship program for low-income students, which together work to provide parents with options when their assigned neighborhood school does not meet the needs of their children. The state has room to improve, however, particularly with regard to public charter school accountability. Similarly, while Louisiana has empowered parents with choice, it must do more to hold alternatives accountable to high curricular standards and performance. Only five states earned a C- or better. Overall, the country has a very long way to go in terms of empowering parents. Choice is still very limited in most states. Even among states that have public charter schools, many still maintain limits on charter school growth. Very few states have opportunity scholarship programs. And accountability for additional choices is distressingly weak.
26 State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013
Eight states earned the lowest grades for empowering parents (or rather, not empowering parents). Iowa, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia all have yet to allow public charter schools and do not have scholarship programs or a parent trigger. In effect, students and families in these states are left without any options outside of the traditional public school system. When the systems fail, and leaders in turn fail to improve them, students in these nine states are trapped.
Meaningful Information
Only 11 states require that PK12 schools receive an annual school report card with an AF letter grade based on student achievement. Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and South Carolina all have strong policies that provide information on student achievement, student growth, and achievement gaps. Five other states received a 3 on this policy, mainly due to the lack of achievement gap data. The exception is Louisiana, which does not explicitly distinguish school grading criteria specific to high schools (such as graduation and drop-out rates or college readiness data). Another six states provide annual report cards for schools, but they assign a numeric score of 1100 to each school instead of a letter grade. In addition to school performance information, states also need to demonstrate some method for notifying parents when their children are assigned ineffective teachers. This policy objective had the lowest average score, 0.22 out of a four-point scale, indicating that parent notification has yet been embraced by many states. As conversations regarding teacher effectiveness become the norm and take the place of teacher experience and seniority as proxies for teacher quality, however, more parents will demand to know such information. Three states are ahead of the curve on this policy: Florida, Indiana, and Michigan. These states require parent notification when students are placed with an ineffective teacher, after the teacher has been rated ineffective for two or more years. Another five jurisdictions D.C., Illinois, New York, Rhode Island, and Utah make teacher effectiveness data available to parents on request or provide school-level effectiveness data. A major innovative policy that is receiving a lot of attention and interest from state policymakers is a parent trigger. Few states have actually adopted the policy yet; this objective received the second lowest average score among states. Thus far, only four states have adopted some form of parent trigger: California, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Only California the state in which the parent trigger originated provides parents with the option of choosing from among at least the four turnaround options detailed in the federal Race to the Top program. Louisiana enables parents to petition to opt into the states Recovery School District. Mississippi enables parents to petition for a charter conversion, while Texas provides parents with three turnaround options. Over the next year, StudentsFirst expects several more states to adopt parent trigger policies.
Increasing Quality Choices

As mentioned previously, all but eight states allow public charter schools. Of the 43 states that have public charter schools, nine states have arbitrary caps on the number of charter schools that can be authorized, and 17 states limit authorization to districts only. Only the District of Columbia operates without a cap (though with some qualification) and has both performance thresholds for expansion and an expedited process for reviewing applications from high-performing operators.
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In terms of setting high standards for public charter school accountability, only four states met all of StudentsFirsts criteria: Hawaii, Missouri, Ohio, and Washington. The distinguishing factor for these states was an emphasis on accountability for both schools and authorizers. Washington is the most recent state to adopt a charter school law, and its accountability framework truly reflects the lessons learned from states that preceded it. Ohio is notable for its automatic closure trigger, which mandates that a charter must be closed if it meets certain criteria. Establishing a state-level policy mandate provides cover for authorizers to make necessary closure decisions. Seven states had strong accountability for schools but lacked meaningful oversight of authorizer performance. Of the dozen states that provide opportunity scholarships for low-income students, only four states D.C., Indiana, Louisiana, and Wisconsin meet StudentsFirsts full criteria for opportunity scholarships. In these states, scholarships are limited to low-income students in low-performing schools and have accountability requirements for participating schools. Wisconsins program, which is not statewide, includes multiple accountability measures to ensure that scholarship students are achieving at expected levels through their publicly funded options. Again, states have more to do in terms of holding schools receiving scholarship students accountable for curricular standards and results.
Providing Comparable Resources

This policy categorys breadth in scores relates to the broad array of policies that states can and should enact to ensure that all publicly funded schools have access to comparable resources. Put another way, there are many ways in which states must ensure that public resources meant for each child are provided in full regardless of the school option he or she chooses. Six states provide comparable or nearly comparable funding for students attending publicly funded programs. Hawaii, Maryland, and Tennessee are exemplary, and Delaware, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island provide nearly comparable funding. Eight states allow for authorizers (in most cases, districts) to reduce funding normally provided to public charter schools for administrative purposes. However, equity does not end with operating resources. Access to facilities and facilitiesrelated funding continues to present a significant hurdle to public charter growth and expansion. Surprisingly, of the 43 states that have public charter schools, only 12 states require districts to offer excess facilities space to charter schools. When it comes to providing funding and financing assistance for public charter school facilities, 15 states provide at least one kind of assistance. Five states provide a per-pupil facilities allowance. The District of Columbia is the only true exemplar in terms of supporting public charters in acquiring and maintaining facilities. D.C. provides a right of first offer that prioritizes highperforming schools, as well as a financing trifecta of a per-pupil facilities allowance, access to bond revenue, and alternative financing structures.
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Spend Wisely and Govern Well Distribution
30
16
0 A
2 B C D
3 F
Rank
1 2 3 4 4 6 7 7 9 10 10 10
State
National Average Michigan Rhode Island New York District of Columbia Alaska Illinois Massachusetts Kansas Ohio Hawaii Delaware Connecticut
Grade
D+ B BC+ C+ C+ C+ C+ C+ C C C C
GPA
1.57 3.00 2.78 2.67 2.56 2.56 2.44 2.33 2.33 2.22 2.11 2.11 2.11
States that Spend Wisely and Govern Well have policies in place that ensure that every dollar spent on education goes toward improving schools and is not wasted on bureaucratic systems that do not help our children succeed. Michigan and Rhode Island earned the top grades in this policy pillar and were the only two states to earn a B- or higher. These states understand that schools and districts need flexibility in spending funds to best benefit the needs of their students and require that all schools and districts are transparent in their accounting. They also allow for flexibility in how schools are governed as well, so that changes can be made when schools and districts fail to meet objectives. For example, Michigan leaves the majority of the states funding for public schools unrestricted and allows schools to make their own decisions about how money is spent, such as in contracting for services and class-size requirements. Michigan also has taken impressive steps to require that districts offer teachers more attractive, portable retirement plans. Also, Michigan has established a strong state intervention model that enables the state to take control and drive reform in financially or academically failing districts. Still, Michigan could improve its financial accountability system by ensuring that schools publicly report their spending compared to student achievement. In total, 16 states earned a C- or better, mainly because they offer some sort of governance flexibility and do not restrict staffing decisions based on class size.
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The worst-performing states in terms of Spending Wisely and Governing Well are Montana, New Hampshire, and North Dakota. These three states demonstrated the worst of all combinations they have restrictions on how districts use their resources, but they are handsoff when it comes to intervening when these same districts and their schools fail to perform. States need to reverse this paradigm. Districts and schools should be afforded flexibility to innovate and achieve results, and they should be held accountable when they do not.
Governance Flexibility
When schools or districts consistently fail to meet performance expectations, there must be a way to change the leadership in place and make it accountable for results. In large part due to federal requirements regarding state accountability, most states have at least some form of state intervention for low-performing schools or districts. Only 13 states offer no governance flexibility of any kind for low-performing schools and districts. Eighteen states provide for full state control but do not allow for mayoral control in low-performing districts. States are becoming more creative and expanding their authority through the design of new state-level governance intervention models. Both Louisiana, with its successful Recovery School District, and Tennessee, with its new Achievement School District, offer innovative and robust approaches to state governance compared to the traditional models of ordering corrective action or appointing a receiver. Connecticut and Michigan are also developing their own specialized models. StudentsFirst anticipates several states moving in a similar direction over the next year. At the local level, options are significantly more limited. Only ten states allow for some form of mayoral control. Mayoral control ranges from mayoral appointment of school board members to direct authority over the hiring of the superintendent. Of the ten states that allow some level of mayoral control, only D.C., Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New York permit full mayoral control of a large district.
Spending Resources Wisely

Parents and other taxpayers invest a lot of money in schools, and they deserve to know how it is spent and what they are getting for that investment. States vary widely when it comes to fiscal transparency and funding flexibility. Texas has an exemplary fiscal transparency policy that requires districts to report on specific metrics that link expenditures with academic outcomes. The state assigns a 15 star rating for each district based on performance, and the state commissioner has authority to appoint a management team in districts in which performance is insufficient. Both Maryland and New Mexico have fiscal transparency measures in place for districts, but they do not have accountability measures linked to governance flexibility in districts that fail to meet objectives. More than half of the states provide districts with staffing flexibility, and the vast majority of states provide some level of flexibility when it comes to achieving management efficiencies. Twenty-seven states do not restrict class size past the third grade. All but four states California, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and South Carolina permit districts to develop management efficiencies, such as alternative procurement vehicles.
Teacher Pensions
A majority of states still lock teachers into the traditional, outdated state pension system, although only 11 states exempt public charter school teachers from these restrictions. Only eleven states allow districts to offer a more portable retirement option for teachers. Alaska is
30 State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013
the only state that requires all new school employees to enroll in a portable retirement plan, although Kansas will begin to in 2015. Rhode Island recently moved to a more portable retirement system. And in 2012, the Michigan legislature took steps to offer teachers better retirement options, and state officials are studying the benefits of moving to a 100 percent portable program.
Looking Forward
While the State Policy Report Card will be released annually in a full report format, it is important that the data and analysis available on the website reflect the latest information available. As such, the report card will be updated periodically following state legislative cycles to ensure that the information and assessments are accurate and relevant. StudentsFirst will build on this first State Policy Report Card going forward and will continue seeking the right balance between defining standards and elements for rigorous policies aligned to the principles of the policy agenda and allowing for flexibility and innovation in state approaches toward achieving the policy objectives. The report card must be nimble enough to accommodate a variety of frameworks for enacting the same policies if it is truly going to be useful to policymakers. Implementation can bring clarity to the scope and definition of a policy while exposing complexity and nuances that were not originally conceived. For instance, StudentsFirst is very interested in state adoption and implementation of meaningful evaluation systems over the next year. How states define student growth and achievement and how they weight them in computing a teachers overall effectiveness rating will be topics of much debate and analysis. StudentsFirst will consider refining its rubric for what constitutes a rigorous, meaningful evaluation system as the analysis unfolds. Evolution in evaluation design and implementation is only one example. By nature, change and innovation ideas evolve over time. Other policy areas that hold enormous potential in 2013 include competency-based learning and student course choice. Where states are developing and implementing meaningful policies in these areas that act as levers for reform, StudentsFirst will consider including them as part of an updated policy agenda and report card. StudentsFirst endeavors not only to keep pace with the evolution of education policy but also to contribute to it, through ongoing research and thoughtful analysis of progress in the field. The report card itself will also serve as a source for ongoing research and analysis. Determining what similarities exist among state policies and which distinctions hold greater potential to impact implementation is an important inquiry worth pursuing. Likewise, there must be careful analysis of the correlation between state policy grades and student achievement trends. Louisiana earned the highest grade, yet it has historically ranked near the bottom in terms of NAEP achievement. Like other states, policymakers reference this persistently low student achievement as an impetus for aggressive reforms. In other states, such as Florida, reforming policy has been a gradual process, and student achievement has steadily grown. Similar explanatory hypotheses are not easily developed for other states, however. An initial comparison of state policy grades and state NAEP achievement indicates no correlation, positive or negative. This should be expected. It is far too early to attribute increased student achievement to strong reform policies, as the most significant policy change has happened only in the past five years and full implementation is just beginning.
Ideally, the report card will be an asset and a resource for efforts to drive change. It should provide perspective on where the education reform movement has come and how far it still has to go to help every child. Now is the time to build on the momentum sweeping the country among parents and community members, policymakers and public officials, administrators, and teachers. There is no time to lose now is the time to put students first.
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The secret in education lies in respecting the student.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Policy Agenda: The Big Picture

The policies advocated by StudentsFirst are as much levers for reform as they are reforms themselves. The theory of change is that if a state adopts these policies, then it positions and supports districts and schools and principals and teachers to do the hard work of improving the education provided to students. These policies enable great schools to flourish. They enable educators to work as true professionals and as part of a results-oriented team on which decisions are made based on the impact created in the classroom. And these policies enable leaders to take decisive action when programs and personnel are not raising student achievement.
No single policy is going to dramatically improve public education on its own. There is no silver bullet, and generally there is no ranking among our priorities. StudentsFirst takes a multi-prong approach to education reform, and this is informed by the latest research and reflected in the scope of the State Policy Report Cards. Each of the policy pillars works in concert with the others, and a state needs to put all of the pieces together to enable robust, meaningful reform in its education system. It is important to note that StudentsFirsts policies focus on schools the systems, personnel, and models around which education is organized. Obviously youth development involves much more than just education. Many of the challenges students face today relate to poverty and its impact on every facet of their lives. It would be wrong to say otherwise. But as educators, policymakers, and concerned citizens, it would be equally wrong to abdicate responsibility to ensure all children learn regardless of their socio-economic conditions. States and communities must address these issues aggressively. Poverty does matter, and it matters a lot. But poverty does not determine whether or not a student can succeed in life it is not destiny. There are thousands of examples across the country of students, schools, and communities beating the odds imposed by poverty and succeeding in education. StudentsFirst believes that to improve life outcomes for children, high-quality educational opportunities must be made available to every child. Achieving that goal is the core focus of StudentsFirsts work.
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Why Elevate Teachers

Elevate the Teaching Profession by Valuing Teachers Impact on Students
StudentsFirst believes that all students can achieve at high levels if they have effective teachers. Research clearly shows that teachers are the most important in-school factor in determining student achievement. It is also the factor that education policymakers have the most control over. Ensuring every child has an effective teacher is a critical strategy for eliminating the achievement gap. Yet most states have policies in place that actually work against this goal. Effective teachers are not recognized and retained. Teachers who need more development are not given meaningful feedback about what they specifically need to do to improve. School leaders are not held accountable for overall school performance or for how well they build and manage an effective team. Personnel decisions are made without any connection to whether students are actually learning from their teachers. With these issues in mind, StudentsFirst analyzed how states attract, retain, and recognize quality teachers through policies and practices that treat teachers like true professionals.
Specifically, the State Policy Report Card examines the extent to which each states laws elevate the teaching profession by:
Evaluating teachers based on evidence of student growth in the classroom, their classroom practice, and student feedback. Evaluating principals based on school-wide student growth and their ability to attract, retain, manage, and develop excellent teachers. Supporting the expansion of alternative teacher training and certification programs and the elimination of ineffective programs. Rewarding excellence by paying teachers based on their impact in the classroom. Making all staffing decisions including hiring, transfers, and dismissal based on effectiveness. Reforming tenure as something earned and maintained through consistently high performance; and eliminating it as a protection for educators who do not meet the mark.
For all of these, StudentsFirst places a heavy emphasis on the relationship between educator effectiveness and student growth in learning, placing a premium on evaluations that are objective, meaningful, and fair. Ultimately, the most important duty of a teacher is to help students learn. How well students are learning is the strongest indicator of the quality of the teaching taking place. Student growth must play the predominant role in determining performance, and every policy related to educators must rely on this principle.
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Elevating the Profession, Developing Talent, and Ensuring Accountability through Meaningful Teacher and Principal Evaluations
Assessing teacher and principal performance in a strong and meaningful way is an absolutely critical first step toward improving our schools and elevating the teaching profession. Evaluations that comprehensively assess educator performance based on multiple factors provide necessary information to teachers, principals, and district leaders. For teachers, evaluations can be used as a tool to inform their practice so that they can reach their full potential. For administrators, evaluations are essential to informing decisions that will improve the overall educational quality of schools, including keeping the best teachers and providing targeted professional development to teachers that need it. Until recently, states across the country required and expected little from districts educator evaluation systems. Evaluations lacked frequency, meaningful feedback, and clear expectations.1 As a result, teachers and principals have been treated like interchangeable parts, evaluated on measures that research shows have little correlation to fundamental outcomes such as raising student achievement. Often evaluations were subjective in nature, relying on one or two administrative observations. But in the past few years, there has been a sea change sweeping across the country in this area, largely due to a few key states such as D.C., Florida, and Tennessee taking the lead, as well as federal initiatives, including Race to the Top (RTTT). By 2010, one year after RTTT was announced, momentum for improving teacher evaluations had developed significantly. At that time, only 16 states required teacher evaluations to include student achievement data.2 Today, 28 states require that student achievement data be included in evaluations to assess teacher performance. As this change takes place, states must ensure they take a comprehensive approach to developing their evaluation frameworks, so that evaluations are effectively used as a tool to recognize excellence, support development, and address consistent ineffectiveness. Evaluations must be objective, meaningful, and fair. Teachers and principals deserve to be evaluated annually so they receive the feedback, support, and development they need to improve their craft. Likewise, when districts conduct evaluations annually, administrators can more effectively manage their instructional corps to ensure every child has a great teacher in every classroom. Comprehensive evaluations include multiple measures to reflect accurately the responsibilities of teachers and principals. For both principals and teachers, since their primary responsibility is to increase student learning, student academic growth must be a significant factor within these evaluations. By using student academic growth, as opposed to achievement on any single test, as the focus of an evaluation, teachers and principals can be fairly and objectively recognized for their influence on their students achievement as
Teacher Evaluations
Exemplar States:
Colorado Louisiana
Principal Evaluations
Exemplar States: Colorado Louisiana Florida Rhode Island Tennessee Wisconsin
1 2
Weisberg, Daniel, Susan Sexton, Jennifer Mulher, and David Keeling. The Widget Effect. The New Teacher Project, 2009. Blueprint for Change: National Summary, 2010 State Teacher Policy Yearbook. National Council on Teacher Quality, 2010.
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Evaluations must be objective, meaningful, and fair

Teachers and principals deserve to be evaluated annually so they receive the feedback, support, and development they need to improve their craft. Likewise, when districts conduct evaluations annually, administrators can more effectively manage their instructional corps to ensure every child has a great teacher in every classroom.
opposed to external factors. Regardless of where their students start, students with highly effective teachers should reflect at least a years worth of growth over the course of a year of school. StudentsFirst believes that objective measures of student growth should account for 50 percent of an educators evaluation, based on the premise that increasing student learning is the core and predominant focus of an educators job. States may use multiple methods for calculating student growth, but the key is that this receives the significance and weighting it deserves. Of course, as with any assessment of something complex, no single factor can provide a complete and accurate picture of performance. Growth in student achievement is not the only important aspect of teachers and principals roles. Educator evaluations must be multidimensional to comprehensively assess educators. For teachers, this includes classroom observations and student surveys, both of which have been shown to increase the reliability of an evaluation instrument, as well as its predictive power to identify varying levels of teacher quality.3 And by basing classroom observations on a clear, structured rubric, schools realize the added benefit of having principals paying more attention to and learning about instruction than ever before. This is reflected in principal evaluations as well. Additional measures for principals should include whether they effectively manage high-performing teachers. These measures examine whether a principal is successful at attracting, developing, and retaining effective and highly effective teachers. Further, to be more meaningful, evaluation ratings must go beyond ambiguous, two-tier or binary rating systems. A 2009 study reported that in districts utilizing binary rating systems, 99 percent of teachers received a satisfactory rating.4 This does little to distinguish among varying levels of performance or provide guidance for developing teachers in need of support. A rating system with at least four tiers that rates teachers as highly effective, effective, minimally effective, or needs improvement, with clearly defined objectives for each rating, offers educators relevant feedback on how to improve upon their practice. Districts must be free to design and develop robust evaluation systems without subjecting them to negotiations. Input from teachers and principals is important to building buy-in to this system; but including evaluation criteria in the collective bargaining process at the school district level is not the way to achieve this. When evaluation systems are subject to negotiation, the resulting system might not be ultimately designed first and foremost to benefit students needs. Union leaders represent the interests of all their members, both those who are highly effective and ineffective. Simply put, labor leadership has a conflict of interest when it comes to developing evaluations for members. Districts should absolutely include teachers in the development of the evaluation process through feedback sessions, surveys, and focus groups by subject, but states should take evaluation criteria off the bargaining table.
3 4
Gathering Feedback for Teaching: Combining High-Quality Observations with Student Surveys and Achievement Gains. Measures of Effective Teaching Project, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2012, p. 9. Weisberg, Daniel, Susan Sexton, Jennifer Mulher, and David Keeling. The Widget Effect. The New Teacher Project, 2009.
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A robust, rigorous evaluation for teachers and principals is critical to elevating the teaching profession and developing effective educators. Infrequent observations, perfunctory assessment ratings, and meaningless feedback have all too often characterized the way districts have gone about evaluating and developing teachers and principals. For too long, evaluations used by states and districts have done an incredible disservice to teachers, principals, and most important, students. Policies that require districts to adopt and implement meaningful, objective, and fair evaluation systems are in the best interests of students and educators alike.
Keeping the Best Teachers through the Use of Evaluations to Inform Personnel Decisions
Every student deserves an excellent teacher, and every teacher deserves to work with an instructional team dedicated to excellence in the classroom. To create a high-performing learning environment for all students, schools must create a culture that retains and celebrates effective teachers. The positive influence great teachers can have on their students cannot be emphasized enough. In fact, students with the highest-performing teachers gain five to six more months of learning than students in classrooms with the lowest-performing teachers.5 And the impact of such teachers extends far beyond academic achievement, translating into many positive outcomes that last well into adulthood. Students who learn from effective teachers are more likely to attend college, attend higher-ranked colleges, earn higher salaries, live in better neighborhoods as adults, and even have lower rates of teen pregnancy.6 Identifying teachers who are effective and areas in which teachers need to improve is the first step toward raising the level of teacher quality in a school or district. Objective, meaningful, and fair evaluations are essential to this effort. Measuring teacher performance by multiple measures tied to student academic growth provides critical information to teachers and administrators alike. Yet having the information is not enough; school leaders must use evaluation data to drive personnel decisions. A teachers evaluation should determine what specific kinds of professional development would be helpful and what a teacher must do to improve his or her practice. Whether or not a teacher is effective must be the primary basis for decisions that determine teacher employment, placement, dismissal, and recognition. For far too long, school systems have prioritized arbitrary external classroom factors such as seniority over in-class performance when it comes to key personnel decisions. This makes little sense. Numerous studies have shown that after the first few years of a teachers career, experience has little correlation to increased student achievement.7,8 In other words,
Ending Forced Placement

Exemplar States: District of Columbia Florida Louisiana
Staffing Decisions
Exemplar States: District of Columbia Florida Georgia Indiana Louisiana Michigan
5 6 7 8
The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in Americas Urban Schools. The New Teacher Project, 2012, pp. 2, 42. Chetty, Raj, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff. The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood. Working Paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011. Rivkin, Steven, Eric Hanusheck, and John Kain. Teacher Layoffs: Rethinking Last-Hired, First-Fired Policies. National Council on Teacher Quality, 2010. Rivkin, Steven, Eric Hanushek, and John Kain. Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement. Econometrica, March 2005: 417458.
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a fifth-year teacher can be just as effective as a 20-year teacher. To be clear, this does not mean that experience is negligible. Rather, because research has shown that experience is not a reliable proxy for teacher effectiveness, there is no reason it should be a sole or significant basis for teacher personnel decisions. Instead, school leaders should make personnel decisions on what matters most whether students are learning. This is definitely the case when it comes to teacher assignment and placement. Schools must be able to build an effective instructional staff that meets the needs of their students. A forced placement policy prevents schools from having this flexibility. Forced placement requires that when excessed teachers are recalled for rehire that they be prioritized based on their seniority rather than their performance. So if an ineffective teacher is excessed, all too often that teacher winds up filling a vacancy at another school rather than allowing the principal at that school to fill the spot as he or she sees fit. In 30 states, forced placement is allowed, and there is no requirement that ineffective teachers be dismissed from the classroom. Another very clear example of a policy regarding personnel decisions that is misaligned with the best interests of students is a policy commonly referred to as last in, first out. This policy requires districts during a reduction in force to dismiss teachers based on seniority, regardless of their performance and effectiveness. In other words, newer teachers are laid off first, even if they are effective and highly recognized for being great teachers. Each year, local newspapers across the country report on a Teacher of the Year in this position. Once again, such a policy defies common sense. Numerous studies have illustrated this policys detrimental impact on student learning. One study that simulated and compared the impact of a seniority-based layoff system versus a performance-based system found only a 16 percent overlap between teachers who were retained in the classroom and those who were effective. In other words, the better teacher is dismissed roughly four out of five times under a seniority-based layoff system. Yet 11 states still require that seniority be the sole factor to determine layoffs, and an additional 25 states neither prohibit seniority from being used nor require performance be a factor in dismissals. Tenure is another key personnel area in which years in a classroom, rather than performance in a classroom, are commonly upheld as the foundation for decision-making. In most states, tenure is granted automatically without any demonstration of performance after a teacher has taught on average for just three years. In 36 states across the country, tenure is neither attained nor revoked based on any consideration of a teachers effectiveness. Awarding tenure this way can have damaging consequences. If a teacher does not demonstrate effectiveness before being granted tenure status, districts are basically promoting a teacher whose students are unlikely to achieve at high levels. And because tenure exists to keep a teacher in the classroom, if a teacher cannot lose tenure for poor performance, then it becomes extremely difficult for a principal to dismiss that teacher even when it is clear that students are being negatively impacted. Ultimately, job security becomes the priority rather than performance, and students pay the price. Schools must be empowered to do better. Prioritizing students and great teachers requires that performance, evident through strong evaluations, be the driving factor for all personnel decisions. Given the tremendous impact highly effective teachers have on students, personnel decisions must be structured to recognize, retain, and reward effective teachers.
Schools must be able to build an effective instructional staff that meets the needs of their students.
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Doing so also elevates the teaching profession experienced teachers and new teachers alike should be given the opportunity to be excellent teachers and to work with colleagues who excel as well.
Reforming Teacher Compensation to Attract and Keep the Best Teachers

School districts need the ability to financially reward and retain their best teachers and to use money as one incentive tool that helps them attract great teachers to their schools. The existing salary schedule used by most public schools does not provide this kind flexibility and instead bases starting salary and annual pay increases on the type of degree(s) the teacher has earned and/or on the number of years he or she has taught rather than on his or her ability in the classroom. This is commonly referred to as a single salary schedule or as steps and lanes. It restricts the amount districts can pay great teachers, which rewards longevity in the profession, as opposed to hard work, talent, and effectiveness. It also holds teaching back from being on the same status as other professions such as doctors and lawyers, where it rightfully belongs. Studies have repeatedly shown that while teachers make rapid improvement during the first few years of teaching, gains tend to level off thereafter.9 And with the exception of a very few subject areas most notably secondary mathematics teachers with an advanced degree in the subject they teach are no more effective than those without such degrees.10 Earning an advanced degree in education for example, from a teacher-training masters program has not shown to improve a teachers ability to increase student learning.11 Yet nationally, school districts spend approximately $15 billion annually rewarding teachers for obtaining these degrees.12 The purpose of a salary system and a way to elevate the teaching profession should be to reward outcomes and meet workforce needs, not to pay for inputs. A district could achieve far greater results by providing higher salaries to the most effective teachers and providing coaching and mentoring to developing teachers. Both of these initiatives could be paid for with funds otherwise misused in a single salary schedule system based on degrees and years of experience.
Reward Performance with Pay

Exemplar States:
Florida Hawaii Louisiana Nevada
Rockoff, Jonah E. The Impact of Individual Teachers on Student Achievement: Evidence from Panel Data. American Economic Review, 2004: 247252.
10 Goldhaber, Dan D., and Dominic Brewer. Does Teacher Certification Matter? High School Teacher Certification Status and Student Achievement. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, June 2000: 12945. 11 Chingos, Matthew M., and Paul E. Peterson. Its Easier to Pick a Good Teacher Than to Train One: Familiar and New Results on the Correlates of Teacher Effectiveness. Economics of Education Review, June 2011: 449465. 12 Miller, Raegen, and Marguerite Roza. The Sheepskin Effect and Student Achievement. Center for American Progress, July 2012. http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2012/07/pdf/miller_ masters.pdf (accessed July 17, 2012).
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As of December 2012, seven states Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, and Utah have passed legislation requiring school districts to tie compensation to performance indicators that include, if not prioritize, the academic achievement of students. The remaining 43 states and the District of Columbia generally fall into one of the following categories: the state sets a minimum salary schedule that school districts must incorporate; the state allows school districts to establish or negotiate their own salary policy; or the law is silent in regard to teacher compensation. Several of these states have voluntary performance-pay programs in place or have established programs for specific school districts within the state. Developing compensation systems that are flexible in nature and linked to performance are a sensible way for districts to create the kind of professional environment that will attract and retain the highest caliber individuals to the teaching profession. Such a system rewards teachers for what is most important their impact on their students.
Alternative Certification
Teacher Certification Pathways

Exemplar States: Connecticut District of Columbia Michigan Minnesota Rhode Island
All kids need and deserve to be taught by great teachers. And while there are many great teachers in our public schools, there just are not enough to go around to help every child learn. If states are going to raise the overall caliber of their teacher workforce, they will need to open up the pipeline for recruiting new pools of talent; states need access to the very best talent available. Traditional teacher preparation programs attract only a small segment of potential teachers to the profession because they typically require candidates to have a bachelors degree in education or in a specific subject matter. Thats the case even for potential teachers who already possess degrees in other subjects. For example, in some states, a NASA rocket scientist would have to have an undergraduate major in mathematics instead of aerospace engineering in order to teach an eighth grade algebra course. Additionally, traditional preparation programs are not always attracting the top undergraduate students into teaching; fewer than a quarter of new teachers come from the top third of college graduates.13 As a result, students, and the teaching profession as a whole, are missing out on a lot of potentially great teachers. To expand the teacher talent pool, states should create alternate pathways for prospective teachers to become certified. These pathways should allow professionals and college graduates alike who may be experts in certain subjects to enter into teaching without having to go back and earn a traditional education degree. State certification requirements should allow for provisional licenses in some cases to ensure alternatively certified teachers can be in the classroom, where they are needed, without bureaucratic delays. For alternative certification programs to have a truly successful impact on the teacher talent pool, it is critical that as states expand the pipeline, they demand that programs recruit top candidates and establish high standards for actual teaching once they get into the classroom. States should require programs to set high criteria for candidate selection,
13 Auguste, Byron, and Matt Miller. Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining the Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching: An International and Market Research-Based Perspective. McKinsey & Company, 2010, p. 5.
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such requiring a high undergraduate grade point average combined with some work experience. Programs must also ensure that candidates demonstrate content mastery for the subject they plan to teach not by having coursework or an undergraduate major on their transcripts but by passing rigorous content exams. States must also hold alternate preparation programs accountable for classroom outcomes. States should link teacher effectiveness data to training programs. If a program is not producing effective educators, the state should no longer allow that program to operate.14 When held to high standards and continually reviewed for performance, alternative certification programs have been shown to produce gains in student learning and alternatively certified teachers have outperformed teachers with formal coursework in education.15 Forty-four states and the District of Columbia allow some form of alternative certification, but only five have any meaningful processes by which to evaluate and decommission programs. And several states that purport to have alternative certification routes limit the value of those routes with program requirements similar to those of traditional licensure, such as requiring an undergraduate major as a demonstration of content knowledge, instead of something more meaningful like a content exam. States should look to alternative pathways established in D.C. and Rhode Island for models to replicate. The benefits of alternative pathways are clear. The teaching profession is strengthened by enabling more people to become teachers. By expanding certification to teachers trained through alternative programs, states can utilize both traditional and alternative pathways to provide schools with access to a wider, talent-rich pipeline of new teachers. And by recruiting from a wider selection of candidates, schools are better able to provide a great teacher for every student.
By recruiting from a wider selection of candidates, schools are better able to provide a great teacher for every student.
14 Johnson, Susan Moore, Sarah E. Birkeland, and Heather G. Peske. A Difficult Balance: Incentives and Quality Control in Alternative Certification Programs. Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2005. 15 Sass, T.R. Certification Requirements and Teacher Quality: A Comparison of Alternative Routes to Teaching. Georgia State University, 2011. http://www.abcte.org/files/alt.cert.study.
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Why Empower Parents

Empowering Parents with Meaningful Information and Choices
StudentsFirst believes that parents and guardians are best suited to make decisions that are in the best interests of their children; parents naturally put their childrens interests before the interests of a system, for example. However, to make the best decisions for their kids, parents need meaningful information about their schools. Parents need to know which schools serve children well, how schools compare with each other, and which schools can best meet their childrens needs. Similarly, parents are levers for accountability and change. No parent would choose to send their child to a classroom in which he or she would fall behind his or her peers. Parents deserve to know when their child is placed with an ineffective teacher, and they should have the power to do something about it. At the same time, when it comes to educational options, no student should ever be forced to attend a low-performing school or a school that cannot meet his or her needs. Traditionally, states and districts have taken a one-size-fits-all approach to education that does not serve the learning needs of all of our children. Without options, students can be trapped in schools that do not put them on a path to success later in life. States can remedy this situation by ensuring that parents with children in chronically failing schools have high-quality alternatives, especially in areas in which the supply of high-quality school choices for students does not currently exist. To attract the best public charter schools and support their students, states must ensure that charters have access to appropriate resources, including good facilities and equal funding for each public school student they enroll. But the state and authorizers must also hold these schools accountable to ensuring that all students opting into their programs are receiving a quality education. Authorizers must quickly move to shut down schools that are not doing so. Indeed, all schools taking public funds must be held accountable for high standards and must do right by children. Choice for appropriate education options does not begin and end with public charter schools, however. Sometimes change needs to happen more quickly, and many students cannot wait for public schools to improve. In fixing the public school system, we cannot forget about the public school child. Students from low-income families who are left without quality options must be given the opportunity to have immediate access to a better education. This means that, in some cases, the state should fund scholarship programs to allow low-income children to pursue a better education wherever it may exist. But these programs should be held just as accountable for student learning as public schools. Parents choosing to enroll their children in other school options can also serve as a force for change at the school they are leaving. Without options, parents are forced to accept whatever the traditional neighborhood school offers, even if the quality of the program is not good. This allows traditional public schools to take students and their families for granted and there is little incentive to change. Choice has transformed this dynamic, sometimes dramatically. By empowering parents with choice, traditional public schools now have to offer a compelling education program, or families will choose another option. The goal for
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all schools in this kind of environment is to be a healthy, thriving school a place in which students and their families choose to be. In this way, choice can be an incredibly powerful and positive lever for change. Yet additional levers may still be needed. If a district is not intervening and is failing to improve a school that has persistently failed, then parents should have the power to organize and demand change at that school. Under such a policy, rather than continue waiting for a central administration to improve a school, parents can trigger the school turnaround and force officials to act. Empowering parents with information and choice is about meeting every students needs with urgency the urgency that comes from parents protecting their children. Therefore the more power parents can exercise over their childrens education, and the greater the number of high-quality options from which to choose, the faster states can build a students-centered system of schools.
The State Policy Report Card measures whether states empower parents by:
Ensuring that parents have access to meaningful data about schools and teachers. Enabling parents to avoid low-performing teachers and schools. Providing and supporting public charter school options and holding public charter schools accountable for results. Providing opportunity scholarships to low-income students trapped in low-performing schools and holding participating schools accountable for results. Allowing parents to organize and demand change at persistently low-performing schools.
Empowering Parents with Information through School Report Cards

Increasing parental involvement in the education of children is key to building stronger schools.16 To be effectively involved, however, parents need to understand how well their childrens schools are performing. There are many ways to be involved, and most parents want to do more than just attend special events or volunteer for certain activities. They want to be advocates for their children, their classrooms, and their schools. Parents are also key levers in holding school officials accountable for their performance and demanding change when necessary.
School Report Cards

Exemplar States:
Arizona Florida Indiana New Mexico Ohio South Carolina
16 Back to School: How Parent Involvement Affects Student Achievement. The Center for Public Education, August 2011.
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School report cards give parents information about their childrens schools in an easyto-understand format, just like a childs academic report card.
Unfortunately, many parents and community members do not have the clear and useful information they need to be deeply involved and make informed choices about their childrens schools. And when information is available, it is usually not accessible; data on school performance are not provided in a meaningful or transparent format. A simple, common sense solution is to require that all elementary and secondary schools receive annual school report cards that reflect how well their childrens schools are performing relative to other schools in the state. School report cards are informational documents that state departments of education make available to all parents of students attending public schools. School report cards give parents information about their childrens schools in an easy-to-understand format, just like a childs academic report card. Each school receives an AF letter grade based on how well it is educating students. StudentsFirst advocates for using AF letter grades because that is what parents are most familiar with when receiving information about performance in the school context. Children receive report cards with letter grades, and parents know what those grades mean. There is no guesswork, as opposed to a color scheme or a numeric score that may not be clear about the order and scale. Letter grades are intuitive indicators of how good or bad something is. Specifically, a schools AF academic performance grade should include at least three measures of student achievement: student performance on statewide or end-of-course assessments, the schools progress in student achievement, and how well the school is doing in closing achievement gaps. When it comes to high schools, school performance grades should factor in high school graduation rates, student performance in Advanced Placement courses, and students college readiness. All of these measures should be linked to the state accountability system so that the data regarding school performance is consistently presented to parents, administrators, and policymakers. It is important to note, however, that because of the importance of this link, the utility of the school report card is tied to the rigor and quality of the accountability system. If a state does not track achievement gaps between all subgroups of students, for instance, then it may not provide an accurate measure of how well a school serves a particular student. States must be clear about how the measures in the report card are calculated and what data are included. Ideally, states should annually publish school and district report cards on the state departments website in a way that is easily accessible and understandable to parents. This information should include a ranking of all schools and districts, allowing parents to compare one to another. Each school district should then ensure that school report cards are distributed to all of the parents whose children attend public schools in that district. At least ten states currently have statutes requiring state-issued school report cards that give each school an AF letter grade based on student achievement. These states include Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. Florida and Indiana have exemplary school report card legislation.
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Also, the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act waiver process has prompted several other states to consider school report cards as part of their revised state accountability systems. It is important that in developing these, officials maximize the impact information can have in empowering parents. School report cards that utilize AF letter grading best enable parents to be involved in their childrens education in meaningful ways.
Empowering Parents with Performance Data and Parental Notification and Consent for Placing Students with Ineffective Teachers
Parental involvement is critical to building successful schools.17 Parents are critical levers not only to their own childrens learning but to holding school officials accountable for their success. But all too often parents are prevented from getting deeply involved in their childrens education because they do not have clear ways of doing so or do not have enough information to guide their involvement. Beyond knowing about their childs performance, parents should also be entitled to be well informed about the teaching and learning happening in the classroom. All parents have the right to know how their childrens teachers are performing. After all, teachers are the most influential in-school factor that affect student success.18 Unfortunately, most school districts do not share teacher performance data with moms and dads. In fact, in many states, parents are prohibited from gaining access to this critical information. Such policies do not serve students and families well. To truly empower parents, schools should provide full and complete teacher evaluation information to any parent requesting this information about his or her childs teacher. In providing such information, schools and districts should provide a whole picture of a teachers and schools performance, and not just test scores. Alternatively, a state could publish school-level teacher effectiveness data that lets parents know on average the quality of teaching and learning in each classroom. While this is a weaker policy in that it is not as empowering as data regarding a childs individual teacher, school-level data would at least provide some meaningful information to parents. Informing parents about teacher performance is especially important when a child is placed with an ineffective teacher. Consider this an ineffective teacher generates 50 percent less learning over the course of a year than an average teacher.19 The difference between having effective teachers and ineffective teachers can have a profound, life-long impact on a student.20 Thus, it becomes critical that parents know when their children are placed with
Parents are critical levers not only to their own childrens learning but to holding school officials accountable for their success.
17 Back to School: How Parent Involvement Affects Student Achievement. The Center for Public Education, August 2011. 18 Hanushek, Eric, John Kain, and Steven Rivkin, Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement. Working Paper No. 6691, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1998. 19 Hanushek, Eric. Teacher Quality. Hoover Institution Press, 2002, pp. 112. 20 Chetty, Raj, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff. The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood. Working Paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011.
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a teacher who is unlikely to lead students to academic success. Schools should provide written notification to the parent or guardian of any student assigned to a classroom teacher deemed ineffective in the past school year. A parent taking his or child to a pediatrician would rightfully want to know the success rate and other attributes of the doctor attending to their child. Furthermore, the parent is not forced to send their child to an ineffective doctor. The same should be true when it comes to entrusting their child with a professional teacher. Parents should be able to do something with critical teacher performance information. Schools should ask every parent whose child is placed in the classroom of an ineffective teacher to consent to that placement. When schools require parental consent before placing a student with an ineffective teacher, parents are given the power to influence their childrens education positively by demanding a great teacher something all kids need and deserve. Admittedly, this policy will serve as a disruptive force in districts. For perhaps the first time in some places, in reaction to increased parent demand, school and district officials will be forced to deal with ineffective teachers by helping them improve or counseling them out of the profession, instead of simply assigning them to classrooms full of children. A number of states across the country including Illinois and Utah are making some form of teacher performance data available to parents. It is worth noting, however, that when only teacher-related assessment results are made public, as was the case when a newspaper published this information in Los Angeles, parents are not provided a complete picture of the performance of their childs teacher. A few other states go a step further in empowering parents by requiring parental notification when students are placed with ineffective teachers. In Indiana, for example, state law prohibits a student from being placed with ineffective teachers for two years in a row. If a school is unable to comply with this law, then the school must notify parents indicating that their children will be placed in a classroom with a teacher who has been rated ineffective.21 In Florida, each school district must notify the parent of any student who is assigned to a classroom teacher that has been rated unsatisfactory.22 Ultimately, lawmakers have the ability and responsibility to empower parents with information relevant to their childrens education, and nothing is more relevant than the quality of each students teacher. When parents have access to clear teacher performance data, they can make informed decisions about how best to advocate for their children. When state law requires parental consent before placing a child with an ineffective teacher, parents are given the power to demand better for their kids. State laws that encourage annual and transparent communication, such as parental notification and consent, prioritize every parents right to be informed and involved in his or her childs education.
21 See Indiana Code 20-28-11.5-7. 22 See Florida Administrative Code 1012.2315.
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Parent Trigger
Parents of students in persistently failing schools are often denied meaningful options to give their children a better education. To ensure all students receive a high-quality education, it is critical that these parents are empowered with the tools to intervene in failing schools to bring about positive and much-needed changes. Parent trigger policies empower a majority of a schools parents to band together at the grassroots level and petition the district to turn around persistently low-achieving schools. Through parent trigger policies, parents could demand that the district intervene and implement an improvement plan from among the four federal Race to the Top turnaround intervention models whichever model the parents believe best fits their situation. The district, upon being presented with the petition, carries out the plan over the course of the next school year. Turning around the school can take many forms: transforming the way it is run, changing the school leadership, restarting the school as a public charter, or closing the school altogether. Parent trigger is transformational because it empowers parents with solutions for improving low-achieving schools and gives families leverage they would not otherwise have. By increasing pressure on officials in charge of failing schools, parent trigger policies ensure that low-performing schools, and the districts that oversee them, are held accountable to the needs of the families served. Through greater empowerment, parents are encouraged to become more involved with their childrens education, something that is universally accepted as positive. Parents in two California communities have already organized in support of petitions to turn around their chronically failing schools. Leaders around the country, inspired by California, are following with their own parent trigger policies. Already, Texas and Ohio have passed strong parent trigger laws. Indiana, Louisiana, and Mississippi have adopted parent trigger policies that provide more limited turnaround options. And 15 additional states have considered or are considering parent trigger legislation, including Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. For parent trigger to be effective, parents must have the power to bring about change without having to wait for entrenched bureaucracies and special interests to take action. Without this power, parents are left without options and their children remain trapped in failing schools. All students deserve a quality education, and parent trigger allows parents to push to make better opportunities available to their children.
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Opportunity Scholarship
Exemplar States:
Wisconsin
Scholarships for Low-Income Public School Families Stuck in Chronically Failing Schools
Low-income families that enroll in public schools in the United States have far fewer options when it comes to quality educational opportunities than their wealthier peers. Across the country, students from low-income households are much more likely to attend low-performing schools, and that negatively impacts their learning, development, and future prospects.23 Unfortunately, these students families lack the resources to enroll in private schools or to relocate to a school district that offers a better public education either because of a lack of supply or too much demand. They also may not have access to good public charter schools. In effect, these parents and their children are trapped. Leaders must fix the school systems where these children reside, but poor public school children stuck in failing schools cannot afford to wait for change. Targeted, publicly funded scholarships provide some low-income students with an immediate lifeline by allowing them to enroll in better-performing private schools. Scholarship programs have shown results. For example, in the District of Columbia, scholarships were linked to increased gains in student test scores and higher graduation rates.24 Likewise, in New York City, the college admission rate among low-income AfricanAmerican students who had received three-year scholarships in elementary school went up by 24 percent.25 And participating parents believe that scholarships provide a better option for their kids. For example, parents in a Charlotte, NC scholarship program were twice as likely to rate their school highly than those in the public school group.26 Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, studies also show that scholarship programs improve outcomes for students remaining in public schools.27 Although the majority of states do not currently offer scholarship programs, many states are exploring them. Where pilot or local programs exist, states are looking at expanding their reach beyond select districts or cities. Resources are likely to be limited, however. Thus, as a tool for expanding opportunities and in order to provide the highest impact, scholarship programs should be prioritized for the students who need them the most students from low-income households attending low-performing schools or districts. At the same time, like all schools that receive public dollars, private schools that receive scholarship students must be held accountable to high standards of student learning. The best programs include accountability measures that do not just collect data on student
23 Rothwell, Jonathan. Housing Costs, Zoning, and Access to High-Scoring Schools. Metropolitan Policy Program, The Brookings Institution, 2012. 24 Peterson, Paul E. School Vouchers in DC Produce Gains in Both Test Scores and Graduation Rates. EducationNext, June 26, 2010. 25 Chingos, Matthew M., and Paul E. Peterson. The Effects of School Vouchers on College Enrollment: Experimental Evidence from New York City. Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings Institution, 2012. 26 Greene, Jay P. Education Matters: Vouchers in Charlotte, Education Next, Summer 2001. http:// educationnext.org/files/ednext20012_46b.pdf. 27 Forster, Greg. A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Vouchers, Friedman Foundation. http:// www.edchoice.org/research/reports/a-win-win-solution--the-empirical-evidence-on-school-vouchers.aspx.
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achievement but also provide consequences for private schools that do not demonstrate results. For example, Louisiana recently launched a program to provide scholarships to students from households with income levels at or below not exceeding 250 percent of federal poverty guidelines, attending poorly performing public schools. The Department of Education adopted a strong accountability program that requires participating private schools to administer state-level student assessments for participating students. If the students do not achieve at expected levels, these schools can be deemed ineligible to accept new students. The state must also ensure that student learning at least meets state standards schools that do not prepare students adequately should not be accepting public funds. States are also exploring tax-credit scholarship programs. These differ from direct state-run programs in that non-profit scholarship granting organizations provide funds to students rather than the state. States incentivize donations to the organizations by providing a full or partial tax-credit to businesses. These programs offer a feasible alternative in some states where providing public funds directly to either students or private schools is problematic; however, states typically have less authority to hold private schools accountable under these programs. For example, in 2012, Pennsylvania amended its scholarship program to target students in low-income households (those with a maximum income of 185 percent of federal poverty guidelines) and those students in the lowest-achieving schools in the state. This program does not have accountability requirements, however, which limits the ability of the state to ensure participating students are receiving a high-quality education. Ultimately, publicly funded scholarships can provide students in need a brighter future. States must set up scholarship programs targeted to serve the students who will benefit most and hold participating private schools accountable for providing a quality education to its scholarship students. The goal is not just to give families another option, but to provide a better option. States that establish such a scholarship program are focusing on using public resources as they are intended to provide a great education for every child.
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Grow, Replicate, and Expand Great Public Charter Schools

Public charter schools are, like traditional district schools, free and open to anyone in their jurisdiction. They empower public school parents of students who are assigned to chronically low-achieving district schools with meaningful options to help their children learn. Public charter schools often serve as models of innovation for states and districts, and they can offer unique programs that may better serve some students needs. They operate independently of traditional districts, which gives public charter schools and the educators who teach in them the flexibility to try new educational approaches without bureaucratic obstacles. In exchange for this increased autonomy, public charter schools must be held to strict accountability measures to ensure all children are learning at high levels. There are important steps that states can take to promote the growth of a healthy, innovative, accountable public charter school sector. Removing arbitrary and unnecessary caps on charter school growth, requiring a rigorous charter application process, and providing robust oversight of schools can ensure that students are well served. States should establish dedicated and independent public charter school authorizing entities, other than school districts, that can focus on growing high-quality, autonomous schools. In every state, there should also be a high bar for public charter schools that want to replicate or expand. Moreover, by establishing a fast-track authorization and renewal process for schools with demonstrated records of raising student achievement and narrowing the achievement gap, states can help authorizers open model schools quickly in the neighborhoods that need them most urgently. Hawaii and Minnesota provide strong models for establishment and expansion of highquality public charter schools by not restricting charter growth and ensuring that charters wishing to expand have demonstrated a record of success first. Ultimately, the goal for states should be to allow the highest-performing public charter schools to replicate, guide the middle-performing schools to excellence, and close persistently low-performing schools. This balance of autonomy and accountability for results can provide great additional public school options for Americas children.
Charter Accountability
Exemplar States: Hawaii Missouri Ohio Washington
Public Charter School Accountability

All public schools, whether they are traditional district schools or public charter schools, should be held accountable for the student learning that happens there. When a district school fails to meet accountability standards, there should be consequences in place and parents should also have other educational options available to them. But in order for public charter schools to be a viable, high-quality option for parents, states need to create a robust system of accountability that offers transparency regarding school performance, enables and requires authorizers to hold schools accountable for their performance, and holds authorizers accountable for ensuring schools raise student achievement.
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Unfortunately now, however, many state laws are silent or excessively vague about the extent to which public charter schools must be held accountable for student achievement, operational transparency, and fiscal practices. In addition, too few meaningful rules exist regarding the roles and responsibilities of public charter authorizers. Public charter schools are given autonomy to innovate without the restrictions placed on traditional district schools and the weight of the bureaucracies that govern them. Recent studies have confirmed that through this innovation, public charters can be great options for parents by producing better results for students than traditional public schools in some urban areas.28, 29 Yet public charters schools are not providing better options consistently; nationwide trends show that charter performance varies from school to school.30 Experts agree that variance in public charter quality is due largely to a lack of strong accountability in some areas.31, 32 Because charter schools are publicly funded, states must take stronger action to ensure that authorizers are taking their responsibilities seriously and providing rigorous oversight and accountability for academic results. A strong accountability framework for public charter schools and authorizers has several key components. Public charter schools should operate under a five-year performance contract with the authorizer. The separate performance contract is important; it serves as the foundation for the rest of the accountability structure that cannot rely simply on a charter application by itself. The performance contract should set clear goals for student academic growth. Authorizers should conduct annual performance reviews and report out on each schools performance in meeting its goals to the public. When schools fail to meet the goals established in their charter contract, authorizers must be empowered and expected to take strong action, including closing schools that fail to perform well. While some states do articulate policies for school accountability, often state law is silent or ambiguous about the responsibilities of authorizers, prompting confusion, poorly interpreted expectations, and ineffective oversight. Likewise, too many authorizers are too slow to close low-performing public charter schools, which only serves to dilute the quality of options available to students and parents. Authorizer decisionmaking must be timely and conclusive; poor performers should be closed. States should designate a statewide oversight body to ensure authorizers are maintaining a strong portfolio of schools. This entitys responsibility is to hold authorizers accountable through reporting, monitoring, and sanctions when necessary, including suspending authorizers from authorizing new schools.
States need to create a robust system of accountability that offers transparency regarding school performance, enables and requires authorizers to hold schools accountable for their performance, and holds authorizers accountable for ensuring schools raise student achievement.
28 Abdulkadiroglu, Atila, et al. Informing the Debate: Comparing Bostons Charter, Pilot and Traditional Schools. The Boston Foundation. January 2009. http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~pfpie/pdf/InformingTheDebate_Final.pdf. 29 Hoxby, Corline M., Sonali Murraraka, and Jenny Kang. How New York Citys Charter Schools Affect Achievement. New York City Charter Schools Evaluation Project, September 2009. 30. Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States. Stanford University, June 2009. 31 Charter School Performance Accountability. National Association of Charter School Authorizers, September 2009. http://www.qualitycharters.org/images/stories/Performance_Accountability.pdf. 32 Osborne, David. Improving Charter School Accountability: The Challenge of Closing Failing Schools. Progressive Policy Institute, 2012. http://progressivepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/06.2012Osborne_Improving-Charter-School-Accountability_The-Challenge-of-Closing-Failing-Schools.pdf.
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Lawmakers should take note of the charter accountability laws in Hawaii, Ohio, and Washington when crafting legislation. These states have taken bold action, requiring annual reviews against performance-based contracts, clear triggers for closing persistently lowperforming schools, and authorizer accountability. Public charter schools offer the promise of a better option for children and their families when their neighborhood schools are not meeting their educational needs. In exchange for autonomy to operate and innovate, public charter schools commit to providing a high-quality learning experience. States must put the policies in place to ensure that schools and their authorizers are making good on that commitment.
Comparable Funding for All Students
Fund Fairly
Exemplar States: Hawaii Maryland Tennessee
A great public education system empowers parents whose children are stuck in chronically failing district schools by providing them with other high-quality school options for their children. But to create that empowering dynamic, states need to ensure that both traditional public schools and public charter schools are adequately and comparably funded. Unfortunately, most public charter schools lack their fair share of resources due to inequities in state laws. Nationwide, public charter school students were funded, on average, at 20 percent less per-pupil than traditional district school students during the 200910 school year, the last year for which such data are available.33 Public charter school students should not be discriminated against by receiving less funding per pupil than their district school peers. Each and every public school student deserves a quality public education, regardless of the type of public school he or she attends. This discriminatory gap, which results in students at public charter schools starting with fewer resources than students at traditional district schools, can be attributed to any or all of three main factors. First, a handful of states use a segregated budget allocation for public charter schools; this usually results in less funding for public charter schools than for traditional district schools. Second, while some other states do provide comparable state funding, many local districts do not allocate an equitable share of local taxes they collect to public charter schools. Third, public charter schools often lack direct or equal access to state and local dollars earmarked for education, such as bond revenue. Students should not be discriminated against because of the kind of school they choose to attend. To remedy the resource gap, states should enact laws like Tennessees, which is designed so that public charter schools receive, for each student enrolled, the amount of state, local, and federal dollars that a traditional district school would receive for each student. Another source of inequity for some public charter schools stems from the ability of authorizers most often local school districts to charge fees to public charter schools for oversight or administrative costs. In practice, holding funds back from public charter schools unfairly diverts charter school funding away from the classroom or other services. It is important to note that authorizers play a critical role in ensuring a strong, robust system of
33 Public Charter Schools Dashboard, The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, accessed August 10, 2012. http://dashboard.publiccharters.org/dashboard/policy/page/funding/year/2010.
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charter school accountability. Public charter school accountability is also a high policy priority, and therefore states must ensure that authorizers are adequately funded for oversight and administration. Striking the right balance requires states to directly fund authorizers and to allow individual public charter schools to receive the full amount of their funding. As another form of school choice, publicly funded or tax-credit opportunity scholarship programs aim to make private schools an affordable option for low-income students who must otherwise attend a low-performing public school. States must design opportunity scholarship programs to provide the greatest access to high-quality programs, and that means enabling participating students to enroll at a variety of high-quality private schools by making options as affordable as possible. To ensure affordability, these programs should provide scholarships that are as comparable to per-pupil state funding as possible.
Equitable Access to Facilities

All children, whether they go to traditional public schools or public charter schools deserve to learn in safe, modern learning environments. More than a matter of fairness and principle, quality facilities are one of many factors that can contribute to positive student outcomes. For example, increased investment in infrastructure has led to higher scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a well-regarded measure of student achievement.34 To provide educational programming that meets students needs, public charter schools need access to buildings either new ones or space that district schools are no longer using. Public charters also need funding and financing programs to build and support their facilities. Most public charter schools face unique difficulties, however, when trying to finance new school projects. Unlike school districts, public charter schools lack taxing powers and usually lack credit history, both of which are needed to obtain fair terms when borrowing long-term funds. This problem is compounded by the fact that most public charter schools do not receive equitable per-pupil funding to cover the cost of securing and maintaining school buildings. As a result, public charter schools must often make due with less-than-ideal spaces, such as former stores and office buildings.35 Several states have implemented laws that require school districts to make unused facilities available to public charter schools before selling them to third parties. States should maximize this policy, known as right of first refusal, to ensure that public charter schools can lease or purchase these facilities at or below market value. States should also require state agencies and local governments to make other unused facilities available to public charter schools. Such policies make great sense. Providing access to unused facilities not only helps charter schools, and the students they serve, but it also enables communities
A great public education system empowers parents whose children are stuck in chronically failing district schools by providing them with other high-quality school options for their children.
34 Crampton, F. E. Spending on School Infrastructure: Does Money Matter? Journal of Educational Administration, 47 (3): 305322. 35 Allen, Jeanne, and Alison Consoletti, eds. 2010 Annual Survey of Americas Charter Schools. Center for Education Reform, 2010, pp. 1516. http://www.edreform.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ CER_Charter_ Survey_2010.pdf.
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to maintain public school facilities for public school purposes, maximizing the value of the neighborhood asset. A thriving, quality school is a much better use than letting that space remain unoccupied and, most often, slowly deteriorating. Some states have also begun to implement programs to help public charter schools obtain the facilities they need, particularly when it comes to helping schools make complex loan structures work with the gap between authorization terms (usually on five-year cycles) and standard 30-year loan terms. The District of Columbia is a national model for enabling public charter schools to access and maintain school facilities. Since 1999, D.C. has provided charter schools with a per-pupil facilities allowance (currently set at $3,000 per pupil) that provides charter schools funds to repay loans or rent facilities without having to dip into their operational funds. This has allowed for tremendous growth and sustainability in D.C.s public charter school sector over the past decade. D.C. also allows public charter schools access to bond revenue and has created several alternative financing structures that make it easier for schools to finance their facilities costs. Utahs Charter School Finance Authority has the ability to provide tax-exempt bond financing and provide credit enhancements that help charter schools leverage private lending. Colorado law allows school districts to submit tax levy propositions to voters, with funding benefiting public charter schools. Each of these alternatives help, but most states need to do more to ensure that all public charter schools have broad access to state-backed programs that will help them obtain low-cost financing. States must ensure that public charter schools can invest in infrastructure and provide the great learning environment that every student deserves
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Why Spend Wisely and Govern Well

Spend Taxpayer Resources Wisely and Govern Well to Get Better Results for Students
In tough economic times, policymakers should ensure the limited dollars that are available for the public education system are used effectively and efficiently toward helping children learn, rather than supporting ineffective programs or unnecessary bureaucracy. Districts should have maximum flexibility to achieve results. For example, schools and districts should be encouraged to identify management alternatives when such options increase either the efficiency or quality of services that students receive. Districts should be able to partner with states, cities, and other schools to create economies of scale that allow them to purchase supports such as transportation and food services at lower costs. And states should also eliminate policies that require district-level spending, including mandatory spending on classsize reduction and other categorical requirements, and instead require districts to account for how they prioritize their resources to increase student achievement. But increased flexibility means nothing without increased transparency about the decisions that schools and districts are making. For too long students have suffered in schools that do not put the majority of their resources into the classroom, and states have not held districts accountable for how they use their funding and whether it benefits students. States should overhaul financial accountability by providing greater fiscal transparency to the public that directly ties district spending to student achievement. This kind of comparison allows taxpayers, especially parents, to understand the return they are getting on the investments made. Greater accountability must come with greater autonomy. We must hold those in charge accountable when they do not get results. Right now, local school boards govern the vast majority of schools, just as they have for the past century. Unfortunately, these outdated governance structures too often have been exploited to serve special interests above the needs of children. Far from providing expert guidance, local school boards, driven by political considerations, are often obstacles to real reform and properly aligned spending priorities. Moreover, locking schools into a single governance structure stifles innovation that could bring more focus to serving students interests. Communities with academically or financially failing schools deserve governance structures that put students first. Making smarter choices regarding how resources are invested usually works in concert with other policy objectives. Consider educator pension policies attractive benefit packages are part of a strong professional compensation system. Yet most states require
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districts to lock teachers into a pension system that does not reward teachers for their work until very late in their careers. These systems often offer no flexibility to teachers who want to move to another district or state when it comes to taking the full value of their retirement earnings with them. Schools cannot attract and retain talented teachers if they are restricted in how they use their resources to do this.
The State Policy Report Card examines whether states are spending wisely and governing well by:
Requiring transparent financial reporting at all levels and directly comparing spending with student achievement. Allowing schools and districts flexibility to pursue management alternatives that achieve greater resource efficiencies. Ensuring that strong accountability systems are in place that enable governance flexibility when schools and districts are not achieving results, either academically or financially. Removing categorical spending requirements and relaxing class-size restrictions beyond third grade. Enabling districts to offer portable retirement plans that attract teachers into the profession and provide them flexibility as they progress in their careers.
Mayoral and State Control

Governance of schools and districts who is in charge of oversight and policymaking is an often-overlooked lever for school improvement. This is in part due to the fact that the most common form of governance the local school board has been in place since the advent of the nations public education system. When schools and classrooms are underperforming, officials usually try changes to curriculum or programs, class sizes, resource levels, staffing and leadership often to little or no effect. With increasing frequency, however, some jurisdictions are realizing that part of the solution may be doing something very new and different; part of the solution may be to change not only who is in charge but the very way schools are governed in the first place. Some school districts have school boards that serve them well, boards that make decisions that have proven to be in the best interest of students. Other school districts, often large urban ones, are not well served by their school boards. This could be due to a variety of
Mayoral and State Control

Exemplar States: District of Columbia Hawaii Illinois Massachusetts Michigan New York
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factors. As elected officials, they may be too beholden to special interests, especially in lowturnout elections, commonly associated with school board races. Board members are also often bogged down in parochial politics and red tape, leaving them unable to bring about the meaningful change urgently needed in the most underperforming school districts. Whatever the reasons, there are too many examples of school boards that have failed to provide the leadership and action necessary to raise student achievement. Putting the mayor, rather than the school board, in charge of schools is one way to streamline accountability and improve leadership in a failing district. Mayors can better coordinate school services with other city services and create badly needed reforms quickly.36 And more residents vote in mayoral elections than school board elections, making mayors responsive to a citys entire population rather than just a narrow subset.37 Cities such as New York and Boston and the District of Columbia have seen positive gains in student achievement after putting mayors in control of their schools.38, 39 Another potential way to improve school leadership is to put district or school governance in the hands of a state department of education. States have resources and expertise that can be used to improve how districts are managed and sometimes create a strong alternative to school board leadership. It is important that when states assume control of districts, they have full control over those districts rather than partial or shared control. To be effective, they also provide direct streamlined authority for decisionmaking that is not subject to micromanagement. Such a model allows state officials to take the rapid and decisive actions necessary to turn around extremely low-performing districts. Governance models are an area full of innovation. States such as Louisiana, Michigan, and Tennessee have started putting their state departments of education in control of the lowest performing schools in their states. The state can leverage its position for a more targeted intervention with the goal of rapidly improving the quality of education in those schools. Louisiana has seen considerable success with this model, which it instituted in 2003; schools in the Louisiana Recovery School District have seen gains in both high school graduation rates and student performance measures.40
36 Community Schools Across the Nation. Coalition for Community Schools. Accessed April 10, 2012. http:// www.communityschools.org/aboutschools/local_initiatives.aspx. 37 Hess, Frederick M., and Olivia Meeks, School Boards Circa 2010: Governance in the Accountability Era. National School Boards Association, 2010. 38 Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott Announce that Record Number of Students Graduated from High School in 2011. New York City Department of Education. Accessed September 28, 2012. http://schools.nyc. gov/Offices/mediarelations/NewsandSpeeches/2011-2012/Grad_Rates_20120611.htm. 39 Brown, Emma. More DCPS Students Taking, Passing Advanced Placement Exams. Washington Post, September 25, 2012. Accessed September 28, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-schoolsinsider/post/more-dcps-students- taking-passing-advanced-placement-exams/2012/09/25/047e3372-072e11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html. 40 Smith, Nelson. The Louisiana Recovery School District: Lessons for the Buckeye State. The Fordham Institute, January 2012.
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Governance changes like mayoral and state control are not a panacea for reform by themselves; rather, governance changes enable leaders at the district and school levels to break free from stagnant bureaucracies and to act with the urgency, clear direction, and autonomy necessary to focus on reforms that increase student achievement.
Governance changes, like mayoral and state control, are not a panacea for reform by themselves; rather, governance changes enable leaders at the district and school levels to break free from stagnant bureaucracies and to act with the urgency, clear direction, and autonomy necessary to focus on reforms that increase student achievement. Unfortunately, but perhaps not unexpectedly, states have been slow to embrace changes in governance. Many states do not currently allow for mayoral control of schools, and most states that allow for state control of schools or districts do so in a limited way. Ultimately, schools and districts should be run in whichever way best serves students. Just as one school is not best for every student, one leadership model is not best for every district. State laws should allow for flexibility around how schools and districts are governed doing so will help ensure that all schools and districts are led in a way that streamlines performance accountability and, ultimately, puts students first.
Financial Reporting, Accountability, and Transparency

There is rightfully debate about the societal priority we place on education as reflected in our budgetary decisions. There is much less debate about what we are doing with the dollars that are allocated to education and whether those dollars are impacting children today. Each year, the United States spends more than $500 billion in public funds for elementary and secondary education. On average, 51 percent of these expenditures go toward supporting instruction. The remaining 49 percent of funds are used to pay for operational and capital costs at schools. These include the construction and maintenance of buildings, providing transportation services to students, and paying for business services and support staff. Unfortunately, this information is not analyzed and reported on in a manner that allows school leaders, policymakers, and parents to determine whether this spending is being used in ways that best advance student learning. Right now, data about how tax dollars are spent are typically reported in averages and divided among broad spending categories, such as salaries, contracts, supplies, and capital costs. This information may answer How much is being spent? but it does not answer the questions What is it buying? and What is being received for those funds? Even when the data are broken down into per-pupil amounts, the information still does not tell officials whether funds are being spent efficiently or effectively in ways that help children. For example, schools are not able to determine if a particular program, such as a reading intervention program, is providing the outcomes officials expect given the costs.
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To help children learn more effectively, and to help policymakers and school officials allocate limited education dollars most efficiently, school districts, parents, and policymakers must have timely access to expenditure data that actually measure effectiveness, such as student growth. To ensure that appropriate conclusions are drawn, states should identify districts and schools that are alike in terms of costs of living, student needs, socio-economic factors, programs, and size; states must be able to make apples-to-apples comparisons. Understanding which school districts allocate their resources in ways that lead to academic achievement and cost-effective operations is only the first step. States also must develop strong accountability measures and intervention strategies to address districts that are performing poorly in terms of how they spend their dollars and failing to serve students well. Most states do require school districts to record expenditures in a uniformed manner and to publish a budget and expenditures annually. But only one state, Texas, has taken the next step of creating a fully transparent financial system. Texass system, the Finance Allocation Study for Texas (FAST), uses metrics aimed at understanding the relationship between spending decisions and educational outcomes, compares similar districts with each other, and permits the state to intervene when funds are mismanaged. The results of FAST are published on the Department of Educations website, which allows users to customize reports. FAST uses a rating system to indicate a districts success in combining cost-effective spending with the achievement of measurable academic progress. If a school district does not satisfy the financial accountability standards determined by the commissioner, then the commissioner can arrange for on-site investigations, appoint a conservator, or appoint a management team to oversee relevant district operations to ensure dollars are used more effectively going forward. All states should take this kind of action. With better and more transparent systems in place, we can begin to truly analyze spending and ensure public resources are being used wisely and in ways that help students learn.
Enable Schools and Districts to Create Management Alternatives

Management alternatives allow school districts to use their funds in the most flexible way to create economies of scale or to purchase higher-quality school supports. There are approximately 16,000 school districts across the United States.41 Individually, they may not be able to obtain the best price or terms when contracting. But by banding together, partnering with cities and counties, or signing onto statewide contracts, these school districts can obtain high-quality services at the best price through their collective negotiation power. Districts and public charter schools could create joint powers authorities with each other. For example, instead of each school district in a region obtaining its own fire insurance, schools districts could join together in a joint powers authority. By pooling their risk, they become a more attractive client for insurance companies, and thereby they can obtain a better insurance premium. School districts and public charter schools should
41 Table 5. Number of Public School Districts, by Locale Code (CCD) and State: 200304, National Center for Education Statistics. Accessed September 10, 2012. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/ruraled/ TablesHTML/5localedistricts.asp.
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Given limited dollars, policymakers and school leaders must use resources on programs, initiatives, and reforms that have proven to help children learn more effectively.
be able to contract with state agencies and local governments or opt into master contracts. For example, instead of negotiating directly with the big telecommunications firm, a school district could sign on for telephone service through the contract the state already uses for its own telephone system. Because the state has much larger volume than any school district, it is likely to have much better long-distance rates than a school district could obtain by itself. States should remove laws that prevent or severely restrict contracting for more costeffective, higher-quality business or operational services. Many state laws are silent or allow at least one management alternative, often in the form of providing services to public charter schools or other districts. Few state laws specifically allow school districts or public charter schools to sign on to state contracts. In recent years, some states have explored requiring school districts to contract for certain services, but a policy requiring private sector contracts is equally ill advised. The best solution is to ensure that contracting is just one option, and not a requirement, for either traditional school districts or public charter schools, as it may not be the cheapest or best option. StudentsFirst encourages states to expressly permit cost-effective management alternatives. This will empower school districts to find the most efficient way to deliver high-quality services while allowing school districts and public charter schools to focus on managing what matters most: educating kids.
Eliminate Class-Size Limits When They Are No Longer Particularly Effective, and Use Limited Resources on Reforms Proven to Be More Useful
Creating the right classroom environment requires an important balance of resources. Smaller class sizes are a common interest, but given limited dollars, policymakers and school leaders must use resources on programs, initiatives, and reforms that have proven to help children learn more effectively. Smaller classes make sense to most people, since smaller average class sizes should result in each teacher having more time for each child. Yet studies have shown that class-size reductions in grades 412 lead to insignificant increases in student achievement, relative to the size of the investment.42 Class-size reductions are very costly to implement costing in the billions of dollars for some states. Research also shows that students would be more effectively and efficiently served if districts invested these resources elsewhere, such as in improving overall teacher quality or updating curricula.43 And because every school has finite resources, staffing requirements can result in tradeoffs that might be undesirable for students. State-mandated class-size limits and compulsory teacherstudent ratios restrict school and district staffing and spending flexibility necessary to strike the right balance for each classroom. For example, high schools may prefer to hire additional
42 Whitehurst, Grover J. Russ, and Matthew M. Chingos. Class Size: What Research Says and What It Means for State Policy. Brookings Institution, 2011. Accessed October 21, 2012. http://www. brookings.edu/~/media/ research/files/papers/2011/5/11%20class%20size%20whitehurst%20chingos/0511_ class_size_whitehurst_ chingos.pdf. 43 Ibid.
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counseling staff to help with college admissions rather than hire additional teachers to reduce class size by one or two students per class. Class-size limits are also difficult to maintain in small or rural schools or schools with large variances in enrollment between grades. Twenty-seven states do not restrict class size above the third grade where it is less effective in improving student learning. Most other states limit class size by imposing mandatory caps that cannot be exceeded in each class. Georgia permits districts to apply for waivers from these requirements, and Vermont permits school districts to meet an average class maximum across their district. At the very least, states with limits should take an approach like Vermonts because this is a more practicable goal, considering that enrollment frequently changes mid year. The strongest state reform would be to eliminate class-size mandates for grades 412 and instead empower schools with flexibility to direct those resources to more effective tools. Some states authorize their state board or state department of education to adopt regulations that limit class size. In the absence of a statutory prohibition on class-size restrictions, state boards should utilize their authority to relax their regulations and create the needed flexibility for schools. Ultimately, class-size limitations above the third grade, while well intentioned, are likely doing more harm than good. They tie up limited resources from being used for something that has a greater impact on student achievement and they stifle innovation by prescribing a one-size-fits-all staffing model that prevents local leaders from making the best decisions for their students. Instead of requiring districts to comply with unnecessary mandates, state policymakers should empower school leaders with the widest degree of staffing and scheduling flexibility. Leaving decisions about class size up to schools and districts is one important way to do so.
Reforming Teacher Pensions to Attract and Retain the Best Teachers and Ensure Long-Term Sustainability
Teachers are professionals, and they deserve to be compensated accordingly. But more than doing right by teachers, competitive compensation packages are a critical element to attracting and retaining the best teachers. This means, in addition to offering competitive starting salaries and an opportunity to receive additional pay for exceptional work, school districts must be able to offer retirement plans that are fair, competitive with other professions, and most important, portable. Districts need to provide teachers with benefit packages that more closely align with their interests. Unfortunately, traditional pension systems back-load benefits locking teachers out of their retirement benefits in their first few years of teaching, and then locking them into the profession and most often the same state or district for the remainder of their careers in order to get full retirement benefits. States and districts cannot attract the kind of talent needed to raise student achievement in every classroom with restrictive, antiquated, uncompetitive policies. The need for pension reform is urgent. The current pension system does little to attract and retain the best 21st century instructional workforce, making it an ineffective investment. To make matters worse, it is also an increasingly unaffordable one. As of 2010, the gap between promises made by states for all employees retirement benefits and the amount of
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funding set aside to pay for these benefits grew to at least $1.38 trillion.44 To try to relieve this underfunding, states are taking measures that leave an outdated system in place, while penalizing new, and sometimes existing, teachers by reducing their benefits or increasing the retirement age. Simply put, as a mechanism for investing in and rewarding great teachers, the current pension system makes little sense and does not help children. To address the instability of these traditional pension systems, states need to move to portable retirement plans similar to those offered in other professional fields. Portable retirement plans allow teachers to access their benefits in full, regardless of when they move or if they change careers. In this way, teachers are actually rewarded for the work they have performed regardless of how many years they stay. This type of structure is fairer to an increasingly more mobile workforce, and it enables districts to attract top talent to the teaching profession. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of states (40) only offer teachers the traditional defined benefit plan. These plans reward longevity and backload retirement benefits by promising a predetermined annual benefit to members. The amount of the benefit is calculated through a formula based on a combination of years of service and salary, rather than the actual amount of money that was contributed and investment return received by the employee and the state or district. Traditional pension plans require teachers to work between five to ten years just to become eligible for retirement benefits and require teachers to stay in the same system anywhere from 20 to 35 years to receive full benefits. To make matters worse, defined benefit plans are fundamentally structured in a way that make them vulnerable to human error, financial declines, and political influence, as public officials use the funds as leverage for other purposes.45 If changes are not made soon, existing pension costs will crowd out other educational spending priorities and have a negative impact on the very teachers and students that states and policymakers are trying to serve. A clear alternative to defined benefit plans are portable plans, such as defined contribution or cash balance plans. These allow teachers to accrue savings in real-time and to take the full value of their investment with them when they leave their district to teach elsewhere or change professions. Portable plans also eliminate the structural problems associated with traditional pension systems. Most important, these plans align to the interests of a 21st century teacher workforce.
44 The Widening Gap Update. Pew Center on the States, The Pew Charitable Trust, 2012. http://www.pewstates. org/uploadedFiles/PCS_Assets/2012/Pew_Pensions_Update.pdf. 45 McGee, Josh. LJAF Solution Paper: Creating a New Public Pension System. Laura and John Arnold Foundation, 2011. http://arnoldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/LJAF-Pension-Solution-Paper.pdf.
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Consider these facts: More than 40 percent of new teachers are career changers.46 Sixty-six percent of 18- to 29-year-olds anticipate changing careers in their lives, and nearly six in ten of those employed have already switched careers.47 Even those individuals who plan to be a teacher for their entire career will not stay in the same state. A simulated cohort of 30-year teachers using data from the National Center for Education Statistics Schools and Staffing Surveys found that at least 16 percent of all teachers would move to another state during their careers.48 Todays highly mobile workforce needs a benefits system that does not penalize teachers who dont stay in the classroom or the same district for their entire career. Slowly, states are beginning to offer more portable retirement plans with the most common being either a hybrid benefit-defined contribution plan or an optional defined contribution plan. There is some movement toward cash balance plans - both Kansas and Louisiana have recently opended this option up to new teachers. It is essential for the retirement security and mobility of the current teacher workforce, as well as the economic stability of the public education system, to discontinue the use of defined benefit retirement plans and to establish portable retirement plans that are not susceptible to underfunding and political influence. It is a smarter way of investing in teachers showing them they are valued in the future for the work they are doing now.
46 Miller, Raegen. Redefining Teacher Pensions. Center for American Progress, 2011. http://www. americanprogress.org/issues/2011/09/pdf/teacher_pension_reform.pdf. 47 Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change. Pew Research Center, 2010. http://www. pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change.pdf. 48 Costrell, Robert, and Podgursky, Michael. Distribution of Benefits in the Teacher Retirement Systems and Their Implications for Mobility. American Education Finance Association, 2010. http://www.mitpressjournals. org/doi/pdf/10.1162/EDFP_a_00015.
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Instruction does much, but encouragement does everything.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Appendix A
2013 Methodology
The State Policy Report Card, 2013 is a comprehensive look at each states education policies and regulations and assigns a qualitative letter grade to each state based on its policies and how well it aligns with a policy rubric. We started with the 37 policy objectives in the StudentsFirst Policy Agenda. In some cases, related objectives were combined for evaluation purposes. In other cases, due to complexity surrounding the policy objectives or insufficient data, the objectives were removed from the report card for future examination. In total, we included 24 different policies concerning teacher and principal evaluations and use of evaluations, parent empowerment, school choice options, use of education resources, fiscal transparency and accountability, and governance structures. The report card assesses whether states have created the policy conditions under which reform can exist and, ultimately, allows them to close the achievement gap.
Evaluation Process
A team of analysts researched and analyzed all 50 states and the District of Columbias policies and regulations. After the initial analysis, the team underwent a vigorous quality control process, which included benchmarking and corroborating with additional sources as well as requesting feedback and input from state education officials from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Development of the Rubric

To assess the policies and how well each particular policy can foster an environment for reform, an evaluation rubric was developed. The rubric identifies the varying policies and criteria required to earn a score from 0 to 4, with 4 representing the strongest lever for reform and the most common sense policy for students. The rubric underwent an intensive vetting process both internally and externally with key stakeholders. Twelve policies were given the designation anchor policy. These policies are those that are foundational for meaningful education reform and were assigned an overall weight of three times regular objectives for scoring purposes. Grade point averages (GPAs) were calculated based on grouping policies by categories within their respective policy pillar.
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Sample Calculation
The first three objectives are grouped together in the comprehensive evaluation category. The first and second objectives (Teacher Evaluations and Principal Evaluations) are both anchor policies and thus weighted three times regular objectives; each of these policy objective scores will be multiplied by three to get a weighted score. Weighted scores are summed up and divided by the total weights to get a category GPA. A separate GPA was calculated for an overall state grade, each of the policy pillars, and for the ten categories.
GPA Sample Calculations Score

Objective 1 Objective 2 Objective 3 3 2 4 x x x
Weight
3 3 1 7 = = =
Subtotal
9 6 4 19
GPA = Subtotal Total Weight GPA = 19 7 = 2.71 Anchor Objective: Foundational policy for meaningful education reform.
The following scale was used to convert GPA to letter grades:

GPA Scale
A A3.70 to 4.00 3.5 to 3.69 B+ 3.30 to 3.49 B B3.00 to 3.29 2.70 to 2.99 C+ 2.30 to 2.69 C C2.00 to 2.29 1.70 to 1.99 D+ 1.30 to 1.69 D D1.00 to 1.29 0.70 to 0.99 F 0.00 to 0.69
Below is a breakdown of the three policy pillars, the ten categories, and each policy. 1. Elevate Teaching (4 Categories, 10 Policies) a. Comprehensive Evaluation i. Teacher Evaluations ii. Principal Evaluations iii. Evaluations & Contracts b. Use Evaluations for Personnel Decisions i. Ending Forced Placement ii. Staffing Decisions iii. Tenure Attainment & Maintenance c. Value Effective Teachers i. Reward Performance with Pay ii. Reform Salary Schedules d. Alternative Teacher Certification i. Teacher Certification Pathways ii. Teacher Certification Accountability
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2. Empower Parents (3 Categories, 9 Policies) a. Empower Parents with Information i. School Letter Grading ii. Parent Notification iii. Parent Trigger b. Increase Quality Choices i. Opportunity Scholarship ii. Charter Establishment & Expansion iii. Charter Accountability c. Provide Comparable Resources for All Public Options i. Fund Fairly ii. Enable Equitable Access to Facilities iii. Charter Facilities Financing 3. Spend Wisely & Govern Well (3 Categories, 5 Policies) a. Promote Governance Structures that Streamline Accountability i. Mayoral & State Control b. Spend Taxpayer Resources Wisely to Improve Outcomes for Students i. Fiscal Transparency ii. Management Alternatives iii. Class Size c. Make Teacher Pensions Portable and Fair i. Pension Reform The tables on the following pages show how we defined the ratings 0 to 4 for the policies and regulations.
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Evaluation Rubric Elevate Teaching

Comprehensive Evaluation
Teacher Evaluations Require meaningful, annual teacher evaluations that are based significantly on objective measures of student growth and include other multiple measures focused on student outcomes. These may include classroom observations and student surveys. The evaluations should rate teachers according to at least four tiers of effectiveness and provide opportunities for feedback and are linked to professional development.
4
The states policy includes annual, comprehensive teacher evaluation based on multiple measures, including 50% on student growth, classroom observations, and student surveys, and includes at least a four-tier rating of effectiveness, and links to feedback and professional development. Evaluation system will be implemented within two years.
3
The states policy includes annual comprehensive teacher evaluation based on multiple measures, including significant (or at least 25%) student growth and classroom observations, and includes at least a fourtier rating of effectiveness. Evaluation system will be implemented within defined timeline.
2
The states policy includes regular comprehensive teacher evaluation based on multiple measures, including significant student growth and classroom observations, and includes at least a fourtier rating of effectiveness.
1
The states policy includes regular comprehensive teacher evaluation based on multiple measures, including student growth, and includes at least a four-tier rating of effectiveness.
0
The states policy either (1) does not require regular evaluation or (2) does not require any consideration of student learning.
Principal Evaluations Require meaningful, annual principal evaluations that are based significantly on schoolwide student growth and effective management of teachers and rate principals according to at least four tiers of effectiveness.
4
The state requires annual comprehensive principal evaluation based on 50% school-wide student growth and effective management of teachers, and implements at least a four-tier rating of effectiveness. Evaluation system will be implemented within two years.
3
The state requires annual comprehensive principal evaluation and anchors a significant portion (or at least 25%) on school-wide student growth, at least a four-tier rating, and effective teacher management. Evaluation system will be implemented within defined timeline.
2
The state requires annual comprehensive principal evaluation based on multiple measures, including schoolwide student growth, at least a four-tier rating, and effective management of teachers.
1
The state requires regular comprehensive principal evaluation based on schoolwide student growth and at least a four-tier rating of effectiveness.
0
The state does not require comprehensive principal evaluations based on student growth and effective management.
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Evaluations & Contracts Provide districts full authority, not subject to negotiation, to develop and implement meaningful educator evaluations.
4
The states policy is that evaluation is not subject to collective bargaining.
3
Not applicable.
2
State law is silent or collective bargaining on evaluation is somehow limited (e.g., process but not criteria).
1
Not applicable.
0
The states policy is that evaluation is fully subject to collective bargaining at the district level.
Use Evaluations for Personnel Decisions

Ending Forced Placement Ensure that schools have the authority to build and maintain an effective instructional team, including having autonomy over hiring decisions and the dismissal of ineffective teachers from the classroom.
4
Forced placement is prohibited/mutual consent hiring is required. Ineffective teachers are exited from the system after no more than two consecutive years of being rated ineffective.
3
Forced placement is prohibited/mutual consent hiring is required OR ineffective teachers are exited from the system after no more than two consecutive years of being rated ineffective.
2
State law allows districts to establish mutual consent hiring OR requires that ineffective teachers be exited from the system after no more than three years of being rated ineffective.
1
State guarantees that no student will be assigned to ineffective teachers for two consecutive years.
0
State law requires or allows for forced placement of teachers and does not ensure that ineffective teachers are exited from the system.
Staffing Decisions Require staffing decisions, including layoffs, to be based on teacher effectiveness and prohibit seniority from driving personnel decisions.
4
The state requires staffing decisions to be based on effectiveness and prohibits seniority from being a factor in layoffs, other than a tiebreaker for similarly rated teachers.
3
The state requires staffing decisions to be based on effectiveness and makes effectiveness the primary factor in layoff decisions.
2
The state requires staffing decisions to consider effectiveness and makes effectiveness a significant factor in layoff decisions, or seniority is prevented from being the driving factor (existing employees are grandfathered in with LIFO).
1
The state allows staffing decisions to consider effectiveness, but does not prohibit seniority-based layoffs (or prohibits LIFO for new hires and non-tenured teachers only or only in low-performing/specified districts).
0
The state requires seniority to be the key driver of personnel decisions, including layoffs.
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Tenure Attainment & Maintenance Eliminate or reform tenure in K12 education by requiring tenure attainment and maintenance to be based on consistent effectiveness.
4
The state requires more than three years of service to attain tenure and requires attainment to be based on performance standards; tenure is revocable and standards and process for dismissal due to ineffectiveness are reformed; or no tenure system.
3
The state requires three or more years of service to attain tenure and requires attainment to be based on performance standards; tenure is revocable based on performance.
2
The state requires three or more years of service to attain tenure and requires attainment to be based on performance standards.
1
The state requires three or more years of service to attain tenure but does not require attainment to be based on performance standards.
0
The state allows tenure to be attained in less than three years and does not require attainment to be based on performance standards.
Value Effective Teachers

Reward Performance with Pay Pay increases for teachers should be based on multiple factors of effectiveness, primarily student achievement.
4
State law requires either the Department of Education or traditional school districts to develop compensation systems for teachers that include measures of effectiveness. Performance is the primary criteria used to determine pay increases.
3
State law requires either the Department of Education or traditional school districts to develop compensation systems for teachers. The compensation system must include effectiveness, but performance is not the primary criteria to determine pay increases. The state may still have a salary schedule that is based on years of service and/or credentials, but performance impacts pay.
2
State law requires either the Department of Education or traditional school districts to develop compensation systems for teachers. The law allows, but does not require, these entities to include measures of effectiveness. The state may still have a salary schedule based on years of services and/or credentials in place.
1
State law is silent on the structure of compensation systems.
0
The compensation system for traditional school district teachers requires any pay increase to be based entirely on years of experience and credentials. Evaluation results do not impact teachers pay.
Reform Salary Schedules Eliminate or prohibit salary increases for masters degrees as a primary factor in setting teacher compensation.
4
State law eliminates or prohibits district compensation systems from including as a primary factor salary increases for masters degrees or additional education credits for traditional public schools.
3
Not applicable.
2
State law is silent.
1
Not applicable.
0
State law requires district compensation systems for traditional public school teachers to be based on advance degrees and/or educational credits.
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Alternative Teacher Certification

Alternative Certification Pathways Reduce barriers to teaching through alternative pathways. These should include the expansion of high-quality alternative certification programs that have higher admission standards and increased flexibility for demonstrating subject matter expertise. States should also establish a provisional license that enables teachers with alternative certification to teach in the classroom.
4
The state allows alternative certification and provisional licenses/classroom placement of teachers from alternative programs, and includes higher standards for selective admission, including high GPA requirements (3.0 or higher or 2.5 or higher combined with at least 5 years of relevant work experience) or a graduate degree in the content area. State requires demonstration of subject-matter/content knowledge, but does not require undergrad major.
3
The state allows alternative certification and provisional licenses/classroom placement of teachers from alternative programs, and includes a selective admission standard of a higher GPA (2.5 or higher). State requires demonstration of subject-matter/content knowledge, but does not require undergrad major.
2
The state allows for streamlined certification through alternative route providers and requires demonstration of subjectmatter/content knowledge, but does not require major as demonstration of content knowledge. State does not require higher admission standards or allow provisionally certified teachers to teach in the classroom.
1
The state allows for streamlined certification through alternative route providers for some grades and subjects, but does not require higher admission standards or allow provisionally certified teachers to teach in the classroom, and links content knowledge to graduate or undergrad major. Requires onerous, irrelevant coursework or attainment of an advanced degree. State allows nonuniversity organizations to be approved issuers of teacher certification if they meet the same state requirements as a university.
0
The state has legal barriers to entry in the teaching profession, including complicated credentialing or certification schemes not related to student achievement, and restricts placement by alternative programs of provisionally certified teachers in classrooms.
Alternative Certification Accountability Establish clear processes for authorizing and evaluating alternative certification programs and decommissioning those programs that do not produce effective educators.
4
The state has well-defined processes for authorizing and evaluating alternative certification programs and decommissioning programs that do not produce effective educators. Processes are based on teacher effectiveness data and evaluations.
3
Not applicable.
2
Not applicable.
1
The state has some process for authorizing and evaluating alternative certification programs as well as processes for decommissioning programs that do not produce effective educators, however these processes are not well established or clear.
0
There are no established process for authorizing, evaluating, and decommissioning alternative certificate programs that do not produce effective educators.
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Empower Parents
Empower Parents with Information
School Letter Grading Require that all K12 schools receive annual school report cards that include AF letter grades based on student achievement and growth in learning.
4
The state requires that all PK12 schools receive annual school report cards that include an AF letter grade based on student achievement. The letter grade reflects both achievement gap closure and student growth and performance measures. Grades are distinguishable between high school and elementary school.
3
The state requires that all PK12 schools receive annual report cards that include an AF letter grade based on student achievement, including growth measurement, but excluding achievement gap data.
2
Not applicable.
1
The state requires that PK12 schools receive school report cards, but it does not does not require it annually and does not include achievement gap data. Or the state uses a 100-point scale numerical system to grade schools.
0
The state does not require that all PK12 schools receive annual school report cards based on student achievement.
Parent Notification Inform parents about teacher effectiveness, and when kids are placed with ineffective teachers, require parental notification and/or parental consent to such an assignment.
4
The state requires parental notification when student is placed with a teacher who has been rated ineffective in his or her most recent evaluation, and allows for parental access to teacher evaluation information upon request or state publishes school-level teacher effectiveness data. State requires districts to obtain parental consent for placement of student with an ineffective teacher and/or allows access to alternative classrooms.
3
The state requires parental notification when student is placed with a teacher who has been rated ineffective for two or more years, and allows for parental access to teacher evaluation information upon request or state publishes school-level teacher effectiveness data.
2
The state requires parental notification when student is placed with a teacher who has been rated ineffective for two or more years.
1
The state allows for parental access to teacher evaluation information upon request. -OR- The state publishes school-level teacher effectiveness data.
0
The state does not require parental notification regarding teacher effectiveness.
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Parent Trigger Establish a parent trigger option allowing a majority of parents at a low-performing school to organize a petition requiring a turnaround.
4
The state law allows parent trigger when a majority of parents with students enrolled (or combo w/parents of students enrolled) sign and submit a petition to turnaround a low-performing school. LEA is required to implement (with state appeal) and there are four RTTT intervention models. Low-performing schools are eligible and there is a specified process that includes: timeline, signature requirements, and parent protections.
3
The state law allows parent trigger when a majority of parents with students enrolled (or combo w/parents of students enrolled) sign and submit a petition to turnaround a low-performing school. Districts are required to implement the plan, subject to state appeal and there is at least one intervention option, such as charter conversion. There is a specified process that includes a timeline and state to adopt regulations for process.
2
Not applicable.
1
The state law allows for parent trigger when a majority of parents with students enrolled, or in combination with parents of students assigned to the school, sign and submit a petition to turnaround a lowperforming school. Districts are required to implement the plan, subject to state appeal. There is a specified process that includes a timeline for implementation, but there are limited options of intervention models.
0
The state does not establish parent trigger law allowing majority of parents to trigger turnaround or charter conversion of low-performing district schools.
Increase Quality Choices

Opportunity Scholarship Establish broader options for low-income students in low-performing schools or districts by providing publicly funded scholarships that include accountability requirements for participating schools.
4
The state establishes a student scholarship program limited to low-income students in low-performing schools or districts that includes multiple accountability requirements, including state-approved assessment of scholarship students in participating schools.
3
The state establishes student scholarships that are limited to low-income students in low-performing schools or districts and includes some accountability requirements.
2
The state establishes student scholarships that prioritize low-income students in low-performing schools or districts, but it does not include accountability requirements.
1
The state establishes scholarships that prioritize low-income students or students in low-performing schools or districts, but it does not include accountability requirements.
0
The state either does not have a scholarship program or it does not prioritize enrollment in the program to low-income students or students from low-performing schools. The schools participating in the program do not have accountability requirements.
73
Charter Establishment & Expansion Remove barriers to establishment and expansion of high-performing charter schools, including removal of arbitrary growth caps and establishment of non-district authorizers and fast-track approval processes for high-performing public charter schools.
4
The state does not have a cap on charters; has additional, non-district authorizers; and has a fast track authorization process for high-performing charters and sets a high threshold for replication/expansion for all schools.
3
The state does not have a cap on charters; has additional, non-district authorizers; and sets a high threshold for replication/ expansion for all schools. No fast track authorization process.
2
The state has smart caps on charter establishment (high performers are exempt). Replication/expansion requires demonstration of success. No fast track authorization process. -ORThe state recently (within last two years) established chartering authority.
1
De facto cap (districts are sole authorizers), but no cap on number of charters. No expedited authorization process for high-performers.
0
The state has arbitrary barriers on charter establishment and/or does not have non-district authorizers. -OR- The state does not allow charter schools.
Charter Accountability Strengthen public charter accountability by creating clear, strong mechanisms for closing low-performing schools and holding authorizers accountable.
4
The state requires a performance-based contract (apart from the application) with five-year term lengths (or less); clear triggers and protocols are in place for closing low performing charter schools; authorizers are required to submit an annual report to an oversight body for each school they oversee; oversight body is required to perform an annual review of each authorizer; low performing authorizers will be suspended or sanctioned.
3
The state requires a performance-based contract (apart from the application) with five-year term lengths (or less); authorizer is required to conduct annual school reviews and to submit an annual performance report to an oversight body for each school they oversee; oversight body is required to perform an annual review of each authorizer.
2
The state requires a performance-based contract (apart from the application) with five-year term lengths (or less); clear triggers and protocols are in place for closing low performing charter schools; the authorizer is required to conduct an annual review of each school and to submit an annual performance report to an oversight body for each school they oversee.
1
The state requires a performance-based contract (apart from the application) with five-year term lengths (or less); clear triggers and protocols are in place for closing low performing charter schools.
0
The state does not have clear accountability measures in place for evaluating and closing low-performing schools or holding authorizers accountable (including no oversight body for authorizers).
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Provide Comparable Resources for All Public Options

Fund Fairly Provide comparable per-pupil funding for all public school students to the school in which they are enrolled.
4
The state provides equal perpupil funding for all students enrolled in traditional or public charter schools, and/ or receiving scholarships. Skimming is not permitted.
3
The state provides equal funding for public charter schools with no skimming but provides lower funding for scholarships (where applicable).
2
The state provides equal funding for public charter schools, and only allows authorizers to skim up to 3% for oversight costs.
1
Not applicable.
0
The state law is written in a way in which per-pupil funding is not provided equally among traditional public schools, public charter schools, and scholarships, and requires charters to purchase services from the district and pay fees to the district and its authorizer.
Enable Equitable Access to Facilities Public charter schools should have the first right to buy or lease excess public space, at or below fair market value.
4
At the state or local level, charters are provided the first right of refusal for a wide variety of facilities at or below fair market value. Charters may also co-locate in excess public space. High achievement schools are prioritized.
3
At the state or local level, charters are provided the first right of refusal to a wide variety of facilities at or below fair market value. Charters may also co-locate in excess public space.
2
At the state or local level, charters are provided the first right of refusal to buy or lease school buildings at or below fair market value.
1
State law provides charters with the first right of refusal for public school buildings, but does not ensure their sale at or below fair market value.
0
State law does not require the state or local jurisdictions to offer charter schools first right of refusal for any surplus buildings.
Charter Facilities Financing Provide charter schools with facilities support, including a per-pupil facilities allotment and capital financing options.
4
The state provides charter schools with charterdedicated alternate financing enabled by the state, access to local bonds, and a perpupil facilities allowance.
3
The state provides for two of the following three options: charter-dedicated alternate financing, access to local bond revenue, and per-pupil facilities allowances.
2
The state provides for only one of the following three options: charter-dedicated alternate financing, access to local bond revenue, and perpupil facilities allowances.
1
The state is silent regarding charter school access to local bonds but may provide limited alternative financing or a per-pupil facilities allowance.
0
The state prohibits charter school access to local bonds and does not provide alternative financing or a perpupil facilities allowance.
75

Promote Governance Structures that Streamline Accountability
Mayoral & State Control Allow for mayoral and state control of academically low-performing schools and districts.
4
The state allows for full state control of low-performing schools and/or districts and full mayoral control of lowperforming districts.
3
The state allows for state control of low-performing schools and/or districts and limited mayoral control for low-performing districts.
2
The state allows for full state control of low-performing schools or districts.
1
The state allows for limited state control of low-performing schools or districts.
0
The state does not allow for mayoral and state control (expressly providing trigger that mayor or governor can activate) of underperforming school districts.
Spend Taxpayer Resources Wisely to Improve Outcomes for Students

Fiscal Transparency Implement fiscal transparency and accountability measures that link school-level spending to student achievement data, and allow for governance changes when resources are managed poorly.
4
The state requires that districts report expenditures in a way that allows the state and public to understand the link between spending and student achievement, and has specific accountability measures, including the triggering of governance changes related to the poor use of funds.
3
The state requires that districts report expenditures in a way that allows the state and public to understand the link between expenditures and student achievement.
2
The state law requires the department of education to determine reporting requirements.
1
The state law has prescribed reporting requirements for districts that do not include expenditure to student achievement calculations.
0
State law does not require reporting on expenditures.
76
Management Alternatives Give school districts personnel and contracting options to access efficient and high-quality services.
4
The state expressly allows public charter schools and traditional public schools to identify multiple management alternatives to realize efficiencies.
3
The state expressly allows public charter schools and traditional public schools to identify one management alternative to realize efficiencies.
2
Not applicable.
1
The state law is silent on the ability of public charter schools and traditional public schools to use alternative contracting vehicles.
0
The state expressly prohibits the ability of charter schools and traditional public schools to use alternative contracting vehicles.
Class Size Provide districts with the staffing and scheduling flexibility by not imposing ineffective regulations to control class size.
4
The state has no class size restrictions above third grade.
3
Not applicable.
2
Not applicable.
1
The state has a class size average requirement for grades above third grade.
0
The state has mandatory class size restrictions above third grade.
Make Teacher Pensions Portable and Fair

Pension Reform Provide teachers employer-sponsored retirement options that are portable and treat all teachers fairly.
4
State law requires all public school employees to enroll in employer-sponsored defined contribution or cash balance plans. [Charter schools are not required to participate in these plans.]
3
State law requires all new employees to enroll in employer-sponsored defined contribution or cash balance plans. [Charter schools may or may not be required to participate in these plans.]
2
The state has an optional employer-sponsored defined contribution, cash balance, or hybrid plan that includes a limited defined benefit. [Charter schools may or may not be required to participate in these plans.]
1
The state only offers defined benefit plans or backloaded retirement plans for traditional public schools. [Charter schools are not required to participate in these plans.]
0
The state only offers defined benefit plans or backloaded retirement plans for traditional public schools. [Charter schools are required to participate in these plans.]
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Acknowledgments
StudentsFirst would like to thank its more than 1.8 million members across the country for whom this report was developed. We would also like to thank the legislators, staff, education officials, and community partners we work with in the 17 states StudentsFirst is legislatively active. StudentsFirst also would like to thank the following national experts and organizations for providing guidance, feedback, and a high bar for contributing to the education policy discussion: The Broad Foundation Data Quality Campaign Digital Learning Now Education Trust Foundation for Excellence in Education Laura and John Arnold Foundation National Alliance for Public Charter Schools National Association of Charter School Authorizers National Council on Teacher Quality TNTP The Walton Family Foundation About StudentsFirst
StudentsFirst is a bipartisan grassroots movement of more than 2 million members nationwide, working to focus our education system on whats best for students. Today, too many of Americas children are not getting the quality education they need and deserve. StudentsFirst is helping to change that with common sense reforms that help make sure all students have great schools and great teachers. We are working to ensure educators are valued for the critical role they play in kids lives, families have high-quality school choices and a real say in their childs education, and our tax dollars are spent wisely on what works for kids. Launched by former Washington D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee in December 2010, StudentsFirst has successfully helped pass more than 70 studentcentered policies in 17 states, and our movement continues to grow.
StudentsFirst requested feedback and input from state education officials in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia regarding initial data analysis. The following states responded and provided valuable insights and feedback: Alaska Arkansas Colorado D.C. Public Charter School Board Florida Georgia Hawaii Iowa Kentucky Maine Maryland Massachusetts Mississippi Missouri Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey New York North Dakota Oregon Rhode Island Tennessee Texas Washington Wisconsin
Finally, this report was developed through the tireless efforts of the StudentsFirst team.
Copyright StudentsFirst 2013
825 K St, 2nd Floor Sacramento, CA 95814 916-287-9220 www.studentsfirst.org

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State of Education State Policy Report Card 2013

Michelle Rhee Founder and CEO

Policy Agenda: The Big Picture

Appendix A: 2013 Methodology

Approach & Methodology

Meaningful Evaluations for Teachers and Principals

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Empower Parents with Data and Choice

Spend Wisely and Govern Well

Governance Flexibility Spending Resources Wisely Teacher Pensions

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Elevate the Teaching Profession

Empower Parents with Data and Choice

Spend Wisely and Govern Well

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Table 1: 2013 State Policy Report Card Summary

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Purpose of State Policy Report Cards

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

StudentsFirst has designated the following policy objectives anchor policies:

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Elevate the Teaching Profession

Top Five States

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Meaningful Evaluations for Teachers and Principals

Use of Evaluations for Personnel Decisions

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Alternative Pathways to Certification

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Empower Parents with Data and Choice

Top Five States

Increasing Quality Choices

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Providing Comparable Resources

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Spend Wisely and Govern Well

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Spending Resources Wisely

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

The secret in education lies in respecting the student.

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Policy Agenda: The Big Picture

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Why Elevate Teachers

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Evaluations must be objective, meaningful, and fair

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013

Ending Forced Placement

State of Education State Policy Report Card, 2013