A Case Study in Accountability, District Monitoring, and School Improvement 293NEW JERSEY NCLB PROCESSES
The State Review Process: Quality Single Accountability Continuum
The New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJQSAC) is a self-monitoring
instrument that targets five critical District Performance Review (DPR) areas: Fiscal &
Facilities, Operations, Personnel, Instruction/Program, & Governance. Each of the indicators
in the DPRs were derived from the corpus of educational research and aimed at providing all
children quality instruction. State officials intended for the monitoring process to focus on the
core technology of teaching and learning to improve student achievement. New Jersey
Department of Education officials anticipated that the state could now possibly move from a
compliance-based system to an ongoing collaborative process.
QSAC was piloted in 15 districts during year one, using both external and internal
monitors to assess the 300 indicators. By meeting state-established benchmarks, districts exit
corrective action, and become eligible for self-monitoring, in which districts engage in a
continuous systematic three-year cycle of improvement. Self-monitoring, however, requires
reviewing student achievement data, collaboration, curriculum, and assessing the degree to
which the district adheres to state regulations including fiscal matters, personnel, and school
operations. According to state officials, the process of monitoring should reflect a
commitment to ensuring school effectiveness and be viewed as a process that anticipates
collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders over time, rather than just focus on snapshot
outcomes as evidence of school success or failure (Lattimer, Schonyers, & Arons, 2006).
The Collaborative Assessment for Planning and Achievement
At the building level, New Jersey requires a Collaborative Assessment for Planning and
Achievement (CAPA) review when schools have not met satisfactory levels of student
achievement in language arts literacy or mathematics. External monitoring teams of Highly
Qualified Professionals (HQP) include retired superintendents, supervisors, state officials,
university faculty, and New Jersey Department of Education (DOE) managers (New Jersey
Department of Education [NJDOE], n.d.a). Intended to identify specific obstacles to teaching
and learning, CAPA teams examine the level of leadership, learner-centered instruction, and
developing learning communities by collecting data in seven standard areas: classroom
assessment and evaluation; instruction; school climate and culture; student, family, and
community support; professional growth and development; and leadership.
THE CONTINUING DILEMMA OF URBAN SCHOOLS
Urban public schools are especially hard hit from years of neglect, and the lack of
systematic practices targeted at improving student learning (Orfield & Lee, 2005). Casualties
include students whose teachers, demoralized and disenfranchised, no longer believe them
capable of meeting even the most reasonable academic challenge. Teachers in low socio-
economic status (SES) schools point to the challenges of teaching children who, in all
likelihood, did not attend preschool and did not grow up watching Sesame Street. They
describe how single-parent households, drugs, limited access to before and after school
tutoring, and summer remediation, create multiple obstacles to learning
With low-income school districts experiencing difficulty recruiting and retaining highly
qualified teachers, poor working conditions, and a growing urgency to improve test scores,