Additional Resources Research has demonstrated that students just - PDF document

Additional Resources Research has demonstrated that students just below the proficiency bar were most likely to make large gains in the NCLB era, while high achievers made lesser gains. Those most victimized by this regime were high- achieving poor and minority students—kids who were dependent on the school system to cultivate their potential and accelerate their achievement. Here are some of the studies that have focused on this issue: Jonathan Plucker, Jennifer Giancola, Grace Healey, Daniel Arndt, and Chen Wang, Equal talents, unequal opportunities: A report card on state support for academically talented low-income students (Lansdowne, VA: Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, 2015), http://www.excellencegap.org/state-report. Jonathan Plucker, Jacob Hardesty, and Nathan Burroughs, Talent on the sidelines: Excellence gaps and America’s persistent talent underclass (Storrs, CT: University of Connecticut, Center for Education Policy Analysis, 2013), http://cepa.uconn.edu/mindthegap. Robert Theaker, Yun Xiang, Michael Dahlin, John Cronin, Sarah Durant, Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? Performance Trends of Top Students (Washington, D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2011), http://edexcellence.net/publications/high-flyers.html. Dale Ballou and Matthew G. Springer, Achievement Trade-Offs and No Child Left Behind (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University, 2008), http://www.vanderbilt.edu/schoolchoice/documents/achievement_tradeoffs.pdf. Tom Loveless, Steven Farkas, and Ann Duffet, High-Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB, (Washington, D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2008), http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/publication/pdfs/20080618_high_achievers_7.pdf. Joshua S. Wyner, John M. Bridgeland, John J. DiIulio, Jr., Achievement Trap: How America Is Failing Millions of High- Achieving Students from Lower-Income Families (Washington, D.C.: Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, 2006), http://www.issuelab.org/resource/achievement_trap_how_america_is_failing_millions_of_high- achieving_students_from_lowerincome_families Jennifer Booher-Jennings, Below the Bubble: “Educational Triage” and the Texas Accountability System (New York, NY: Columbia University, 2005), http://aer.sagepub.com/content/42/2/231.short.

Recommended Indicators and Weights Indicator K-8 High School Achievement index 0-25 percent 0-25 percent Growth for all students ≥ 50 percent ≥ 25 percent Growth for subgroups 10-20 percent 10-20 percent ELL progress Variable Variable Graduation N/A ≤ 25 percent School quality 10-15 percent 15-20 percent

Other indicators that focus on high-achievers AP/IB achievement (e.g., number of students scoring 3 or higher on AP or 4 or higher on IB) Dual enrollment credits w/ quality control (i.e., credits accepted by state universities) Performance on college entry exams such as SAT, ACT, and ACCUPLACER Performance in SAT subject tests How should we use accountability to promote equity? X Proficiency rates X Growth-to-proficiency models X Base most of schools’ grades on growth for low-achievers ✔ Base 10-20 percent of a school’s rating on growth for students who are low-performing relative to an external benchmark (e.g., below proficient students) and/or students who belong to a traditionally underserved subgroup Slow Progress - 15 of the 17 states that submitted ESSA plans indicated that they will assign summative ratings to schools. - On average, these 15 states plan to base 56 percent of a school’s rating on either a performance index or growth for all students – both measures that give schools an incentive to pay attention to all of their students. - In 2016, fourteen states (or 28 percent) used achievement indexes or average scale scores instead of proficiency rates. So far, seven of the 17 states that submitted ESSA plans (or 41 percent) plan to use one of these measures as their indicator of academic achievement. - In 2016, the average state based just 30 percent of its K-8 schools’ ratings on growth for all students. On average, the 15 states that have submitted ESSA plans so far plan to base 36 percent of their K-8 school ratings on growth for all students.

How states should redesign their accountability systems under ESSA By David Griffith and Mike Petrilli – November 10, 2016 We at the Fordham Institute have long held that there is no one best way to design a state accountability system. Still, we know that states are now putting pen to paper on their accountability plans and that many of them want advice about what to do. So here is our attempt to outline an ideal accountability system for states. Consistent with ESSA, our proposed accountability system rates schools based on a range of indicators. Indicators of Academic Achievement (10-25 percent of summative school ratings) In the average state, measures of academic achievement currently count for about half of schools’ summative ratings. However, because these measures are strongly correlated with student demographics and prior achievement, we believe they should count for at most a quarter of schools’ ratings going forward. Further, instead of using raw proficiency rates, which encourage schools to focus on the “bubble kids” (i.e., those just above or below the proficiency threshold) states should use average test scores or a “performance index.” Indicators of Student Growth (50-90 percent of K-8 school ratings, 40-80 percent of high school ratings) Because they are the best indicators of schools’ overall performance, measures that capture the academic growth of all students should count for at least half of elementary and middle schools’ ratings and at least 40 percent of high schools’ ratings. Currently, forty-five states estimate growth in English Language Arts and math at the K-8 level, and thirty-five do so in high school. Thus, assigning more weight to these measures is something most states could do right away. In the medium term, states should also continue to develop their capacity to estimate growth at the high school level, as well as in other core subjects such as science and social studies, which will allow them to weight growth even more heavily in the future. Because growth scores can be unstable, we encourage states to average over two years when calculating school grades. We also strongly urge states not to use “growth to proficiency” measures, as these encourage schools to ignore the needs of their high- achievers (and are poor indicators of school quality). Similarly, we urge those states that base a portion of their grade on the progress of low-achieving students or other subgroups not to overdo it. In our view, at least three quarters of the weight states assign to growth should be based on growth for all students. Indicators of Progress toward English Language Proficiency (Variable) We will leave the debates over how to best serve English Language Learners to those with expertise in this area. However, common sense suggests that the weight assigned to ELL measures should vary based on the percentage of a school’s students who are classified as ELL. High School Graduation (10-25 percent) Though we don’t have strong opinions about how states measure graduation, it’s important that they don’t assign too much weight to this indicator, lest they encourage schools to lower their standards for earning a diploma. In our view, basing 10-25 percent of high schools’ ratings on some combination of 4- and 5-year graduation rates is a reasonable approach. Indicators of Student Success or School Quality (10-20 percent) There is broad agreement that states’ current accountability systems are unfortunately dependent on standardized tests that cannot capture all the skills that students need to acquire, and that have sometimes encouraged teachers to engage in harmful “test prep.” Yet many of the alternatives to testing that have been