The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

District Reviews

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) engages in numerous district and school reviews for a wide variety of purposes throughout the year. It is the DESE's goal to ease as much of the burden these reviews place upon districts and schools as possible, while also maintaining the high quality of these reviews so that we fulfill our legal and public obligations.

To this end, the legislation that called for the creation of the DESE's Office of School and District Accountability (now called the Office of District Reviews and Monitoring, hereinafter ODRM) requires ODRM to ensure that no school or district is audited during the administration of any statewide assessments, and shall coordinate with other entities in the department to ensure that a school or district is not subject to multiple comprehensive audits or reviews by the department or any accrediting body within a 9 month period unless the board specifically votes to do so on an emergency basis (M.G.L. c. 15, § 55A).

To help facilitate scheduling, DESE has created a database of all comprehensive reviews year by year, including five-year charter renewal reviews, Comprehensive Program Reviews (CPRs) by our Public School Monitoring Office, district accountability reviews by our Office of District Reviews and Monitoring (ODRM), and accreditation reviews by the outside agency New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). The reviews scheduled by the above offices did not include any potential overlaps for the 2018-2019 school year.

No overlaps within DESE for scheduled reviews

The Public School Monitoring Office and Charter School Office worked proactively to avoid overlaps for their scheduled reviews. In addition, when selecting the districts for the 20 district accountability reviews required by state law, ODRM used the comprehensive reviews schedule as an element of its selection criteria and worked with the Public School Monitoring Office to avoid any potential overlap.

No overlaps with NEASC for scheduled reviews

There were no overlaps with NEASC reviews for the 2018-2019 school year.