If I had a magic wand, testing would exist to inform better instruction and provide parents with annual information about the progress of their child. But accountability would look something like this:
'Effectiveness index' considers demographics in measuring campuses
How good is your kid's school?
It seems like a simple question, but factors like student backgrounds can make clear-cut answers elusive.
What if you could find a way to evaluate schools that doesn't penalize them for their students' language barriers, lack of parental involvement or other social factors that impact learning?With virtually no fanfare, the Dallas Independent School District does exactly that. Every year, it produces a "School Effectiveness Index," a rating that levels the playing field between schools, no matter where their students come from or what they lack in life.
DISD has been calculating the scores since 1992 but has never publicized the ratings, even though parents are hungry for information showing how their neighborhood schools stack up. The Dallas Morning News recently collected nine years of effectiveness scores from the district and has made them available at dallasnews.com/disdblog.
One of the district's top researchers, who helped develop the ratings, cautioned parents not to view the scores in isolation. Many other factors also are important, he said, such as personal interactions with teachers.
"From a parent standpoint, I would be far less concerned about the school [ratings] than I would be about what my kids are telling me about their teacher," said Robert Mendro, the district's director of evaluation. "A kid will tell them about which teacher requires homework, which teacher is tough."
The News recently shared the effectiveness scores with about 40 parents, educators and community members. Some found the scores helpful in a general sense.
"Rather than choosing the highest-ranking school in a measure of best, I would look for consistency in the top 10 percent of performing schools," said parent Randy Hazlett, who has a child at Townview Magnet Center. "Still, the rating system will reward those schools which accept students from low-performing feeder schools and significantly boost their test scores."
The scores turn conventional wisdom about which schools are "good" on its head. For example, the most effective school in the district last year, according to the ratings, was Rusk Middle School. By way of comparison, the Talented and Gifted magnet school – widely lauded as one of the best public schools in America – ranked No. 29.
That happens because the ratings compare schools by isolating the impact teachers have on student achievement. The ratings measure how far a student advances with his teacher in one year.
Through a complex statistical analysis, the district isolates student characteristics that affect learning, such as family income, ethnicity and English mastery. A school's score is designed to eliminate advantages campuses gain from the social and demographical characteristics of their students.
That's a completely different approach from the state's accountability system, which looks at how many students pass annual standardized exams. Low-income students tend to score lower on such tests.The district's "value-added" ratings focus on how much students learn in a year, not whether they pass certain tests, such as the TAKS, Dr. Mendro said.
Such calculations are a growing trend in education as researchers try to determine how far schools push their kids along the learning curve...
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