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November 13, 2007
Growth Models: A Silver Bullet?BoardBuzz has heard from a lot of hard working educators and school board members that growth models need to be incorporated into NCLB version 2.0 so schools are given the credit they deserve for increasing student achievement. BoardBuzz certainly agrees, but is including a measure of student growth a silver bullet to cure all of NCLB's ills?
If you have been following the recent developments up in the Big Apple, the answer surely seems to be a resounding NO. The New York Times had two articles (read here and here) this past week on the fallout of New York City's new school accountability system which included a growth measure. So what is all the fuss about? Well, since the growth measure accounts for more than half (55 percent) of each school's accountability grade (schools are graded A through F) many schools with already "high performing" students with impeccable reputations received grades lower than schools with lower performing students who were making greater gains with their students. This did not sit well with many parents from the "high performing" schools or parents from many of the schools receiving D and F's for that matter.
So what went wrong? If New York officials were able to read the Center for Public Education's report released today—Growth Models: A guide for informed decision making—maybe the fallout could've been avoided. The report points out several important issues policymakers, such as those in New York City, need to take into consideration when implementing a growth model. Although BoardBuzz is an NYC outsider, it does not appear that city officials took into consideration one key element the Center's report points out—one that is often overlooked when implementing a growth model—provide professional development.
According to the report, professional development is needed to inform teachers, administrators, and parents to what exactly is being measured and how the data should be used, because if those who are affected by the growth model don’t understand it, then they won't accept its results. After reading the New York Times articles, it appears this was the case in NYC. Parents and educators seemed confused about how some schools were graded higher than others, since it is hard to understand how the grades were calculated.
This is a lesson federal policymakers should take heed of before they include a growth model in NCLB's reauthorization. Just throwing a growth model into the new law won't magically make NCLB better, just as a doctor simply diagnosing an illness won't make a patient better. As the Center's report points out, there is no "one" growth model, and federal policymakers should give states the flexibility needed to develop growth models that meet the goals of NCLB and enable them to develop growth models that fit their needs and resources.
Although including a growth model in NCLB 2.0 is certainly a step in the right direction, it needs to be done correctly. Policymakers, educators, parents and even the media should check out the Center for Public Education's Growth Models: A guide for informed decision making to learn more about the different types of growth models, what is needed to implement a growth model, and how growth model data should be used.
Posted November 13, 2007 10:35 AM | Advocacy & Legislation
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Comments(2)
Posted by: Michael Martin on November 13, 2007 6:13 PM
Growth models are important, but the fallacy here is using them to compare schools. Schools that have children who lack the basics, typically because of deprived childhoods before entering school, need to have a focus on reading and math in order to allow them to participate fully in society. But for children who have mastered basic reading and math we should be offering them a broader education that would enrich their understanding of the world around them.
As a consequence, the growth model fails to account for the fact that a well rounded curriculum contains more than just reading and math. If affluent schools show the same growth as less affluent schools then they are cheating their students out of a full life in the future.
Posted by: Nancy Doorey on November 14, 2007 3:46 PM
As a school board member in a diverse district, I originally had great hope that growth models would help us recognize and celebrate schools that are putting low-performing students on track toward proficiency, thereby helping us attract and retain effective teachers in these schools. However, in all nine states now using them, growth models have made little to no difference in school ratings. Why not? We recently completed a study which found that the NCLB grade-level tests simply are not sensitive measures of the growth of below-grade-level students (OK - shouldn't have been too surprising). When we substituted an adaptive test to see which students were "on the path to proficiency", more than twice as many mid- to high-poverty schools made AYP. We need Congress to allow the use of adaptive tests for NCLB. Federal bill HR3979 has been introduced to do this. The study can be found at www.rodelfoundationde.org .
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