Ensuring Fairer and Better Tests Under Title I - A The first proposed regulation focuses on ensuring states continue to administer tests that are fair
measures of student achievement for all students, with particular focus on ensuring states appropriately capture and measure the progress of English Learners and students with disabilities.
Not exact matches
«Two days
of testing is a natural next step, as long as the assessments continue to cover the material needed to truly
measure every
student's strengths and challenges, and the changes are implemented carefully and with the input
of educators and communities,» High
Achievement New York, which advocates
for higher standards, said in a statement.
Union - appointed experts reviewed exam items released last year and concluded that the great majority were valid
measures of student achievement and age - appropriate
for those tested.
The new evaluation system will provide clear standards and significant guidance to local school districts
for implementation
of teacher evaluations based on multiple
measures of performance including
student achievement and rigorous classroom observations.
«If we're saying that the only thing that's a valid
measure of student achievement is a test score, versus all the other work they do, it's going to be a sad day
for the
students of New York state,» Mulgrew said.
Choi, Christine Lippard, an assistant professor
of human development and family studies at Iowa State; and Shinyoung Jeon, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University
of Oklahoma - Tulsa, analyzed data
measuring inhibitory control (the ability to pay attention and control natural, but unnecessary thoughts or behaviors) and math
achievement for low - income
students in Head Start through kindergarten.
Indeed, the whole point
of «value - added»
measures is to control
for observed traits such as
students» prior
achievement and characteristics.
A teacher's contribution to a school's community, as assessed by the principal, was worth 10 percent
of the overall evaluation score, while the final 5 percent was based on a
measure of the value - added to
student achievement for the school as a whole.
States can accomplish this by
measuring achievement via average scale scores or a performance index, and by giving substantial weight to a
measure of academic growth
for all
students from one year to the next.
This multiple -
measures system boosts performance among teachers most immediately facing consequences
for their ratings, and promotes higher rates
of turnover among the lowest - performing teachers, with positive consequences
for student achievement.
They suggested that, rather than
measuring academic
achievement based on proficiency rates alone, states should either look at scale scores or some sort
of an index providing partial credit
for getting
students to a basic level (and additional credit
for getting
students to an advanced one).
We conducted our analysis alternately using absolute
student achievement,
measured with statewide mean SAT scores
for the 1989 — 90 school year and the mean high - school dropout rate calculated from 1990 census data, and with a second
measure that represents the deviation
of actual
achievement from expected
student performance.
Kamras: A quality teacher, in my view, is someone who: 1) knows his / her subject matter with great proficiency; 2) has the demonstrated capacity — as
measured by quantifiable
student achievement — to share that knowledge with children; 3) holds all children, regardless
of background, to the highest
of standards
of excellence; 4) leads by taking full responsibility
for his / her
students»
achievement; and 5) inspires
students to pursue dreams they never imagined.
As regular readers know, I'm a big proponent
of individual - level growth
measures because they can largely control
for factors that schools can not influence (prior
student achievement, the challenges
of poverty, etc.).
Assessment is,
of course, a vital part
of education, but the stakes attached to these tests are way out
of balance when such a limited and imperfect
measure of achievement counts
for more than all the assessments
of all the
students» teachers,» says Orfield.
There was an organization called the National Board
for Professional Teaching Standards, where a teacher could submit videos, but there was actually a hesitance to include
student achievement in any
of those
measures,
for many reasons, many
of them ideological.
For example, if you have volunteers who lead reading groups, you can measure student achievement from the beginning of the school year to the next or set a goal for each student; that is, students will increase reading vocabulary by 25 perce
For example, if you have volunteers who lead reading groups, you can
measure student achievement from the beginning
of the school year to the next or set a goal
for each student; that is, students will increase reading vocabulary by 25 perce
for each
student; that is,
students will increase reading vocabulary by 25 percent.
Moreover, it is a direct
measure of what policymakers want in teacher quality, not a proxy
for student achievement fashioned by education's internal stakeholders.
To test the sensitivity
of our results to this methodological decision, we constructed a value - added indicator that
measures a teacher's contribution to
student achievement (accounting
for a wide variety
of student and classroom characteristics that could affect
achievement independent
of the teacher's ability).
Teachers should be rewarded
for producing useful
student outcomes, most notably,
student learning gains,
measured by value - added standards (i.e., improvement) rather than by levels
of achievement at the end
of a course.
Given a large data set, I also was able to account
for characteristics
of schools that I could not directly
measure but that might influence
student achievement over the school year.
Nevertheless, there is still a story to be told, and the essential part
of it is that the program that education reformers have tried to promote now
for decades — introduce more choices
of schools
for students, enable competition among schools, open up paths
for preparing teachers and administrators outside schools
of education, improve
measures of student achievement and teacher competence, enable administrators to act on the basis
of such
measures, and limit the power
of teachers unions — has been advanced under the Obama administration, in the judgment
of authors Maranto and McShane.
Evaluations
of any educational technology program often confront a number
of methodological problems, including the need
for measures other than standardized
achievement tests, differences among
students in the opportunity to learn, and differences in starting points and program implementation.
We also conducted a more sophisticated analysis that
measures the relationship between a family's demographic characteristics (such as eligibility
for free - or reduced - price lunch, median household income
of the
student's residential neighborhood, race, and
student prior
achievement level), a school's poverty level, and the likelihood that the parent makes a request.
The school characteristics include whether it is in an urban area, grade level (e.g., high school), the number
of students enrolled,
student - teacher ratio, the percentage
of students who are eligible
for the free or reduced - price lunch program, the percentage
of minority
students, and
measures of student achievement in reading and math.
However, recall that the principals» survey responses allowed us to construct separate
measures of two distinct aspects
of teacher quality: the ability to improve
student achievement and the ability to provide an enjoyable classroom experience
for students.
Michigan's high school
achievement test, in place since 1978, could be on its way out to make way
for a set
of new tests that would
measure students» college readiness.
In tackling this task, Feinberg says, they «backed into» the five essential tenets
of the KIPP model: High Expectations (
for academic
achievement and conduct); Choice and Commitment (KIPP
students, parents, and teachers all sign a learning pledge, promising to devote the time and effort needed to succeed); More Time (extended school day, week, and year); Power to Lead (school leaders have significant autonomy, including control over their budget, personnel, and culture); and Focus on Results (scores on standardized tests and other objective
measures are coupled with a focus on character development).
We do not find any statistically significant relationship between the number
of years a teacher has taught and
students»
achievement, though this is probably due to the necessary omission
of first - year teachers (because we can not
measure their value added
for a previous school year).
We excluded kindergarten and first - grade teachers because earlier
achievement exams were not available
for their
students; this prevented us from developing a «value - added»
measure of student learning.
This interpretation
of the law requires a minimum
of 8 different indicators (math
achievement scores, reading
achievement scores, another academic indicator, and a school quality or
student success indicator, plus participation rate
for each
of these four
measures).
But
for Core proponents, the timing couldn't be worse: Just as states began implementing the new standards, 40 states receiving No Child waivers are also launching new systems to evaluate teachers, which will incorporate some
measures of student achievement, including, where available, scores from standardized tests.
The discipline
of market economics supposedly will force
for - profit schools to streamline their bureaucracies, retain and reward highly talented administrators and teachers, and raise
student achievement on a variety
of measures.
We find a positive correlation between a principal's assessment
of how effective a teacher is at raising
student achievement and that teacher's success in doing so as
measured by the value - added approach: 0.32
for reading and 0.36
for math.
One key weakness
of the
student achievement — gain
measure is the limited number
of grades and subjects
for which assessment data are currently available.
The use
of gain scores also minimizes the incentives
for classifying a nondisabled
student as disabled, since such scores
measure individual progress instead
of lowering the
achievement bar.
The next round must get to
measuring teacher effectiveness based on
student achievement, promoting professional development that is based on research and effective practice and improves performance, providing incentives
for teachers who are effective, and requiring removal
of teachers who, even with solid professional development, can't or don't improve.
For a better sense
of the magnitude
of these estimates, consider a
student who begins the year at the 50th percentile and is assigned to a top - quartile teacher as
measured by the Overall Classroom Practices score; by the end
of the school year, that
student, on average, will score about three percentile points higher in reading and about two points higher in math than a peer who began the year at the same
achievement level but was assigned to a bottom - quartile teacher.
A handful
of school districts and states — including Dallas, Houston, Denver, New York, and Washington, D.C. — have begun using
student achievement gains as indicated by annual test scores (adjusted
for prior
achievement and other
student characteristics) as a direct
measure of individual teacher performance.
Demanding accountability
for results and
measuring achievement with the Texas Assessment
of Academic Skills (TAAS), a criterion - referenced assessment — actually, a rather blunt instrument — has spurred significant improvement in
student achievement.
As an example
of the limitation
of this
measure, note that the United States is coded as a country where teacher salaries can be adjusted
for outstanding performance in teaching on the grounds that salary adjustments are possible
for achieving the National Board
for Professional Teaching Standards certification or
for increases in
student achievement test scores.
In most industrialized countries — nearly all
of which outperform us on
measures of academic
achievement, such as PISA and TIMSS —
students begin preparing
for a career while still in high school.
Although comparable
measures of the rate
of student learning are not available
for Chile, researchers studying the Chilean school system typically consider a difference in
student achievement of 10 percent
of one standard deviation to be a small to moderate effect.
As a result, simple comparisons
of student outcomes in municipal, stand - alone, and network schools might give misleading estimates
of the impact
of schools on
student achievement, even after adjusting
for the
measured characteristics
of the
students who attend each type
of school.
These data provide us with information on
achievement, as
measured by the Iowa Tests
of Basic Skills (ITBS), before
students applied and, even more crucially, with post-application
achievement data
for students who remained in Chicago's regular public schools.
I'm going to focus on the final two posts, in which Greene argues that
student achievement tests are poor proxies
for school quality and that they're not correlated with other
measures of quality.
A simple cost calculation gives the improvements in
student achievement (
measured again in standard deviations) that could, by the Picus and Odden estimates
of benefits, be expected
for a $ 100 addition to spending per pupil from each
of the separate programs.
At the same time, demand
for good charter schools has swelled, as the best
of them have notched remarkable success on
measures of student achievement.
Teachers» unions are strongly against these plans
for a variety
of reasons, including that they say it's nearly impossible to accurately
measure an individual teacher's contribution to a
student's success, since a child's
achievement is cumulative over a period
of years and the result
of the efforts
of many people.
The actual number
of longitudinal or quasi-longitudinal studies that controlled
for students» backgrounds and used
student achievement as the
measure of whether teacher preparation made a difference was far fewer.