Academic distress commissions: A leg up for Ohio in implementing ESSA?

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) required states to identify and intervene in persistently low-performing schools. Some states opted for more aggressive intervention with the creation of recovery school districts, including the Achievement School District in Tennessee, the Recovery School District in Louisiana, and the Education Achievement Authority in Michigan. Here in the Buckeye State, we don’t have a statewide recovery district—but we do have “academic distress commissions” (ADCs).

ADCs were added to Ohio state law in 2005 as a way for the state to intervene in districts that consistently fail to meet academic standards. Only two districts (Youngstown and Lorain) have ever been placed under ADC control, while a third (Cleveland) avoided the designation because of its implementation of the Cleveland Plan. In the summer of 2015, however, ADCs blasted onto the front pages of Ohio newspapers thanks to House Bill 70. The bill—widely known as the “Youngstown Plan” [1]—sharpened the powers and duties of ADCs in Ohio and was signed into law by Governor Kasich in July. (See here for an overview of the bill’s biggest changes to ADCs.) 

In December 2015, the long-awaited reauthorization of NCLB became a reality with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The biggest change was the devolution of some authority from the federal government to states—including much greater discretion over how to identify persistently failing schools and what to do about them.

A close read of the new law suggests that it won’t conflict with Ohio’s current ADC structure. ESSA requires the identification of individual schools, while an ADC identifies an entire low-performing district. As long as the Buckeye State follows ESSA’s requirements, it shouldn’t trouble the feds that Ohio also intervenes in struggling districts—particularly since ESSA permits “additional statewide categories of schools” that are identified “at the discretion of the state.”

But as policy makers work to develop Ohio’s state accountability plan under ESSA, it’s worth asking whether the current system of ADCs can provide some helpful lessons and a head start on designing the school-based identification and intervention guidelines required under the new federal law. Here’s a look at a few of the key elements:

School identification

Ohio statute requires that any district receiving an overall grade of F for three consecutive years be placed under the control of an ADC. This is a clear measure that is based on Ohio’s accountability report card data, which the state has been using for some time. ESSA, meanwhile, requires that struggling schools be given a designation of “comprehensive support” (any Title I school that’s in the bottom 5 percent statewide or fails to graduate 67 percent of its students) and “targeted support” (any Title I school with a subgroup that is labeled “consistently underperforming” by the state). Although the comprehensive support measures are clearly defined, Ohio is well positioned to use its robust school report card measures—already utilized in the context of ADCs—to develop the required “consistently underperforming” definition for targeted support. Ohio’s accountability system will have to undergo some relatively minor changes under ESSA, but these changes won’t require the state to stop using report cards and letter grades.

Locally made plans

ADCs are required to get local input in the form of a CEO-convened community stakeholder group,[2] which is tasked with “developing expectations for academic improvement” and “building relationships with organizations in the community that can provide services to students.” Under ESSA, both comprehensive support and targeted support schools will also be subject to improvement plans. What these plans must contain matters, but how they’re developed is just as important—and schools in both categories are required to seek stakeholder input.

To be fair, ADCs and local control haven't exactly gotten along so far. The rapid proposal and passage of House Bill 70 was controversial and drew condemnation from the very stakeholders that ESSA champions—school leaders, teachers, and parents. This should be a warning to Ohio as it devises its ESSA-required intervention strategies: If policy makers want the system to work, they would be wise to earnestly seek local input on how to craft plans for comprehensive support and targeted support schools. 

Creating school choice

Like NCLB before it, ESSA permits districts to allow students who are enrolled in persistently failing schools the option of transferring to another public school served by the district. Ohio’s ADC legislation has similar provisions that the state could consider mirroring for ESSA purposes. First, any student enrolled in an ADC-designated district is eligible to participate in the EdChoice Scholarship Program, Ohio’s largest voucher program. Second, the ADC is responsible for expanding “high-quality school choice options in the district” and can do so by creating a high-quality school accelerator—an organization that is not operated by the district and is responsible for attracting and recruiting high-quality sponsors and schools. The accelerator model could further empower families at comprehensive support and targeted support schools while interventions are underway. 

Exit Criteria

ESSA requires a school identified for intervention to meet a set of high expectations in order to “exit” identification and its associated interventions. The law permits states to craft their own exit criteria as long as schools that fail to meet that criteria within a certain number of years are subjected to “more rigorous state-determined action.” USDOE’s proposed regulations contain some additional stipulations, including that schools must meet exit criteria within four years.

Ohio has already developed similar exit criteria for its ADCs. First, a district must earn an overall grade of C on the state report card. Once that benchmark is met, the district begins a transition period. If it maintains an overall grade higher than F for two consecutive years after the first C, it ceases to be under ADC control. If, however, the district receives an F during the transition period, it reverts back to its ADC designation.

ADC statute also requires rigorous action long before USDOE’s fourth year. Starting in the first year of the existence of an ADC, if a district doesn’t earn an overall C grade, it is subject to an increasingly severe ladder of interventions—which includes reconstituting any school, altering or suspending collective bargaining agreements, and appointing a new board of education. In theory, Ohio could turn some of these criteria and consequences into its exit standards for ESSA-identified schools; however, the backlash against the Youngstown plan could make that move difficult.

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ESSA’s focus on school identification and an ADC’s attention to district performance could lead some to assume that the two laws aren’t compatible. But they’re far from being mutually exclusive. In fact, the dual focus on schools and districts could work in Ohio’s favor, since ESSA requires states to “provide technical assistance” and support to each district that serves “a significant number” of comprehensive support and targeted support schools. It stands to reason that any district with a significant number of these schools is already or soon to be a candidate for ADC designation, so it makes sense that the state would oversee interventions at the district level while the district oversees interventions at the school level.

Furthermore, Ohio’s experience in developing and working with ADCs gives it a distinct advantage in considering how to design school-level interventions. Ohio’s ADC legislation has plenty of similarities to ESSA, and these similarities should contribute to the state’s development of a strong identification and intervention plan for struggling schools.