By Ezra Howard
In my last piece I conducted a longitudinal analysis of the TCAP results of the state-run Achievement School District (ASD). This study was unique in several ways. For one, to my knowledge it is the only longitudinal study of current ASD schools that spans back to 2010. Existing comparisons only go back to 2012, immediately prior to state takeover.
The study is also unique because it improves upon a comparison that was valid in 2013 yet inappropriate in 2014, where the 2012 pre-takeover TCAP results of six ASD schools were compared against the ASD’s ten schools in 2014. It provided an enlightening level of information, which you can find here. However, as stated at the end of the piece, there is much more to be studied with the turnaround efforts in Memphis.
In this article I have two goals. First, I will apply the same level of scrutiny to the TCAP results of Shelby County Schools’ Innovation Zone, or iZone, the district-led turnaround effort in Memphis. For full disclosure, I work in an iZone school. Second, I will compare the iZone results to that of the ASD. The two programs are similar in nature, they both rely upon an extended school day and they both receive increased funding for instruction. However, their turnaround approaches are very different and, as such, a comparative study offers a number of implications for future turnaround efforts.
The ASD uses a portfolio model where some school are district-run but the majority are operated by charter management organizations (CMOs). Many of these schools, specifically those run by CMOs, rely on the phase-in model which absorbs one or two grades at a time as opposed to taking on the entire school. Conversely, all of the iZone schools are currently district-run and do not use the phase-in model. As a result, comparing the two models contributes to the on-going discussion of: (1) entrusting charters with turnaround efforts; and (2) the need for and desirability of the phase-in approach used by the ASD versus the whole school takeover model.
Methods
The methods for this study are fairly similar to the previous examination of the ASD. Using the base accountability files provided by the Tennessee Department of Education, I tabulated the percentage of students who are proficient and advanced for each school, accounting for the grades taught in the phase-in schools. I did this for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. I did this for both ASD and iZone schools.
Unlike my analysis of the ASD, the state does not report the results for iZone as a whole. This is because iZone is not a district unto itself but a program under Shelby County Schools (SCS). Therefore, school-wide results were extracted and tabulated to “create” an actual iZone district similar to the one I created for the ASD. However, the state has not released the raw number of students who took the test or scored in each level of proficiency for the 2013-2014 academic year. In fact, the only piece of viable data is the percentage of proficient or advanced (P/A) students within each school. Thus, this study is a longitudinal analysis of individual schools and a gauge of district-level measure of students proficient or advanced by averaging school-level scores.
The Summary
iZone has maintained a significant lead in average P/A achievement over the ASD since 2013. In 2013, iZone average P/A achievement was 4.5% greater than that of the ASD. In the 2014, that gap widened to 11.1% in favor of the iZone. Even more impressive is the fact that if these turnaround efforts are ranked from greatest to least by P/A levels, the highest achieving ASD school, Brick Church, ranks behind three iZone Schools: Ford Road, Douglass K-8, and Cherokee Elementary. The ASD’s second highest achieving school, Corning Achievement, is 9th in line, followed closely by iZone’s Hamilton Middle with less than a 1.0% difference.
The Summary
iZone also leads the way for average RLA achievement. In 2013, iZone had an average 3.8 percentage point lead in P/A achievement over the ASD in 2013. The gap widened in 2014, a difference of 6.9% still in favor of the iZone. Similar to math, if we rank all the turnaround schools in order of achievement, the ASD’s Brick Church occupies the top spot. However, iZone schools would be in 2nd through 7th place (Douglass, Ford Road, Treadwell Middle, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Hamilton) followed by Humes Upper in 8th place and two more iZone schools in 9th and 10th place (Lucie E. Campbell and Sherwood Middle). ASD occupies only two of the top ten spots with these turnaround efforts when it comes to RLA.
The Summary
Let’s examine the accumulative mathematics gains for each school within each model for turnaround. For iZone, only one of its twelve schools has not posted double-digit gains (the Cohort 2 school, Fairley Elementary), three schools have posted gains topping 20 percentage points (Ford Road, Cherokee Elementary, and Chickasaw Middle) and not school has shown negative gains. For the ASD, only two of its nine schools have shown double-digit gains (Brick Church and Cornerstone Prep), with Brick Church making gains greater than 20 percentage points, and three schools have posted negative gains (Westside, Corning, and Hanley).
The Summary
Consider the accumulative RLA achievement gains for each school within each turnaround model. For iZone, four of its twelve schools have posted double-digit gains (Treadwell Middle, Chickasaw, Cherokee Elementary, and Ford Road), two schools have shown negative gains (Fairley and Magnolia Elementary). For the ASD, one school (Brick Church) has shown double-digit gains and four schools have achieved negative gains (Westside, Corning, Hanley, and Humes).
Conclusion
With two years of TCAP data on hand, it’s accurate to say that the achievement results for iZone are significantly higher than those for the ASD. A large number of ASD schools are significantly further behind in achievement for both reading and math than when they started. The majority of iZone schools are showing startlingly high results with Math with steady increases in RLA; though there are a few schools with less than stellar results in both academic areas. As mentioned, there are a number of policy implications to these finding. Due to the level of attention they demand, a few of these implications will be discussed in turn in the following piece. For now, however, it seems apparent that local turnaround efforts has resulted in greater gain in achievement than state-run efforts.
Methods Appendix
A quick note: when calculating the proficiency rates for a multiple schools, it’s preferable to use raw data as opposed to averaging the P/A results of all the schools; the former proves to be a reliable gauge but the latter is more accurate. For example, the difference between P/A rates for the ASD garnered by averages versus direct calculation is less than 1% in most cases; the only considerable difference was in the Reading Language Arts (RLA) P/A rates for 2014, which was 1.7%. As a fairly reliable method, I was able to gauge achievement for the two Aspire schools within Hanley Elementary by averaging the scores between them in 2014 with less than a 2.0% difference in either school’s math achievement and less than a 1.0% difference in RLA achievement. While there are subtle weaknesses to this approach, having to analyze school-level data over time allowed me to separate the schools by cohort: Cohort 1 (C1) consists of schools chosen for turnaround efforts in 2012-13 and Cohort 2 (C2) are those for 2013-14. You can see these results in the ASD iZone Analysis Spreadsheet.
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