Accountability Systems for Alternative High Schools

By some measures, educational attainment is the highest it has ever been. National high school graduation rates have risen every year since they were first collected in the 2010-11 school year by the U.S. Department of Education.

Yet, ensuring that all students complete high school remains an elusive goal. Approximately 1 million high school students each year fail to earn a diploma or its equivalent.¹ This number translates to a national school dropout rate of 5.9 percent, but for certain subgroups of students, specifically black and Hispanic students, it is much higher—6.5 and 9.2 percent, respectively.

Under federal law, high schools with graduation rates that are less than 67 percent or meet other criteria for low performance are subject to intensive improvement strategies. This requirement also applies to what the law defines as “alternative education campuses” (AECs), schools that states have established to serve the unique needs of students who are at risk of dropping out or who have re-engaged in school.

Federal policy allows states to use the same, or different, measures to hold these schools accountable for their performance as other public schools. However, there is a knowledge gap when it comes to understanding how students navigate the alternative school experience and how effectively the federally required school performance measures assess these schools.

Recent analyses show that without meaningful accountability, traditional school districts may push struggling students into low-quality alternative schools.² 

The analysis shared in this report suggests that measures used to hold these schools accountable may over-identify failure and under-identify success. School accountability systems better designed to measure the nuances of student experience in these schools would provide critically needed insights.

This paper provides the groundwork to design such measures. The recommendations aim to improve researchers’, practitioners’, and policymakers’ ability to conduct much-needed investigation into the experience of students in alternative schools, while striking a balance between accurate measurement and rigorous expectations. It presents two options for states to consider in developing federal accountability systems for alternative schools.

First, states could forego using metrics in federal law, as these calculations inadequately determine performance for students who are poorly served by traditional schools. This report will demonstrate this inadequacy by looking at the experience of the New York City public schools and proposing metrics that better capture this experience. States interested in developing customized metrics should conduct similar analyses of their student outcome data for alternative schools.

Second, states could use the 67 percent graduation rate metric to identify schools as low-performing, while using recommendations presented in this report—including a graduation rate index, credit accumulation, and attendance—to gauge progress to exit low-performing status.

In this report, the authors review the characteristics of alternative schools on a national level, profile the students who attend them, and outline the legal history of these schools. The report also explores a series of options to more effectively measure the performance of alternative high schools. 

While meaningful school accountability systems include the examination of a wide array of data and the implementation of supports to ensure continuous improvement in all schools,³ this report focuses exclusively on measuring school progress. Data on school progress is a necessary first step toward designing broader systems of support, improvement, and resource allocation. 

The proposed school progress metrics fall into three areas: graduation rate; academic proficiency; and school quality and student success.