Measure Schools on Student Growth

Unfortunately gaming the system is still a temptation.<p>By rewarding growth, schools are incentivized to prevent earlier grades from doing too well.<p>One student with potential pushing the overall performance higher than that school might like for that year might be purposefully stunted in order to allow room for growth in later years, robbing them of getting as far in life as they would have.

As a teacher, I agree that we should grade schools on student growth.<p>Give the kids 3 standards referenced tests a year; one is referenced to the school district, one to the state, and one to the nation. Give all 3 exams in a week when they do nothing else. This gives us better test results than a single exam on a single day.

This idea sounds familiar. Isn&#x27;t this basically &quot;Value-added Modeling&quot;, which looks at how much teacher contribute to individual differences in increases in student test scores? [1] Has this not been applied at the school level!?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholar.google.com&#x2F;scholar?hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&amp;q=value+added+modeling&amp;btnG=" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholar.google.com&#x2F;scholar?hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&amp;q=valu...</a>

Problem is most states assessments can&#x27;t measure growth and &quot;growth measures&quot; are numerically nonsense.<p>Growth measures do exist, but they require adaptive tests.

A simple pencil mark on the door frame usually works best.<p>My adult kids love to look back to see how tall they were when they were 10 years old.<p>Instead of measuring schools how about we pay teachers more and demand decent education.<p>All this measuring! Measuring, measuring, measuring.<p>What a waste of time and money.

Teacher’s unions and their enablers who are politically aligned to them reject all forms of measurement and accountability. Even this alternative one of growth instead of snapshots will be attacked on flimsy grounds.