School Accountability. Rochester’s accountability strategies for school will build on and become the logical extension of the School-based Planning initiative. While the standards for student performance set by the Board are district-wide, the approach to accountability for those standards shall be one that involves the schools in the development of the strategies, terms and goals for which they are held accountable. In developing these strategies, each school shall be accountable for equity in the internal distribution of resources, for adopting policies that reflect professional knowledge, for establishing means by which staff can continually gain more knowledge, for creating problem-identification, and problem-solving processes that continually assess and modify its own practices, and for responding to parent, student, and staff concerns and ideas. Each school or a team within a school (house, cluster, school-within-a-school) shall negotiate an agreement on the baseline data, the improvement goals and strategies, as well as the additional resources, support and conditions that may be indicated. The negotiated agreement for school improvement shall be a multi-year plan which shall be binding on all parties. This plan will include a commitment to make annual progress reports to the school’s community and constituencies. The multi-year plan will be based on data collected by the District, State and school. It should include information such as school performance data and other factors that contribute to student performance, student mobility, teacher absenteeism, etc. School surveys and other alternative assessments will be used on a periodic basis as another means of data collection from students, staff, parents and community. The data will be used as a basis for planning to improve student achievement, school climate and parent involvement. The multi-year plan will include the following components: Needs assessment - an analysis of progress (data) which draws conclusions and is the basis of goal setting. Goals - projects expectations for cohorts of students: should be described in measurable terms and address the conclusions reached during needs assessment analysis. Strategies - prescribes meaningful and relevant changes conducive to goals achievement; should reflect research and best practice methods and include participation by school staff or teams within a school. Monitoring component - describes how the school will monitor its progress toward the goals. Evaluation - descri...
School Accountability
