State Education Agencies (or SEAs) are a crucial element in translating policy to schools. A new report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education, in coordination with the Building State Capacity and Productivity Center, “The SEA of the Future“, urges state education agencies to use performance management to support school improvement.
Authors Paul Hill, Patrick Murphy, Sam Redding, Betheny Gross, and Ashley Jochim have written about the policies, people, and resources that SEAs need to better manage their relationships with districts and schools and identify strategies for aligning resources with goals. The volume concludes by describing how state leaders-including governors, legislators, philanthropies, and reform advocates-can support SEAs in these efforts.
As editor Betheny Gross explains, “This first volume outlines the main themes the BSCP Center will be bringing to regional comprehensive centers and SEAs over the next five years. We hope it also provides SEAs with a framework for thinking about the work they have before them.”
Following is a summary that outlines the changes that CRPE recommends:
Program administration:
The old SEAs
– Manage programs to ensure state and district spending complies with state and federal regulations
The new SEAs
– Manage programs to align compliance and improvement mandates and ensure state and district spending has maximal impact
Standards, Assessment, Accountability:
The old SEAs
– Develop performance benchmarks – Establish high-quality longitudinal data systems for federal reporting – Report results to parents
The new SEAs
– Develop cost and performance benchmarks – Establish high-quality longitudinal data systems and measurement tools for cost-effectiveness analysis – Compare results across programs, districts, and schools
School and District Support:
The old SEAs
– Rely on districts for school turnaround – Help districts and schools with federal reporting requirements – Provide uniform systems of support that lack customization – Are accountable to governors, legislators, and voters for program implementation
The new SEAs
– Broker support for school and district staff according to need – Help districts and schools leverage federal, state, and private resources – Increase flexibility to pursue differentiated approaches to school improvement – Are accountable to districts for support and state for productive use of resources
Intervention:
The old SEAs
– Offer support in cases of persistent performance failures
The new SEAs
– Phase out programs and schools that persistently fail to achieve performance targets and intervenes to provide better programs and options for families
Innovation:
The old SEAs
– Reduce district innovation by imposing one-size-fits-all requirements for schools – Leave it to districts to support local innovation in curriculum, teaching, and educational delivery
The new SEAs
– Foster district innovation by providing regulatory and financial flexibility to develop new programs and school models – Incentivize, evaluate, and disseminate local innovation in curriculum, teaching, and educational delivery
For more information, please visit: http://www.crpe.org/publications/sea-future-leveraging-performance-management-support-school-improvement
