David Griffith and Michael Petrilli have put their minds together to produce an ideal ESSA accountability system as a model for state education agencies. Below are excerpts from their recent blog post:
States are now putting pen to paper on their accountability plans and many of them want advice about what to do. So no more hesitating or prevaricating. Here’s our attempt—just David and Mike, mind you, not Fordham at large—to lay out an ideal accountability system for states.
Design Objectives
Our proposed accountability system has three goals:
- To gauge school performance as fairly and accurately as possible (most importantly, by not penalizing schools for factors outside their control, such as students’ prior achievement)
- To encourage schools to focus on all students’ long-term success
- To foster an environment that rewards quality by empowering parents
System for Rating Schools
Consistent with the Department of Education’s interpretation of ESSA, our proposed accountability system assigns summative school ratings based on a range of indicators, which we describe below. To be clear, we believe ESSA can be read to allow for multiple grades or ratings for schools (for instance, one each for Academic Achievement, Student Growth, Graduation Rates, Progress toward English Language Proficiency, and Other Indicators of School Quality and Student Success). That would be our preferred interpretation. But assuming the feds stick to their guns, here’s how we’d combine these factors into a summative grade (A-F).
- Indicators of Academic Achievement (10-25 percent of summative school ratings)
- Indicators of Student Growth (50-90 percent of elementary and middle school ratings, 40-80 percent of high school ratings)
- Indicators of Progress toward English Language Proficiency (Variable)
- High School Graduation (10-25 percent)
- Indicators of Student Success or School Quality (10-20 percent), such as: “College and Career Ready” indicators, Subsequent performance/persistence, Student/teacher retention, Chronic Absenteeism, and/or Student surveys
For more details, see:
