Hot Potato Accountability

Tag, you’re it! Whatever school enrolls a high school student during Semester 8 is the school responsible for whether he graduates or not using the Hot Potato accountability system.

Remember the childhood game of Hot Potato? It’s very similar to Musical Chairs except that the potato moves while the music plays, not the people. Players in a circle pass the potato or other object while the music plays, and whomever has the potato when the music stops playing is out. The key is making sure you are not the person holding the potato at the wrong time. What does this have to do with education? In our state, our school accountability measures apply exactly the same way: Whatever school is holding the student on the day of the test of when the item is measured gets held accountable for the student. 

I’ll bet a lot of states do it this way because I think the Fed does it this way, but like all accountability measures, getting it right is important because it affects education. In Idaho, elementary schools are measured by ISAT scores and how students do on the IRI (Idaho Reading Indicator), in middle school how students perform on the ISAT exams, and in high school how students perform on the ISAT and what % of the school’s students graduate within 4 years. In order to understand how Hot Potato accountability works, let me detail in on high school accountability a bit more. High school students take English, Math, and Science ISAT exams in 10th grade and are ranked by how many of their students reach a cut off score, or are deemed ‘proficient’ on the test for those subjects. Graduation rate, the other indicator used for high schools is based on what percentage of a school’s students graduate within a 4 year window. Our state goal on 4 year graduation rate is 87.3.

Now back to Hot Potato accountability: In our high schools, whatever schools have students when they take the ISAT exam in 10th grade and when graduation comes around each spring are held accountable for these students. There are 8 semesters in the 4 years a student attends high school, but the semester that matters for our graduation rate is Semester 8. When Semester 8 is finished, whatever school the student happens to be enrolled in will be rewarded when students graduate on time and penalized if they don’t. If a student was enrolled in one high school for 7 semesters and a second high school for their final (or maybe not) 8th semester, which school should receive the credit for whether the student graduates or not? In the Hot Potato system, the 2nd school does because the student is enrolled there in semester 8. The same is true for ISAT scores.

How does this affect education? Remember that ISAT scores and 4 year grad rates are the only way we determine whether schools are ‘effective’ or not. The ISAT Interim (practice) exams that are given in many schools and districts do an excellent job showing you which students will pass the ISAT and which will fail. This is important information to know coming into the 10th grade ISAT. When it comes to graduation, ‘eligible to graduate’ means that it’s mathematically possible to graduate that year. Students need 46 credits to graduate, and typically take 12-16 1 credit classes per year. This means that if a student comes into semester 7 (beginning of their senior year) with less than 36 credits, they aren’t going to graduate in 4 years. Counselors can usually make pretty accurate graduation predictions by the students’ junior year, or semester 5. If a district has 4 regular high schools and one ‘Alternative’ high school, the key to gaming the ISAT and graduation would be to make sure that students who will influence these statistics negatively are enrolled in the Alternative school at the right time.

It’s hard to say how much this really happens...I think the majority of educators don’t pay much attention to how the state holds their schools accountable, but there are certainly some educators who care. The state’s graduation goal is 87.3%. In 2019, 80.7% of our students graduated in 4 years, up from 80.6% in 2018. In 2018, 43% (90 out of 210) of rural and urban high schools reported graduation rates of 90 percent or higher, and 18 high schools reported 100% (4 year) graduation rates, far exceeding the state’s goal. If you’re wondering why so many schools are reporting 90% or better grad rates yet the state average is only 80%, it’s because the first metric is calculated by students throughout the state and the second by school. This means that many of the students who won’t graduate in 4 years are coming from relatively few schools.

100% of your students graduating in 4 years is like hitting a hole in one in golf...it’s an extremely rare occurrence. So is 90% or better grad rate when statewide only 80% graduate on time. Unless, of course, you identify the students who won’t graduate in 4 years before Semester 8, and make sure they’re in the district alternative school or an online high school during that important semester. My prediction is that each year the number of schools who hit 90% or better 4 year grad rate will continue to go up, but the overall statewide number will continue to stay the same because Hot Potato accountability causes a shuffling of negative statistics without actually doing anything to fix any problems. 

Hot Potato is a simple game, but not necessarily a fair one. The problem with Hot Potato accountability is that the key to winning the game is not necessarily fixing any problems, but making sure the problems are in the right places at the right times. Likely, this is why we have so many ‘alternative’ schools; they act as repositories for the students who bring the school numbers down, and it’s pretty easy to identify who these students are and when they need to arrive at the local alternative school. The real question to ask though: Is it fair that a student who doesn’t graduate on time gets counted against a school that has enrolled her for 1 semester while the school that enrolled her for 7 semesters isn’t held accountable for anything concerning her graduation or lack thereof? 

The solution to this is actually really simple but would immediately discontinue any motive to move students around: when considering school accountability, the school that enrolled a student the highest number of terms should be the accountable school, regardless of where the student ends up on the day they should graduate or take the ISAT exam.