From: Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu Apr 26, 2007 5:06:08 AM US/Pacific
To: ARN Main List <arn-l@interversity.org>, arn2-strategy
<arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [arn2-strategy] CSMonitor on Growth Models and 2014
Proficiency
Reply-To: arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com
AS CONGRESS PREPARES TO REAUTHORIZE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND,
MORE EDUCATORS WANT NEW DEFINITIONS OF ACHIEVEMENT
Christian Science Montior -- April 26, 2007
by Stacy Teicher Khadaroo
What's the right balance between pushing schools to reach a goal and
giving them credit for making progress, even if they fall short?
That's a key question lawmakers are considering as they prepare to
reauthorize the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), set up five
years ago with the hope of closing achievement gaps in public schools.
The call has been coming from all corners to incorporate "growth
models"
into the way schools are judged. Rather than simply comparing this
year's group of third-grade or eighth-grade scores with last year's,
advocates say, states should also track the progress of students
individually, and see how much they learn over the course of a year.
Under the current system, a school in Milwaukee with only 2 percent of
its students scoring "proficient" in reading and math progressed to
about 42 percent proficient in a few years. But because that number was
still below state targets under NCLB, it received the same label as
schools that may have made no progress at all, according to the recent
report by the bipartisan Commission on No Child Left Behind.
Expand credit for improvements
Everyone from civil rights groups to teachers' unions to the secretary
of Education herself has acknowledged that giving schools some credit
for their students' improvements makes sense. For instance, they say it
would be more fair to schools with a high turnover of students (common
in high-poverty areas), because they could show the learning outcomes
of
students actually taught there that year, versus newcomers, who may
have
low scores reflecting their previous experience.
"If we [want] to improve the effectiveness of schools, how are we going
to do that if that's not what we're measuring?" says Paul Barton, an
educational consultant and former director of the Educational Testing
Service Policy Information Center. By simply looking at whether a
certain percentage of students score proficient on an end-of-year
standardized test, he says, states are measuring what students have
learned in their entire life up until that point – which is affected by
many factors other than what they are taught in school.
The concept resonates with the public: According to a Phi Delta
Kappa/Gallup Poll last year, 81 percent of Americans say they favor
looking at the improvement students make during the year, rather than
the percentage passing a test at the end of the year.
The mechanism that would be revised is known as AYP – the requirement
that schools make "adequate yearly progress" toward the ultimate goal
of
all students scoring proficient on state tests in reading and math by
2014.
AYP is "a blunt instrument," said Tommy Thompson, co-chairman of the
bipartisan commission, whose report includes 75 recommendations for
improving NCLB.
If a school does not meet AYP for all subgroups of students (such as
ethnic groups, low-income students, and English-language learners) for
two years in a row, it must provide tutoring options and allow students
to transfer out. Eventually, schools can be taken over by the state or
forced to restructure.
Many school administrators have expressed frustration that their school
is perceived as failing if even one subgroup falls short by a few
points. That's why the bipartisan commission also suggested that
schools
should only be judged as not meeting AYP if the same subgroups fell
behind the goal for two years in a row.
Test scores vs. tracking students
The current law relies heavily on a testing system designed for a
different purpose – to sort and track students based on whether they
were performing at a level that was average for their grade.
"When we came along with sanctions and accountability, we simply took
the tests we had. Nobody started over from scratch," Mr. Barton says.
But accountability for closing gaps is a different goal and requires a
different kind of testing, he and many others insist.
Counting student progress has precedent in a few states, such as North
Carolina. Since 1997, schools there have been measured by a combination
of proficiency and improvement.
NCLB "made a complicated system even more complicated," says Lou
Fabrizio, director of accountability services with the North Carolina
Department of Public Instruction. "Schools would be designated as
meeting a growth component under our program, but they would
potentially
be listed as not making AYP, and that [causes] a little bit of
confusion," he says.
But recently he's been glad to add yet another layer of complexity.
North Carolina is one of five states that the US Department of
Education
is allowing to experiment with growth models in AYP calculations.
After one year, "it did not help as much as we would have hoped," Mr.
Fabrizio says, but it's too soon to judge how many more schools might
be
able to show progress under such a system. (Last year, 45 percent of
the
state's schools met AYP.)
The US House Committee on Education and Labor held a hearing last month
on growth models and other assessment issues. A committee staff member
says the research in support of growth models is almost overwhelming,
and it's no longer a matter of whether to use them, but of how. The
committee aims to prepare a reauthorization bill by this summer, though
a full vote by Congress on such bills could be delayed until after the
2008 elections.
One point of contention is whether all students should be expected to
reach proficiency by 2014. Some critics say that goal is artificial.
"We need to start in reality instead of a fantasy," says Monty Neill,
executive director of FairTest in Cambridge, Mass., one of more than
100
groups that have signed a Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB.
Schools serving high-needs populations should be expected to aim for a
growth rate based on what's already being achieved by schools doing
well
with similar populations, he says.
But US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings calls the 2014 goal
one
of her "bright line principles."
The DOE put out a proposal earlier this year that noted, "a growth
model
is a tool to achieve proficiency by 2014, not a loophole to avoid it."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0426/p17s01-legn.html
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