[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ESEA REAUTHORIZATION: OPTIONS FOR IMPROVING NCLB'S MEASURES OF PROGRESS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION AND LABOR
U.S. House of Representatives
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 21, 2007
__________
Serial No. 110-11
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor
Available on the Internet:
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COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR
GEORGE MILLER, California, Chairman
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan, Vice Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon,
Chairman California,
Donald M. Payne, New Jersey Ranking Minority Member
Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin
Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, Virginia Peter Hoekstra, Michigan
Lynn C. Woolsey, California Michael N. Castle, Delaware
Ruben Hinojosa, Texas Mark E. Souder, Indiana
Carolyn McCarthy, New York Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan
John F. Tierney, Massachusetts Judy Biggert, Illinois
Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania
David Wu, Oregon Ric Keller, Florida
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Joe Wilson, South Carolina
Susan A. Davis, California John Kline, Minnesota
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Bob Inglis, South Carolina
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington
Timothy H. Bishop, New York Kenny Marchant, Texas
Linda T. Sanchez, California Tom Price, Georgia
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Luis G. Fortuno, Puerto Rico
Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania Charles W. Boustany, Jr.,
David Loebsack, Iowa Louisiana
Mazie Hirono, Hawaii Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania John R. ``Randy'' Kuhl, Jr., New
John A. Yarmuth, Kentucky York
Phil Hare, Illinois Rob Bishop, Utah
Yvette D. Clarke, New York David Davis, Tennessee
Joe Courtney, Connecticut Timothy Walberg, Michigan
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director
Vic Klatt, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on March 21, 2007................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Altmire, Hon. Jason, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of............... 66
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck,'' Senior Republican Member,
Committee on Education and Labor........................... 3
Miller, Hon. George, Chairman, Committee on Education and
Labor...................................................... 1
Statement of Witnesses:
Doran, Harold C., senior research scientist, American
Institutes for Research.................................... 30
Prepared statement of.................................... 32
Dougherty, Chrys, Ph.D, director of research, National Center
for Educational Accountability............................. 19
Prepared statement of.................................... 21
McWalters, Peter, Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary
Education, State of Rhode Island........................... 26
Prepared statement of.................................... 28
Olson, Allan, co-founder and chief academic officer,
Northwest Evaluation Association........................... 5
Prepared statement of.................................... 7
Woodruff, Valerie, Secretary of Education, State of Delaware. 16
Prepared statement of.................................... 18
Additional Materials Submitted by Chairman Miller:
Darling-Hammond, Linda, Charles E. Ducommun professor,
Stanford University School of Education, prepared statement
of......................................................... 66
National School Boards Association (NSBA) letter............. 75
ESEA REAUTHORIZATION: OPTIONS FOR IMPROVING NCLB'S MEASURES OF PROGRESS
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Education and Labor
Washington, DC
----------
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:28 a.m., in room
2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. George Miller
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Miller, Kildee, Payne, Hinojosa,
Tierney, Kucinich, Wu, Holt, Davis of California, Sarbanes,
Sestak, Loebsack, Hirono, Yarmuth, Hare, Courtney, Shea-Porter,
McKeon, Petri, Castle, Souder, Ehlers, Platts, Keller, Fortuno,
Boustany, Kuhl, and Heller.
Staff present: Aaron Albright, Press Secretary; Tylease
Alli, Hearing Clerk; Alice Cain, Senior Education Policy
Advisor (K-12); Fran-Victoria Cox, Documents Clerk; Adrienne
Dunbar, Legislative Fellow, Education; Amy Elverum, Legislative
Fellow, Education; Denise Forte, Director of Education Policy;
Gabriella Gomez, Senior Education Policy Advisor (Higher
Education); Lloyd Horwich, Policy Advisor for Subcommittee on
Early Childhood, Elementary and Secretary Education; Lamont
Ivey, Staff Assistant, Education; Brian Kennedy, General
Counsel; Ann-Frances Lambert, Administrative Assistant to
Director of Education Policy; Ricardo Martinez, Policy Advisor
for Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning and
Competitiveness; Stephanie Moore, General Counsel; Jill
Morningstar, Education Policy Advisor; Joe Novotny, Chief
Clerk; Lisette Partelow, Staff Assistant, Education; Rachel
Racusen, Deputy Communications Director; Theda Zawaiza, Senior
Disability Policy Advisor; Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director;
James Bergeron, Counselor to the Chairman; Robert Borden,
General Counsel; Kathryn Bruns, Legislative Assistant; Steve
Forde, Communications Director; Jessica Gross, Deputy Press
Secretary; Taylor Hansen, Legislative Assistant; Chad Miller,
Professional Staff; Susan Ross, Director of Education and Human
Resources Policy; and Linda Stevens, Chief Clerk/Assistant to
the General Counsel.
Chairman Miller [presiding]. Good morning. The Committee on
Education and Labor will come to order.
Today's hearing will shed light on one of the most
important decisions we face in reviewing the No Child Left
Behind law: whether or not to reform the current definition of
adequate yearly progress. I can think of no question more
central to the reauthorization and goals of the law.
As one of the original authors of No Child Left Behind, I
am often asked how I would like to see the law changed. The
short answer is that I would like to see us be responsive to
legitimate concerns while maintaining the core values of the
law, providing an equal opportunity and an excellent education
to every child, regardless of their race, their family income
or disability.
I recognize that there are some legitimate concerns with
the current accountability system. And today we have the
opportunity to focus on two concerns that have been central to
this discussion on reauthorization: One, will a growth model
system offer real accountability for student achievement? And,
two, are there other credible and reliable academic indicators
in addition to standardized tests that can offer an accurate
picture of student achievement?
With the system that we have currently, what is commonly
known as the status model, we know there are some schools where
students are making real progress and yet these schools are
still not making AYP. Under the current system, a gain or loss
in the percentage of students who are proficient could be a
result of factors largely outside the school.
At the joint hearings we held in this room last week with
members of the House and Senate Education Committees, every
organization who testified proposed growth models as the
solution to these challenges. Today we will have the
opportunity to examine whether growth models are the answer
schools and states are seeking.
The second focus of today's hearing has also generated much
debate. And that is the concern that a single standardized test
is too blunt an instrument to fairly and effectively measure
school progress. We have heard from many in the civil rights,
education and research communities who acknowledge that using
one standardized test to compare students against a single set
of high standards is essential to closing the achievement gap.
They have also expressed valid concerns that that single
test may not be able to tell us all we need to know about what
students and schools can do. Having the most accurate
information on student progress is critical to closing the
achievement gap. And looking at other evidence in addition to
state tests may be the way to obtain a more complete view of a
child's true progress.
Further, including indicators such as graduation rates and
advanced course taking may incentivize progress in closing the
debilitating achievement gaps in those critical areas. Today we
will hear from leading experts and practitioners on these two
complex accountability issues: growth models and multiple
indicators.
I look forward to their testimony and ask them to keep in
mind three questions as we look for their help in these areas.
First, are growth models and multiple indicators of
performance consistent with No Child Left Behind's goal of
ensuring that all children can read and do math at grade level
by 2014?
Second, do states have the capacity they need to ensure
that information gathered to determine whether a school or
district has made adequate progress is both valid and reliable?
Third, do these approaches appropriately credit improving
schools, or do they overstate academic progress? In other
words, are they a step forward in offering a fairer, more
reliable means of accountability, or are they a step backward,
simply another loophole that hinders accountability?
Our collective goal in reauthorizing No Child Left Behind
should be to look to those changes that improve the integrity
of the act and move us forward toward the stated goal of the
act, to provide opportunity and an excellent education to every
child.
I want to thank the witnesses in advance for their
testimony.
And I would like now to yield to the senior Republican on
the committee, Mr. McKeon, for his opening statement.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this
hearing as part of the series of hearings on No Child Left
Behind we launched a week ago.
Though last week's discussion provided a broad overview of
our reauthorization effort and gathered input from both the
House and the Senate, I believe today's hearing and the others
to follow will serve an even more important purpose as they
delve into the real challenges at the heart of NCLB.
Today we begin with an examination of options for improving
NCLB's measure of progress. And I thank our panel of witnesses
for joining us for this examination.
Adequate yearly progress is a benchmark that makes NCLB
different from other education laws that came before it. It is
the measure that tells all of us legislators, parents,
teachers, administrators, and taxpayers exactly how a school is
doing in educating students from one grade level to the next.
And for that reason, it is vital that the concept remains in
place.
However, as we approach this year's reauthorization, it is
important that we are open minded to tweaks in the law that
could make it more practical while ensuring that the underlying
principle of accountability remains consistent. And that is
where growth models enter into this discussion.
Under current No Child Left Behind guidelines, school
districts use a status model to compare the performance of
students in a specific grade against the performance of the
students of that same grade during the previous year. Some have
raised concerns about the reliability of the status model. They
argue that a model which compares the achievement of the same
students over time within a growth model may be more
appropriate and act as a more accurate measure of adequate
yearly progress.
As we review the Department of Education's growth model
pilot programs as well as last year's Government Accountability
Office report on the implementation of growth models to
determine if schools in certain states were making adequate
yearly progress under No Child Left Behind, I believe that
growth models can play an important role in this
reauthorization. However, these growth models must be well-
designed. They must be rigorous. And they must meet a number of
criteria that are consistent and central to NCLB.
For example, they must include the requirements that all
students reach proficiency, that the gaps between groups of
students continue to close, and the growth model is tracked as
part of a state data system and that a state's assessment
system must produce comparable results from grade to grade and
year to year.
With that being said, members of this committee know as
well as anyone that the reliability and utility of growth
models is the focus of an ongoing debate. So I think we all can
comfortably say today that we are not necessarily here to
wholeheartedly embrace the concept nor dismiss it out of hand.
Instead, we are simply here to listen and to learn. I am
looking forward to this hearing and the additional hearings we
will be having in this series.
And again, I thank the witnesses and look forward to their
testimony.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
With that, we will begin with the witnesses.
Our first witness will be Allan Olson, who is the co-
founder and chief academic officer of the Northwest Evaluation
Association. Northwest Evaluation Association is a non-profit
organization that provides research, support and technical
assistance to 2,400 partnering school districts and education
agencies throughout the United States. Dr. Olson has led the
Northwest Evaluation Association in its efforts to build the
largest nationwide database in longitudinal student test
results.
Valerie Woodruff is the secretary of education from the
Delaware Department--excuse me. I think our colleague wanted to
introduce----
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is a great pleasure for me to introduce Delaware's
secretary of education, Valerie Woodruff. Val has been
secretary since July of 1999, prior to which she served as the
associate secretary for curriculum and instructional
improvement for Delaware. Her career is rooted in education.
And she has been a teacher, counselor, assistant principal and
principal in high schools in both Maryland and Delaware.
As secretary, Val has led the implementation of Delaware's
accountability system as well as implementation of No Child
Left Behind. I appreciate Val's commitment to raising student
achievement, the importance of high-quality teachers and school
leaders and the belief that all children deserve an excellent
educational experience.
Val is the Delaware representative on the Southern Regional
Education Board, serves on the executive committee of SREB and
is the first K through 12 educator to serve as vice chair. She
has also served on the Board of the Council of Chief State
School Officers and was the president of the Chief State School
Officers from November of 2005 through November of 2006.
We are lucky to have her in Delaware. And don't try to take
her away.
I yield back.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
Welcome, Secretary Woodruff.
Dr. Chrys Dougherty is the associate director of Research
National Center for Educational Accountability. Dr. Dougherty
is the director of this center and has authored the ``Parents
Guide to Asking the Right Questions about School'' and has
written extensively on the value of longitudinal data and the
10 essential elements of statewide student information systems.
He has been an elementary school science teacher in
Oakland, California, is a professor of statistics,
econometrics--ergonomics is what we fight over in the labor
side of this committee.
Mr. Dougherty. Yes, econometrics.
Chairman Miller. Econometrics. Yes. You are the guys? They
are always quoting you guys about this and that. Okay--and
education policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
Peter McWalters is commissioner of the Rhode Island
Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Prior to
becoming Rhode Island's commissioner, he served over 20 years
in a variety of educational leadership and teaching positions,
including the superintendent of schools in the city school
district of Rochester, New York.
Dr. Harold Doran is the senior research scientist, American
Institutes for Research, where he supports the development of
state testing and accountability systems as an applied
statistician and psychometrician. And he is currently a member
of Secretary Spellings' peer review panel for state growth
models. He has been an elementary school principal and a
classroom teacher.
Welcome to all of you, and thank you for your contributions
this morning.
Mr. Olson, we are going to begin with you.
There will be a light in front of you. The green lights
will go on when you start your testimony. There will be a
yellow light that suggests you should start wrapping up in the
next minute or so, and then a red light when your time has run
out.
But we will obviously allow you to finish a thought and a
sentence and maybe even a paragraph. There you go.
STATEMENT OF ALLAN L. OLSON, CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF ACADEMIC
OFFICER, NORTHWEST EVALUATION ASSOCIATION
Mr. Olson. If it is brief.
Chairman Miller, Ranking Minority Member McKeon and members
of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify
before you.
Again, my name is Allan Olson. I am co-founder of an
organization called the Northwest Evaluation Association. The
Northwest Evaluation Association is a not-for-profit
organization. We provide testing services to school districts
around the nation and also have a very strong research staff.
So we do research in the field also.
We are currently providing very accurate measures,
assessments, and growth measures for approximately 3 million
children multiple times a year in 49 states. After 30 years of
experience in research, it is clear that NCLB could be
strengthened and more effective if states were allowed to and
encouraged to implement measures of student achievement that
were accurate enough to actually measure growth, actually
measure growth of the individual students. Okay?
So I am talking about student level and actually designed
specifically for determining change over time at the child
level. An accurate growth measure provides the best evidence of
a school's effectiveness. It also improves the assessment data
in ways that help students, teachers, parents, and others focus
learning and focus their efforts to improve learning over time.
In other words, a very good accurate measure and a growth
measure will inform many people within the education community
in manners that allow them to change their behaviors to become
increasingly effective. So a good growth measure is not only
probably the best accountability measure, it is also the best
possible way to improve our capacity to improve learning.
Today's computerized adaptive tests represent the most
common approach to meet these requirements. However, states
could develop other methodologies.
An accurate measure of each student's achievement is
reported on a cross-grade vertical measurement scale provides
the school and the state information about whether a student is
proficient, in other words, meets all the requirements inside
No Child Left Behind related to status capacity and information
about how far a student is below or above that standard, not
just information that the child is below or above, but actually
how far below or above, which also gives us a chance to
establish growth targets at the child level, growth targets
that would lead toward proficiency and/or growth targets that
would help children or focus on children who are well above the
standard at the time of the measure.
Allowing states to accurately measure growth of each child
strengthens all the foundation pieces of No Child Left Behind
while providing educators evidence that will inform improvement
of instruction and learning. So what we would be asking for is
states be allowed to have a system that increases the quality
and accuracy of information to inform the process's improvement
while putting in place an accountability measure as required by
No Child Left Behind.
As I mentioned before, growth measure is the best measure
of whether a school, a program, a district is being effective
in meeting the needs of its children. A growth measure that is
accurate enough to measure growth in an individual child also
helps a district know whether they are being effective with
children of differing characteristics, whether that is
ethnicity, whether it is gender, whether it is starting place
on a scale. It gives the school district information about how
effective they are with those children.
Accuracy is the center piece of a good growth measure. The
test requirements today that are in place, the tests the states
have in place today are quite accurate for children who happen
to be near the proficient line or happen to be in the middle of
a distribution. But by the nature of the design requirements
for tests, the tests that are in place will not be as accurate
for low-achieving children or will not be as accurate for high-
achieving children.
And if your measure isn't as accurate for low-or high-
achieving children, it will not be a best growth measure for
those children and will not provide the kind of information
that will lead to constant improvement focussed on those
children. A measure of that nature also will not be very
accurate for purposes of diagnostic reporting, which is one of
the requirements of No Child Left Behind. But states probably
are falling short of the intent of that particular provision in
the law. A good, accurate measure, a good, accurate growth
measure would allow states to respond in that manner.
I think in order to have a very good measure, it will be
important to remove the real tight constraints right now that
are in place, either intentionally or by the nature of the way
the law is being implemented, remove the constraints for a very
tight alignment to just grade level content standards with the
measure. Many children are functioning well below those content
standards. And we need to measure those children well.
The law calls for challenging all children. To challenge
all children, we must have a measure that is accurate for all
children and be able to set growth targets that are appropriate
for those children.
Thank you very much.
[The statement of Mr. Olson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Allan Olson, Co-Founder and Chief Academic
Officer, Northwest Evaluation Association
The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) is a not-for-profit
organization which partners with over 2,500 school districts to promote
student learning provides, precise and consistent growth assessment
testing services for over 3 million children in 49 states. For over 30
years, we have been providing assessments in key subjects in grades 2-
12, as well as detailed reports on student learning, and offering
training to help educators use data to improve practice. Our tests are
given multiple times per year in paper-and-pencil and computer-adaptive
formats and give educators, parents, students, and policymakers a clear
and comprehensive look at how much academic growth individual students
are making over time. This kind of data has been of great value to our
partner districts and has resulted in increases in the number of
children tested at a rate of over 50 per cent per year. NWEA's
mission--``partnering to help all kids learn''--also has lead us to
research educational policy and practice based on the extensive data in
our database and our experience with thousands of teachers and schools.
In the course of this research and working with our 2,500 partner
districts, it has become clear to us that in order to help students
learn more, we have to provide teachers with the information that they
need to be able to identify student strengths and deficiencies and to
better understand how far each child is from achieving proficiency.
This means that we have to measure accurately each student's current
achievement level to understand what a student knows and needs to know
next, and to track each student's growth over time to be sure that
young people are moving at a rate of growth that will help them become
proficient. We have to provide this information to the teacher as
quickly as possible, in a form that enables the teacher to make the
best instructional decisions for the students.
The aspect of this approach that is germane today is the
measurement and use of student growth information. What we mean by
growth measurement is using assessment to ``follow the child'' in order
to find the actual achievement level of the child and then to measure
it over time.
In this area, our organization has reached three conclusions, as
follows:
1. We will gain a much more complete and useful picture of the
performance of our schools if we include the growth of individual
students in our accountability systems.
2. Students must have growth targets that challenge them and that
lead them to the state's definition of proficiency in a set of skills
that will make them productive members of society when they graduate
from high school.
3. Teachers, principals, students, and parents must all have a
clear understanding of the amount of achievement growth that the
student must make each year to enable them to participate in the
student's growth.
Why is measuring individual achievement growth important?
As NCLB has been implemented, it has become increasingly obvious
that the way student achievement is measured currently does not begin
to tell us whether the school is doing a good job or a poor job
teaching the students that come through its doors. While there are many
reasons for this, the issue can be seen very clearly as follows:
Schools ``A'' and ``B'' have the same percentage of students
identified as ``proficient.'' Students in school B grew, on average,
twice as much as students in school A to achieve their proficiency.
Which school is doing a better job?
We believe that the answer is the school that is achieving greater
rate of progress in moving students towards proficiency. Promoting the
growth of individual students from one year to the next is the hallmark
of a successful school. This is especially true for students who are
below proficiency levels for a given grade and need to grow faster in
order to catch up. Providing teachers a measure of how much the student
must grow to get where the students needs to be also gives that teacher
a useful tool for addressing the learning needs of each individual
student.
Students come to school with different preparation, motivation, and
support resources. It is the job of every school to help every student
move forward regardless of his or her current achievement level. For
students with low achievement levels, the school needs to accelerate
growth, to help these students reach levels that will allow them to
compete when they graduate from school. For students with high
achievement levels, the school needs to keep them growing to keep them
engaged and to allow them to reach their full potential.
Research (Kingsbury and McCall, 2006) has clearly indicated that
schools vary greatly in the amount of growth that they cause in student
achievement. It is equally clear that student growth differs by grade
and demographic group within a school. Without information about
student growth, we cannot tell the full story of a school, and we
shouldn't try to judge whether the school is doing a good job or not.
Can we measure achievement growth of individual students?
It is clear that two components are needed to measure the
achievement growth of individual students. The first requirement is the
ability to measure students accurately to gain a deep understanding of
where their learning is. Current tests provide very little information
about students who are high performers and are well beyond their grade
level or low performers who are well behind grade level. To be able to
measure achievement for these students requires a measurement scale
that goes beyond grade-level testing and identifies what students know
across the many strands of knowledge that a student needs to know to be
identified as a proficient.
Let me illustrate the point. Consider, for example, a twelve year
old child (grade 6) performing two grade levels below his age level
(grade 4). If that child achieves a year and a half of growth for each
of the next two years, he will be in grade 8 and perform much like a
7th grade student. That is a huge success. However, if we only measure
the ``status'' of the child as to his age level, and not the growth, we
will conclude that the child is a failure and the school is failing him
even though he will have caught up a whole grade level. Further, we
won't be able to inform the teacher, the parents, or the child where
the student is truly performing so that they can craft a plan to reach
proficiency.
The tools are available to provide this kind of detailed
information. Growth measures have been in use for several decades.
Computerized adaptive testing (CAT: Weiss, 1982) was developed by
researchers with funding from the federal government in order to
provide a way to measure large, diverse groups of individuals
efficiently and accurately. An adaptive test allows us to measure the
performance of high-achieving and low-achieving students as accurately
as we measure the students in the middle of the distribution. Since its
development, adaptive testing has been used for a host of high-stakes
and low-stakes applications, from individuals entering the armed
services to individuals trying to be certified in high-tech
specialties. NWEA alone has administered over 60,000,000 adaptive tests
to students.
NWEA urges Congress to allow states and school districts to measure
student growth as part of the accountability requirements under No
Child Left Behind. We believe the great advantages such an approach
provides will be sufficient motive to states to adopt this option as
they consider how best to serve their children.
It is important to stress that we are not proposing to abandon
information about whether a child is operating at grade level. Rather,
we want to allow states to go further. As illustrated in the slides
that accompany this testimony, we can be far more effective in helping
children achieve greater growth, so they can move to proficiency and
beyond, if we more accurately know where they are performing and we can
measure their performance growth.
What Measuring Growth Can Do
One of the critical challenges confronting NCLB is ensuring that
accountability is linked to approaches that actually are useful in
helping schools and teachers help students reach proficiency.
If we know where a student stands, and how much they must grow
before they graduate, we should be able to marshal our resources to
make sure that the needed growth occurs.
If we know how much growth is typical for a student who starts the
year with a certain level of achievement, we should be able to
immediately set goals for the student that represent good growth, great
growth, and incredible growth.
If we know the growth goals for a student, we should be able to
tell the teacher exactly what the student needs to learn by the end of
the year to meet the growth goals.
If we know the growth goals for each student that a teacher is
working with, we should be able to guide that teacher so that he or she
can design and redesign the instructional approach she will take with
her students.
And if we accomplish these things, the accountability is aligned
with how students learn and what schools need to do.
After all, the central issue is how we help the current generation
of students meet our expectations. Measuring growth of each child gives
us information that we can use to improve the growth of all of our
students. At the same time, information about growth at the class and
school level helps us describe our schools and their efficiency in ways
that are far more useful to schools, teachers, parents and kids than
what we learn by confining ourselves to the simple status question of
current grade level.
Finally, for our students who aren't growing to meet their growth
goals, our response needs to be centered on the needs of those
students. We need to reorganize to help the students.
In conclusion, our request is a simple one: make it clear in the
law that states are permitted, or even encouraged, to do more than just
measure status. They can, and should, also measure growth as part of
that same process.
Thank you for the opportunity to share our experience and data with
you this morning.
Improving NCLB Accountability
Current Law: NCLB requires states to develop a measure of annual
yearly progress (AYP) in order to hold districts and schools
accountable. It stipulates that by the 2005-06 school year the states
must have in place an assessment system for all students, as well as
various subgroups, that annually tests student performance in reading/
language arts and mathematics in grades 3-8, and for a single test in
grades 10-12. By the 2007-08 school year, states are also required to
assess every student in science, at least once in each of the following
grade spans: 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12.
NCLB also allows states and localities to include other measures of
student academic progress but these measures may not be used in place
of the assessments described above for purposes of establishing AYP.
The Problem: Currently under NCLB, schools are evaluated for their
progress in improving student performance by comparing successive
groups of students rather than tracking the same group of students over
time. In other words, to meet AYP, schools must show that each grade
level (e.g. third graders) has improved over the previous year, not
that each student or the same group of students (e.g. third graders
that are now fourth graders) has progressed. Therefore, these yearly
comparisons do not track the performance of the same students.
This approach to assessment does not provide the information we
need to accurately measure what individual students know and what
educators need to know to address their learning deficiencies and
support their achievement growth.
In addition, since the focus of NCLB is on measuring proficiency
rather than annual learning progress, schools that have improved
substantially but have not yet reached proficiency targets are rated
the same way as schools that have no improvement. Achieving learning
gains provides no credit to these schools.
The Solution: In addition to the annual testing by grade and by
subject currently required, states should be allowed to meet their NCLB
annual yearly progress assessment requirements by measuring the
performance growth of every student.
NCLB recognizes the critical role that timely, accessible, and
accurate information about student academic performance plays in
informing and motivating educators, policymakers, parents, and the
public in finding ways to raise student achievement and close the
achievement gap. Giving states the option of measuring student growth
to meet AYP assessment requirements would provide a more accurate
measure of how students are progressing. By measuring growth over the
course of each grade, it would provide educators a clear roadmap for
bringing a student to proficiency.
Currently, schools that improved substantially but did not make AYP
are viewed the same way as schools that made no improvement. Including
a growth measure in assessing school improvement would be fairer.
Schools that have made substantial gains in student academic
performance would be recognized for those improvements, even if they
still do not meet proficiency standards. This change also would allow
states to focus their support on those schools that are really
struggling.
Questions and Answers
What are the key attributes of a growth model of assessment?
Growth measures provide the kind of information about what students
know and do not know in key strands of knowledge within subject areas
that helps teachers identify and focus on student strengths and
deficiencies and determine what needs to be taught next. Using growth
models, educators and young people can identify desired semester-by-
semester targets for student achievement that, if met, will ensure that
young people are making progress toward mastering content and attaining
proficiency. With this information, proficiency targets are not some
abstract, far-away goal but clear benchmarks for students and teachers
to reach that help ensure that students achieve proficiency over time.
Measuring growth requires testing students against a common scale.
This means that student achievement is measured to determine where a
student fits across the entire continuum of learning in a particular
subject area rather than on a grade-specific scale. The growth measure
is actually a measure of growth toward proficiency, which is not tied
to grade level but to mastery of content. Tests used by states today
that measure what a student needs to knows within a particular grade
level provide very good information about students performing in the
middle range of performance (where state cut scores for accountability
are pegged). But these tests do not ask enough questions to paint a
useful portrait of what is happening with high-achieving and low-
achieving young people who typically perform at the extremes or outside
their grade levels. For example, state grade-level tests provide little
information when a sixth-grade student is performing at the fourth-
grade level or about a fourth-grade student who is performing at the
fifth- or sixth-grade levels.
If a state chooses to measure student performance growth from year
to year instead of progress towards meeting fixed performance targets,
won't the gaps between low- and high-performing students just be
continued?
Not necessarily. If states set growth targets on the road to
proficiency then states, districts, and schools will continue to have
markers to meet to ensure that all students graduate from high school
with the knowledge and skills they need for productive and success
lives.
Is it realistic to assume that low-performing students can grow at
a faster rate than higher-performing students to meet those targets?
Currently, NCLB requires states, districts and schools to meet
fixed performance targets by grade and by subject for all children. The
only way to meet the intended purpose of NCLB--to close achievement
gaps--is to identify those gaps and develop strategies for addressing
them. By providing schools and teachers information on how a student is
progressing within the school year and between school years is more
likely to impact teaching and learning and, therefore, accelerates
improvements in student achievement.
Using growth measures also addresses another key problem with the
current law. Currently, state targets for AYP are set all over the map.
While a few states have set high performance targets early on, many are
waiting until several years from now to establish higher targets for
achievement that are closer to desired proficiencies. This delay means
that in several years, schools that have been judged as meeting AYP
will suddenly be far off from state targets. Growth measures provide a
way of setting steady and achievable targets that are based on what can
truly be expected of young people.
How are student growth measures different than the currently used
value-added testing, also called a ``growth model''?
The U.S. Department of Education is supporting pilot ``growth
model'' accountability plans in school districts in Arkansas, Delaware,
Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee. It has been mandated for use by
all school districts in Pennsylvania and Ohio and several hundred
school districts in 21 states. New legislation in Arkansas and
Minnesota calls for implementing a form of value-added measurement, and
the School Boards Associations in Iowa and New York are currently
piloting a value-added program. Dallas and Seattle are the most
prominent urban districts that use the value-added approach. In some
states, such as Tennessee, this value-added model (VAM) is the bedrock
of the accountability system, and the results are used to judge the
quality of schools and the effectiveness of individual teachers.
Value-added models of assessment, however, are an analytic
methodology applied to NCLB test results. It is a method of statistical
analysis, rather than a particular test, used to analyze longitudinal
test data in order to isolate factors affecting a student's growth over
time. It provides educators general information about which students
have benefited most and least and about instructional impact--how
effective it has been in providing students with a year's worth of
growth from where they began the year. Through this information,
teachers, principals, district administrators, and school board leaders
can learn whether high achievers, middle achievers, or low-achievers
are making the most progress, and what can be done to raise the
performance of each group. Impact data can determine whether and the
extent to which schools and classroom teachers are effective in raising
performance.
The currently used value-added models, however, do not provide the
kind of rich multiple-times per year diagnostic information about the
key strands of knowledge within subject areas that each student needs
to master to move to the next level of performance. It also does not
tell why a particular teacher is effective or not effective. And the
value-added analysis is applied to tests that are not particularly
accurate for students who are high achievers and low achievers, thus
blunting its value as even a broad analytic tool.
Won't a growth model require a sophisticated data system that will
substantially add to state and district costs?
States will be given the flexibility to continue with the current
assessment models or to substitute or add a growth measure of progress
towards measuring AYP.
Our experience suggests that using a growth measure of progress
could cost less, not more, than the current NCLB testing requirement.
In Idaho, for instance, the cost is $13.00 per students to test
students in grades 2-10, four times a year, including training and
reporting costs. This is less than most states are spending on once-a-
year testing under NCLB requirements.
Isn't testing itself the problem, imposing unnecessary burdens on
school districts and leading teachers to teach to the test? Shouldn't
we just eliminate the testing requirements from the law?
If the nation is serious about accountability in education and
about making sure that tax dollars invested in education result in a
student population that is prepared for work and postsecondary
education, we should not back away from the concept of testing. The
issue is not whether or not to test but what kind of testing will yield
the kind of information that actually helps teachers help students.
Expansion in the use of growth measures rather than one-shot grade-
level tests can help educators, policymakers, and parents determine
whether schools and students are actually making required progress
toward proficiency. They also will tell educators, school board
members, parents, and students what areas of learning they need to be
working on to make desired growth targets.
Since more than 2,500 school districts use out of grade-level
testing currently, why does the law need to be changed? Can't districts
simply do what you're proposing under current law?
Yes, any district can use whatever test it wants to measure student
learning. However, the law makes specific reference to use of grade-
level tests without referring to growth measures to fulfill the
assessment and accountability requirements of NCLB. The 2,500 school
districts that use growth measures to determine the performance growth
of children are pioneers that have demonstrated the value of this kind
of assessment to provide comprehensive information about individual
student achievement in key subject areas to help further accelerate
achievement gains. There are over 12,000 other public school districts
that might include testing that tracks the performance of students over
time if the law explicitly recognized this kind of testing as an
alternative in determining whether schools, districts, and states are
in compliance with the law.
Do other companies also offer this sort of testing, or are you
simply trying to change NCLB to benefit NWEA?
Many other testing organizations--such as the Educational Testing
Service and Scantron--already use testing methodologies that can
pinpoint individual student achievement against a common scale and
provide immediate feedback. This type of testing was first introduced
by the U.S. military in the 1970s. The computer-adaptive testing used
by NWEA, for example, is basically the same methodology ETS uses in its
Graduate Record Exam and GMAT tests.
Encouraging states to use computer-adaptive methodologies and
growth measures that can given by computer or paper-and-pencil tests
might actually hurt NWEA by providing much larger companies greater
incentives to develop growth measures and enter this market. But we
believe that it is the right thing to do and is not simply a matter of
which companies have the biggest market share, but whether we have the
kinds of tests that will help more schools bring more students to
proficiency.
Northwest Evaluation Association
The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) is a national nonprofit
organization based in Portland, Oregon, that partners with school
districts and education agencies nationwide to promote academic student
growth and school improvement. NWEA provides computer adaptive and
paper-and-pencil assessments in mathematics, language arts, and science
in grades 2-12 as well as training and comprehensive reporting tools
that enable educators to measure and promote individual student and
school academic growth. Their products and tools are provided at a
price districts can afford, and any profit is reinvested in product
development and technical assistance.
Three decades of experience nationwide. Over the past 30 years, the
company has tested more than 25 million young people; it currently is
helping to assess more than 4 million students a year in more than
2,400 school districts in 49 states. Its presence is particularly
strong in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and South
Carolina, where it tests the vast majority of students in the state.
Growing demand for student growth data to support NCLB. NWEA has
grown by 50 percent a year in recent years to meet the demand of school
districts for formative assessments that track the growth of individual
students over time and offer immediate feedback to district leaders,
teachers, students, parents, and school board members.
An immediate and vital source of information for teachers. The
value of the assessments to schools is considerable, in part because
students and teachers receive immediate results which allow them to
better understand and develop strategies to offset student learning
deficiencies. The assessments evaluate student achievement across
content standards, and results help identify problem areas in content
knowledge, skills, and concepts that need addressing to best maximize
achievement. Because it is a growth measure, teachers use the data to
determine if students are making equal to, or normal, growth. The test
also offers schools valuable information about the most effective
teachers, student groupings, or the need for alternative ways to focus
instruction.
An accountability tool for NCLB. In addition, schools and district
leaders can compare scores with the growth targets for a particular
year and see whether students are on target for meeting proficiency
levels required to achieve the goals of NCLB. Results can be
disaggregated by NCLB subgroups to give periodic indicators about how
well a school is doing in serving diverse populations.
A unique resource for finding proven answers to some of our most
challenging educational issues. All the student growth data gathered by
NWEA is aggregated into our Growth Research Database, the largest
nationwide repository of student test results which is used by states,
national organizations, and prominent national researchers to assess
the impacts of policy and practice on student achievement growth.
For more information, go to http://www.nwea.org.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
STATEMENT OF VALERIE WOODRUFF, SECRETARY OF EDUCATION, STATE OF
DELAWARE
Ms. Woodruff. Good morning.
Chairman Miller. I am going to have to turn my microphone
on, and you are going to have to pull yours closer to you.
Ms. Woodruff. Okay. It wasn't on. Okay?
Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon, and members of the
committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify today
about the implementation of growth models and accountability
systems.
I am proud to say that Delaware was among several states
that had implemented a school and district accountability
system to measure our progress and standards-based reform prior
to the passage of No Child Left Behind.
We began assessing English language, arts, and mathematics
in 1998. And based on early information about the goals of No
Child Left Behind, we applauded the initial work of Congress
and believed that we could easily meet the requirements of the
law.
Our original accountability system included three measures
of student performance: status, which is essentially AYP;
growth; and the improvement of the lowest performing student.
To our schools and to our communities, these measures made
sense and had what I refer to as face validity. Simply stated,
educators and others understood the value of measuring not only
the performance of one cohort of students to another, but also
the change in performance of the same cohort of children over
time.
And certainly, they saw the value of attending to and
measuring the improvement of the lowest performing students and
of closing the achievement gap. Delaware was the tenth state to
receive approval of our accountability plan in the spring of
2003. Also, we were among the first states to receive full
approval of our standards and assessment system.
Delaware implemented a unique identifier in 1984. And we
have worked diligently since that time to link student
demographic data with achievement data. And we have reported
that for many years.
Given all of these factors, we were anxious to talk with
the Department of Education and to convince them that the use
of growth models was a natural progression in creating a mature
accountability system. When the department allowed states to
submit growth models for the 2006 accountability measurement,
we felt confident that our proposal would be approved. That did
not occur. And we were perplexed at the feedback we received.
None of the questions were related to the model itself.
They had to do with other things. It did not seem that the peer
reviewers had clear guidance about the criteria, nor did they
understand the different models that can be used to measure
growth.
We made several changes. And we were approved and will be
using the growth model measurement for the 2007 accountability
year.
The model that we chose supports our philosophy of
continuous improvement for all students. It is easy to
understand. It is easy to explain. It provides schools with
information that shows which students are making progress
toward proficiency, which students are maintaining proficiency,
and which students are slipping backwards, which is something
we all want to avoid.
It is not enough to measure the average performance of even
a small cohort of students. Systems must focus on the
performance of individual students and must provide schools
with the appropriate incentives to address student needs.
Moving forward, the law should not only encourage the use
of a variety of accountability models, not only allow it, but
also encourage it. These models should be focused on individual
student achievement and build on adequate yearly progress to
promote more valid, reliable, and educationally meaningful
determinations. States need to be encouraged to innovate and
seek new and better ways of continuous student achievement.
Specifically, the Department of Education must establish
clear and consistent policies and procedures that enable states
to use growth models. It should articulate the foundation
elements that must be in place. For example, the state must
have a unique student identifier, approved standards and
assessment system, and a data system that is able to collect
and track individual performance over time.
When states have those elements in place, they should not
then have to guess about how their proposals will be judged.
Those criteria need to be clear and understandable. They should
define what must be contained, and they must select and train
peer reviewers so that states can be guaranteed a fair and
equitable review of all proposals, regardless of the background
or philosophical beliefs of the reviewers. The peer review
process must be transparent and iterative and be focused on
improving the quality of the accountability system, not
limiting their scope and use.
In order for states to pursue stronger, more robust systems
of accountability, a partnership of support and technical
assistance must be in place. States need ongoing technical
assistance in order to build a strong knowledge base about
accountability models. We need to benefit from research about
which models are most effective and why. And they need
continuing support and development and improving of data
systems.
For example, as strong as our data system is today in
Delaware, we can benefit from knowledge and support about
cutting edge technology. All states are eager to learn more and
to improve the quality of education for all of our children.
I appreciate the opportunity. And I will be glad to answer
questions. Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Woodruff follows:]
Prepared Statement of Valerie Woodruff, Secretary of Education, State
of Delaware
Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon and members of the
committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify today about the
implementation of growth models in accountability systems. My name is
Valerie Woodruff. I am the Secretary of Education in the state of
Delaware. I am the immediate Past President of the Council of Chief
State School Officers.
I am proud to say that Delaware was among several states that had
implemented a school and district accountability system to measure our
progress in standards based reform prior to the passage of No Child
Left Behind. We began assessing English language arts and mathematics
in 1998. Based on the early information about the goals of NCLB, we
applauded the initial work of Congress and believed that we could
easily meet the requirements of the law. Our original accountability
system included three measures of student performance: status, growth,
and improvement of the lowest performing students. To our schools and
to our community, these measures made sense and had what I refer to as
``face validity.'' Simply stated, educators and others understood the
value of measuring not only the change in performance of one cohort of
students to another but also the change in performance of the same
cohort of students over time. And certainly, they saw the value of
attending to and measuring the improvement of our lowest performing
students and of closing the achievement gap.
Delaware was the tenth state to receive approval of our
accountability plan in the spring of 2003. Also, we were among the
first states to receive full approval of our standards and assessments.
Delaware implemented a unique student identifier in 1984 and has worked
diligently and deliberately since that time to link student demographic
data with achievement data. Given all these factors, we were anxious to
engage the Department of Education and to convince them that the use of
growth models was a natural progression in creating a mature
accountability system.
When the Department allowed states to submit growth model proposals
for the 2006 accountability measurement, we felt confident that our
proposal would be approved. That did not occur, and we were perplexed
at the feedback we received. It did not seem that the peer reviewers
had clear guidance about the criteria, nor did they understand the
different models that can be used to measure growth. We were required
to make several changes in order to receive approval for the 2007
accountability year.
The model that we chose supports our philosophy of continuous
improvement for all students. It is easy to explain and understand. It
provides schools with information that shows which students are making
progress toward proficiency, which students are maintaining
proficiency, and which students are slipping backwards. It is not
enough to measure the average performance of even a small cohort of
students. Systems must focus on the performance of individual students
and must provide schools with the appropriate incentives to address
student needs.
Moving forward, the law should not only allow but also encourage
the use of a variety of accountability models. These models should be
focused on individual student achievement and build on adequate yearly
progress (AYP) to promote more valid, reliable, and educationally
meaningful accountability determinations. States must be encouraged to
innovate and to seek new and better ways of supporting continuous
student achievement.
Specifically, the Department of Education must establish clear and
consistent policies and procedures that enable states to use growth
models for accountability. It should articulate the foundation elements
that a state needs to have in order to qualify to use a growth model.
For example, a state must have a unique student identifier; approved
standards and assessment systems; a data system that is able to collect
and track individual student performance over time. When states have
those elements in place, they should not have to guess at how their
proposals will be judged.
The Department should clearly define what criteria must be
contained in a growth model proposal, and they must select and train
the peer reviewers so that states can be guaranteed fair and equitable
reviews of all proposals regardless of the background or philosophical
beliefs of the reviewers. The peer review process must be fully
transparent and iterative and be focused on improving the quality of
accountability systems, not limiting their scope and use.
In order for states to pursue stronger, more robust systems of
accountability, a partnership of support and technical assistance must
be in place. States need ongoing technical assistance in order to build
a strong knowledge base about accountability models. They need to
benefit from research about which models are most effective and why.
They need continuing support in development and improvement of data
systems. For instance, as strong as Delaware's data system is today, we
can benefit from knowledge of cutting edge technology. All states are
eager to learn more and to improve the quality of education for our
children.
I appreciate the opportunity to address the committee today. Thank
you for your leadership. I will be glad to respond to your questions.
______
Chairman Miller. Dr. Dougherty?
STATEMENT OF CHRYS DOUGHERTY, PH.D, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH,
NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY
Mr. Dougherty. I would like to thank the first two
presenters for making a lot of my points for me.
First, I would agree with Dr. Olson that it is very
important to look at growth across the entire achievement
spectrum, that it is valuable both for accountability, and it
is valuable from the point of view of school improvement.
My organization, the National Center for Educational
Accountability, identifies and studies consistently higher-
performing schools to see what they do compared to the average
performing schools. And looking at student growth is a critical
part of this process.
And I would like to thank Dr. Woodruff for emphasizing the
importance of longitudinal student data systems at the state
level to be able to do these types of models. Our organization
has been working very closely as lead partner on the data
quality campaign to essentially encourage all states to develop
longitudinal student data systems. We have got a packet that
should be in your hands that describes a lot of the information
about which states have made progress in that area.
Twenty-seven states so far, according to our survey,
actually have the critical, three critical data elements in
place in order to do, as of next year, a growth model based on
longitudinal student data. Now, that doesn't mean that they
have every component in place. Dr. Woodruff mentioned
assessment system requirements and so forth. But it does mean
that from the point of view of building a statewide
longitudinal data system they are definitely on track.
And I would like to compliment the Congress for essentially
funding longitudinal data grants, which has helped to
accelerate this process of states developing longitudinal
student data systems. If you had done the same list 3 or 4
years ago, you would have had fewer than 10 states with the
capability longitudinally of doing any kind of growth model.
Now it is up to 27. It is very likely it will be over 40 in
another 3 years. So that has been very helpful.
I just want to mention that the way growth is handled now
as part of AYP and these growth models--and this is reiterating
some of the things that have been said--you have got status,
which is are enough kids proficient today. You have safe
harbor. Are you reducing the percent of kids that are not
proficient? And growth is the third.
If kids are way below proficient, are you growing them on a
path or a track to proficiency. And Dr. Doran is expert in a
lot of the different methods you can use to say what do you
mean by on track to proficiency, how do you measure that. It
looks like I have a minute left, so I am going to mention a
couple of the different ways.
The system Delaware uses is essentially it takes students
and it puts them in achievement bands, level one, two, three,
four, five. Or California would do far below basic, below
basic, basic, proficient, advanced. And basically you monitor
the progress of students over the bands. You essentially, as it
were, deduct points for kids falling back. You give more points
for kids moving forward.
And everybody can understand that. It is very simple. That
is called a value table approach. That is one approach.
Another approach is just to draw a trajectory or line
between where the kid is now in proficiency. If he is below
proficient, it could be a curved line. It could be a straight
line. And if you next year are on or above the line, then you
are meeting the growth requirement for being on track to
proficiency.
And the third approach, which Dr. Doran's organization
specializes in, is using statistical models to project or
predict whether or not a student will be proficient based on
past patterns of students with a certain score in, let's say,
3rd grade and a certain score in 4th grade. What were the odds
that that kid would be proficient in 6th grade?
So that uses, again, longitudinal data, which states need
to have in order to be able to develop these models and also in
order to be able to validate these models to see the extent to
which students who were predicted to be proficient actually get
there. And that is very critical, the validation part of these
growth models.
I finally want to mention that as we move toward putting
attention also on kids who are proficient, not only not
slipping back below proficiency, but also growing to levels
above proficiency, I don't know if the AYP system is the right
place to handle that because of the issue of you don't want to
offset kids not growing at the bottom end with kids growing at
the top end. You don't want to use one to offset the other.
But rather, you want to look at both issues separately and
maybe make the growing of the kids at the top end be part of a
recognition system. And maybe that is the way to handle it and
not through the AYP system.
Thank you very much. I would be happy to answer questions
afterwards.
[The statement of Mr. Dougherty follows:]
Prepared Statement of Chrys Dougherty, Ph.D, Director of Research,
National Center for Educational Accountability
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I thank you for the
opportunity to testify about the use of good educational data, over
time, to measure the growth of student achievement. I am Chrys
Dougherty, Director of Research at the National Center for Educational
Accountability (NCEA), national sponsor of Just for the Kids.
The Center is one of 14 national organizations that are managing
partners of the Data Quality Campaign. This campaign is a national,
collaborative effort to encourage and support state policymakers to: 1)
improve the collection, availability, and use of high-quality education
data, and 2) implement state longitudinal data systems to improve
student achievement. I will refer in my testimony to the Ten Essential
Elements of a statewide longitudinal data system identified by NCEA and
the Data Quality Campaign (attached), and to information from NCEA's
Survey on State Data Collection which identifies where states are
currently in implementing high-quality data systems capable of
answering questions critical to improving schools and school systems (a
selected list of these questions is also attached).
I have also been privileged to serve on a panel for the U.S.
Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to review
state applications for the state longitudinal data system grant program
authorized under title II of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002,
and currently serve on a panel for the U.S. Department of Education to
review state applications to implement growth models for NCLB.
An Overview of Growth Models
``Growth models'' can be defined as any analysis or measurement of
the progress of individual students over time. The growth models of
interest here ask the question: Is the student growing fast enough to
be ``on track'' to reach the desired goal in the desired length of
time? For example, is the student progressing well enough to be ready
to handle rigorous high school coursework by the time he or she enters
high school?
Growth models of this type should be distinguished from
conventional ``value-added'' models, which ask the question, ``Is the
student growing faster than would be predicted by his or her
characteristics?'' Typically these characteristics include the
student's prior test scores. However, students could be growing faster
than predicted for typical students like themselves, and yet not fast
enough to reach proficiency in the desired length of time--or ever.
Annual testing in grades 3-8 has been crucial for the development
of growth models. These models are based on following students year
after year and looking at individual growth every year, rather than
waiting several years to find out whether the student has
progressed.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The ability to look at student growth was a major motivator for
the early adoption of grades 3-8 testing in states such as Tennessee,
Texas and North Carolina. Annual testing data was critical for Texas's
Comparable Improvement growth model, North Carolina's growth model, and
Tennessee's value-added model.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since the desired goal under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is
proficiency, the first question that NCLB growth models address is
whether non-proficient students are growing fast enough to reach
proficiency in the near future--usually in the next three years.
A second question that NCLB growth models sometimes address is
whether already proficient students are growing fast enough to stay
proficient.
A third question that these models should address is whether
already proficient students are growing to levels higher than
proficiency. NCLB as currently written does not encourage states and
school districts to address this question.\2\ This question is
especially important in states where the proficiency standard is below
that required to prepare students for college and other postsecondary
training for skilled careers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The exception to this is NCLB's authorization of funding for
Advanced Placement incentive programs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We would like to encourage school systems to focus on whether
students, particularly disadvantaged students, are growing toward
readiness for college and skilled careers after high school. Goals and
standards that states set for accountability--ones to which sanctions
are attached--are likely to be lower than those which school systems
should adopt for purposes of goal-setting, curriculum design, and long-
term planning.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ For a discussion of why accountability standards are often not
set high enough to be worthy goals for long-range planning, see
``Identifying Appropriate College Readiness Standards for All
Students,'' www.just4kids.org/en/research--policy/college--career--
readiness.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Therefore, an incentive for growth to higher levels is probably
best accomplished not through the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)
system, but rather by encouraging the creation of voluntary programs
for identifying and publicly recognizing schools that are successful at
placing students, particularly disadvantaged students, on a trajectory
to these higher standards. Identifying these schools and examining
their best practices should be the topic of ongoing research and
dissemination.\4\
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\4\ See www.just4kids.org for examples of efforts to identify and
recognize higher performing schools and to research and disseminate
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Data That Is Necessary to Measure Student Academic Growth
The ability to follow individual students over time, as necessary
for growth models, requires a longitudinal data system. Specifically,
to create growth models, states need at least the following three
elements from the list of Ten Essential Elements identified by the Data
Quality Campaign (www.dataqualitycampaign.org):
Element One: A statewide student identifier making it
possible to follow the same students over time
Element Three: The ability to link students' test score
records over time
Element Four: Information on untested students and the
reasons why they were not tested.
The Status of State Data Systems Capable of Measuring Growth
According to the 2006 NCEA Survey on State Longitudinal Data
Systems, 27 states will have the capability of doing a growth model as
of the 2007-08 school year, based on their possession of these three
elements for at least two years. These states, listed on the Data
Quality Campaign's website at www.dataqualitycampaign.org/survey--
results/policy.cfm, are:
Alaska Massachusetts Rhode Island
Colorado Minnesota Tennessee
Connecticut Nebraska Texas
Delaware Nevada Utah
Florida New Mexico Vermont
Hawaii New York Virginia
Kansas North Dakota Washington
Kentucky Ohio West Virginia
Louisiana Pennsylvania Wisconsin
The Statewide Longitudinal Data System grants have helped many
states develop and improve their longitudinal student data systems.
These competitive grants from the U.S. Department of Education's
Institute of Education Sciences have not only increased the ability of
states to do growth models, but also their capacity to provide
information to teachers and principals on the academic growth of their
students.
Better information is a critical tool for school improvement.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd be happy to answer any questions you
may have.
Essential Elements and Fundamentals of a Longitudinal Data System
While each state's education system is unique, it is clear that
there is a set of 10 essential elements that are critical to a
longitudinal data system:
1. A unique statewide student identifier that connects student data
across key databases across years
2. Student-level enrollment, demographic and program participation
information
3. The ability to match individual students' test records from year
to year to measure academic growth
4. Information on untested students and the reasons they were not
tested
5. A teacher identifier system with the ability to match teachers
to students
6. Student-level transcript information, including information on
courses completed and grades earned
7. Student-level college readiness test scores
8. Student-level graduation and dropout data
9. The ability to match student records between the P--12 and
higher education systems
10. A state data audit system assessing data quality, validity and
reliability
In addition to the 10 essential elements, states need to ensure
that they take into account the following fundamental concepts in the
construction of their longitudinal systems.
Privacy Protection: One of the critical concepts that should
underscore the development of any longitudinal data system is
preserving student privacy. An important distinction needs to be made
between applying a ``unique student identifier'' and making
``personally identifiable information'' available, for example. It is
possible to share data that are unique to individual students but that
do not allow for the identification of that student. It also is
critical to put in place encryption and data security protocols to
secure the transmission or transaction of data between and among
systems. States should ensure that they bring privacy considerations
into the development of each repository and the exploration of each
protocol or report.
Maximizing the Power of Education Data While Ensuring
Compliance with Federal Student Privacy Laws: A Guide for Policymakers
State Longitudinal Data Systems and Student Privacy
Protections Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and
State Longitudinal Data Systems
State Data Systems and Privacy Concerns: Strategies for
Balancing Public Interest
Data Architecture: Data architecture defines how data are coded,
stored, managed and used. Good data architecture is essential for an
effective data system. Many states are in the process of improving
their data architecture so that they can clearly communicate with all
entities with which they share and from which they receive data.
Districts need to know specifically how data elements are defined
(e.g., what a ``dropout'' is), how they should be formatted, and how
and when the data should be transferred to the state education agency.
Without these standard definitions and dictionaries, state education
agencies will have an extremely difficult time making sense of the data
received from their districts. With standards in place that are used by
everyone, staffing resources and processing or cycle time can be
greatly reduced, data can be made available to users when they need
them, and reports can be based on clear and common definitions.
Data Warehousing: Many states are in the process of designing and
building or upgrading their data warehouses. Policymakers and educators
need a data system that not only link student records over time and
across databases but also make it easy for users to query those
databases and produce standard or customized reports. A data warehouse
is, at the least, a repository of data concerning students in the
public education system; ideally, it also would include information
about educational facilities and curriculum and staff involved in
instructional activities, as well as district and school finances. The
warehouse should ensure student and teacher confidentiality, allow
longitudinal analyses, and include analytical capabilities for its
users. Examples of the capabilities that should be available in a data
warehouse include, but are not limited to, trend analyses; tracking of
students over time and across campuses and/or districts; queries
designed and conducted by different users (with different levels of
access to detailed data, depending on user classification); and
standard summary reports at the campus, district or state level for
policymakers and educators. The key to effective data warehousing is
the timely and efficient use and reporting of data.
Interoperability: Data interoperability entails the ability of
different software systems from different vendors to share information
without the need for customized programming or data manipulation by the
end user. Interoperability reduces reporting burden, redundancy of data
collection, and staff time and resources. It allows for better, faster
and clearer reporting of data. It depends on systems having common data
standards and definitions. Organizations such as the Schools
Interoperability Framework Association work to ensure the creation of
platform-independent, vendor neutral open standards that can be used by
educators and vendors to design and implement interoperable data
systems.
Portability: Data portability is the ability to exchange student
transcript information electronically across districts and between P-12
and postsecondary institutions within a state and across states.
Portability has at least three advantages: it makes valuable diagnostic
information from the academic records of students who move to a new
state available to their teachers in a timely manner; it reduces the
time and cost of transferring students' high school course transcripts;
and it increases the ability of states to distinguish students who
transfer to a school in a new state from dropouts. The large interstate
movement of students in the wake of Hurricane Katrina made the value of
such a system obvious. Data portability is supported by the
implementation of interoperable systems, but it requires states that
use these systems to have a set of common definitions or protocols.
Professional Development around Data Processes and Use: Building a
longitudinal data system requires not only the adoption of key elements
outlined in this paper but also the ongoing professional development of
the people charged with collecting, storing, analyzing and using the
data produced through the new data system. The local school person who
inputs course grades needs to understand fully how his/her work fits
into the broader data system, the principal needs to understand how
data can effect daily school management--both facilities and academic
decisions--and policymakers need to understand how their decisions are
limited or expanded based on the quality of the data available. For
these changes in culture and management to occur, states need to make
it a priority to rethink and possibly reorganize how education data is
managed throughout the system, increase training and professional
development for staff--both managers and users--and assist all
employees and stakeholders of the state education system to be active
consumers of the longitudinal data system.
Researcher Access: Research using longitudinal student data can be
an invaluable guide for improving schools and helping educators learn
what works. These data are essential to determining the value-added of
schools, programs and specific interventions. States are developing
ways to make student-level data available to researchers while
protecting the privacy of student records under the Family Education
Rights and Privacy Act. Because state education agencies and local
school districts usually do not have the resources to conduct this
research themselves, providing access to the data to outside
researchers with appropriate privacy protections allows critical
research to be done at no cost to the state or to school districts.
Policy Implications of State Data Systems in 2006-07
Does your state collect the most relevant data to inform your
policy conversations and decisions?
Policymakers and educators need longitudinal data systems capable
of providing timely, valid and relevant data. Access to these data
gives teachers the information they need to tailor instruction to help
each student improve, gives administrators the resources and
information to effectively and efficiently manage, and enables
policymakers to evaluate which policy initiatives show the best
evidence of increasing student achievement.
Does your state have the data to answer these timely questions?
Based on responses to the 2006 NCEA survey, only a few states can
answer each of these priority questions facing policymakers and
educators today.
1. Which schools produce the strongest academic growth for their
students? (27 states can answer this question; States must have
Elements 1, 3, 4 to answer this question)
Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia,
Wisconsin
2. What achievement levels in middle school indicate that a student
is on track to succeed in rigorous courses in high school? (5 states
can answer this question; States must have Elements 1, 3, 6, 7 to
answer this question)
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Utah
3. What is each school's graduation rate, according to the 2005
National Governors Association graduation compact? (28 states can
answer this question; States must have Elements 1, 2, 8, 10 to answer
this question)
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut,
Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, South
Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia,
Wisconsin, Wyoming
4. What high school performance indicators (e.g., enrollment in
rigorous courses or performance on state tests) are the best predictors
of students' success in college or the workplace? (4 states can answer
this question; States must have Elements 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 to answer
this question)
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Texas
5. What percentage of high school graduates who go on to college
take remedial courses? (14 states can answer this question; States must
have Elements 1, 8, 9 to answer this question)
Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana,
Massachusetts, North Dakota, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Washington,
Wyoming
6. Which teacher preparation programs produce the graduates whose
students have the strongest academic growth? (10 states can answer this
question; States must have Elements 1, 3, 4, 5 to answer this question)
Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio,
Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
Chairman Miller. Mr. McWalters?
STATEMENT OF PETER MCWALTERS, COMMISSIONER OF ELEMENTARY AND
SECONDARY EDUCATION, STATE OF RHODE ISLAND
Mr. McWalters. Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon,
thank you for this opportunity. My name is Peter McWalters. I
am the commissioner from Rhode Island. I have been there for 15
years. And before that, I was a superintendent of schools in
Rochester. I am clearly an urban educator.
I am pleased to be able to talk to you today as you
consider reauthorizing No Child Left Behind. I was the
president of CCSSO in 2000, 2001 when we authorized this. And I
supported it then. I support it now.
It represents the very best form of federal intent. It
essentially is the Civil Rights bill. It is part of a
children's bill of rights. And it pushed states to focus on
success for every student.
The emphasis of standards and assessments and
accountability on public information was needed then as it is
now. And it has been beneficial for the nation. Now 5 years
down the road, I think we can see some areas in which the law
could and should be modified to help achieve the goals we all
share.
As CCSSO has said in its recent recommendations regarding
No Child Left Behind reauthorization, we are in a new stage of
standards-based reform. Many of the basic foundational pieces
are in place. The question now is, how do we build on the use
of these foundations to improve student achievement and close
the gaps?
I would submit to you that this will require innovation,
change beyond currently understood, capacity building and
retooling of systems, and quite honestly, judgments that are
based on leadership, content, capacity, and the context of
districts and schools. We need a federal law that values these
things.
As you prepare to reauthorize No Child Left Behind, I ask
you to consider three issues: how states determine whether
schools have met their targets, how we publicly identify
schools that have missed their targets, and how states can best
deliver assistance and implement consequences to help districts
as well as schools meet these goals.
As you know, schools may be identified for improvement if
they miss any single one multiple target established in the
law. And these targets are almost exclusively based in the
tests that states administer at seven grade levels.
We are not afraid to use student performance as the
ultimate measure of school improvement. Our testing system in
Rhode Island developed with the support of the federal funds is
a tri-state partnership under which Rhode Island, New
Hampshire, and Vermont established a common set of grade-level
expectations and standards and developed an assessment system
lined up with those standards. This partnership, known as the
New England Common Assessment Program, is exactly the type of
initiative that the federal government should continue to
support.
In addition to our state assessment system, we believe in
Rhode Island in a number of means by which we can and do
measure school performance. We administer attitudinal surveys
to students, parents, teachers, and administrators. We visit
schools on a structured visitation. We publish the results of
both of those--they are all online.
Parents get access to all this information. We measure
school climate as in safety. We measure student connectedness.
Does anybody here know me? Is anybody listening to me?
We measure instructional leadership. We measure
instructional practice, teacher competencies, as in, do they
even know what the standards are. We track all of this stuff as
well as parent involvement. We conduct peer review visits at
every school.
Every school is required by law to write an annual school
improvement plan and submit district plans to us. And if you
are in intervention, we get to not only review them, but we
approve them. We have a very aggressive statute of progressive
support and intervention.
Test results should be the initial measure of districts and
schools. But the law should allow states to employ indicators
in addition to student performance to determine whether schools
and districts are making adequate yearly progress.
These indicators should include measures of capacity such
as school climate, teacher expectations, leadership,
instructional leadership, teacher development, program
implementation fidelity, and parent engagement. These
indicators should be supplemental to assessment results, but
they should be allowed to be part of an overall determination
of school as well district progress.
As you know, NCLB is quite prescriptive in regards to
identifying schools and districts that have missed annual
targets. Under the terms of the law, all schools that missed
even one target are placed in the same status: identified for
improvement. This label tells us only that the school has not
met the target. It does not tell us why.
I have seen the school fail in 1 year go from high-
performing to insufficient progress because it missed a single
target. And we find this hard to explain in terms of the public
policy or what Valerie called face validity.
I believe that the law should establish a graduated system
of classifications for schools and districts that have
identified for improvement. The identification of schools and
districts should include information as to how many targets
were missed as well as over how many years. The identification
of schools and districts should also indicate the capacity of
the school or district to meet these targets as determined by
indicators other than test results.
Finally, I ask you to consider how states develop support
systems and intervention strategies for schools and districts
that have been identified for improvement. We don't need an
intervention system that is based on a score card. We need a
system that will give us multiple ways to measure all the
components of the viability of a school in a district and to
offer scaffolded responses based on the needs of schools and
districts.
The system as it stands is not designed to give schools a
blueprint for success. It is a retributive system. We will not
shrink from our responsibility of raising achievement and
closing the gap. But we need the law to value our experience
and leverage the expertise and give us more options over
schools that are identified for improvement.
Not all schools admit their targets are in the same place.
Some may be truly dysfunctional institutions in need of a great
deal of help, even restructuring. Others may be on task and the
path toward success. How do states know if this is the case?
Only through multiple measures.
Indicators of measures of leadership, instructional
leadership capacity, school climate, community involvement, and
program integrity. Only through this can we determine the
course, the appropriate course of action to take.
Now that we are 5 years into the implementation of this
law, it is obvious that many schools that have missed their
annual targets are doing all they can within failing systems.
That is, school improvement is often a matter of district
capacity. In these instances, the intervention at school level
will do nothing to solve the underlying systemic problem.
When a state intervenes in a school that has missed
targets, the state must have on-hand the complete picture of
the school and district capacity. The law should not prescribe
our responses. It should give us the authority to use our best
professional judgment to build school improvements.
The Rhode Island approach has been entered into district
negotiated agreements that we write, negotiate, and finally
approve on a program, budget, and personnel basis. That is
pretty powerful. This is part of our process of progressive
support and intervention.
We are ready to do the work. To do that, we need an NCLB
that is more than just a score card based on student
performance and a list of mandated responses. We need
indicators to measure all components of the health and capacity
of the system.
Chairman Miller. Mr. McWalters, I am going to ask you to
wrap up.
Mr. McWalters. Very good.
The last piece that I would say is when you passed this
authorization, there was a sense of impatience on your part,
which was well-deserved at that time. I think 5 years in the
credibility of individual states' capacity is now known and can
be reviewed in a peer review system.
[The statement of Mr. McWalters follows:]
Prepared Statement of Peter McWalters, Commissioner of Elementary and
Secondary Education, State of Rhode Island
Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon, and members of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on improving
the ways we measure student progress. My name is Peter McWalters, and I
am the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education in the State
of Rhode Island, where I have served for 15 years. I am also a past-
president of the Council of Chief State School Officers and a former
Superintendent of Schools in an urban district, Rochester, New York.
I am pleased to be able to talk with you today as you consider
reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. I supported the law in
its passage. It represents the best form of federal intent and has
pushed the states to focus on success for every student. The emphasis
on standards and assessments and on public information was needed at
the time, and it has been beneficial to the nation. But now, five years
down the road, I think we can see some areas in which the law could and
should be modified to help us achieve the goals that we all share.
As CCSSO has said in its recent recommendations regarding NCLB
reauthorization, we are in a new stage of standards-based reform. Many
of the basic foundations are in place. The question now is: How do we
build on and use these foundations to improve student achievement and
close achievement gaps? I would submit to you that this will require
innovation, capacity, and judgments that are based on district capacity
to respond to specific conditions that have led to low student
achievement. We need a federal law that values those things.
As you prepare to reauthorize NCLB, I ask you reconsider three
issues:
how states determine whether schools have met their
targets,
how we publicly identify schools that have missed their
targets, and
how states can best deliver assistance and implement
consequences to help schools meet their goals.
As you know, schools may be identified for improvement if they miss
any single one of the multiple targets established in the law. And
these targets are almost exclusively based on the tests that states
administer at seven grade levels.
We are not afraid to use student performance as the ultimate
measure of school improvement. Our testing system in Rhode Island,
developed with the support of federal funds, is a tristate partnership,
under which Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont established in
common a set of grade-level standards and expectations and developed an
assessment system lined up with those standards. This partnership,
known as the New England Common Assessment Program, is exactly the type
of initiative that the Federal government should continue to support.
In addition to our state assessment system, we have in Rhode Island
a number of means by which we can--and do--measure school performance.
We administer an annual survey to all students, teachers, and parents,
and from the results of this SALT Survey we tabulate ``Learning Support
Indicators'' that measure school climate, instructional practices, and
parental involvement. We conduct peer-review visits at every school in
the state every five years. Each school is required by law to write an
annual School Improvement Plan, and each district writes an annual
District Strategic Plan, and these plans are at the center of our work
with all schools and districts.
Test results should be the initial measure of the school. But the
law should allow states to employ indicators in addition to student
performance to determine whether schools and districts are making
Adequate Yearly Progress. These indicators could include measures of
capacity such as evaluations of school climate, instructional
practices, instructional leadership, teacher development, program
implementation, and parental engagement. These indicators should be
supplementary to assessment results, but they should be allowed as part
of the overall determination of school and district progress.
As you know, the NCLB is quite prescriptive in regard to
identifying schools and districts that have missed annual targets.
Under the terms of the law, all schools that miss even one target are
placed in the same status: Identified for Improvement. This label tells
us only that the school has failed; it does not tell us why. I have
seen a school fall in one year from high performing to insufficient
progress because it missed a single target, and we find this hard to
explain to the school and to the public at large.
I believe that the law should establish a graduated system of
classifications for schools and districts that have been identified for
improvement. The identification of schools and districts should include
information as to how many targets were missed as well as for how many
years. The identification of schools and districts should also indicate
the capacity of the school or district to meet all targets, as
determined by indicators other than test results.
Finally, I ask you to reconsider how states develop support systems
and intervention strategies for schools and districts that have been
identified for improvement. We don't need an intervention system that
is based on a scorecard. We need a system that will give us multiple
ways to measure all components of the health and the capacity of
schools and districts and to offer scaffolded responses based on the
needs of the school or district. The system as it stands is not
designed to give schools a blueprint for success. It is a retributive
system.
We will not shirk our responsibility for raising achievement and
closing the achievement gap. But we need the law to value our
experience and expertise and give us more options once schools are
identified for improvement. Not all schools that miss their targets are
in the same condition. Some may be truly dysfunctional institutions in
need of a great deal of help--even restructuring. Others may be on task
and on the path toward success. How do states know if this is the case?
Only through multiple measures--indicators to measure leadership,
instructional capacity, school climate, community involvement--can we
determine what course to take to help schools meet their goals.
Now that we are five years into implementation of the law, it is
obvious that many schools that have missed their annual targets are
doing all that they can do within a failing system. That is, school
improvement is often a matter of district capacity. In these cases,
state intervention at the school level will do nothing to solve the
underlying systemic problems.
When a state intervenes in a school that has missed targets, the
state must have on hand a complete picture of the school and district
capacities. The law should not prescribe our responses. It should give
us the authority to use our best professional judgment to build school
improvement. The Rhode Island approach has been to enter into District
Negotiated Agreements on program, budget, and personnel with those
districts that have missed their annual targets. This is part of our
process of Progressive Support & Intervention, which is based on
multiple indicators that present information for broader and deeper
than assessment results.
We are ready to do the work. To do that, we need from NCLB more
than just a scorecard based on student performance and a list of
mandated responses. We need indicators to measure all components of the
health and capacity of the system. We need intervention strategies that
help us build the capacity in each identified school and district. And
we need the freedom and capacity to do our work, while always keeping
the goals clear and the actions and outcomes transparent so as to
improve the public-education system.
I ask, therefore, that you consider revising the prescribed
sequence of mandated responses to Title I schools that have been
identified for improvement so that states can develop graduated support
and intervention strategies that best meet the needs of each identified
school.
I have asked you today for a good deal of accountability at the
state level, for I believe that the states have the ability to take on
this challenge. When Congress passed and the President authorized the
NCLB, there was a general sense of impatience with progress that the
states had made. The law is therefore both comprehensive and
prescriptive in regard to state responsibilities. The states have taken
on these responsibilities in a serious and committed manner, and I
therefore believe we are ready to move to a new level of shared
understanding. States should be able to submit their annual compliance
plans, which the Education Department would verify and accept after
good-faith peer review
The CCSSO recommendations for NCLB reauthorization include several
items that support the points I have brought to you today, including
calling on Congress to allow states to include additional relevant data
in making judgments about school progress, allowing states to
differentiate consequences for schools that have missed their annual
targets, investing more in state capacity to assist and intervene in
districts and schools that have missed their targets, and creating a
new process for innovative models and a greatly revised system of peer
review that would allow states to continuously innovate in
accountability and other areas--with proper guarantees for results.
Thank you for your attention and leadership on these important
issues. I have with me several supportive documents regarding the
accountability system in Rhode Island that I would like to present to
you for your records, and I look forward to any questions you may have.
______
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
Dr. Doran?
STATEMENT OF HAROLD C. DORAN, SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST,
AMERICAN INSTITUTES FOR RESEARCH
Mr. Doran. Thank you. Chairman Miller, Ranking Member
McKeon, and honorable members of the committee, thank you for
this opportunity to share my thoughts on ways to improve the No
Child Left Behind Act.
My name is Harold Doran, and I am a senior research
scientist at the American Institutes for Research in
Washington, D.C. In this role, I help states and districts
across the country develop their testing and accountability
systems. I am also a former classroom teacher and elementary
school principal in Tucson, Arizona.
The question I have been asked to respond to today is
whether the AYP provisions would benefit from having additional
ways to evaluate schools, what some refer to as multiple
measures, and whether these measures can be joined to form a
compensatory accountability system. The term ``compensatory''
denotes that not meeting AYP under one measure could be
compensated for using a secondary measure. I believe the
provisions could be strengthened if multiple measures were
added.
In my discussion today, I would like to explain this
position and suggest specific measures that I believe would
strengthen the legislation. I emphatically support the use of
multiple measures, as do most educational experts. However,
there are multiple views on what set of measures to be included
in accountability systems. Even more challenging is how these
measures can be combined in forming a compensatory
accountability system.
To reduce ambiguity, I would offer the following definition
of multiple measures for today's conversation: an
accountability system that includes multiple measures uses test
scores from more than a single test, achievement indicators
collected by other means, or various statistical methods for
evaluating the data. By this definition, NCLB already uses
multiple measures.
But the law does not permit for one to compensate for
another measure. I believe the integrity of the law would be
enhanced if it were modified to accommodate the following:
multiple measures; and allow states to use those measures to
create rigorous compensatory systems.
First, any consideration of new measures, however, must
first be met with a discussion of criteria to avoid watering
down any of the current systems. One, including new indicators
should result only in added rigor to core content areas. Two,
incorporating multiple measures should not result in systems
that are too complex so that they are difficult to implement or
confusing to parents and educators.
I have four specific recommendations. Two of these
recommendations would add measures that could serve in a
compensatory role. One recommendation adds to AYP. And the last
is a recommendation to ensure system integrity.
NCLB currently monitors the proficiency rates of high
school students in language arts, reading and math. When
students do not reach levels of proficiency on the statewide
regular tests, their only option is to retake the same test a
year later.
However, an alternative that could be used is to provide
students with an opportunity to enroll in targeted coursework
that targets their specific area of need and allow for them to
pass an end-of-course examine that allows for them to
demonstrate mastery of the content.
For instance, a student may not reach proficiency on the
statewide test because it were known that he struggled with
concepts in geometry. Subsequently, the student could enroll in
a geometry course, demonstrate proficiency via a new state-
developed end-of-course exam that is equally as rigorous as the
statewide NCLB test.
Learning is fundamentally about change. However, the
methods by which AYP are currently calculated do not follow
this logic and, in many ways, are actually biased. The current
reality is that the mathematical model used to measure
proficiency rates must be improved.
For example, a school with many students scoring in the
highest performance category can have a drop in students'
academic performance that still remains above proficiency and
still be classified as a school making AYP. In contrast, a
school with many students beginning well below proficiency and
learning at remarkable rates, is likely not to be recognized as
a high-performing school.
It is my recommendation that AYP calculations include
results obtained from growth models as another method for
evaluating schools. NCLB currently requires students to
participate in science assessments beginning in 2008. However,
the results of those assessments will not be included currently
in AYP calculations. It is my recommendation that they should
be. It is also possible to develop end-of-course exams in
science, as previously suggested.
Last, I would like to offer a suggestion on the use of
NAEP. It cannot be used to measure AYP, but it can be used to
inform how state performance standards are set and partly used
to determine overall system integrity. I would like to
recommend that this committee support a research agenda that
would investigate and report how best to establish links
between NAEP and the various state assessment programs.
In many respects, the variability in standards and
difficulty of the assessment programs across states is
important and reflects idiosyncrasies in the educational
programs. On the other hand, this variability presents a
significant challenge, given that we live in a highly mobile
society.
It is my view that reauthorized versions of NCLB should
establish national policy using NAEP to illustrate the
comparability of proficiency levels across the country. This
information would be extremely valuable as states build or
refine their standards and assessment programs. It will also
provide policymakers with a window to assess system integrity.
Thank you for your time. I hope these suggestions are
helpful. And I am grateful to answer any questions that you may
have.
[The statement of Mr. Doran follows:]
Prepared Statement of Harold C. Doran, Senior Research Scientist,
American Institutes for Research
Chairman Miller, ranking member McKeon, and honorable members of
the committee, thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts on
ways to improve the No Child Left Behind Act. My name is Harold Doran,
and I am a senior research scientist at the American Institutes for
Research (AIR) in Washington, DC. In this role, I help states and
districts across the country develop their testing and accountability
systems.
The question I have been asked to respond to is whether the
adequate yearly progress (AYP) provisions in NCLB would benefit from
having additional ways to evaluate schools, what some refer to as
multiple measures, and whether these measures can be joined to form a
compensatory accountability system. The term compensatory denotes that
not meeting AYP under one measure could be compensated for using a
secondary measure.
I believe the AYP provisions could be strengthened if multiple
measures were added. In my discussion today, I would like to explain
this position and suggest specific measures that I believe would
strengthen the legislation.
Why Multiple Measures?
I emphatically support the use of multiple measures, as do most
educational experts. However, there are multiple views on what set of
measures to include in accountability systems. Even more challenging is
how these measures can be combined in forming a compensatory
accountability design. To reduce ambiguity, I would offer the following
definition of multiple measures for today's conversation: An
accountability system that includes multiple measures uses test scores
from more than a single test, achievement indicators collected by other
means, or various statistical methods for evaluating the data.
By this definition, NCLB already relies on multiple measures. But
the law does not permit one measure to compensate for another measure.
I believe the integrity and strength of the law would be enhanced if it
were modified to accommodate the following:
1. Permit for multiple measures; and
2. Allow states to use those measures to create rigorous
compensatory systems.
Any consideration of new measures, however, must first be met with
a discussion of criteria to avoid watering down our current systems:
1. Increased Rigor. Including new indicators should result only in
added rigor to core content areas.
2. Simplicity and Transparency. Incorporating multiple measures
should not result in complex systems that are difficult to implement or
that are confusing to parents and educators. The elegance of
simplicity, combined with a focus on rigor, will guard against over-
engineering accountability designs.
Specific Recommendations for Multiple Measures
I have four specific recommendations. Two of these recommendations
would add measures that could serve in a compensatory role, one
recommendation adds to AYP, and the last is a recommendation to ensure
system integrity.
End-of-Course Exams
NCLB currently monitors the proficiency rates of high-school
students in language arts/reading and math. When students do not reach
levels of proficiency on the statewide regular tests, their only option
in many cases is to retake the same test. However, an alternative that
could be used is to provide students with an opportunity to enroll in
coursework that targets their specific areas of need and allow for them
to pass an end-of-course test that demonstrates mastery of the content.
For instance, a student may not reach proficiency on the statewide
NCLB test only because he struggles with concepts in geometry.
Subsequently, the student could enroll in a geometry course and, at the
end of this course, demonstrate proficiency via a state-developed end-
of-course exam in geometry that is equally as rigorous as the statewide
NCLB test.
Growth Models
Learning is fundamentally about change. However, the methods by
which AYP are currently calculated do not follow this logic and are, in
many ways, biased.
The current reality is that the mathematical model used to measure
proficiency rates must be improved. For example, a school with many
students scoring in the highest performance category can have a drop in
students' academic performance that still remains above the proficiency
bar and still be classified as making AYP. In contrast, a school with
many students beginning well below proficiency, but learning at
remarkable rates, is likely not to be recognized as a high-performing
school.
It is my recommendation that AYP calculations include results
obtained from growth models as another method for evaluating schools.
The results from these models can be used in a manner similar to the
safe-harbor provisions as another way to make AYP. If permitted, the
models must conform to the same high expectations for proficiency as
currently required and not simply reward growth.
Incorporate Science Results into AYP
The 2001 NCLB requires students to participate in science
assessments beginning in 2008. However, the results of those science
assessments are not included in the current AYP calculations.
Including science in AYP calculations will encourage schools to
emphasize science as a component of their core curricula. It will also
be possible to develop end-of-course exams in science as previously
suggested.
National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) Research
for Comparability
Last, I would like to offer a suggestion on the use of NAEP--it
cannot be used to measure AYP, but it can be used to inform how state
performance standards are set and partly used to determine overall
system integrity. I would like to recommend that this committee support
a research agenda that would investigate and report how best to
establish links between NAEP and the various state assessment programs
across the country.
In many respects, the variability in content standards and
difficulty of the assessments across states is important and reflects
critical idiosyncrasies in the educational programs. On the other hand,
this variability presents a significant challenge given that we live in
a highly mobile society. For example, a student attaining mathematical
proficiency in Arizona may attend college and/or obtain professional
work outside of that state.
Hence, my view is that reauthorized versions of NCLB should
establish national policy using NAEP to illustrate the comparability of
proficiency levels across the country. This information would be
extremely valuable as states build and/or refine their standards and
assessment programs. It will also provide policymakers with a window to
assess system integrity.
Should the committee accept the notion that additional indicators
are necessary to establish more robust systems, I would then encourage
the committee to further consider how these multiple indicators can be
combined to form a judgment about school quality that still aligns with
the basic tenets of proficiency set forth in the legislation.
I hope these suggestions are helpful as this committee moves
forward with deliberations related to NCLB improvements. I am grateful
for the opportunity to testify today and am happy to answer any
questions you may have.
______
Chairman Miller. Thank you all very much for your time.
Dr. Doran, you say on the bottom of the first page of your
statement that by definition NCLB already relies on multiple
measures, but the law does not permit one measure to compensate
for another measure.
And, Commissioner McWalters, you said in your statement
that these indicators should be supplementary to assessment
results, but they should be allowed to be as part of an overall
determination of school and district progress. Are those two
things consistent?
Mr. Doran. Maybe I can clarify exactly what I mean and
explore for just a moment. Currently there is a limited set of
multiple measures that are permitted. In reality, a student has
a single opportunity to demonstrate proficiency on the test. We
know that tests when designed well can provide very useful and
good information. But the reality is some kids have mastered
the content, but for one reason or another, didn't have an
opportunity to demonstrate their proficiency on the test when
it was given on that day.
And I think what I am saying is this. You talk to
practitioners. You talk to statisticians. You talk to testing
professionals. And we might say that if I had a different day
or a different way for a student to demonstrate their
proficiency on this content, he would have. I know the student
has mastered the material. But it just didn't work today. So I
need a different day to test, or I need a different way. The
goal is still the same: evaluate whether the student has
mastered the concept. Just provide multiple, parallel tracks to
identify whether the student has done so.
Chairman Miller. Commissioner McWalters?
Mr. McWalters. I would concur with that. There are two
different multiple measures we are talking about. One is
actually about student performance. And the other is capacity
issues. I meant don't let the capacity issue measure. The
indicators of whether they are on task should not somehow
compensate for student performance. But I would concur.
We are a state that very much is trying now to come up with
embedded assessments that can be audited for reliability and
use to drive practice. Those kind of measures when done right
ought to be compensatory as in added to and part of an
explanation.
Chairman Miller. Let me follow up on what you just
mentioned. Because in your testimony, you also stated--and this
is what concerns me--``Now that we are 5 years in the
implementation of the law, it is obvious that many schools that
have missed their annual targets are doing all that they can do
within a failing system.''
Mr. McWalters. Right.
Chairman Miller. And I think all of us here as we have
visited schools and schools that haven't made AYP and they show
you what changes they are making, you leave that school and get
in your car and drive away thinking they don't have a chance.
Mr. McWalters. Right, right. That is right.
Chairman Miller. Because you just don't see any change in
the capacity to do what is necessary. They have moved everybody
around. They have given people titles.
Mr. McWalters. Right.
Chairman Miller. But it is just not going to happen. And it
hasn't happened for the last 20 years in the same schools.
Mr. McWalters. Right.
Chairman Miller. So you start to think, you know--and so, I
am intrigued with the idea of multiple indicators as also being
able to give you a handle on what is going on in that school or
even within that district.
Mr. McWalters. Yes, right.
Chairman Miller. But certainly, within that school of
whether it is time for professional development or teachers to
work together or to review one another's activity, all of these
things that we think measure a learning environment. But again,
you are really talking about two separate purposes.
Mr. McWalters. That is right, sir.
Chairman Miller. Is that correct?
Mr. McWalters. Absolutely. I think most of us--again, when
I said I was an urban educator, I was in a state that didn't
have an urban capacity. The state could not intervene at the
district level because some of our urbans they are bigger
institutions almost than the State Department.
So when this law started--and I think it started in the
right place--all commissioners were into school improvements
where you can go in and you can possibly restructure a school
to work for a while. But if you step back and that is in a
system that is dysfunctional, then that system will eventually
come back to neutral, if you will.
So this issue of what other measures of school health,
district health aligned from state health to school room is
very complicated business. And it is only actually with the
emerging information systems that you can start tracking
expenditures, time on task, teacher development.
And the most impenetrable ones so far is when you have bad
teacher practice with kids who have never been given a fair
chance. And then you find teachers who actually begin to
understand their own limitations when they see good standards
and good feedback. And then you start realizing teacher
retooling is part of an enormous investment strategy.
I think my only point is if you don't know all of that and
you just keep using one indicator, I just don't see the
viability of that changing the improvement structure.
Chairman Miller. Dr. Dougherty, do you want to comment?
Mr. Dougherty. I would like to add that I am hearing two
issues here. One is a more nuanced way of determining whether
the kid is okay. Is the kid on a trajectory to being
proficient. And the second is a more nuanced approach to
whether the school is okay and the school is on a trajectory.
Chairman Miller. And a district.
Mr. Dougherty. And a district. And that is a very important
point because school systems--schools exist within systems. And
a lot of times the problem is the system is dysfunctional.
Chairman Miller. Okay.
Secretary Woodruff, let me ask you this. This 2007 school
year you are going to be using an approved growth model. Is
that correct?
Ms. Woodruff. Yes, sir.
Chairman Miller. What is the biggest change that you think
you are going to notice?
Ms. Woodruff. We don't know. We will be calculating the
school's rating based on the traditional model. We will also be
calculating using the growth model. And then we will be able to
see whether or not there is any difference in the school rating
between the two. So until we actually implement and evaluate
that implementation, I really can't give you a clear answer.
Chairman Miller. Thank you. My time is up.
Mr. Olson, I am going to have to get you on a second round
here. But I am quite intrigued with your track record in terms
of administering these adaptive tests. And I would like to come
back to that.
But I would like now to recognize Congressman McKeon.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And just following up a little bit on the line of
questioning that you were doing with Commissioner McWalters and
Dr. Doran, you are talking about having a dual type different
modes of testing because it would do a better job.
One of the things that I have found in talking to people is
their complaint already of having too many tests. Would this be
another layer on top of that that they would have to deal with?
Mr. Doran. A couple of issues.
One, in thinking about this a bit, I think it is clear that
we are talking about two buckets, two kinds of things that we
want to collect indicators on and about schools. School process
indicators, things that are illustrative of how healthy the
school is in its instructional leadership and how well students
are spending time on task and so forth. And those don't
necessarily become quantifiable in the sense of whether
students have mastered the core content or not. So those are
the school process variables bucket. And those are extremely
important.
Then there is the other bucket, which are those measures
that are designed to specifically measure whether students have
met the outcomes that are expected of them or not. Now, with
respect to student outcomes, if we had multiple measures--that
is, other ways that we could evaluate whether the students have
mastered the contents or not--I wouldn't necessarily suggest
that students would be tested multiple times, per say.
I think that students should be given multiple
opportunities to demonstrate the mastery of the concept. So for
example, if a student did fine and demonstrated their mastery
of the concept on the regular statewide assessment, that is
fine. That is the only assessment maybe that student would need
to participate in unless the school or the classroom teacher
for other reasons wanted the student to participate in
something else.
However, if the student didn't demonstrate mastery of the
concepts on that particular test, I think there should be
multiple avenues from which the school--the state has designed
a system such that the school can choose an alternative path.
Now, I don't think that, based on my conversations with
professionals and state departments of education, my
experiences as a practitioner, which was 10 years, that people
would push back and reject an opportunity to allow students to
have multiple opportunities to demonstrate their mastery of the
concept.
I think where people would push back is if students were
required to participate in repetitive tests that didn't give
them useful information upon which they could make
instructional diagnoses from there.
Mr. McWalters. I would completely concur with that. When I
talk about multiple assessments, I think one of the things that
we are still missing is that the test is perceived as a state
test. And thank God, now I think most of us have at least got
standards in systems where they are aligned. But teachers don't
own them yet.
And until we have worked at the level of teachers
developing assessments just like the state tests or versions of
it that I would call embedded, much more performance-based,
much more on demand and that the state's obligation is to have
a system that is auditing that so it is either got quality and
it is reliable.
But any of you that know anything about the writing process
strategy statewide or nationally know that it is hard work and
it is probably extensive to get it embedded. But until teachers
begin to own the assessment decisions that would add up to
improving the state test, then you are still doing a dip stick
strategy and you are not going to change practice
substantively.
So the teachers I talk to don't think of my instrumentation
as additional testing. They think of it as instructional
assessment.
Mr. McKeon. But it still takes more time away from
classroom instruction because they have to do another----
Mr. McWalters. The ones that I am talking about would be
done right in an instructional program. It would be part of the
instructional practice just like a quiz is today.
Mr. McKeon. Okay.
Mr. McWalters. If you know what I mean.
Mr. McKeon. Okay. But a quiz also takes time away from
instruction. I mean, at some point whenever you are evaluating,
you are taking time away from instruction. I am just saying
that was one of the complaints we have is we already have all
these tests. And I am not saying anything about the validity of
it, the importance of it.
Just, I think, when you say we get push back on some
things, you get push back on just about everything.
Secretary, one of the questions I had is we both come from
the largest state. You are one of the smaller states. Do you
think what you are doing could be replicated with the number of
districts we have, the number of schools we have within our
state and then the same thing across the country?
Ms. Woodruff. Well, actually, the growth model that we have
in place absolutely could be used in small states, large
states. It really doesn't matter. We are using the value table.
It is very simple to understand, as Dr. Dougherty mentioned.
Students are given points for different progressions toward
proficiency. If the student slips, then the school gets fewer
points. So the system itself is one that really can be used in
a small system or a large one. That is not an issue at all.
Could I comment on the previous conversation for a moment?
Mr. McKeon. Go ahead.
Ms. Woodruff. One of the things that I think that we have
gotten away from is helping teachers and others understand that
assessment has been and always will be a part of instruction
and that those quizzes and end of course assessments and so
forth are important. In Delaware, we have a student
accountability system. And at certain levels students who are
well below our standard must attend summer school.
We have developed a system by which school districts can
bring to us what we call other indicators of performance. And
if students can show proficiency according to those other
indicators, then they do not have to go to summer school and
face other consequences like not going to the next grade and so
forth.
So I think that what both Dr. Doran and Commissioner
McWalters are talking about in terms of other kinds of
assessments really can be done. The system we have now probably
isn't as sophisticated as it ought to be. But something like
that makes sense to families and makes sense to students as
they get older certainly and certainly to teachers.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Kildee?
Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Commissioner McWalters, you testified in support of a
differentiated interventions for schools that do not meet AYP,
depending on how close they are. Can you describe how you might
differentiate the consequences for schools that fall short a
little, fall short a lot?
Mr. McWalters. Well, right now our practice--we are
actually in this practice. We have gone out--we have systems,
and they tend to be embedded in big urban systems. I am going
to be dramatic.
You have flat line indicators. I mean, the first indication
is teach, for God's sake. And that is a pretty heavy
assessment. But when you go in, usually when you find there is
a pretty complicated set of dysfunctions from leadership to
school culture, attitudes. I mean, you just want to shut the
place down, which that is the one dramatic thing we can do.
But the truth is you go from there to places that have
reasonably good cultures, but they just internalize low
expectations. They love the kids, but they are not working with
them. So you need to know that when you are going in there. And
you need to know whether or not it is about alignment, time on
task, command, control.
You need to settle either those initiatives at the state
and district level. And once you have them in your tool kit,
you need to know whether the district is part of that problem.
Is it the districts that have the systems of dysfunction? And
if it does, that changes the trajectory of change.
When I talk about AYP, I have two images. One is a
realistic one for a school and a realistic one for a big system
with a series of alignments that all have to be dealt with. So
I think my point is I am in a little state that has enough
information systems on health, time, expense, personnel that
that is the level of intervention that we are now dealing with.
And I just see differentiated treatments for different
schools. There is a phrase in my state now, ``Great schools
look awfully similar. Terrible ones can look awfully
different.''
Mr. Kildee. Well, let us take this. You have a school A and
school B. One just barely missed AYP. And the other one just
was way, way down the scale.
Mr. McWalters. Right. That is right.
Mr. Kildee. Can't we have effects, penalties, consequences,
whatever you want to call them?
Mr. McWalters. That is right.
Mr. Kildee. Do you apply those effects, consequences,
penalties differently in those instances?
Mr. McWalters. Well, I would like to be able to--yes, my
answer is I think we have to have better degrees of judgments
made about what the intervention and the penalties are. And I
think those should be in a proposal that is kind of a change
theory or status that is reviewed by a peer review structure so
that it is not hidden, it is not made up on the spot. It is a
whole program of that is one reviewed.
Because one of the other issues I think we have to admit is
we are at a scale of intervention that is still an experiment
in 50 states. None of us have an answer here. I need both
assurance and cover that in good faith I am doing public policy
work that can be tracked over time for its effectiveness. And I
think that is what the peer review system ought to kind of
review and sanction.
Mr. Kildee. Well, for example, at one point you might
require tutoring for students.
Mr. McWalters. Right.
Mr. Kildee. Because perhaps there was a great differential
between where they should be. One just barely fell short. Is
there something short of tutoring one could do in that school
that would help raise that?
Mr. McWalters. Well, I will give the example of a--in the
first round, I think the drama was needed because it uncovered
those places we are hiding behind averages. But once you got at
that, many of the places actually got on task, identified
through disaggregation what they had to do, and they went about
the business of doing it.
But now that we are into this over time, you have schools
that kind of drop in and drop out. And to go in there
effectively, sometimes they see it coming. Sometimes it is as
simple as a cohort question. You want to be able to go in with
an instrumentation.
Sometimes it is instructional practice. Sometimes there was
a change in leadership. And sometimes it is more time on task
like tutoring. I am suggesting that all of those are decisions
that need to be made in the context of a really comprehensive
assessment of where the school or district is.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you. Just one more question. Suppose one
of these groups whom we disaggregate the data for falls short
and that could bring the whole school out of compliance with
AYP.
Mr. McWalters. Right.
Mr. Kildee. Is there something we can do rather than say
that school is out of AYP and therefore must suffer the
consequences, the effect, whatever you want to call it, that we
do something for that one group to help raise them up? Or do we
just declare the whole school not achieving AYP?
Mr. McWalters. I would say you just ask me. That is the
biggest question in my state now on the periphery. When you
have a system that is perceived to be a pretty good system,
good system, good school, in one indicator, usually second
language or minority or poor kids in a system that they are a
tiny percentage, in those early days, that was exactly what I
needed because you could go after people that never talked
about it.
But now that everybody knows that is the indicator, once
you have that, this issue of saying the school is now not in
AYP and is in need of improvement it is--I don't know if the
word is redundant or superfluous. Because now you still could
have a reasonably high-performing place that is not running
away from the identification of needing to do something about a
target population. But the rhetoric of the big system--I am
either in or out--it is not effective.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
Mr. Castle?
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And let me thank the panel of witnesses who were
exceptional. I started this week giving a speech to our
district superintendents on the growth model. And then I have
listened to you. And I have decided now I knew a lot less about
it than I thought I did going into it. So you have opened up
the book for study, I think, here.
Let me ask you, Dr. Doran, a question on something a little
bit unrelated in your written testimony, which I am looking at
now. You indicated in the discussion on NAPE, ``It cannot be
used to measure AYP.'' I agree with that. ``But it could be
used to inform how state performance standards are set,'' et
cetera, and, ``recommend that the committee support a research
agenda that would investigate and report how best to use links
between NAEP and the various state assessment programs across
the country.'' And I agree with that, too.
And I have seen the charts that have shown how states are
achieving on their own assessments versus how they do on the
NAEP test, the National Assessment for Education Progress Test.
And I would assume the state assessment would include
standards, too. I mean, to me they are perhaps--I am not saying
anyone is cheating. But obviously, some states are setting a
lot higher standards than others.
And that concerns me. I am not sure that is what the
purpose of all this is. But I just wonder if you wanted to
expand on that a little bit in terms of your thinking. I
understand your conclusion is we need to study it further.
Mr. Doran. I would be happy to. It is true. We know that
there is a lot of variability in at least the two things that
you mentioned. We know the difficulty of the assessments vary
across states. And we also know the difficulty and the breadth
of the content standards vary across the states.
And there is some research. It is not comprehensive. But
there is some research that has done exactly what you
mentioned. We have seen how state tests can be used to match up
to NAEP. And we can compare how state performance compares to
NAEP. I think we need to extend that, and that is why I am
recommending that. I would like to see that happen a bit more
comprehensively.
I think this is important for a number of reasons. One, I
am not sure that there is a great deal of understanding of
exactly what is happening in or why there is this great
variability across states. And I think we need to open the door
to start having that conversation about if there is
variability, what is the cause of that variability, and are
some states, in fact, doing things that other states should be
doing.
So I think having a policy that would help illustrate the
comparability of standards and assessments across states would
then lead us down the path of a better understanding about what
some states are doing that may, in fact, should be replicated
in other locations. Why do I think that is important? Well, we
know that some students start high school in one state and they
move into another state. And they may have a difficult time
catching up. Or they may be advanced, and they may be bored.
That some students graduate high school in, say, Arizona
and they may move and attend college in California or obtain
work in California. But the proficiency definitions in Arizona
and California may be very disparate.
So we in many respects don't have a really strong system of
coherence. And I know why. Because we have--someone mentioned
50 or 52 different experiments happening with the district in
Puerto Rico. So I would recommend this because I think, a, we
need an illustration of what is happening in terms of
comparability. And, two, I think that would lead us down the
road of a better understanding of why there are variances.
Mr. Castle. Thank you.
Let me jump subjects here and to Secretary Woodruff and Dr.
Dougherty, getting back to the growth model.
Secretary Woodruff, you mentioned that Delaware has been
using longitudinal data systems that track individual student
progress since 1984. And my impression is from your testimony
and from what I know that indeed Delaware was more advanced in
that area than perhaps some other states had been.
Dr. Dougherty, I think you indicated that 27 states could
do growth now and 40 in several years. Is that a correct
statement? Well, let me ask the question. And that is the whole
growth business is a little more complicated than I had
thought, I am learning. And my concern is--and I think it is an
important part of our discussion on the reiteration of No Child
Left Behind perhaps this year.
But my concern is the ability of the states to do it. We
have had a lot of complaints about the cost of No Child Left
Behind, et cetera. And I don't want to overburden. On the other
hand, I would like to do something which is positive. I am just
curious as to where we are vis-a-vis the states and how
simplistic this would be for them to do or how complicated it
would be for them to do it. If you all could share your
thoughts on that.
Ms. Woodruff. Well, I think Dr. Dougherty certainly is much
more the expert on the lay of the land, if you will, across
states and where different states are. But I know that in our
conversations at CCSSO that as states are putting the data
systems in place and learning more about assessment systems and
how growth can work, there is a desire among my colleagues for
this kind of accountability model to be used because we feel
that it really can help us, quite frankly, incentivize our
schools and people within our schools more than the status
model alone.
Mr. Dougherty. Yes, I would say that basically the data
nerds in the state agencies have been wanting longitudinal data
systems for years. And they never got the leverage until No
Child Left Behind came along and you started to talk about,
``Well, you have got to desegregate kids by ethnicity,'' and so
forth and so on. And then how do you keep track of which kid
belongs in which group with kids bubbling in every year? That
is going to create errors and so forth.
And so, you basically--one of the biggest positive
consequences of No Child Left Behind is just the better
development of data systems and the greater use of data for
school improvement, system evaluation, and so forth. There has
been tremendous progress. My organization was originally a
small non-profit called Just for the Kids. And we started out
in 2000 surveying the states to see who could do longitudinal
data pictures involving student growth, tracking, who has been
enrolled in the school for how long.
And Tom Luce, who founded our organization, said, you know,
find me 15 states that can do this. Well, we found about five.
So now it is a lot more than 15, so we are making tremendous
progress in this area. The recognition that it is valuable,
that it is not only valuable for accountability, but you can
then put information in the hands of educators.
I have not only got my kid, but my kid comes in this fall
and I have got an academic history on the kid going back. So if
he doesn't understand multiplication, maybe he didn't learn
place value last year. Understanding that building these data
systems is valuable, both for evaluation, accountability, and
school improvement and the teacher and principal and district
level.
Mr. Castle. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Miller. Ms. Hirono?
Ms. Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think that NCLB should allow for multiple assessments
because what we have now is just not fixable enough as a really
helpful way to measure student progress. And right now the
Department of Education is approving growth models on a pilot
basis. And they are limiting this to only 10 states.
I note, Dr. Dougherty, that in your testimony that 27
states are pretty much ready to go with a growth model and that
the NCLB right now does not contemplate that by statute.
So yes or no would be good, for all of you, if we should
amend NCLB to allow for more flexibility to allow the states
right now to propose a growth model as an assessment measure.
Can we just go down the line?
Mr. Olson. Yes.
Ms. Woodruff. Yes.
Mr. Dougherty. Yes.
Mr. McWalters. Yes.
Mr. Doran. Yes.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Miller. I am impressed. Thank you, Ms. Hirono.
We will go back to Mr. Boustany.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Given that math and science have been--there is a strong
consensus that these areas of education are critical for our
national competitiveness vis-a-vis China and other countries in
a global economy.
For those of you who have looked at the longitudinal
tracking, are there clear differences with regard to math
versus language arts when you look at the tracking system? And
is it easier to implement longitudinal tracking with math
education than with language arts?
Mr. Doran. I have done a bit of research on this actually.
It is a tough question to answer. It is a good question. And we
think about this question quite a bit actually.
In the growth modeling world, and in a slight variation
from the kinds of growth models that we are talking about
today, something called value added models, we tend to be able
to pick up what statisticians call a bit more signal, that is,
we can minimize statistical noise, with math. We don't know
exactly why.
Some hypothesize that math tends to be a little bit more of
a linear kind of an instructional subject as opposed to
reading, which one may or may not--and there are arguments on
the other side of that, that they say math isn't as linear. But
from a statistical perspective in some of the research that I
have done with value added models, which are slightly different
than growth models that we are talking about here today, we are
able to at least pick up a bit more sensitivity on what is
happening within the school in the subject area of math.
We still do very good work with--or we think we can still
do very good work statistically with reading scores. But the
sensitivity in terms of how much we can capture for whatever
reason isn't as good in reading as it is in math. It is still
good, and I don't want to undermine that it is not. But we can
pick up better patterns of what is happening in schools and
minimize statistical noise with math when compared to reading.
Mr. McWalters. I think the issue of math and reading
comprehension and communication are the central elements. My
experience in this is that we have to delve deeper into what
reading comprehension means. And testing has its limits there.
But in the industry that I represent, people understand
teaching reading. And yet they stop teaching it developmentally
by the 4th grade, which is why you have so many kids who can't
answer comprehension questions when they get into high school.
And math is too often defined as operations as opposed to
problem solving.
And my experience is that once you are in high school, a
student who can't solve the math problem probably isn't reading
and comprehending what you are even asking them to do. If you
can reduce it to an operation, they tend to be able to do it.
I have kids who can pass an algebra test if it is done as
algebra problems. If you take the numbers off the page and put
it as a problem to be configured and then solved, they can't do
it.
Mr. Boustany. So there is a strong linkage between language
skills and math solving ability.
Mr. McWalters. At the higher up that you tend to go.
Mr. Boustany. The higher up you go?
Mr. McWalters. Absolutely. Problem solving----
Mr. Boustany. So it is critical that if we are going to use
longitudinal tracking as a tool, you wouldn't want to separate
out the two. You would want to track both areas longitudinally?
Mr. McWalters. Yes, absolutely.
Mr. Boustany. Yes, yes.
Also, Dr. Doran, I was very pleased to hear your commentary
on the variability of NAEP and many of the state assessments.
And this seems to be something that has been unmasked clearly
since No Child Left Behind has been in play. And I agree. I
think it is an area clearly that needs to be researched more
thoroughly. And so, I thank you for bringing up that point.
I see my time is running out.
Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
Chairman Miller. Ms. Davis?
Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for being here. I really appreciate your
expertise on this.
Commissioner McWalters, you mentioned one of the problems
that we have certainly seen in the San Diego area where we had
a school meeting AYP on one of 30--only missing it on one of 38
requirements.
In your research, if we were to address the specific
shortfalls for a school and just look at that element--and in
many cases, it is in special education or perhaps even in
English language learners. Does that actually cover the needs
for that school? Or how do you think we should best address
that?
Mr. McWalters. Now you are into context. And take this as
an experienced practitioner, but it is not definitive. I can
imagine a place where you expose the one indicator and the
people are as upset at the school level as we would be. It is
almost like when we finally got decent information that has
surfaced, they are willing to step toward the problem.
There is another school where that one indicator--those
kids become the problem. They will do everything they can to
find a way around the kid. Those are two different contexts.
One of them you want to hang. And the other one you want to
work with.
Now, however we term that, this is that issue of is
everything too blunt. Assuming that you have taught us the
lesson that we are accountable and that we have got to be
transparent, this tension between state, district, and school
has to come to a new level of maturity where I am holding the
right issues and people accountable for the right attitudes and
intervention strategies. That is the best answer I can give
you.
Mrs. Davis of California. Anybody else want to address
that? Okay. It is obviously a difficulty in the community. It
is a huge difficulty for schools. And I was just curious to see
how many people have----
Mr. McWalters. But I want to say again. I have communities
also that want those kids then to be isolated. That is the good
part of NCLB is that these are all our kids. And to the extent
we are on task to solve that problem, I need to be an incenter,
a rewarder, and a partner. If you are avoiding those kids at
the community or district level, I need to be the hammer.
Mrs. Davis of California. Yes. And perhaps this is an
expansion on that a little bit because we know that there are
certain sub-groups that are more likely in some school
districts to not meet the requirements. And there is this
tension, as you say, with identifying certain sub-groups. Is
there a growth model, though, for those sub-groups that might
be more pertinent really within the context?
For example, in English language learners, you may have a
classroom where you are moving the kids out of that classroom.
The fact that that classroom isn't showing improvement isn't
because the kids aren't improving. It is because the kids who
did improve moved out of the classroom.
Mr. McWalters. Yes.
Mrs. Davis of California. How can we best demonstrate this
concern? And in many ways, is there just a downside to the
growth model as well?
Ms. Woodruff. If I could respond, actually when we designed
ours--and our growth model will give schools and teachers
within schools more specific information about individual
students. And in particular, one of our directors for special
education in one of our local school districts is really intent
on this particular model because we will be able to see if a
student is making that kind of progress and then they can then
examine what needs to be done for that particular child.
One of the other things--so I think the growth model does
really incentivize and provide additional information, more in-
depth information for schools and districts to be able to act.
And I think that is important.
The other thing that we are finding as we look at the
issues around English language learners and special education
is--and we have done a lot of work to try to build the capacity
of local districts. That even though you may have schools
within a district that are kind of going up and down, that it
is a district level issue that needs to be dealt with. And we
need to help them intervene across the district, not just in
individual schools so that you can stop some of that
fluctuation.
Mrs. Davis of California. And, Mr. Olson, perhaps if you
want to come up really quickly. We are running out of time. But
I just wonder is there good cooperation between states with
this data sharing and in developing the longitudinal work that
is being done? Do you see some really good examples that we
could look at?
And, Mr. Olson, did you want to comment on the last one
real quickly? Mr. Olson, I am sorry. Did you want to comment on
that last comment?
Mr. Olson. I wanted to comment on your earlier question.
Given our work, students typically will take a test two or
three, four times during a year giving accurate information on
the growth measured. When a student moves from one classroom to
another, we have the data that follows the child.
The other interesting thing is that with the kind of
quality that we bring, the information we bring, we can begin
studying the effects of moving a child from classroom to
classroom.
So it may or may not be--you know, if the student achieves
somewhat less or less growth, it may not be the teacher. It may
be the fact that the child was moved from class to class or
from school to school. But the quality of data allows us to
begin understanding issues like that within the school system.
Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you.
Mr. Dougherty. In answer to your question about cooperation
across state, states are ravenous for information about how
other states are doing it. One of our most popular things that
we have got in the data quality campaign has been to do a
lessons learned series where we have gone out and done detailed
site visits in specific states and said, ``How did they go
through the process?''
This is stuff that is difficult to record in a survey, so
it is their nuanced experiences. This has been in very high
demand in other states.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
Mr. Souder?
Mr. Souder. I have a couple of questions. But I didn't hear
a clear answer to Mr. Castle's earlier question.
And maybe, Mr. Olson, you could take first crack. How much
roughly does a growth model increase the costs?
Mr. Olson. We don't have all the data about the costs for
each school district, I mean, each state. But our measures in
all likelihood could be put in place for a state at a cost real
similar to what a state has gained for measure for one time a
year under the current model.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
We spend--and schools spend even more--millions on IDEA and
developing individual education plans that supposedly are
advancing those special needs students at the best rate
possible.
Does the growth model accommodate that? Is anybody talking
about how to integrate what we are spending with the right hand
into the left-hand measurements?
Mr. Olson. Well, I would just make one comment. And earlier
my remarks focused on two things. One is measuring growth. And
two, measuring individual children accurately enough to measure
growth. With the computerized adaptive measure, which we use--
and there will be other methodologies.
But when you are measuring children accurately, we can
measure academic growth of children about 98 percent of the
children within the normal population. Which means we are
measuring accurately academic growth of most of the special
education population as well as most of our most talented
children. So a real good accurate measure plus growth is
applicable to those programs.
Mr. McWalters. Can I comment on that?
Mr. Souder. Yes. I would also like to see how that is
integrated in, then, to the individual education plans and
whether these two things are actually linked at all in the real
world.
Mr. McWalters. I think that is the right question that has
a complicated answer. One is it is No Child Left Behind that
finally got on the table that other than for a small number of
students we should have the same standards for all kids.
I am the parent of a special needs student who finally
graduated from college sum cum laude in math who could not
possibly pass any of these tests as a 4th-, 5th-or 6th-grader.
So the issues of adaptations are very real. But the issues of
common standard expectations need to be pounded on. That is the
right place to be.
Now, having said that, the instrumentation for changing
expectations and changing classroom practice is we have so far
to go that the AYP exercise right now is almost likely to pick
up all of the common cultural heritage that we didn't expect
these kids to do anything. So the intervention strategies now
have to be comprehensive. They have to be intensive.
But we have to be realistic about where we are starting.
And I do think working that back into the individual
improvement plan strategy and logic is a pretty powerful
institutional problem that we are facing. And that is the only
way you are going to bring assessment and IEPs into kind of a
common mission.
Mr. Souder. Because most of the schools in my district who
are failing in the standards are either special needs, or the
second is ESL. Because clearly, you can almost tell uniformly
ESL mix even in Indiana. It varies even in a district. Some
buildings will have 80 percent, and others will have a small
percent.
Some, very few, that are failing--I mean, a school can
waiver a certain amount. But most of the schools that are
having problems are way over the amount that they are allowed
for a waiver. What we have been talking about today--how does
that integrate with the English as a second language?
Mr. Dougherty. I want to mention that an ESL kid is
particularly likely--one who is just learning English--is
particularly likely to be very far below proficiency on an
English language test, since he can't read the test, at the
beginning and then is likely to make very rapid progress. So
you should note a rapid growth trajectory for such a student.
Some states, of course, do have tests that measure the
kid's progress in learning English. And school systems use
those tests as part of their diagnostic understanding of why
the kid isn't proficient on the English language test. It is
because they are not proficient on the test of English
proficiency. California is a great example of a state that has
really been conscientious in developing a test that tracks
kids' progress in learning English.
Mr. McWalters. The huge difference is in grade spans. If
you are somebody coming in here at 2nd grade coming from some
schooling, first of all, by age you are developmentally more
likely to respond to whatever the treatment is. If you come
into the 10th grade with no schooling, that is a different
treatment.
I think we shouldn't confuse measuring the measurement of
capacity or fluidity in a language with the other issues behind
the individual child. This is much more about program
treatment, the integrity of good program treatment in the ELL
world while we are figuring out the different ways to measure
what it is, language capacity or language fluidity, either
readiness or in English. I think those are--we have to separate
those issues and go after the integrity of program treatment
because there is tremendous variability on these children.
Mr. Souder. I had a young student from, I believe it was,
Southside High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who had come in
from Somalia where we have a lot of refugees coming in from
Eastern Africa. And he said first off, he was given the test 30
days after he arrived and spoke no English. And then even after
he learned English, they had never taught math in Somalia. So
even after he became proficient in English for his grade level,
he was substantially behind.
Mr. McWalters. Right, right.
Mr. Souder. These nuances are just devastating to some of
the morale to the teachers. I mean, I want accountability. But
it is devastating to the morale of the school and the teachers
when they are being measured and told they are failing based on
those kinds of standards.
Mr. McWalters. Right. But we have also many students in our
country that are American, as in born here. And they are
growing up in second language homes and neighborhoods. And they
are not doing well in our tests, either. That isn't about
measurement. That is about program quality. And this is about
the intervention strategies.
So I think the whole ESL question is the right question on
the table. And the issues about language facility in their own
language and in our language--all of that I think we have
measures of that. But how you fold that into an accountability
system and a program intervention question--it is not solved in
the timelines that are in the NCLB exercise.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Hinojosa?
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank the panelists for coming into visit with us today
and telling us what your thoughts are on No Child Left Behind.
My first question I am going to direct to Peter McWalters
and to Valerie Woodruff. No Child Left Behind already requires
a growth model in one area. And that is for limited English
proficient students. States are required to have benchmarks for
English language proficiency that are aligned to the state's
academic content standards.
They are also required to annually measure students'
progress toward proficiency. Share with us what steps your
state has taken in implementing these provisions and how your
experience with LEP students might inform our approach to
growth models of accountability.
Mr. McWalters. We are part of a national consortium to try
to come up with both assessments and treatment. And as I said
just a minute ago, so far to protect the interests of
everybody, we have all of them tested in state testing, and we
report them as disaggregation so that it is still currently
transparent. It is only through that exercise that I think that
I have not got the other layers of information, which is I have
some students where that is a good measure of the system's
failure to treat them.
I have other students that shouldn't be taking that test.
And it is almost a keen sense of the obvious when you see that.
So I am trying to help people understand we have got to figure
out the measurement instrument, which is necessary. But I think
we also have to know that in some cases it isn't about the
measurement.
It is about the program that that child is in and either
the integrity of its delivery or the fact that he shouldn't or
she shouldn't be in that program. And I am trying to play that
out right now both ways. But I am using straightforward state
assessments to do it. And that is why that cohort isn't moving
because many of them will not show significant enough
improvement fast enough to get that program--or those kids off
that list.
Mr. Hinojosa. Valerie, what is your state doing?
Ms. Woodruff. We certainly are measuring the students'
proficiency in English. And I would agree with Peter. There are
a number of children who, because of their varying
circumstances, 12 years old, no schooling in their native
language coming to us and then we are trying to catch them up,
who really should not be participating in the state
assessments. They do to the extent that they can. And that
certainly tells us where they are.
But we really need to be held accountable, in my mind, for
particularly those older children and whether or not they are
meeting proficiency in English first and then become part of
our state assessment system. So, we actually implemented a test
of English proficiency before No Child Left Behind and required
our districts to track them. Also, once those children become
proficient, we require our districts to continue to monitor how
those children are doing. And if they begin to falter, then to
intervene and provide additional support.
So that has been something that has been kind of on the
books and in practice in our state for a while. But we continue
to be concerned with the frustration level of the children who
are required to take an assessment that they cannot begin to
understand and much less, be proficient on.
Mr. Hinojosa. The next question I want to direct to Harold
Doran and to Allan Olson. No Child Left Behind's accountability
measures are least effective in high schools and is proven by
how we are competing internationally. Our high schools are way,
way down on the list as compared to China and Singapore and all
those others.
What are your recommendations for meaningful accountability
at the high-school level that would include multiple measures,
readiness for both secondary opportunities, and real progress
on improving graduation rates?
Mr. Doran. I have a couple thoughts. And I was wondering
actually if that question would come up in today's
conversation. Bill Gates gave testimony here a week or two ago,
and this issue was highlighted. And there have been some recent
studies that I think have been illustrative of exactly what you
are talking about.
I think there are a couple of things that I have learned by
looking at the literature recently that have evaluated state
assessment systems that tell an interesting story. I may get my
numbers slightly wrong, but I think the number is something
like this coming from Project Achieve and some studies they
have recently done.
I think it is eight states have aligned their graduation
requirements with expectations for post-secondary education or
the workforce. Twenty-six states have their assessments, high-
school assessments in place that only measure skills that
measure 8th-, 9th-and 10th-grade skills. And those don't
necessarily translate into skills that would guarantee that
students are successful post-high school.
There is an interesting model that 11 states have recently
bought into. And they have formed a consortium around an
Algebra II test. And the idea here is that when students
demonstrate competency in Algebra II that that guarantees--or
at least that gives them a higher probability that they will be
successful post-high school. And in some of those 11 states
that test will be a graduation requirement. In some other
states, it will not.
But I think one of the things that we can do from a policy
perspective is ask the following question. What do we want for
our children, and how do we know we are getting it? And so, one
of the things that we ought to--that we want for our children
is success post-high school. We need to operationalize and
define what that means.
Eleven states--there are more probably doing it, but I can
cite the example of 11 states. They have said we value Algebra
II. How do we know we are getting there? Well, we are going to
measure their progress on that core content area because 11
states--we believe that should students demonstrate competency
in that particular content area, they are likely to be
successful in high school.
So I think we can start with something simple. Ask the
question what do we want for our children. We want success in
post-secondary education. And what does that mean? And then
implement systems that measure that.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
The gentleman's time is expired.
Mr. Heller?
Mr. Heller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just a couple of questions here. And I appreciate the panel
being here. I really do appreciate your input. You guys are the
experts. I am not. My wife is a school teacher, so every once
in a while she does chew on my ears a little bit, especially on
this particular topic.
And one of the issues probably reflects what the ranking
member was saying and her concern about the amount of time you
spend testing children as opposed to the amount of time you
actually teach children. And it flows over.
For example, I represent Northern Nevada. And the
elementary school that my children go to, because of the amount
of teaching--excuse me, the amount of testing that goes on,
they have dropped certain curriculum. For example, they don't
teach history any more in the elementary school level because
it is not tested under NCLB.
They have dropped geography. They have dropped social
studies. And that doesn't include other curriculum or
activities like the music programs. They are dropping all these
programs because they are so concerned about these core issues
that need to be taught and tested that they don't have time to
teach others.
And I was wondering perhaps, Ms. Woodruff, if you could
comment on that.
Ms. Woodruff. I would be happy to.
Mr. Heller. Thank you.
Ms. Woodruff. I think those schools are wrong in their
dropping of those other curricular areas. Interestingly enough,
in Delaware we assess both science and social studies and have
been doing so at the elementary-, middle-and high-school level
since 2000. And we will continue to assess social studies as
well.
The other piece of that is that I think that when schools
begin to eliminate the social sciences, when they begin to
eliminate the arts programs, they are failing to see that there
is another context within which children can learn reading and
mathematics.
Mr. Heller. I agree.
Ms. Woodruff. When children see the relationship to other
kinds of--to the rest of their lives and to other kinds of
learning, they are much more likely to be successful than if
they are being constantly bombarded with only two or three
particular subject areas. There are a number of research
studies about the arts and so forth. I just think that it is
something that I am very happy to tell you the schools in
Delaware have not done and that we encourage them to understand
how those linkages can be made.
Mr. Heller. And I agree with you because I think that is an
imperative part of a child's education, are some of these
social skills that they learn in this process.
Ms. Woodruff. Right.
Mr. Heller. And I guess my concern, Mr. Chairman, is that
we are limiting the curriculum of these children or are careful
not to limit the curriculum of these students because I think
music programs do offer value. I think history offers a lot of
value as does geography and other social studies areas.
Ms. Woodruff. If I could comment further, one of the things
that we have deliberately done is we have standards in about 17
different areas, including career and technical education. And
we have done crosswalks, if you will, between standards in one
area and in another so that the people see the relationship.
We are also in the process of developing a statewide
recommended curriculum with model units. And many of those
units are integrated so that the teachers have something that
they can use. And then they have embedded assessments that are
directly related to the instruction that then just flow out of
the whole teaching and learning process and are not seen as
some stand-alone test that they don't feel has any sense and
context of the school itself and of their ongoing work. So it
is really an exciting opportunity for us.
Mr. Heller. Okay.
Ms. Woodruff. And our teachers are helping us build it and
are embracing it.
Mr. McWalters. I think this is a wonderful opportunity to
get out of the silos by the cross-mapping. I am assuming most
people would still want reading and math assessed because they
are so central. The idea that they are displacing something or
teaching to the tests as in drill and kill obviously is the
wrong place to be.
But when you start helping people map across the subjects,
then all the activity, the actual hands-on applied learning
exhibitions become instrumental in improving those two scores.
That is one of the only ways we are going to change the
structure of schooling. Otherwise you are going to end up with
more separation, more discrete testing. And it will still be
factual recall rather than application.
Mr. Heller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Miller. Thank you very much. I guess I would argue
that when schools start to implode on narrowing the curriculum
it may be one of the first indicators of the lack of capacity,
that you really are now watching an institution that is
atrophying to such an extent and lost an understanding of what
a learning environment is.
I mean, I have been involved with a number of schools all
across this country that have now taken music and made it an
absolute gateway to mathematics and the understanding of
mathematics. And I mean, it is replicated time and again in so
many areas that that might be a red flag that you would not
want to ignore in terms of the talent of that group of teachers
and administrators.
Next is Mr. Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I was out of the room for a minute, and you may have
covered some areas while I was gone. But I am from the state
that is suing the federal government over No Child Left Behind,
which is the way I was introducing myself at a lot of workshops
for freshman members. And to be honest with you, it was
actually a fairly----
Chairman Miller. That would be Connecticut, right?
Mr. Courtney. That is correct. Sorry.
And, you know, listening to the presentation, which
obviously all of you put a lot of thought into what is the
goals--which I think everybody agrees on. But I have to say
there really--at least in the state that has distinguished
itself in terms of the hostility and adversarial relationship
with this program--it is a very popular thing that the attorney
general is doing.
He is the kind of guy who sues everybody, pharmaceutical
companies, banks, insurance companies. He has said that there
has been no action of his office that has ever garnered the
kind of public response as his decision to challenge NCLB.
And, Mr. McWalters, who is a close neighbor of my
district----
Mr. McWalters. I am?
Mr. Courtney. You sort of started to get into whether or
not there is sort of a redundancy factor about what we are sort
of learning from tests. And, you know, what I see in
Connecticut is that when the test results come back in, the
schools that are not succeeding are Title I schools. And, I
mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that
Greenwich High School is not going to have any problems
succeeding. Whereas New London or Willington or Hartford or
Bridgeport or New Haven are going to--I mean, and at some point
people really question about, you know, why is this effort and
expense worth it?
Because it is almost common sense that tells you what the
results are, which is we know where the problems are. It is
poor school districts who, by the way, are the ones who have
been getting shortchanged on Title I funding over the last
couple of years. I mean, it is almost perverse to see the cuts
that these districts are having to absorb over the last few
years in terms of resources.
At the same time, the government is identifying them as not
succeeding. So, you know, I guess the question is is there a
way to do this a little more intelligently without sort of,
again, really damaging the public's belief and credibility in a
process that they see as the tail wagging the dog.
You have to go back now to the beginning because the
issue--some of us experienced this between the law as passed by
a bipartisan Congress with an executive branch that was drawing
a new line in the sand for accountability and transparency.
That is good. Disaggregation, good.
Many of us were in states that had systems that pre-dated
that. Valerie spoke to it. I spoke to it. I can clearly
remember sitting with the department going, ``Wow, what an
opportunity.''
If you came in and assessed where each state was in terms
of its own integrity to do the right thing--as in we had just
got a law. I was into disaggregation. I was into the beginning
of intervention. It didn't line up perfectly, but I was there.
Instead of leveraging me forward, I spent 18 months
regrouping. That was a mistake. But I write it off because I
think the impatience of Congress from a nation at risk to goals
2000 was such that you didn't want to hear it anymore.
Connecticut was a perfect example, a high-performing state with
some of the biggest gaps, some of the most urban
concentrations.
The way to call that question between the law and the
department to focus in on what needed to be called apparently
didn't happen. I was one of those states that said I don't need
more state testing to know the sick place. But I have learned
to appreciate grade-level testing as an instrument of
improvement at the school and district level. I couldn't have
untangled that 5 years ago.
But I think we are all saying whatever lessons we needed to
learn about accountability and capacity and transparency--if it
hasn't been learned, then you need to authorize your department
to go after that state. But for states that have stepped toward
this and they are trying to sort out state needs from district
needs to school needs to growth, individual, instructional
needs, we have got to get that sophisticated pretty quickly.
Ms. Woodruff. Well, our experience has been that many of
our Title I schools are some of our highest-performing schools.
And we, for a very small state, are thrilled that we have had a
number of national blue ribbon schools. High-poverty schools
with high-risk populations, including English language
learners, particularly at the elementary level who are doing
incredibly well.
I think that where we are seeing No Child Left Behind
really shining the light on places that may have a somewhat
homogenous population and smaller numbers of the sub-groups and
shining the light on those places and saying you are not doing
what you need to be doing for all children has been helpful in
many ways. And I think that Title I schools for many years have
received a great deal of money.
I am not happy with the way Title I schools have to hold
back certain amounts of money in case of choice and in case of
supplemental educational services that should be, in my mind,
going to programs and to children rather than being held back
for some of those reasons. But our experience with Title I,
non-Title I has been a little different than what you
described.
Chairman Miller. The gentleman's time is up.
Mr. Fortuno?
Mr. Fortuno. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I want
to thank you for holding this hearing today, and the ranking
member as well.
And thank you all for being here. I am sorry I had to step
out for a while. But as I was following everything that you
have said--and I was here through all of your presentations
today--it is clear that there are different states at different
levels of achievement. Some states have really benefited from
this process. And actually all their resources have been
focused in trying to do what needs to happen.
The other states like Connecticut--I would love to share
some thoughts with you afterwards, if we may--certainly are not
as happy. In my case in Puerto Rico actually, the latest was
that the AYP measurements or actually requirements are not
being met, and Puerto Rico was just fined a couple of weeks ago
on this.
And actually, if I may, Mr. Chairman, I would love to
introduce that letter just to show that indeed there are
different jurisdictions at different levels of achievement. So
if you don't have any problems with that, I would love to
introduce in the record the letter from the Department of
Education.
And I am just wondering when you have this disparity--and I
am asking everyone--how do you handle--from here, how do you
handle that disparity. We want some levels of measurement.
There are some states achieving--or actually some districts
that are at a very high level of achievement. And there are
other places like my district where that is not happening,
clearly not happening.
So I would love to hear your insights as to what you
recommend we do from this end to try to do something that fits
everyone. But actually it is impossible to fit everyone.
Mr. McWalters. I want to step right up on that one. I think
the law was trying to protect the rights of children to get--to
access to a quality education. And thank God, it holds states
accountable for that. That is the right place to be.
But having said, I am the smallest geographic state, but I
am the second most densely populated state in the union. We
have about the same number of population. We were comparing
demographics earlier.
Every one of these places has a very different issue. And I
would still submit that this law does not address what the
original Title I law was trying to do, which was become an
issue--I am going to call it the urban agenda--in concentration
and size. They make a difference.
If you are dealing with New York City, Chicago,
Philadelphia or Los Angeles or Providence, which is a small big
city, the issues you are dealing with to get the individual
school and student access in quality instruction is complicated
by distance, size, and density.
I think the law hints at that, but I don't think there is
enough understanding that for me to get a child in New York
City access and performance to standard is to deal with all of
the issues from state house through district to community. And
it is somewhere in the differentiated instruction. It is the
same in Connecticut.
Connecticut's issue is basically urban. Now, I don't know
whether the state had an urban agenda. As a superintendent, I
don't know many states that did, at least not really. Because
if it is an urban agenda, it is more complicated than simply
school improvement, as necessary as the school improvement
infrastructure is.
Mr. Fortuno. Anybody else have a comment? The weather is
great in Puerto Rico this time of the year. And if anyone wants
to come down, I guarantee good weather.
Ms. Woodruff. I think your point that the law--although the
goals of the law are certainly well-intended--that just as we
know that every school has its own unique needs and issues,
every state is in a different place. And I think that Peter
mentioned earlier that, you know, if you have a state that has
put systems in place and is moving forward and getting the
agenda taken care of, then we ought to be allowed to do that
and to be given some freedom and flexibility in order to do it.
And those folks who are seeking to improve, such as Puerto
Rico, need to be given technical assistance and support. It is
part of what we keep talking about in terms of a federal, state
partnership. And a partnership is you shake hands, and you
figure out where you are going, and you help each other get
there. It is not a one-size-fits-all and everybody lines up and
you are either yes or no and put in a box. That is part of what
has been frustrating.
I believe that when No Child Left Behind was passed that
Delaware could have made minor changes in our existing law, and
we could have been much further along today than we are because
we had to sit back and regroup. And I was told point blank by
counsel at the Department of Education that our law was too
restrictive and it needed to be changed. Our law was changed.
And we are now in compliance with No Child Left Behind. We
would be in a very different place today, I believe.
Mr. Fortuno. Thank you.
Mr. Olson. I would like to make an observation. The law
when it was passed was passed with the intent to use an
accountability process to help schools and states get better.
Well-intended, well-conceived. But a message within the panel
today is that there is also a need for Congress to reflect on
how might that law be more helpful to the processes of
improving learning and instruction and school organization and
things like that.
I think if you reflect on that question, given the
resources that are being put in and the issues that you have
within--the consequential issues you have within the law--and I
am not suggesting--that reflection--I am not suggesting walking
away from any of the requirements. But how might the law change
in small ways to make it easier for schools to put the energy
into constant improvement over time?
Mr. Sarbanes. Actually I want to pick up on that idea--
excuse me--and talk about and ask you a couple questions about
this relationship between resources and an accountability
framework, which is usually put in the context of well, we have
the accountability and we just need to get more resources in
there behind what people are doing so that they can actually
achieve the goal.
But what I am interested in having you speak to is whether,
for example, you think a growth model that has been discussed
in contrast to this status model, whether that can actually
result in more efficient use of resources.
I mean, I had the opportunity to be part of rolling No
Child Left Behind out in the state and the district and the
district of schools and now within schools. And as you know,
the current system is such that when you don't meet AYP
particularly for certain periods of time, it triggers all kinds
of technical assistance and other resources and requirements on
the system and then on schools in terms of developing school
improvement plans and restructuring plans and all this other
kind of stuff.
So that is an obvious place where if a growth model brought
more flexibility into the system and the accountability system
you might not start a school or a system or a series of schools
jumping through those hoops that then generate a lot of
resources as quickly. So you could speak to that.
But then the other question is just in the delivery of
resources do you think a growth model is going to encourage the
resources to be directed better than they are being directed
now?
So I would love to have you all react to that question.
Mr. Olson. I would like to make a brief comment.
Mr. Sarbanes. Yes.
Mr. Olson. And I will go back. There have been a number of
observations that schools, say, were tested too much. What we
find in our work is that once people are administering tests
that are useful, helpful and drive improvement of their
decision making, all of a sudden they think of testing as being
desirable. So a lot of it has to do with the utility and the
accuracy and the helpfulness, if you will, of the measure.
So if you go to a measure that is more accurate than that
which is commonly used, right away you, if you will, free up
resources and you change the resource allocation. You change
the energy. You change the decision making.
If we have improved information about growth and about
growth of individual children, we will then also know more
about the factors of the resources and which are making a
difference. And so, we can make better decisions which to use,
which to modify and how to use them. The growth measure, a
good, accurate growth measure will, in fact, influence resource
allocation over time.
Mr. Sarbanes. All right. Thank you.
Ms. Woodruff. I would agree. We know that with the
implementation of our growth model--and we have already done a
few test cases and given information to some of our schools--
that they are able then to hone in on specific children a
little differently. And to go to the gentleman's question a
little while ago about the use of IDEA funds and so forth, we
foresee--and I think this will hold true, continue to hold
true--that the allocation of resources toward specific needs of
not only groups of children, but individual children will be
more targeted.
I think then that as that happens, we ought to be given
some flexibility in how to utilize those funds a little
differently than perhaps we are required to do today. And I
think that the whole issue of resources needs to be examined in
terms of the efficiency with which schools and districts are
using the resources at hand. Not to say that we couldn't use
additional resources, but the examination of efficiencies is
always important.
Mr. Sarbanes. Right.
Anybody else?
Mr. Doran. Yes. The interesting thing about the growth
model is it can tell a very different story about a school. And
this would very directly interpret or suggest how we would do
resource allocation. For example, the current system says you
don't cross the threshold, you might be low-performing. If you
are above the threshold, you are making AYP or some might
perceive that as being high-performing. But it may, in fact, be
the opposite story that we want to be told.
In fact, we may have students who are very high-performing
but they are dropping in their performance. The school is not
actually doing a good job with those kids, but they are staying
above the proficiency bar. On the other hand, we might have a
school that is doing a very remarkable job with low-performing
kids. They are not getting them to cross that proficiency bar
just yet. They will, but they didn't just yet.
Now, in fact, it is the school that appears to be high-
performing under the status model that actually needs resources
targeted to it. And it is the other school that is doing a
remarkable job with its struggling kids that appears to be
doing okay. We do the opposite right now, not in all cases, but
in many cases. And so, that would have a direct relationship.
You know, we see this happen in other fields. And I talk to
educators often about how to make good use of data and
definitely explore different statistical methods. We recently
saw this happen in a book that illustrated how, when you have
the autonomy to look at statistics and data and mine your data,
how you can figure out how to build better teams.
I think we would see the same kind of thing happen in
education. The autonomy to use better and newer statistical
methods will allow for us to figure out how to build better
schools.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you.
Chairman Miller. The gentleman's time is expired.
I would just comment on the gentleman's question because I
think it is a critical question, one as to flexibility of the
use of resources and how you use the data. But, you know, in
every other segment of the economy, people have been plowing
the resources to developing data so that they can make smarter
use of human capital or capital budgets and all of the rest of
this.
I mean, all across the board that is the competition that
is taking place within the economy. And this is one of the--
this and health care are sort of the last areas to decide that
data can really improve the deployment of resources and the
efficiency of those resources.
Mr. Keller?
Mr. Keller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I think it is critical that we get this bill
in the strike zone or it is going to be in trouble.
On the right, conservatives don't like the large role of
the federal government. On the left, many teachers' unions have
concerns about the testing components. And so, I think we need
to make several positive changes. And I see several of those
being made. I can see us making some improvements in the way we
measure students with special education needs. I see some
positive changes in the way we deal with children with limited
English proficiency. I see the growth model being used at least
as a supplement, if not more.
But the biggest remaining complaint that I hear about No
Child Left Behind in Florida is the inconsistency between the
state and the federal accountability systems. And I am very
interested in hearing from you about how the states and the
feds can better align their dual accountability systems to
ensure that parents are given clear and consistent information
about their children's schools.
Let me just give you an example. In Florida, we use one
test called the FCAT both for the state's program called the A
Plus program and for the federal No Child Left Behind program.
Approximately 90 percent of the schools get a passing score
under the state plan. And approximately 90 percent of the
schools fail to meet AYP under the federal plan.
So a parent moves into a school district and says, ``Is
this a good school?'' Well, it is failing under the federal
program, and it is an A school under the state program. And I
think we have got to bring those in line.
And so, I want to ask you. Let me start with Mr. McWalters.
Are you also concerned as we go through reauthorization
about this all or nothing approach to measuring progress for
AYP? And if so, do you think we should go with a more graduated
approach in terms of bringing the states and the feds more in
line?
Mr. McWalters. More graduated. However, I want to go on
record. I think the feds need to stay in this business. We
wouldn't be having this conversation if states either had the
capacity or the will five generations ago to get us to where we
are now.
Mr. Keller. Nobody is questioning that.
Mr. McWalters. So having said that, now I am talking about
the spirit of the law versus the way it is administered.
Mr. Keller. But I have only got a limited amount of time. I
just want that--do you think we should go to a more graduated
approach instead of----
Mr. McWalters. But it has to have a peer review structure
that is transparent.
Mr. Keller. Right.
Mr. McWalters. Because when my proposal is being reviewed,
it is being reviewed in a way that appreciates the context from
which I am coming.
Mr. Keller. Let me stop you there. I hate to, but I have
just got a little amount of time.
Secretary Woodruff, do you believe that we should continue
with this all or nothing sort of approach with AYP? Or would
you prefer a more graduated approach?
Ms. Woodruff. Absolutely a more graduated approach.
Mr. Keller. And do you have any ideas how states and the
federal government can bring their dual accountability systems
more in line?
Ms. Woodruff. Well, again, I think that, you know, in the
reauthorization if you set some criteria around which--a
framework within which we have to work and then allow us to
bring forward our proposals that are measured then against this
criteria, it makes sense.
In Delaware, for example, we use both AYP and a growth
component for our school rating. And we use growth of all
children at all levels in reading, mathematics, science, and
social studies as a part of that because we continue to value
all four content areas, not just reading and math.
Mr. Keller. Well, I met with our local bureaucrats at our
Florida Department of Education. I asked them how could we
bring them in line. And they did the data analysis for me. And
if you meet 90 percent of the AYP criteria and call that
excellent, say, that equals almost identical to schools who get
an a. If you meet 80 percent of the criteria, we will call that
good. That meets almost identical the schools that get a B.
If you meet 70 percent and call it average, that meets
almost identical the number of schools to get a C. But I am
told when talking to folks on both sides of the aisle that if
we did that sort of evaluative process on AYP that that would
hurt some schools' feelings, that, you know, they are only
average or good.
And so, let me ask you, Mr. Olson, do you like that sort of
graduated approach. Or do you think we should stay with the all
or nothing approach to AYP?
Mr. Olson. I would prefer the graduated. I also think that
it is important to maintain some of the richness that state
systems have. And I wouldn't be a real strong fan of adding
many additional measures inside the calculation of AYP. I think
that the schools should have multiple measures. I think states
have the position and obligation to put those in place.
And when you have a richer state system than you would want
to fund and put in place from a federal system, I think you
will have disparity from time to time. But I think the states
have the flexibility also to create some means by which they
appear more consistent.
Mr. Keller. My time is expired unfortunately. I yield back.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Payne?
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.
You know, when this legislation first came--and like Mr.
Courtney said, I was troubled because I knew that schools that
had poor fiscal conditions, unqualified teachers, over-crowded
classes, which are primarily in urban areas like mine in
Newark, New Jersey and other urban places, I was somewhat
opposed, disturbed by highstakes testing because I knew that
they were going to show up at the bottom because of not having
the opportunity to learn, which was a part of legislation in
the past.
But the majority that was in control for the last 12 years
took out opportunity to learn. So if you were failing, that is
your problem. It wasn't that you were not provided with the
opportunity to learn.
Secondly, I knew that there would be some problems with the
suburban communities that might send large numbers of children
to colleges. However, with No Child Left Behind it sort of
disaggregated.
And therefore, you could see that there were children being
left behind because this legislation showed that there were
minority kids, English proficiency language and special needs
kids who were being left behind by these school districts that
sent the majority of their kids off to wherever they would go
after high school, but there was very little acknowledgement
for the others. So I was kind of conflicted with knowing the
testing was going to show negatively, on the other hand,
knowing that the testing would show that there were almost
discrimination to other kids.
The whole question of states' rights--I mean, that is why
we were so far behind. That is why we had to start with a
national lunch program because states weren't taking care of
people when World War II started. Title I, because they didn't
deal with low-income school districts.
So the federal government said, well, put this in. And the
states who still have some of those old trends about not
wanting government to intervene is because of things like
public accommodations, the old Jim Crow laws, the old voting
rights. And they don't people to expose the discrimination that
still exists.
Having said that, though, let us get back to the topic on-
hand. Let me ask a quick question. First 3 years of No Child
Left Behind, growth models were generally not considered to be
consistent with certain statutory provisions of the law.
However, as you all know, in 2005, the secretary of education
reversed course and announced that a pilot project under which
up to 10 states would be allowed to use growth models to make
AYP determined for that school year of 2005, 2006.
Do you feel that the growth models overstate progress or
appropriate credit improving schools? And you could also, if
you have any comment or disagreement with my previous
statement, you may certainly want to run in that all in about
another 2 minutes.
Mr. Olson. From what I have seen in the data, it does not
seem to have any negative effects relative to the requirements
of the law. There are relatively few schools that are making
AYP with the growth model that weren't before. So that hasn't
shifted much. I think it is very important to know that it is
important to measure growth just because it is the best
indicator of effectiveness of systems.
I don't believe states are moving to measuring growth so
fewer schools would be identified in that category. I haven't
heard that in any of the conversations in any state. And I
believe that they are functioning with a great deal of
integrity. So I think it is all a positive move.
Ms. Woodruff. What I am going to be interested in seeing is
that once we put this growth model in place and we have more
definitive information that schools receive--I want to see then
what the effect of that is and their ability to intervene and
do more for the individual children and groups of children so
that they are moving either out of school improvement or
continue on a trajectory to continue to meet the target. So I
think that will not be known until we see this over probably at
least a 3-year term relative to the examination of the data and
what happens. But it is not an attempt to duck the system at
all.
Mr. Doran. The growth models are entirely consistent with
the idea of what it means to learn. When a kid is learning, we
know that the student is growing and changing. And so, growth
models, when properly developed, reflect that notion.
Dr. Dougherty and I serve on the secretary's peer review
panel. And I think that panel worked very well in this last
round. In fact, there were some growth models that
statistically may have allowed for some schools to over-express
growth. And they were met with some concern and comment from
whether they were defensible or not.
And I think if these growth models are to be allowed, that
this peer review process that scrutinized the statistical
methods that were being used and whether they would do exactly
what you are asking--would they over-credit schools--needs to
be emphasized and needs to continue to be in place to guard
against exactly the point that you are mentioning. I do think
growth models should be applied because they are the right
thing to do. But I also think they should be subject to
statistical scrutiny and whether they fit reasonably within a
policy context.
Mr. Dougherty. And I will mention that there was a lot of
conversation in the panel about over time validating the growth
models to see how many of the kids who were predicted to be
proficient are on track to proficient actually end up being
proficient.
Mr. McWalters. I obviously support growth models. But don't
substitute the instrument of measurement for the causation of
change. Your issues about concentrated student need--the growth
model is just going to help us see it. It is not going to
answer how you treat it.
Chairman Miller. The gentleman's time is expired.
If I might follow on with a second round of questioning
here, although I see we--excuse me. Mr. Ehlers? I am sorry.
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you.
Chairman Miller. The gentleman is recognized.
Mr. Ehlers. As a token scientist here, I am used to being
overlooked. But also as a token scientist, I have to ask a
question about science education or my colleagues will think I
have lost my ability.
At any rate, Dr. Dougherty, I noticed that you taught in
elementary school, taught science. And you are aware, of
course, that schools have to begin testing for science in 2007,
2008. But these tests under current law do not count toward
AYP. I am proposing that they should. And I would appreciate
your comment on that and whether you think that is an
appropriate thing.
Mr. Dougherty. I think they should. I think that--just
going back to my experience, back in the day, a lot of times
districts didn't have science curricula for elementary schools.
In Texas, teachers, the science teachers actually requested
that the tests count in the state accountability system because
otherwise the school systems wouldn't pay enough attention to
teaching science. So I think making science count is important.
Mr. Ehlers. I appreciate that. And I, in fact, have
introduced a bill to add that to No Child Left Behind. I hope
it is included in the reauthorization.
Let me go beyond that now. Some of you have made comments
about the multitude of tests, the variability in the tests. My
colleague who just left, Mr. Keller, raised the point that it
was hard to keep track of who was doing well and who didn't
because of the testing methods.
I have introduced a bill to provide voluntary educational
standards, math and science standards. And schools would not be
required to use them, but obviously we would encourage them to
use them. And I have a reason for that. You might argue it
would be better to have national standards in other areas, but
certainly, in the science and math because it is sequential in
nature. And because of the variability of textbooks, the
schedules and coupled with the mobility of families and
students in today's world, it is very possible for students to
get messed up.
For example, if a student is attending a school that
teaches fractions in the fall, percentages in the spring, and
in January transfers to a school that teaches percentages in
the fall, fractions in the spring, they get a double dose of
fractions and never learn percentages. That is not an uncommon
problem. I have seen it in a number of schools.
Do you think it makes sense that we have a system of
voluntary standards? And particularly, this came about not
because so much of the sequencing, but when I looked at test
results and this recent comparison that came out, comparison
between how students did on the NAEP test compared to how they
did on the state's tests, my own state got a D-in terms of how
well the students were performing on the NAEP test compared to
how they performed on the state test. And Michigan is an
outstanding state, has a good school system.
So there is something wrong if we don't have a better
national standard so that we can compare apples to oranges
related to AYP in different states. Any comments on that?
Mr. Olson. I think maybe everyone on the panel will want to
comment on it. Dr. Doran made a comment earlier that made
reference to how states establish their benchmark, their
requirement for proficiency. As far as I know, states have put
proficiency statements in place that have no relative
relationship to anything real in the world. NAEP is an example
of that.
So if we do move to voluntary standards, which I would be
in favor of personally, that we do it in such a way that we ask
the question what is it in the real world that should create
that anchor of expectation and make that common across the
states. The NAEP standard probably is not that standard. And
so, I would suggest some serious thought. And to the extent
that common standards or voluntary standards spread across
other academic areas, the same question would be raised.
Mr. Ehlers. That is a good idea, good comment.
Others? Yes?
Ms. Woodruff. I think that it absolutely is time for us to
have voluntary national standards. And by that, I don't mean
federal standards. I mean standards that we come together, we
agree what the standards are. And we have to be thinking more
clearly about serving the needs of our students, who are a much
more mobile population today than they have ever been. So the
conversation around national standards is timely, appropriate,
and we ought to have it.
Mr. Dougherty. I think such standards would be tremendously
influential, which means if they are very good standards, very
strong standards, they would be very positively influential. So
it would be very, very important, particularly important, to
get them right and have them to be strong. I suggest one of the
anchors should be the aim that students be ready for college,
and skill careers be a target for those standards.
Mr. McWalters. I am from Rhode Island. So we have voluntary
cooperative standards with two other states. I advocate it. I
think it is got to be voluntarily. I am more interested in the
measurements, the instrumentations of the standards and how we
use measurement to actually get students to hit standards that
are comprehensive. Don't confuse the standards with the need
for multiple measures of them.
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you.
Dr. Doran, any comments?
Mr. Doran. I do have comments. I mentioned this in my
testimony and with relationship to the NAEP specifically. I do
think--and I am a strong supporter--of voluntary national
standards. I think the question is why do we have so much
variability in the states' performance levels, and can we do a
better job in bringing some coherence into our educational
accountability system because of the reason that you mentioned,
that we have a very mobile society. So for that reason, I am,
in fact, very supportive of voluntary national standards.
I do want to dovetail on what Allan Olson mentioned a
moment ago. And that is that if voluntary national standards
are created, especially as we look toward the high school,
those standards should begin the conversation of connecting
those standards with skills required to be successful post-high
school.
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Chairman Miller. It probably would be too logical of a
conclusion. But we will try it.
Let me just ask a question. I am sorry. We have a vote, and
I don't want to hold you for that vote.
But, Mr. Dougherty, you indicated that there are 27 states
that now have in place a data system that you think is
acceptable so that they can move to a growth model. Is that a
fair statement of your testimony?
Mr. Dougherty. That is a fair statement. We didn't look at
their assessment system, but we looked at their data system.
Chairman Miller. So if the decision is made to go out and
to embrace a growth model--and I assume we are all talking
about a growth model toward proficiency, that this is a growth
model to take you somewhere, that that is the kind of model.
And there is obviously multiple growth models available, as I
understand it, with integrity and with credibility for the
results that we sort of have in this common conversation about
what we want to achieve. So how do we start that transition?
What do you do with it?
I notice my state is not on that list of a state that has a
data systems acceptable. And they just got a report, just a
huge report that they have waited 3 years for that essentially
one of the components has told them that their data system is
in a shambles. They really know very little about their
customers at all, where they are, what they are doing or how
they are coming and going.
What happens to them in this transition period? I mean, do
we go through the process that we have been going through? You
are on the secretary's peer review. States continue to make
applications, and they are deemed adequate. And that is the
process by which they get through.
And I don't know, Secretary Woodruff, if you have had your
experience with that process.
But if you might, outline that, those who feel confident to
do so.
Mr. Dougherty. I would comment that is a very good process.
It basically causes--it is voluntary. States step up to the
plate. Everybody pretty much wants to have a growth model. And
so, it is kind of like do you qualify.
Chairman Miller. Yes, but a lot of people want a growth
model because they think it is a silver bullet.
Mr. Dougherty. Yes.
Chairman Miller. You can hear it----
Mr. Dougherty. It is not a silver bullet.
Chairman Miller. You can hear it in their voice sometimes
when they talk to you about it.
Mr. Dougherty. They are going to be surprised how few
additional schools qualify for AYP, as North Carolina, I think,
has found, Delaware is likely to find. It is not a silver
bullet. But from the point of view of improving the evaluation
of the effectiveness of educational programs, providing
guidance for school improvement, it is not necessarily a silver
bullet. But it is definitely something that ought to be in the
armory.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
Mr. Doran?
Mr. Doran. I will follow that and say that I didn't serve
on the first round of peer reviews, but I did serve on the most
recent rounds. I like the process that is currently in place.
So to get from A to B if the flexibility were awarded such that
states could implement the growth model, I think those growth
models need to be submitted in the application process. This is
very similar to the way states did this at the very beginning.
When NCLB was first established, they had to establish an
accountability workbook, and they had to go through the process
of how they were going to compute AYP and so forth. I would use
that same process, that states would have to describe how they
are going to implement the growth model, how they are going to
use it within their accountability system. It should then be
scrutinized, modified, if needed.
And I would also support the notion that it didn't turn out
to be a silver bullet in either Tennessee or North Carolina. I
think Tennessee had seven additional schools that made AYP as a
result. And North Carolina, I believe, had none, if I remember
my facts correctly.
Mr. Dougherty. And in contract with the accountability
workbook process, which is pretty much mandatory for 50 states,
I wouldn't make having a growth model be a mandatory--you will
get more enthusiastic participation if it is voluntary and
probably more ingenuity of the ones who apply.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Olson, let me ask you this. In your
testimony you obviously lay out, you know, a substantial track
record of looking at these systems and administering these
longitudinal tests and the results. And you find this all
compatible with your experience that states would be able to
adapt to a system that would be able to allow them to mine this
kind of information from these models that are--I guess I want
to say--currently under consideration?
Mr. Olson. Yes, I do. The thing I would come back to is
that the states are allowed to assess even more accurately the
wealth and the information and the value of the information
will become increasingly useful and give us an opportunity to
target and improve decision makings on many people inside the
educational system in contrast to, you know, just the district
level or just the state level.
Chairman Miller. Let me ask you if you might, just quickly,
what is the red flag we should be looking for in terms of when
people describe to us the process they, their state, would like
to go through to get to the other side. Is there a red flag
that you have watched in the secretary's process or in
experience of people who--I always worry that people embrace a
concept but then their vision of the concept is a little
skewed.
Mr. McWalters. I think I can answer that from a state's
perspective. If I have a growth model or not right now and I
pass the review of the experts, my gap to 2014 is not going to
get smaller with a growth model. So the issue of understanding
how far we are as a nation from wrestling with proficiency at
real levels without softening the bar--none of us want to
soften the bar.
So when you have a growth model or not, the gap is real.
And the intervention capacity question is still the part that
is missing for me. I don't want to hide how far I have to go. I
want to change my capacity to get there.
Chairman Miller. Anyone else?
Secretary?
Ms. Woodruff. As far as the whole growth model issue is
concerned, I think that it is very important that the whole
process is clear, understandable, and transparent.
Chairman Miller. That is the congressional process.
Ms. Woodruff. So that there is absolutely no question about
what the criteria are, how they are going to be judged, and
that the conversation is iterative. And as far as I am
concerned, if there are 27 states----
Chairman Miller. You are talking about the approval process
for that growth model.
Ms. Woodruff. I am talking about what is it you have to do
and what are the steps that must be taken and then how are you
going to be judged. I don't want to know what the test is after
I have taken the course. I would like to know ahead of time
what I am going to be judged on. And I think that has been the
concern that a number of us had.
If there are 27 states ready now, let them go. And then we
will help the other states understand what the mechanisms are
and the hurdles are to get there. I think we are in a state of
today where nationally we really help each other and step up to
do that on a regular basis.
Chairman Miller. Thank you. That may be a good place to
interrupt this conversation. I hope that we will be able to
continue it as the committee gets deeper into the
reauthorization process.
Thank you so much for your time and your expertise and your
experiences. I think this was very, very helpful to the members
of the committee.
The hearing record will stay open for 14 days. If there are
others who want to make submissions, we would certainly take
them under consideration.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Altmire follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Jason Altmire, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Pennsylvania
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing to examine how we
can improve No Child Left Behind's measures of progress.
I would like to extend a warm welcome to today's witnesses. I
appreciate all of you for taking the time to be here and look forward
to hearing from you.
Measuring whether or not students are making Adequate Yearly
Progress is fundamental to how NCLB works. We must have indicators that
accurately measure student knowledge and track their academic
achievement to determine which schools are truly in need of
intervention and to determine exactly what interventions are needed.
I am particularly interested in hearing our witnesses' comments on
growth models. Pennsylvania's proposal to institute a growth-based
accountability model has just begun the peer review process. Assessing
student achievement in this way may have the potential to improve how
we measure Adequate Yearly Progress because it allows for the tracking
of individual students' academic gain on a yearly basis. However, I am
aware that there are different types of growth models and would be
interested in hearing about the best practices in this area.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.
______
[Additional materials submitted by Chairman Miller follow:]
[The prepared statement of Prof. Hammond follows:]
Prepared Statement of Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun
Professor, Stanford University School of Education
I thank Chairman Miller and the members of the Committee for the
opportunity to offer testimony on the re-authorization of ESEA, in
particular the ways in which we measure and encourage school progress
and improvement. My perspective on these issues is informed by my
research, my work with states and national organizations on standards
development, and my work with local schools. I have studied the
implementation of No Child Left Behind,\1\ as well as testing and
accountability systems within the United States and abroad.\2\ I have
also served as past Chair of the New York State Council on Curriculum
and Assessment and of the Chief State School Officers' INTASC Standards
Development Committee. I work closely with a number of school districts
and local schools on education improvement efforts, including several
new urban high schools that I have helped to launch. Thus, I have
encountered the issues of school improvement from both a system-wide
and local school vantage point.
I am hopeful that this re-authorization can build on the strengths
and opportunities offered by No Child Left Behind, while addressing
needs that have emerged during the first years of the law's
implementation. Among the strengths of the law is its focus on
improving the academic achievement of all students, which triggers
attention to school performance and to the needs of students who have
been underserved, and its insistence that all students are entitled to
qualified teachers, which has stimulated recruitment efforts in states
where many disadvantaged students previously lacked this key resource
for learning.
The law has succeeded in getting states, districts, and local
schools to pay attention to achievement. The next important step is to
ensure that the range of things schools and states pay attention to
actually helps them improve both the quality of education they offer to
every student and the quality of the overall schooling enterprise. In
order to accomplish this, I would ask you to actively encourage states
to:
Develop accountability systems that use multiple measures
of learning and other important aspects of school performance in
evaluating school progress;
Differentiate school improvement strategies for schools
based on a comprehensive analysis of their instructional quality and
conditions for learning.
Why Use Multiple Measures?
There are at least three reasons to gauge student and school
progress based on multiple measures of learning and school performance:
To direct schools' attention and effort to the range of
measures that are associated with high-quality education and
improvement;
To avoid dysfunctional consequences that can encourage
schools, districts, or states to emphasize one important outcome at the
expense of another; for example, focusing on a narrow set of skills at
the expense of others that are equally critical, or boosting test
scores by excluding students from school; and
To capture an adequate and accurate picture of student
learning and attainment that both measures and promotes the kinds of
outcomes we need from schools.
Directing Attention to Measures Associated with School Quality
One of the central concepts of NCLB's approach is that schools and
systems will organize their efforts around the measures for which they
are held accountable. Because attending to any one measure can be both
partial and problematic, the concept of multiple measures is routinely
used by policymakers to make critical decisions about such matters as
employment and economic forecasting (for example, the Dow Jones Index
or the GNP) and admission to college, where grades, essays, activities,
and accomplishments are considered along with test scores.
Successful businesses use a ``dashboard'' set of indicators to
evaluate their health and progress, aware that no single indicator is
sufficient to understand or guide their operations. This approach is
designed to focus attention on those aspects of the business that
describe elements of the business's current health and future
prospects, and to provide information that employees can act on in
areas that make a difference for improvement. So, for example, a
balanced scorecard is likely to include among its financial indicators
not only a statement of profits, but also cash flow, dividends, costs
and accounts receivable, assets, inventory, and so on. Business leaders
understand that efforts to maximize profits alone could lead to
behaviors that undermine the long-term health of the enterprise.
Similarly, a single measure approach in education creates some
unintended negative consequences and fails to focus schools on doing
those things that can improve their long-term health and the education
of their students. Although No Child Left Behind calls for multiple
measures of student performance, the implementation of the law has not
promoted the use of such measures for evaluating school progress. As I
describe in the next section, the focus on single, often narrow, test
scores in many states has created unintended negative consequences for
the nature of teaching and learning, for access to education for the
most vulnerable students, and for the appropriate identification of
schools that are in need of improvement.
A multiple measures approach that incorporates the right
``dashboard'' of indicators would support a shift toward ``holding
states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that
improve student achievement'' as has been urged by the Forum on
Education and Accountability. This group of 116 education and civil
rights organizations--which include the National Urban League, NAACP,
League of United Latin American Citizens, Aspira, Children's Defense
Fund, National Alliance of Black School Educators, and Council for
Exceptional Children, as well as the National School Boards
Association, National Education Association, and American Association
of School Administrators--has offered a set of proposals for NCLB that
would focus schools, districts, and states on developing better
teaching, a stronger curriculum, and supports for school improvement.
Avoiding Dysfunctional Consequences
Another reason to use a multiple measures approach is to avoid the
negative consequences that occur when one measure is used to drive
organizational behavior.
The current accountability provisions of the Act, which are focused
almost exclusively on school average scores on annual tests, actually
create large incentives for schools to keep students out and to hold
back or push out students who are not doing well. A number of studies
have found that systems that reward or sanction schools based on
average student scores create incentives for pushing low-scorers into
special education so that their scores won't count in school
reports,\3\ retaining students in grade so that their grade-level
scores will look better,\4\ excluding low-scoring students from
admissions,\5\ and encouraging such students to leave schools or drop
out.\6\
Studies in New York,\7\ Texas,\8\ and Massachusetts,\9\ among
others, have showed how schools have raised their test scores while
``losing'' large numbers of low-scoring students. For example, a recent
study in a large Texas city found that student dropouts and push outs
accounted for most of the gains in high school student test scores,
especially for minority students. The introduction of a high-stakes
test linked to school ratings in the 10th grade led to sharp increases
in 9th grade student retention and student dropout and disappearance.
Of the large share of students held back in the 9th grade, most of them
African American and Latino, only 12% ever took the 10th grade test
that drove school rewards. Schools that retained more students at grade
9 and lost more through dropouts and disappearances boosted their
accountability ratings the most. Overall, fewer than half of all
students who started 9th grade graduated within 5 years, even as test
scores soared.\10\
Paradoxically, NCLB's requirement for disaggregating data and
tracking progress for each subgroup of students increases the
incentives for eliminating those at the bottom of each subgroup,
especially where schools have little capacity to improve the quality of
services such students receive. Table 1 shows how this can happen. At
``King Middle School,'' average scores increased from the 70th to the
72nd percentile between the 2002 and 2003 school year, and the
proportion of students in attendance who met the proficiency standard
(a score of 65) increased from 66% to 80%--the kind of performance that
a test-based accountability system would reward. Looking at subgroup
performance, the proportion of Latino students meeting the standard
increased from 33% to 50%, a steep increase.
However, not a single student at King improved his or her score
between 2002 and 2003. In fact, the scores of every single student in
the school went down over the course of the year. How could these steep
improvements in the school's average scores and proficiency rates have
occurred? A close look at Table 1 shows that the major change between
the two years was that the lowest-scoring student, Raul, disappeared.
As has occurred in many states with high stakes-testing programs,
students who do poorly on the tests--special needs students, new
English language learners, those with poor attendance, health, or
family problems--are increasingly likely to be excluded by being
counseled out, transferred, expelled, or by dropping out.
TABLE 1.--KING MIDDLE SCHOOL: REWARDS OR SANCTIONS?
[The Relationship between Test Score Trends and Student Populations]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2002-03 2003-04
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Laura................................................... 100 90
James................................................... 90 80
Felipe.................................................. 80 70
Kisha................................................... 70 65
Jose.................................................... 60 55
Raul.................................................... 20 ..........................
Ave. Score = 70% Ave. Score = 72%
meeting standard = 66% meeting standard = 80%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This kind of result is not limited to education. When one state
decided to rank cardiac surgeons based on their mortality rates, a
follow up investigation found that surgeons' ratings went up as they
stopped taking on high-risk clients. These patients were referred out
of state if they were wealthy, or were not served, if they were poor.
The three national professional organizations of measurement
experts have called attention to such problems in their joint Standards
for Educational and Psychological Testing, which note that:
Beyond any intended policy goals, it is important to consider
potential unintended effects that may result from large-scale testing
programs. Concerns have been raised, for instance, about narrowing the
curriculum to focus only on the objectives tested, restricting the
range of instructional approaches to correspond to the testing format,
increasing the number of dropouts among students who do not pass the
test, and encouraging other instructional or administrative practices
that may raise test scores without affecting the quality of education.
It is important for those who mandate tests to consider and monitor
their consequences and to identify and minimize the potential of
negative consequences.\11\
Professional testing standards emphasize that no test is
sufficiently reliable and valid to be the sole source of important
decisions about student placements, promotions, or graduation, but that
such decisions should be made on the basis of several different kinds
of evidence about student learning and performance in the classroom.
For example, Standard 13.7 states:
In educational settings, a decision or characterization that will
have major impact on a student should not be made on the basis of a
single test score. Other relevant information should be taken into
account if it will enhance the overall validity of the decision.\12\
The Psychological Standards for Testing describe several kinds of
information that should be considered in making judgments about what a
student knows and can do, including alternative assessments that
provide other information about performance and evidence from samples
of school work and other aspects of the school record, such as grades
and classroom observations. These are particularly important for
students for whom traditional assessments are not generally valid, such
as English language learners and special education students. Similarly,
when evaluating schools, it is important to include measures of student
progress through school, coursework and grades, and graduation, as part
of the record about school accomplishments.
Evaluating Learning Well
Indicators beyond a single test score are important not only for
reasons of validity and fairness in making decisions, but also to
assess important skills that most standardized tests do not measure.
Current accountability reforms are based on the idea that standards can
serve as a catalyst for states to be explicit about learning goals, and
the act of measuring progress toward meeting these standards is an
important force toward developing high levels of achievement for all
students. However, an on-demand test taken in a limited period of time
on a single day cannot measure all that is important for students to
know and be able to do. A credible accountability system must rest on
assessments that are balanced and comprehensive with respect to state
standards. Multiple-choice and short-answer tests that are currently
used to measure standards in many states do not adequately measure the
complex thinking, communication, and problem solving skills that are
represented in national and state content standards.
Research on high-stakes accountability systems shows that, ``what
is tested is what is taught,'' and those standards that are not
represented on the high stakes assessment tend to be given short shrift
in the curriculum.\13\ Students are less likely to engage in extended
research, writing, complex problem-solving, and experimentation when
the accountability system emphasizes short-answer responses to
formulaic problems. These higher order thinking skills are those very
skills that often are cited as essential to maintaining America's
competitive edge and necessary for succeeding on the job, in college,
and in life. As described by Achieve, a national organization of
governors, business leaders, and education leaders, the problem with
measures of traditional on-demand tests is that they cannot measure
many of the skills that matter most for success in the worlds of work
and higher education:
States * * * will need to move beyond large-scale assessments
because, as critical as they are, they cannot measure everything that
matters in a young person's education. The ability to make effective
oral arguments and conduct significant research projects are considered
essential skills by both employers and postsecondary educators, but
these skills are very difficult to assess on a paper-and pencil
test.\14\
One of the reasons that U.S. students fall further and further
behind their international counterparts as they go through school is
because of differences in curriculum and assessment systems.
International studies have found that the U.S. curriculum focuses more
on superficial coverage of too many topics, without the kinds of in-
depth study, research, and writing needed to secure deep understanding.
To focus on understanding, the assessment systems used in most high-
achieving countries around the world emphasize essay questions,
research projects, scientific experiments, oral exhibitions and
performances that encourage students to master complex skills as they
apply them in practice, rather than multiple-choice tests.
As indicators of the growing distance between what our education
system emphasizes and what leading countries are accomplishing
educationally, the U.S. currently ranks 28th of 40 countries in the
world in math achievement--right above Latvia--and 19th of 40 in
reading achievement on the international PISA tests that measure
higher-order thinking skills. And while the top-scoring nations--
including previously low-achievers like Finland and South Korea--now
graduate more than 95% of their students from high school, the U.S. is
graduating about 75%, a figure that has been stagnant for a quarter
century and, according to a recent ETS study, is now declining. The
U.S. has also dropped from 1st in the world in higher education
participation to 13th, as other countries invest more resources in
their children's futures.
Most high-achieving nations' examination systems include multiple
samples of student learning at the local level as well as the state or
national level. Students' scores are a composite of their performance
on examinations they take in different content areas--featuring
primarily open-ended items that require written responses and problem
solutions--plus their work on a set of classroom tasks scored by their
teachers according to a common set of standards. These tasks require
them to conduct apply knowledge to a range of tasks that represent what
they need to be able to do in different fields: find and analyze
information, solve multi-step real-world problems in mathematics,
develop computer models, demonstrate practical applications of science
methods, design and conduct investigations and evaluate their results,
and present and defend their ideas in a variety of ways. Teaching to
these assessments prepares students for the real expectations of
college and of highly skilled work.
These assessments are not used to rank or punish schools, or to
deny promotion or diplomas to students. In fact, several countries have
explicit proscriptions against such practices. They are used to
evaluate curriculum and guide investments in professional learning--in
short, to help schools improve. By asking students to show what they
know through real-world applications of knowledge, these nations'
assessment systems encourage serious intellectual activities on a
regular basis. The systems not only measure important learning, they
help teachers learn how to design curriculum and instruction to
accomplish this learning.
It is worth noting that a number of states in the U.S. have
developed similar systems that combine evidence from state and local
standards-based assessments to ensure that multiple indicators of
learning are used to make decisions about individual students and,
sometimes, schools. These include Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine,
Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Vermont,
and Wyoming, among others. However, many of these elements of state
systems are not currently allowed to be used to gauge school progress
under NCLB.
Encouraging these kinds of practices could help improve learning
and guide schools toward more productive instruction. Studies have
found that performance assessments that are administered and scored
locally help teachers better understand students' strengths, needs, and
approaches to learning, as well as how to meet state standards.\15\
Teachers who have been involved in developing and scoring performance
assessments with other colleagues have reported that the experience was
extremely valuable in informing their practice. They report changes in
both the curriculum and their instruction as a result of thinking
through with colleagues what good student performance looks like and
how to better support student learning on specific kinds of tasks.
These goals are not well served by external testing programs that
send secret, secured tests into the school and whisk them out again for
machine scoring that produces numerical quotients many months later.
Local performance assessments provide teachers with much more useful
classroom information as they engage teachers in evaluating how and
what students know and can do in authentic situations. These kinds of
assessment strategies create the possibility that teachers will not
only teach more challenging performance skills but that they will also
be able to use the resulting information about student learning to
modify their teaching to meet the needs of individual students. Schools
and districts can use these kinds of assessments to develop shared
expectations and create an engine for school improvement around student
work.
Research on the strong gains in achievement shown in Connecticut,
Kentucky, and Vermont in the 1990s attributed these gains in
substantial part to these states' performance-based assessment systems,
which include such local components, and related investments in
teaching quality.\16\ Other studies in states like California, Maine,
Maryland, and Washington,\17\ found that teachers assigned more
ambitious writing and mathematical problem solving, and student
performance improved, when assessments included extended writing and
mathematics portfolios and performance tasks. Encouraging these kinds
of measures of student performance is critical to getting the kind of
learning we need in schools.
Not incidentally, more authentic measures of learning that go
beyond on-demand standardized tests to look directly at performance are
especially needed to gain accurate measures of achievement for English
language learners and special needs students for whom traditional tests
are least likely to provide valid measures of understanding.\18\
What Indicators Might be Used to Gauge School Progress?
A key issue is what measures should be used to determine Adequate
Yearly Progress (AYP) or the alternative tools that are used for
addressing NCLB's primary goals, e.g. assuring high expectations for
all students, and helping schools address the needs of all students.
Current AYP measures are too narrow in several respects: They are based
exclusively on tests which are often not sufficient measures of our
educational goals; they ignore other equally important student
outcomes, including staying in school and engaging in rigorous
coursework; they ignore the growth made by students who are moving
toward but not yet at a proficiency benchmark, as well as the gains
made by students who have already passed the proficiency benchmark; and
they do not provide information or motivation to help schools,
districts, and states improve critical learning conditions.
This analysis suggests that school progress should be evaluated on
multiple measures of student learning--including local and state
performance assessments that provide evidence about what students can
actually do with their knowledge--and on indicators of other student
outcomes, including such factors as student progress and continuation
through school, graduation, and success in rigorous courses. The
importance of these indicators is to encourage schools to keep students
in school and provide them with high-quality learning opportunities--
elements that will improve educational opportunities and attainment,
not just average test scores.
To these two categories of indicators, I would add indicators of
learning conditions that point attention to both learning opportunities
available to students (e.g. rigorous courses, well-qualified teachers)
and to how well the school operates. In the business world, these kinds
of measures are called leading indicators, which represent those things
that employees can control and improve upon. These typically include
evidence of customer satisfaction, such as survey data, complaints and
repeat orders; as well as of employee satisfaction and productivity,
such as employee turnover, project delays, evidence of quality and
efficiency in getting work done; reports of work conditions and
supports, and evidence of product quality.
Educational versions of these kinds of indicators are available in
many state accountability systems. For example, State Superintendent
Peter McWalters noted in his testimony to this committee that Rhode
Island uses several means to measure school learning conditions. Among
them is an annual survey to all students, teachers, and parents that
provides data on ``Learning Support Indicators'' measuring school
climate, instructional practices, and parental involvement. In
addition, Rhode Island, like many other states, conducts visits to
review every school in the state every five years, not unlike the
Inspectorate system that is used in many other countries. These kinds
of reviews can examine teaching practices, the availability and
equitable allocation of school resources, and the quality of the
curriculum, as it is enacted.
Ideally, evaluation of school progress would be based on a
combination of these three kinds of measures and would emphasize gains
and improvement over time, both for the individual students in the
school and for the school as a whole. Along with data about student
characteristics, an indicator system could include:
Measures of student learning: both state tests and local
assessments, including performance measures that assess higher-order
thinking skills and understanding, including student work samples,
projects, exhibitions, or portfolios.
Measures of additional student outcomes: data about
attendance, student grade-to-grade progress (promotion / retention
rates) and continuation through school (ongoing enrollment),
graduation, and course success (e.g. students enrolled in, passing, and
completing rigorous courses of study).
Measures of learning conditions, data about school
capacity, such as teacher and other staff quality, availability of
learning materials, school climate (gauged by students', parents', and
teachers' responses to surveys), instructional practices, teacher
development, and parental engagement.
These elements should be considered in the context of student data,
including information about student mobility, health, and welfare
(poverty, homelessness, foster care, health care), as well as language
background, race / ethnicity, and special learning needs--not a basis
for accepting differential effort or outcomes, but as a basis for
providing information needed to interpret and improve schools'
operations and outcomes.
How Might Indicators be Used to Determine School Progress and
Improvement Strategies?
The rationale for these multiple indicators is to build a more
powerful engine for educational improvement by understanding what is
really going on with students and focusing on the elements of the
system that need to change if learning is to improve. High-performing
systems need a regular flow of useful information to evaluate and
modify what they are doing to produce stronger results. State and local
officials need a range of data to understand what is happening in
schools and what they should do to improve outcomes. Many problems in
local schools are constructed or constrained by district and state
decisions that need to be highlighted along with school-level concerns.
Similarly, at the school level, teachers and leaders need information
about how they are doing and how their students are doing, based in
part on high-quality local assessments that provide rich, timely
insights about student performance.
Some states and districts have successfully put some of these
indicators in place. The federal government could play a leadership
role by not only encouraging multiple measures for assessing school
progress and conditions for learning but by providing supports for
states to build comprehensive databases to track these indicators over
time, and to support valid, comprehensive information systems at all
levels.\19\
If we think comprehensively about the approach to evaluation that
would encourage fundamental improvements in schools, several goals
emerge. First, determinations of school progress should reflect an
analysis of schools' performance and progress along several key
dimensions. Student learning should be evaluated using multiple
measures that provide comprehensive and valid information for all
subpopulations. Targets should be based on sensible goals for student
learning, examining growth from where students start, setting growth
targets in relation to that starting point, and pegging ``proficiency''
at a level that represents a challenging but realistic standard,
perhaps at the median of current state proficiency standards. Targets
should also ensure appropriate assessment for special education
students and English language learners and credit for the gains these
students make over time. And analysis of learning conditions including
the availability of materials, facilities, curriculum opportunities,
teaching, and leadership should accompany assessments of student
learning.
A number of states already have developed comprehensive indicator
systems that can be sources of such data, and the federal government
should encourage states to propose different means for how to aggregate
and combine these data. In addition, many states' existing assessment
systems already provide different ways to score and combine state
reference tests with local testing systems, locally administered
performance tasks (which are often scored using state standards), and
portfolios.\20\
For evaluating annual progress, one likely approach would be to use
an index of indicators, such as California's Academic Performance
Index, which can include a weighted combination of data about state and
local tests and assessments as well as other student outcome indicators
like attendance, graduation, promotion rates, participation and pass
rates or grades for academic courses. Assessment data from multiple
sources and evidence of student progression through / graduation from
school would be required components. Key conditions of learning, such
as teacher qualifications, might also be required. Other specific
indicators might be left to states, along with the decision of how much
weight to give each component, perhaps within certain parameters (for
example, that at least 50 percent of a weighted index would reflect the
results of assessment data).
Within this index, disaggregated data by race/ethnicity and income
could be monitored on the index score, or on components of the overall
index, so that they system pays ongoing attention to progress for
groups of students. Wherever possible these measures should look at
progress of a constant cohort of students from year to year, so that
actual gains are observed, rather than changes in averages due to
changes in the composition of the student population. Furthermore,
gains for English language learners and special education students
should be evaluated on a growth model that ensures appropriate testing
based on professional standards and measures individual student growth
in relation to student starting points.
Non-academic measures such as improved learning climate (as
measured by standard surveys, for example, to allow trend analysis over
time), instructional capacity (indicators regarding the quality of
curriculum, teaching, and leadership), resources, and other
contributors to learning could be included in a separate index on
Learning Conditions, on which progress is also evaluated annually as
part of both school, district, and state assessment.
Once school progress indicators are available, a judgment must be
made about whether a school has made adequate progress on the index or
set of indicators. If the law is to focus on supporting improvement it
will be important to look at continuous progress for all students in a
school rather than the ``status model'' that has been used in the past.
A progress model would recognize the reasonable success of schools that
deserve it. Rather than identifying a school as requiring intervention
when a single target is missed (for example, if 94% of economically
disadvantaged students take the mathematics test one year instead of
95%), a progress model would gauge whether the overall index score
increases, with the proviso that the progress of key subgroups
continues to be examined, with lack of progress a flag for
intervention.
The additional use of the indicators schools and districts have
assembled would be in the determination of what kind of action is
needed if a school does not make sufficient progress in a year. To use
resources wisely, the law should establish a graduated system of
classification for schools and districts based on their rate of
progress, ranging from state review to corrective actions to eventual
reconstitution if such efforts fail over a period of time. States
should identify schools and districts as requiring intervention based
both on information about the overall extent of progress from the prior
year(s) and on information about specific measures in the system of
indicators--for example, how many progress indicators have lagged for
how long. This additional scrutiny would involve a school review by an
expert team--much like the inspectorate systems in other countries--
that conducts an inspection of the school or LEA and analyzes a range
of data, including evidence of individual and collective student growth
or progress on multiple measures; analysis of student needs, mobility,
and population changes; and evaluation of school practices and
conditions. Based on the findings of this review, a determination would
be made about the nature of the problem and the type of school
improvement plan needed. The law should include the explicit
expectation that state and district investments in ensuring adequate
conditions for learning must be part of this plan.
The overarching goal of the ESEA should be to improve the quality
of education students receive, especially those traditionally least
well served by the current system. To accomplish this, the measures
used to gauge school progress must motivate continuous improvement and
attend to the range of school outcomes and conditions that are needed
to ensure that all students are educated to higher levels.
endnotes
\1\ See, e.g. L. Darling-Hammond, No Child Left Behind and High
School Reform, Harvard Education Review, 76, 4 (Winter 2006), pp. 642-
667. http://www.edreview.org/harvard06/2006/wi06/w06darli.htm
L. Darling-Hammond, From `Separate but Equal' to `No Child Left
Behind': The Collision of New Standards and Old Inequalities. In
Deborah Meier and George Wood (eds.), Many Children Left Behind, pp. 3-
32. NY: Beacon Press, 2004.
\2\ Linda Darling-Hammond, Elle Rustique-Forrester, & Raymond
Pecheone (2005). Multiple measures approaches to high school
graduation: A review of state student assessment policies. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University, School Redesign Network.
\3\ Allington, R. L. & McGill-Franzen, A. (1992). Unintended
effects of educational reform in New York, Educational Policy, 6 (4):
397-414; Figlio, D.N. & Getzler, L.S. (2002, April). Accountability,
ability, and disability: Gaming the system? National Bureau of Economic
Research.
\4\ W. Haney (2000). The myth of the Texas miracle in education.
Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8 (41): Retrieved Jul. 23, 07 from:
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/
\5\ Smith, F., et al. (1986). High school admission and the
improvement of schooling. NY: New York City Board of Education;
Darling-Hammond, L. (1991). The Implications of Testing Policy for
Quality and Equality, Phi Delta Kappan, November 1991: 220-225; Heilig,
J. V. (2005), An analysis of accountability system outcomes. Stanford
University.
\6\ For recent studies examining the increases in dropout rates
associated with high-stakes testing systems, see Advocates for Children
(2002). Pushing out at-risk students: An analysis of high school
discharge figures--a joint report by AFC and the Public Advocate.
http://www.advocatesforchildren.org/pubs/pushout-11-20-02.html; W.
Haney (2002). Lake Wobegone guaranteed: Misuse of test scores in
Massachusetts, Part 1. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10(24).
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n24/; J. Heubert & R. Hauser (eds.) (1999).
High stakes: Testing for tracking, promotion, and graduation. A report
of the National Research Council. Washington, D.C.: National Academy
Press; B.A. Jacob (2001). Getting tough? The impact of high school
graduation exams. Education and Evaluation and Policy Analysis 23 (2):
99-122; D. Lilliard, & P. DeCicca (2001). Higher standards, more
dropouts? Evidence within and across time. Economics of Education
Review, 20(5): 459-73;G. Orfield, D. Losen, J. Wald, & C.B. Swanson
(2004). Losing our future: How minority youth are being left behind by
the graduation rate crisis. Retrieved July 23, 2007 from: http://
www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=410936; M. Roderick, A.S. Bryk, B.A. Jacob,
J.Q. Easton, & E. Allensworth (1999). Ending social promotion: Results
from the first two years. Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School
Research; R. Rumberger & K. Larson (1998). Student mobility and the
increased risk of high school dropout. American Journal of Education,
107: 1-35; E. Rustique-Forrester (in press). Accountability and the
pressures to exclude: A cautionary tale from England. Education Policy
Analysis Archives; A. Wheelock (2003). School awards programs and
accountability in Massachusetts.
\7\ Advocates for Children (2002), Pushing out at-risk students;
Heilig (2005), An analysis of accountability system outcomes; Wheelock
(2003), School awards programs and accountability.
\8\ Heilig, 2005.
\9\ Wheelock, 2003
\10\ Heilig, 2005.
\11\ American Educational Research Association, American
Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in
Education, Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing,
Washington DC: American Educational Research Association, 1999, p.142.
\12\ AERA, APA, NCME, Standards for Educational and Psychological
Testing., p.146.
\13\ See for example, Haney (2000). The myth of the Texas miracle;
J.L. Herman & S. Golan (1993). Effects of standardized testing on
teaching and schools. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice,
12(4): 20-25, 41-42; B.D. Jones & R. J. Egley (2004). Voices from the
frontlines: Teachers' perceptions of high-stakes testing. Education
Policy Analysis Archives, 12 (39). Retrieved August 10, 2004 from
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v12n39/; M.G. Jones, B.D. Jones, B. Hardin, L.
Chapman, & T. Yarbrough (1999). The impact of high-stakes testing on
teachers and students in North Carolina. Phi Delta Kappan, 81(3): 199-
203; Klein, S.P., Hamilton, L.S., McCaffrey, D.F., & Stetcher, B.M.
(2000). What do test scores in Texas tell us? Santa Monica: The RAND
Corporation; D. Koretz & S. I. Barron (1998). The validity of gains on
the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS). Santa
Monica, CA: RAND, MR-1014-EDU; D. Koretz, R.L. Linn, S.B. Dunbar, &
L.A. Shepard (1991, April). The effects of high-stakes testing:
Preliminary evidence about generalization across tests, in R. L. Linn
(chair), The Effects of high stakes testing. Symposium presented at the
annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association and the
National Council on Measurement in Education, Chicago; R.L. Linn
(2000). Assessments and accountability. Educational Researcher, 29 (2),
4-16; R.L. Linn, M.E. Graue, & N.M. Sanders (1990). Comparing state and
district test results to national norms: The validity of claims that
``everyone is above average.'' Educational Measurement: Issues and
Practice, 9, 5-14; W. J. Popham (1999). Why Standardized Test Scores
Don't Measure Educational Quality. Educational Leadership, 56(6): 8-15;
M.L. Smith (2001). Put to the test: The effects of external testing on
teachers. Educational Researcher, 20(5): 8-11.
\14\ Achieve, Do graduation tests measure up? A closer look at
state high school exit exams. Executive summary. Washington, DC:
Achieve, Inc.
\15\ L. Darling-Hammond & J. Ancess (1994). Authentic assessment
and school development. NY: National Center for Restructuring
Education, Schools, and Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia
University; B. Falk & S. Ort (1998, September). Sitting down to score:
Teacher learning through assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(1): 59-64.
G.L. Goldberg & B.S. Rosewell (2000). From perception to practice: The
impact of teachers' scoring experience on the performance based
instruction and classroom practice. Educational Assessment, 6: 257-290;
R. Murnane & F. Levy (1996). Teaching the new basic skills. NY: The
Free Press.
\16\ J.B. Baron (1999). Exploring high and improving reading
achievement in Connecticut. Washington: National Educational Goals
Panel. Murnane & Levy (1996); B.M. Stecher, S. Barron, T. Kaganoff, &
J. Goodwin (1998). The effects of standards-based assessment on
classroom practices: Results of the 1996-97 RAND survey of Kentucky
teachers of mathematics and writing. CSE Technical Report. Los Angeles:
UCLA National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student
Testing; S. Wilson, L. Darling-Hammond, & B. Berry (2001). A case of
successful teaching policy: Connecticut's long-term efforts to improve
teaching and learning. Seattle: Center for the Study of Teaching and
Policy, University of Washington.
\17\ C. Chapman (1991, June). What have we learned from writing
assessment that can be applied to performance assessment?. Presentation
at ECS/CDE Alternative Assessment Conference, Breckenbridge, CO;
J.L.Herman, D.C. Klein, T.M. Heath, S.T. Wakai (1995). A first look:
Are claims for alternative assessment holding up? CSE Technical Report.
Los Angeles: UCLA National Center for Research on Evaluation,
Standards, and Student Testing; D. Koretz, K., J. Mitchell, S.I.
Barron, & S. Keith (1996). Final Report: Perceived effects of the
Maryland school performance assessment program CSE Technical Report.
Los Angeles: UCLA National Center for Research on Evaluation,
Standards, and Student Testing; W.A. Firestone, D. Mayrowetz, & J.
Fairman (1998, Summer). Performance-based assessment and instructional
change: The effects of testing in Maine and Maryland. Educational
Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 20: 95-113; S. Lane, C.A. Stone, C.S.
Parke, M.A. Hansen, & T.L. Cerrillo (2000, April). Consequential
evidence for MSPAP from the teacher, principal and student perspective.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on
Measurement in Education, New Orleans, LA; B. Stecher, S. Baron, T.
Chun, T., & K. Ross (2000) The effects of the Washington state
education reform on schools and classroom. CSE Technical Report. Los
Angeles: UCLA National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards,
and Student Testing.
\18\ Darling-Hammond, Rustique-Forrester, and Pecheone, Multiple
Measures.
\19\ M. Smith paper (2007). Standards-based education reform: What
we've learned, where we need to go. Consortium for Policy Research in
Education.
\20\ At least 27 states consider student academic records,
coursework, portfolios of student work, and performance assessments,
like research papers, scientific experiments, essays, and senior
projects in making the graduation decision. Darling-Hammond, Rustique-
Forrester, and Pecheone, Multiple Measures.
______
[National School Boards Association (NSBA) letter follows:]
March 20, 2007.
Hon. George Miller, Chair,
Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Re: Hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee on Adequate
Yearly Progress, March 21, 2007; National School Boards
Association Statement for the Record.
Dear Chairman Miller: The National School Boards Association
(NSBA), representing over 95,000 local school board members across the
nation, commends you for your strong support to reauthorize the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)/No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) Act during the 110th Congress, and for establishing an
aggressive schedule for congressional hearings over the coming weeks.
NSBA looks forward to participating in future hearings and very much
appreciates the opportunity to submit written testimony for the record.
Local school boards across the nation continue to support the goals
of NCLB--including increased accountability for student performance.
However, of utmost concern to local school boards is the belief that
the current accountability framework does not accurately or fairly
assess student, school, or school district performance.
Although the sponsors of the No Child Left Behind Act intended to
establish a responsive accountability system for the nation's public
schools, what has evolved in the name of accountability is a
measurement framework that bases its assessment of school quality on a
student's performance on a single assessment; and mandates a series of
overbroad sanctions not always targeted to the students needing the
services.
Five years after enactment of the federal law, local school
districts continue to struggle to comply with the language of the law
at a time when the unintended consequences of this complex law are
imposing far more dysfunctional and illogical implementation problems
than had been anticipated by the sponsors of the legislation. NSBA
believes that the NCLB law can be amended to improve the accountability
system in a way that restores public confidence in the law and results
in significant improvement in the academic achievement of all students.
In January 2005, NSBA officially unveiled its bill, the No Child
Left Behind Improvements Act of 2005. The bill contains over 40
provisions that would improve the implementation of the current federal
law. In June, 2006, Representative Don Young (R-AK) introduced H.R.
5709, the No Child Left Behind Improvements Act of 2006, which
incorporated all of the NSBA recommendations. Co-sponsors of H.R. 5709
included Representatives Steven R. Rothman (D-NJ-9), Rob Bishop (R-UT-
1), Todd Platts (R-PA-19), and Jo Bonner (R-AL-1). In January 2007,
Rep. Young re-introduced his bill as the No Child Left Behind Act of
2007, H.R. 648. The bill's co-sponsors to date include Representatives
Charlie Melancon (D-LA-3), Steven Rothman (D-NJ-9), Jo Bonner (R-AL-1),
Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI-11), and Todd
Platts (R-PA-19), verifying strong bi-partisan support for these
important improvements to the current law. This comprehensive bill
addresses the key concerns of local school boards, including those
provisions related to the accountability and the adequate yearly
progress (AYP) framework. This bill would:
Increase the flexibility for states to measure adequate yearly
progress (AYP), including growth models.
Grant more flexibility in establishing goals and determining AYP
targets.
Create a student testing participation range, providing flexibility
for uncontrollable variations in student attendance.
Allow schools to target resources to those student populations who
need the most attention by applying sanctions only when the same
student group fails to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in the same
subject for two consecutive years.
Ensure that students are counted properly in AYP reporting systems.
NSBA encourages you to review the No Child Left Behind Improvements
Act of 2007, H.R. 648 in its entirety. However, for your convenience we
have enclosed a copy of our Quick Reference Guide to the bill that
provides the recommended provisions and a brief rationale.
NSBA very much appreciates the opportunity to submit a written
statement for the Record, and we look forward to working closely with
you and your staffs to complete the reauthorization process during this
First Session of the 110th Congress. We will also provide you with
recommended legislative language which should be helpful to your staff
in drafting the new bill.
Questions concerning our specific recommendations may be directed
to Reginald M. Felton, director of federal relations.
Sincerely,
Michael A. Resnick,
Associate Executive Director.
______
Chairman Miller. And, with that, the committee will stand
adjourned. And, again, thank you so very much.
[Whereupon, at 12:51 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]