Issue: Education
Topic: School Finance
Date: March 1, 2015
By: John T. Affeldt
File: new_accountability_in_california_through_local_control.pdf
Managing Attorney John Affeldt analyzes the many congruencies between California’s new Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) and a “new accountability” framework articulated by Professor Linda Darling-Hammond and others. New accountability assesses school and district performance based on multiple measures and seeks to support and assist those entities towards continuous improvement, as opposed to the current dominant accountability model in the U.S. which tests and punishes schools and districts on a narrow set of standardized testing outcomes. John also analyzes where California and LCFF fall short of a functioning “new accountability” — namely the failure of the state to be accountable for the provision of adequate resources to support a common core standards-based education system and adequate state attention to managing its teacher quality, a key component of instructional effectiveness and the capacity to continuously improve.
