Study Flags Drawbacks in Growth Models for AYP (US)
April 1, 2011
Amid battles over teacher quality and school restructuring, there’s one thing everyone seems to want in the next version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: an accountability system that measures student growth.
Yet the results of the U.S. Department of Education’s growth-model pilot program, whose final evaluation was released earlier this year, suggest lawmakers may have to do some heavy lifting to include growth in accountability. Not only do state growth models vary considerably, but they also play out in ways that can run counter to the aims of providing greater transparency and better accountability for all students, not just those “on the bubble,” or just below passing rates for their state exams.
“It seems to me there is a serious disconnect between the rhetoric supporting growth models and the incentives and structures they end up creating,” said Andrew D. Ho, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the federal growth-model pilot program evaluation.
Daria Hall, the director of K-12 policy development for the Education Trust, a Washington research and advocacy group, and one of the original peer reviewers for state growth-model proposals, agreed that some of the rhetoric in favor the concept has not been supported by the data.
“While there are certainly students who are not proficient but are making big learning gains, there’s not nearly enough of them and not nearly as many as folks hoped or assumed that there were,” Ms. Hall said, “and that’s a real problem.”
Department’s Plan
More than half of states are already using or developing their own growth models, and incorporating growth into the next federal accountability system has become one of the most often-requested changes to the ESEA, whose current edition, the No Child Left Behind Act, was signed into law in 2002. Proposals to use growth models have the support of 15 national education organizations, including groups representing state schools chiefs, legislatures, governors, and school boards, as well as the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
Growth-based accountability is also a centerpiece of the Education Department’s vision for the ESEA reauthorization. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told House education committee members at a hearing last month: “[W]e mean a system of accountability based on individual student growth—one that recognizes and rewards success and holds us all accountable for the quality of education we provide to every single student in America.”
“This is a sea change from the current law—which simply allows every state to set an arbitrary bar for proficiency—and measures only whether students are above or below the bar,” he added.
Growth models have gained popularity because supporters say they provide that more nuanced picture of how students are progressing academically and what schools contribute to their learning.
“Simply counting the percent proficient is not a very good way to evaluate a school,” said Peter G. Goldschmidt, a senior researcher at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of Cali fornia Los Angeles, who has studied growth models. “You want to see how schools are facilitating learning, for which you need to look at individual kids.”
Former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings started allowing states to experiment with growth models in 2005, via a pilot initially limited to 10 states. Each state had to tie growth to the existing annual proficiency targets for math and reading under NCLB, rather than setting different expectations for students based on their backgrounds or their schools’ characteristics.
Ohio an Outlier
The Education Department evaluated only the states in the original pilot: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and T