As we revise our accountability
framework, we need to raise the bar
Close to 85% of our K-12 schools
“earn” the top two SPF ratings. How is this possible?
Colorado’s accountability framework places a significant
emphasis on growth scores. This seems fair, especially in light of what we know
to be the correlation between achievement and a school’s zip code. No one wants
to be seen as judging a low-income, low-performing school harshly; we must respect
improvement, no matter where the starting line. I appreciate why growth matters.
But what if the increase in the percentage of students in one
elementary school “meeting or exceeding expectations” in mathematics is
tragically small (from 4.2% to 6.4%)—but somehow our algorithms leads this
school to “earn” a growth rating of 66% points? What if our very approach—“Student
Growth Percentiles are determined by how much students have progressed compared
to their ‘academic peers’”[i]—sets
the bar too low? And what if the “good news,” on one growth measure, appears to
explain why this one school is granted a (preliminary) rating, in 2019, of IMPROVEMENT?
And—equally hard to credit—why its SPF rating jumps from 42.9 % points earned
in 2018 to 51 % points earned in 2019!
Or to state the question another way, what if our
well-meaning desire to be fair (or nice, or generous, or sympathetic) actually
looks a lot like “the soft bigotry of low expectations”?
“What we were
looking for is some alignment,” said Angelika Schroeder, chair of the State
Board of Education. “When you have 73% of schools that are at performance and
the (state test) results are what they are, there’s a big disconnect.”[ii]
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That familiar phrase from Michael Gerson stings. We insist
it cannot be not true of us. But I have been trying to understand why a good
number of extremely low-performing schools are, for now anyway, on the Preliminary
School Ratings for 2019, on IMPROVEMENT. The culprit, as I will call it, seems
to be the excessive credit schools are given for the most miniscule growth. Aren’t
we telling these schools and their students how little we expect? The slightest
bump up—and we say: good enough! The district results look better (one
less school on PRIORITY IMPROVEMENT or TURNAROUND). The superintendent and the
district look smarter (such a good decision, the Aurora school board might say,
to put this school on innovation status back in March 2016[iii]).
All is well.
One begins to wonder if achievement scores even matter.
I fear getting into the weeds in this close look at two
schools—perhaps only of interest to those of you implementing HB 18-1355[iv] or on the Technical Advisory Panel on
Longitudinal Growth. (Some good ideas
are on the table.[v]) But
I hope my larger point concerns many. In trying to be “fair,” I believe we present
a false picture of how our K-12 schools are doing.
The headline in Chalkbeat Colorado last December
read: “State ratings identify 163 Colorado schools in need of improvement.”[vi]
In August, preliminary results for 2019 showed less than 131 schools with
the lowest two ratings.[vii]
Really? When we know the number of schools struggling to help even 25% of their
students meet our standards is much greater? I think we have good reason to tell
policymakers over 200 schools should not be rated on IMPROVEMENT or
PERFORMANCE. Why not alert Gov. Jared Polis and legislators to this reality? They might realize more resources are needed
for the Colorado Department of Education’s School Quality and Support
Division and for our lowest-performing schools. But first we have to
name them as such. All of them.
Here are some details on two schools, both rated on IMPROVEMENT, to make my point. (They
are hardly alone. See 15 more.[viii])
If the facts below are right, are these not schools we must identify as in
trouble – and in great need of support?
Another View has studied Paris Elementary School
since 2015[ix].
Chalkbeat Colorado’s snapshot for 2019 reads[x]:
Literacy - % Met
or Exceeded Expectations 6.7
Math - % Met or
Exceeded Expectations 6.4
Literacy Growth 38.5
Math Growth 66
Please stare at those achievement results. A school that has earned our second highest SPF rating? Look at the ELA and MATH scores over the past two years. How does that 66 in Math Growth look now?
2018
|
2019
|
2018
|
2019
|
|
Percent of students
meeting or exceeding expectations
|
Number of students
meeting or exceeding expectations
|
|||
ELA
|
9.9%
|
6.7%
|
19
|
11 – out of 164 tested
|
MATH
|
4.2%
|
6.4%
|
8
|
11 – out of 171 tested
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“…many high-poverty schools with impressive growth
scores still have many students who can’t read or do math at grade-level,
leaving parents and education activists fearful for their long-term
prospects.
“‘Outcomes
matter to families,’ Nicholas Martinez, co-founder of the advocacy group
Transform Education Now, said bluntly at a recent state board meeting.” “Changes
pending for Colorado school rating system”[xi]
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So 11 out of
171 Paris Elementary students who took the CMAS Math in 2019 scored high enough
to meet or exceed expectations. All of 3 more students than in 2018.
And yet the school’s Math Growth score (which only includes progress from grade
3 to grade 4, and from grade 4 to 5) is well above average – 66. (Median Growth
Percentile (MGP) explained: see Endnote.[xii])
Focus on
that 6.4%. And what about the other 93.6%? On the 2019 CMAS, few were even Approaching Expectations!
ELA: 81.3% of students scored in the lowest 2
categories: Did Not Meet Expectations or Partially Met Expectations.
(That is a higher percentage than in 2018, when 73.4% scored in the lowest
two categories.)
MATH: 76% scored in the lowest 2
categories: Did Not Meet Expectations or Partially Met Expectations.
(Not much different from 2018, when 78.4% of the students scored in the lowest
two categories.)
**
We see a similar story over in Denver Public Schools with
Cheltenham Elementary School. Also rated on IMPROVEMENT. Again, here is the overview on Cheltenham Elementary
in 2019 from Chalkbeat Colorado[xiii]:
Literacy - % Met
or Exceeded Expectations 20.4
Math - % Met or
Exceeded Expectations 16
Literacy Growth 53
Math Growth 62
CDE’s more detailed figures[xiv]
invites us to wonder what leads to such an “impressive” growth score.
2018
|
2019
|
2018
|
2019
|
|
Percent of students
meeting or exceeding expectations
|
Number of students
meeting or exceeding expectations
|
|||
ELA
|
19.3%
|
20.4%
|
33
|
30 – out of 147 tested
|
MATH
|
12.7%
|
16%
|
24
|
26 – out of 163 tested
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An even closer look—for each of the 3 grades tested—shows that the percentage of students meeting expectations declined in grades 3 and 4, but 5th grade scores were much better—and thus, apparently, the MGP scores exceeded 50.
Cheltenham
Elementary – CMAS 2018 and 2019 - % meeting or exceeding expectations
Subject
|
Grades
|
2018
|
2019
|
Change
|
3
|
17.4
|
15.2
|
-2.2
|
|
4
|
23.4
|
10.4
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-13.0
|
|
5
|
16.4
|
30.3
|
+13.9
|
|
Overall
|
19.3
|
20.4
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+1.1
|
|
MATH
|
3
|
14.5
|
11.9
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-2.6
|
4
|
10.6
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7.3
|
-3.3
|
|
5
|
13.1
|
25.8
|
+10.6
|
|
Overall
|
12.7
|
16
|
+3.3
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Congratulations to the fifth-grade teachers and students. But how much should
we make of the MGP scores, in light of the school’s achievement scores falling
in two of the three grades assessed? The state’s algorithms must give inordinate
importance to growth—in one grade. For according to the 2019 preliminary
ratings, Cheltenham “earns” the state’s highest rating: PERFORMANCE,
with 59.3% points, 17 points higher than the year before!
“State officials say that a school’s growth number —
officially called the median growth percentile — ideally should be higher
than the state median, which is about 50. But they say it’s also important to
consider a school’s overall achievement level when examining growth data.”[xvi]
Yes, and this is exactly what I am doing.
Looking at achievement.
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**
Compare and
contrast: when we tell a school NOT GOOD ENOUGH, perhaps a greater urgency to improve
Finally, a related comment on the “unfairness” of placing
schools on PRIORITY IMPROVEMENT or TURNAROUND, when it is nicer of us to
create formulas that lift schools “on the bubble” into the (higher) category of
IMPROVEMENT. In last January’s AV #188[xvi],
my look at Paris Elementary and the 2018 SPF ratings, I pointed to a number of
schools (like Paris) that earned less than 43 percentage points, but
that were rated on IMPROVEMENT. Nine months later, I pose this question: Did the
state’s (too) generous rating prove helpful?
School
|
District
|
2018
|
2019
|
West Elementary
|
Colorado Springs 11
|
Improvement - 42.6
|
Priority Improvement - 37.8
|
Farrell Howell ECE-8
|
Denver Public Schools
|
Improvement – 42.8
|
Turnaround – 29.9
|
Englewood Middle School
|
Englewood
|
Improvement – 42.8
|
Turnaround - 33
|
In contrast, what happened in the three Denver schools, also
mentioned in AV #188, where the state SPF deferred to the tougher district
rating DPS has often maintained? Perhaps the PI label got their attention.
Improved
School Performance Rating, after being put “on the clock” - from 2018 to 2019
|
|||
School
|
District
|
2018
|
2019
|
Monarch Montessori
|
DPS
|
Priority
Improvement - 42
|
Improvement
– 52.3
|
Stedman Elementary
|
DPS
|
Priority
Improvement - 42.4
|
Performance
– 53.1
|
STRIVE-GVR
|
DPS
|
Priority
Improvement - 43
|
Performance
- 53
|
Many adults
are pleased when a chronically low-performing school is able to “escape” the
two lowest ratings. I would ask if we are doing the students and their families
a favor. Aren’t we willing to tell it like it is?
**
Endnotes
[i]
From CDE’s presentation to the Colorado Board of Education, Aug. 15, 2019 - https://go.boarddocs.com/co/cde/Board.nsf/files/BF3RCV6D2768/$file/2019%20SBE%20Presentation%20-%20Assessment%20Results_FINAL%20to%20Post_81519.pdf
[v]
“Colorado isn’t doing away with growth measures, but all the proposals would
add a new metric that measures how long it would take a student growing at a
particular rate to move up one level. State education officials want to see
growth rates that would allow a student who partially meets grade-level
expectations in third grade to be at least approaching expectations two years
later, in fifth grade, and for the fifth-grader who is approaching expectations
to have met them by seventh grade.
“This catch-up measurement, a version of what’s called
‘growth to standard,’ would count for 10% of elementary and
middle school ratings, with the previous growth score counting for 55% and
achievement for 35%. The changes to high school ratings are still a year or
more away.”
District
|
CMAS -ELA –
2018
|
CMAS - MATH
- 2019
|
Growth of
50 or better
|
|
Adams 14
|
Adams Middle
|
21.3
|
8.2
|
|
Hanson Elementary
|
20.8
|
9.8
|
Literacy
Growth-62
|
|
Kearney Elementary
|
18.6
|
11.8
|
||
Aurora Public Schools
|
Crawford Elem.
|
10.4
|
13.1
|
Literary Growth-52*
|
Kenton Elementary
|
18.6
|
9.8
|
Literacy
Growth - 50
|
|
Lansing Elementary
|
17.0
|
9.5
|
Literacy Growth
– 52
Math Growth
- 58
|
|
Peoria Elementary
|
17.6
|
16.2
|
||
Virginia Court Elem.
|
13.4
|
12.2
|
Math Growth
- 51
|
|
Charter School Institute
|
Montessori Del Mundo Charter
|
17.3
|
8.6
|
Math Growth
- 50
|
Denver Public Schools
|
Ashley Elementary
|
23.7
|
13.6
|
Literacy Growth
– 50.5
|
Colfax Elementary
|
20.9
|
22.0
|
||
Johnson Elementary
|
21.4
|
12.6
|
||
Greeley 6
|
Franklin Middle
|
21.2
|
12.1
|
Literacy
Growth - 51
|
Jefferson County
|
Fitzmorris Elem.
|
24.4
|
13.0
|
Literacy
Growth - 50
|
Pueblo 60
|
Beulah Heights Elem.
|
18.6
|
13.2
|
Math Growth
- 58
|
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2019/08/15/find-your-2019-colorado-cmas-scores-and-compare-schools/ *Accurate? Deserves a second look.
[ix]AV #126 (March 2015), AV # 177 (March 2018), and AV #
188 (Jan 2019). Final paragraph from #188 reads: “The SPF, like any human
creation, is fallible and sometimes gets it terribly wrong. If the goal has
been to help provide better ‘support and intervention’ to our lowest-performing
schools and ‘enhance … oversight of improvement efforts,’ the SPF needs to make
it clear that schools like Paris Elementary are
not doing OK. They do not need the stamp of on Improvement. They need help.”
[x] "Find your 2019 Colorado CMAS scores —
and compare schools,” https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2019/08/15/find-your-2019-colorado-cmas-scores-and-compare-schools/.
[xiii] https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2019/08/15/find-your-2019-colorado-cmas-scores-and-compare-schools/.
[xvii] AV #188 – “School
accountability in Colorado - No need to
abandon the School Performance Framework, but it is far from perfect. Case
in point: Paris Elementary and student achievement” (January 23, 2019). https://anotherviewphj.blogspot.com/2019/01/av188-school-accountability-in-colorado.html.
