NWEA Study Finds Dramatic Difference in Relationship Between School Poverty and Student Achievement vs. Student Growth; Reveals Important Implications for How We Evaluate School Effectiveness

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Oct 02, 2018, 10:15 ET

PORTLAND, Ore., Oct. 2, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- A new study from NWEA, the not-for-profit provider of assessment solutions, provides compelling evidence for greater transparency of school achievement and growth measures, and a renewed focus on how we evaluate school effectiveness, with an emphasis on an appropriate balance of performance measures.

Evaluating the Relationships Between Poverty and School Performance, by Andy Hegedus, Ed.D., Research Consulting Director at NWEA, finds that while there is a strong relationship between schools with high rates of poverty and low student achievement, there is a weak relationship between schools with high rates of poverty and low student academic growth. These findings suggest that substantial reliance on achievement measures to evaluate school performance fails to adequately recognize schools producing excellent growth and biases evaluation against schools serving populations typically disenfranchised.

Other notable findings:

There is a broad distribution of growth across the entire school distribution. There are low and high-achieving schools where students learn a lot, and there are schools where they do not.
Sixty percent of the highest poverty schools generated above-average levels of student growth. Conversely, many high achieving schools realized less than average student growth.
The range of median student achievement between the typical lowest and highest poverty schools varies by about 44 percentile points; growth only varies by 4 percentile points.

"This study demonstrates that using growth measures to determine a school's ability to create high levels of achievement over time provides a more accurate measure of school performance than many current practices," said Hegedus. "Communities deserve transparency in reporting both achievement and academic growth; both measures are important and tell us different things."

"This study is powerful in many respects," said Emmanuel Caulk, Superintendent of Fayette County Public Schools in Kentucky. "It introduces for policy makers a different way of viewing schools -- an unbiased way that attempts to measure the effectiveness or quality of learning that essentially levels the playing field by removing the poverty effect."

"Under ESSA, states have flexibility to determine how they will identify and support 'Improvement Schools,'" said Chris Minnich, CEO, NWEA. "By not including growth, we may force changes in schools where students are already improving. We need a national discussion about how we can support good teaching that is closing the achievement gap and helping all kids learn."

Longer version here.

SOURCE NWEA