Barriers to Application of High Standards to All Students

The survey asked public school principals the extent to which 10 factors were barriers to the application of high standards to all students in their school (Table 2 and appendix Table B-16 Part 2). "All students" could mean students in all grades, students with limited English proficiency, or students with disabilities. Findings for this question provide further detail to help interpret previous findings on prevalence of reform strategies.

For all schools, factors cited as moderate or great barriers by close to half of principals were the following: teaching students who are at different levels (56 percent), the inadequacy of parent involvement (49 percent), and assessments that do not measure what students can do (48 percent). The prevalence of several barriers for different types of schools varied. For example, principals of elementary schools with higher proportions of students eligible for free or reduced-priced lunches reported more problems with inadequacy of parent involvement, high student mobility, diversity of student populations, language barriers, teaching students who are at different levels, and assessments that do not measure what students can do than principals of schools with the lowest proportion of these students (Table 3 and appendix Table B-16 Part 2).

As mentioned previously, 78 percent of principals say their schools use content standards in all subjects. The positive picture implied by this finding contrasts sharply with the 37 percent of principals who felt the guidelines on standards were inadequate.

The 48 percent of principals who reported the barrier "assessments not measuring what students can do" contrasts with the 76 percent who say they match assessments to content standards. During debriefings held as part of the pretest of the instrument, principals said that they used this category to report, for example, a situation where students in a bilingual class were assessed using an English language test. The assessment covered the correct content, but the skills of the students were not adequately measured. These situations may account for a portion of the 48 percent. However, this figure still makes it appear that 76 percent was an overestimate. In addition, while 84 percent of principals reported that their schools engaged in professional development tied to the standards to a moderate or great extent, 38 percent said that inadequate professional development was a barrier to the application of high standards, calling into question the reports of professional development implementation.

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