EduGuru

Grade Levels Assessed.

With the changes in the Executive Branch, NCLB will change, but how?  The Eduguru is continuing a series of blogs on the problems opponents have had with NCLB and what they might or should do about them now.

The fifth is expensive:  Grade Levels Assessed.

What if we add more grade levels to the accountability system?  Some grade levels (e.g., PK-2, 11-12) are not formally assessed for inclusion in AYP.  Some sort of measurement is required, especially for schools with only these unassessed grade levels.  Adding appropriate assessments statewide would be expensive.  Continuing to leave them out makes for a spotty accountability system.  This is especially true where student performance is being linked to teachers for pay-for-performance or annual evaluation.

Alternative measures are available, but typically are even more expensive, unreliable, and difficult to quantify (e.g., teacher ratings of students, individual reading inventories, performance measures graded by the teacher).  Eva Baker, past AERA President, has recommended a new generation of performance measures that will take years to develop, validate, and standardize.  States could merely be tasked with the obligation to figure this all out.

Growth measure advocates require multiple years of preferably adjacent grade level testing for their calculations.  If growth can’t be measured until the end of grade 4 or after grade 10, then the two spans that get the most attention in the research are missing.

The Eduguru speaks:  The NAEP-sayers must admit their omnipotent assessment falls short here also.  Will on-line assessments arrive in time to solve this dilemma?

Proficiency Across States.

With the changes in the Executive Branch, NCLB will change, but how?  The Eduguru is continuing a series of blogs on the problems opponents have had with NCLB and what they might or should do about them now.

The fourth is politimetrics:  Proficiency across states.

The contrasts in definition of proficiency across the states has been one of the most fascinating aspects of NCLB.  States rights advocates applaud allowing each state to adopt its own standard.  Of course, NAEP is the only practical and available basis for judging relative difficulty of proficiency cut points.

Proficiency will be defined more normatively—across states—possibly demanding an alignment with NAEP.  This is not as difficult to pass as you might expect considering that many of the states that have the lowest standards for proficiency and the lowest NAEP scores voted Republican.

Debates have raged for decades as districts and states adopted their own tests called minimum skills, basic skills, essential skills, grade-level skills, exit-level skills, and many other terms to designate that what’s measured is somewhere between the lowest level acceptable or a high standard for excellence.  NCLB created proficient as the goal, expecting it to be a high standard but not requiring it to be as high as NAEP.

Politimetrics, the combining of psychometrics and politics to make decisions, will determine the definition of proficiency and how it’s aligned across states.  Look for this to be one of the liveliest debates.  One current strategy of some, following NCLB but having local or state accountability ratings as well, will get more difficult to defend.  As NCLB softens up in other areas, this proficiency issue may get more controversial.  No state can publicly adopt a local proficiency standard that is below the Federal standard.  Having one that’s different in how it’s calculated or what it includes is fine, but expecting less of our proficient children is not going to work.

The Eduguru speaks:  What if NAEP became the standard, but NAEP’s Basic Level became the criterion?  Then states can be encouraged to adopt standards higher than basic—if they want.

100% in 2014.

With the changes in the Executive Branch, NCLB will change, but how?  The Eduguru is continuing a series of blogs on the problems opponents have had with NCLB and what they might or should do about them now.

The third is an easy one:  100% in 2014.

No one believed this goal would be reached, but it did set a long-term target that influenced annual objectives.  Besides, how do you argue against wanting every student to succeed?  Which ones are we willing to leave behind?

Look for Congress, the states, or the Education Secretary to make these changes.

1. Proficiency will be defined more normatively—across states—possibly demanding an alignment with NAEP.  This is not as difficult to pass as you might expect considering that many of the states that have the lowest standards for proficiency and the lowest NAEP scores voted Republican.

2. Growth will become the new controlling factor.  The indication that standards are falling would be that growth is no longer defined as being on pace for proficiency by the end of n years.  If any measurable, reliable growth becomes acceptable, then the barn door will be opened.

3. An IEP for special education or English language learners may trump test scores as the measure of growth.

4. Full academic year will be replaced by a longer term to reduce the number of low performers in the mix and to allow for them to recover using growth.  Look for a two-year term to be used to determine which students are included in AYP.

5. The Education Secretary may adopt a national standard for small subgroups to level that issue.  Look for the subgroup size to be 30 or above, or to be based upon confidence intervals that might require even larger groups.  (This is for AYP, not for reporting descriptive statistics for annual public report cards.)

6. Will subgroups survive as a disaggregation criterion?  Look for alternatives such as majority/minority.  Keep in mind that the new President fits into multiple race categories.  Maybe race goes away and is replaced by income.  Now that would be consistent with campaign talk.

7. Reporting 100%?  Congress may want to clean up the FERPA conundrum of not allowing reporting of 100% categories, unless new guidance is deemed sufficient.

8. Requiring 100%?  Very difficult to keep.  Very difficult to abandon.  100% can be kept as a distant target (some states already do this)—one that continues to move out into the distance as we approach it.  Like a mirage that disappears when you approach and reappears farther down the road.  Look for a 5 to 10 year horizon for 100% instead of a specific year—if 100% survives at all.

The Eduguru speaks:  I’m 100% certain there will be multiple changes, the combined impact of which will not be known for years.  Unless…Congress could authorize some impact studies for rule changes—after all, the states have longitudinal data now with which to test the proposed changes.