The legislature is looking at two bills that would develop a multiple measure accountability system for measuring school performance. Some of the measures being considered are:
-- graduation rates,
-- student growth and student improvement on the assessments,
-- student attendance rates,
-- kindergarten readiness rates,
-- parental involvement,
-- suspensions and expulsions,
-- college and career readiness,
-- postsecondary enrollment rates,
-- postsecondary retention rates per high school,
-- growth of students who score in the top quartile and bottom quartile on the
assessments to ensure that schools and school districts that are not sufficiently meeting the needs of both high-performing and low-performing students.
The measures selected by the State Board of Education for the accountability system would be combined into a school performance score and district performance
score.
I support this type of accountability system because student growth is the most important data to consider when deciding how well a school is performing. But I am worried that the state will choose to use average growth data rather than individual student growth data. Average growth would compare how a school's 4th grade students performed one year to how 4th grade students at the same school performed the next year. It would not take into account the improvement shown by each student from one year to the next. With MAP tests (which we give to students in grades 3-11 in Reading and Math) it is possible to look at each students growth from beginning of the year to the end of the year, or from spring to spring, to see how each has improved.
That data will tell you how a school is doing (assuming students will give their best effort).
