As we continue to do outreach as a staff, we’ve heard a recent uptick in comments and concerns about the norm-referencing that occurs in the Student Growth Percentiles (SGP) methodology which is at the heart of the revised Index proposal.  Recently, stakeholders – through our AAW feedback process, through WSSDA regional meetings, and most recently, through our conference call with ESD superintendents – have asked questions about why the move toward norm-referencing, instead of an alternative means of measuring student growth that sets objective standards of year-to-year growth.  After all, it seems we are less concerned with whether your growth is “above average,”; what we really care about is whether you are getting the academic growth you need to be successful — to be, in that famous phrase, “college and career-ready” by the time you exit high school.

For what it’s worth, I agree!  Criteria-referenced standards of growth are important, and it’s important to remember that SGP has some (remember our discussions of “adequate growth?” – see video at link)  But remember, there are two key considerations; first what we want for our system, and second, what is possible now versus what we may have to consider for inclusion in the future.  This latter consideration is significant when it comes to SGP.

So here are a few facts to arm yourself with as you speak with your colleagues about this issue – why SGP?

• The WA state board of education is not proposing some new, risky methodology.   Keep in mind — we are not developing anything new.  We’re simply implementing an industry-accepted model for measuring growth.  It’s been in adopted in 20+ states around the country, has been approved repeatedly by the federal government, and has the blessing of some of our nation’s foremost authorities on student growth data.  It is particularly popular in states (like our’s) that lack year-to-year vertical scaling in their assessments.
• The absence of vertical scaling in the testing system presents certain limitations.   Washington State’s choice for measuring student growth is shaped significantly by what type of testing system we have (and don’t have).  As we’ve gone over with Richard Wenning, and the video below reinforces (go to the 2:00 mark for this issue in particular), we are not currently equipped to simply subtract year to year changes in scale scores to derive growth rates.  However, a discussion about what criterion-referenced enhancements we could add after we have multiple years of data from a new set of vertically scaled SBAC-generated tests is a good conversation for us to have, and I expect we’ll have it.
• The process of selecting SGP has been deliberative – over several years, involving both SBE and OSPI – To be clear, the process of scoping out various growth methodologies, vetting SGP, and generating SGP data for all 295 districts didn’t start this fall when the SBE started revising the Index.   The process started about 4 years ago.  Washington State was expected to begin development of student growth data as a condition of its first award of federal ARRA funding, right around 2009.  At that time, OSPI, with their national technical advisory committee, reviewed various growth methodologies, what their system would support, and arrived at SGP.  The consideration for the SBE this fall, then, was whether to build upon the growth system that was already under development in Washington, or try to break away from what was already in development and start something new solely for the index.  However, with less than a year to respond to USDOE, basically the same testing system in place, and above all else, a clear desire to align policies rather than create multiple methodologies: the choice was pretty clear –  stay the course, align, and implement what we’ve invested in.
• SGP is not “standard-less”.   While it is true that SGP is primarily a norm-referenced system of growth, it’s important to note that it allows for a determination of “adequate growth.”  Remember, adequate growth is how much growth is required to get students to standard in 3 years.  But  SGP expresses the year to year gains necessary to achieve that standard in normative terms (student growth percentiles) to accommodate the lack of vertical scaling in the tests we give.   We’ve talked about implementing adequate growth in year 2, and simulating it in year 1, to give the field time to learn what it is and how it works before they are evaluated on it.  But make no mistake – SGP does not lack standards of growth.  It simply expresses them in a normative terms.

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

-Ben

As the legislature considers significant new investments in K-12 education, we need to ensure that these investments result in improved outcomes for children. One certain way to achieve this is by strengthening high school graduation requirements.

Our school system should prepare students for the next step in life, whether it’s additional education and training, or direct entry into the workforce. Too often, however, students leave the K-12 system without the knowledge and skills they need to take the next step towards gainful employment. And too often, our minority students are left behind disproportionately.

The facts are sobering. More than 55 percent of graduating seniors from the class of 2010 entering the community and technology college system needed remedial classes because they were academically unprepared for college-level coursework. Not surprisingly, the biggest area of need is math – over 50 percent needed remedial instruction – but reading and writing remediation needs are also high. Clearly, our coursework expectations are not well aligned with what colleges and careers require.

Not surprisingly, Washington also struggles to meet its own workforce needs. Comparatively, Washington’s graduation requirements are weak, and perhaps consequently, our skills gap is growing faster than most every other state in the nation (see slide 15). According to Washington’s Vital Signs Report, 31 states require more science coursework for graduation. Yet, according to the same report, there are two high-paying STEM-related job vacancies for every unemployed person in this state. Washington business leaders have been clear – we don’t have a jobs gap, we have a skills gap. When it comes to stronger STEM coursework requirements, we are among the states that need the most, and demand the least.

Currently, Washington requires a minimum of 20 credits for high school graduation, which is significantly less than a full course load in most Washington high schools. But a Washington high school transcript study found that, from a sample of over 14,000 transcripts, about 35 percent of students took a part-time course load as seniors. It turns out that when we expect less of our students, they tend to ask less of themselves.

Now more than ever before, rigorous coursework is not about preparing for college, it’s about preparing for life. Nationwide, the percentage of jobs that require education or training after high school has doubled over the last 30 years – to over 63% – and shows no signs of slowing. Furthermore, those with at least some education and training after high school are half as likely to be unemployed, and their salaries are nearly double that of high school drop-outs. Our high school coursework should prepare them for this reality.

To address these issues, the 2009 Legislature implemented a 24-credit graduation requirement framework into law. The strengthened requirements developed by the state board of education include additional coursework in core classes like English, and Science. The package also includes the flexibility to take career and technical education courses to satisfy academic requirements, or to receive credit based on demonstrated competency in the subject. But the legislature has thus far failed to step up and fund these requirements. In fact, recent proposals would weaken the requirements to change core requirements like Science and English into electives.

Please join me in urging the legislature to stay the course, and finally fund its promise of a meaningful high school diploma for every Washington student.

Jeff Vincent

Video showing the flexibility in the 24 credit package

Our Skills Mismatch –

1993 ushered in the birth of the World Wide Web at CERN, Beanie Babies, and the passage of Washington’s Education Reform Act. A lot has changed in education over the last 20 years. Our students are more diverse, and our educators are tasked with implementing multiple rigorous pathways for them to be successful in a quickly changing and increasingly demanding array of postsecondary opportunities.

But some things haven’t changed. We took closer look at the funding categories in the public schools operating budget in 1993 and 2013. It turns out that the foundation of the budget, General Apportionment, hasn’t kept pace with the rise in inflation or increase in student enrollment since 1993. Staff ratios, the main driver of general apportionment, are the same as they were 20 years ago except for K-12 classified staff, and this ratio actually went down one classified staff per Full Time Enrollment (FTE).

Compensation hasn’t changed much either. Increases to base salaries haven’t kept pace with inflation, and the state’s increased spending on health benefits is commensurate with general increases in health benefits costs.

If staffing hasn’t increased, then what has? Smaller categorical programs, such as the Transitional Bilingual Program (TBIP), Learning Assistance Program (LAP), and Special Education have experienced significant increases in funding, along with the number of students eligible to receive those services. Additionally, the levy equalization fund, which accounts for 4% of the 2013 public schools operating budget, went from around $82 million in 1993 to $298 million in 2013.

Education Reform funding, which is a mixed bucket of K-12 programs, increased by a factor of close to 14. The fund pays for things like our assessment system and bonuses for National Board Certified Teachers (NBCT). Why the big increase? NBCT bonuses didn’t exist in 1993 and our assessment system was at the beginning of a phased-in implementation plan.

Basically, we’ve increased our funding of categorical programs and provisos, on top of the shaky foundation of general apportionment. It’s also worth noting that school districts have more flexibility when it comes to spending general apportionment funds, allowing them to more strategically allocate resources and address needs in their local communities. It makes you wonder, what would student outcomes look like if the basics were fully funded?

Emily Persky, Research Analyst

Three credits of science, with 2 laboratory credits, would not only help prepare all students for a full range of post-secondary options, but would also support a technologically prepared workforce in our state.

Washington STEM recently conducted a statewide survey of voters and found that:
74% of voters support increasing STEM graduation requirements

STEM skill jobs have remained in-demand even through the economic downturn and closing gaps should remain a priority (according to the  STEM Vital Signs Report (2012) for Washington State)

A summary of Science and Stem Fast Facts may be found here .

Linda Drake, Senior Policy Analyst

An Index, comprised mostly of test scores, is very useful as an initial evaluative screen. It helps us understand which schools are struggling, but not necessarily why. You can’t label a school or its staff a “failure” by merely looking at test scores in a spreadsheet. You need to understand something more about the school and why the data tells the story it does.

The Board sees meaningful accountability as a partnership with schools. The Index exists not just to rank and grade schools, but to effectuate change – in strategies, funding, and state school improvement supports. An Index that labels schools “failures” without having ever actually taken the time to learn about the school is sending the wrong message. In this case, the emphasis is on punishment, not improvement. Also, the initial label of “failure” becomes nearly impossible to overcome in developing a partnership with the school towards meaningful change.

The State Board will continue to utilize the Index to recognize excellence in our public schools through the Washington Achievement Awards, and as a valuable tool of analysis for all of Washington’s schools. We have never utilized an A – F grading system, and don’t plan to.

These requirements were approved by the State Board at their November, 2010 meeting, but full implementation of the framework is pending legislative authorization and funding. The State Board of Education will only support moving forward on these requirements when they have been approved and fully funded by the legislature.

With the loss of state professional development funding, many districts are adjusting their calendars, replacing full-day instruction with partial or half days. The use of half-days for professional development directly supports quality teaching, but comes at the cost of learning time for our students. In this video, Executive Ben Rarick provides an overview of the State Board of Education’s drive to reinstate statewide professional development funding in order to maximize instructional time.

The first illustrates an important point – just because nominal spending has increased over time (representing the upward trajectory of the bar graphs) does not mean K-12 programs have increased (in fact, the inverse is sometimes true, when the aging workforce makes it expensive just to keep the teaching staff we have)  Basically, this chart shows that while there have been ebbs and flows, state funding has only managed to keep pace with inflation, and not much else.

Also, one can start in a year in which K-12 funding is demonstrably inadequate, show increases with inflation over time, and it creates the overall impression of adequacy.   But, if you are starting from a point of inadequacy, whether you’ve kept pace of inflation is essentially irrelevant: the funding is still inadequate.  It’s easy to be fooled by charts going up.  The question is: going up against what?

-Ben

This comports somewhat with the results in the 2^nd graph, in which our 4^th grade reading scores are on an overall downward trend since 2005, even before the transition from WASL to MSP.  I continue to argue that 4^th grade literacy scores should be a focus going forward.

Re: NAEP, In each case, our performance lags behind the unweighted average of the Global Challenge States.  For graduation rates, our performance falls below both unweighted averages (NAEP and national), which is somewhat anomalous; it will be interesting to see if that trend continues beyond the first year of the comparable 4 yr cohort data.

-Ben

What are they?  Well, collections of evidence are what they sound like – “work samples based on classroom work prepared by the student with instructional support from a teacher” according to OSPIs official literature.

Collections represent a valuable alternative to students who struggle with standardized tests, but they are also costly.  The legislature currently requires COEs in Reading and in Writing, but only this year have Math COEs been required for graduation.   Because pass rates for the Math are relatively low, it is expected that more students will access the COE as an alternative to graduation.  And since each COE comes with a state price tag of $400, it is likely that the legislature will have to give serious consideration to just how valuable COEs are.  Are they worth the cost?

The chart below shows a projection of increased costs to the state associated with phasing in math and science end-of-course tests as graduation requirements over the next few years.  The truth is, we don’t know what the actual costs will be, and existing estimates are widely diverging.  But everybody agrees on one thing – the costs will go up considerably.  Again, are they worth it?

In trying to answer that question, SBE staff member Linda Drake discovered something noteworthy in the data.   While racial achievement gaps are quite prevalent in the results of the state’s standardized tests scores, they are far less prevalent in the COE results.  The results below are for Reading and Writing.  Note the wide gaps in the top graph (the HSPE) and the clustering of scores in the bottom graph (COE).

And most noteworthy is the results for the Transitional Bilingual students.  In the top graph (HSPE) they are by far the lowest performing subgroup.  Yet, on the bottom graph (COEs), they are right in the middle of the pack.

The results for the bilingual population in Reading should perhaps not surprise us.  Clearly, the language barrier associated with a standardized test would be effectively mitigated by a COE in which tasks are performed collaboratively with an educator.   But the racial gaps are somewhat more mysterious.  Perhaps we could dismiss this data if the N size was extremely low, but its not, as shown in the chart below.  The ‘n’ is consistently over 1,000 students.

Or, perhaps the passage rates for COEs is so high, that the assessment essentially fails to discriminate performance levels enough to reveal the gaps.  But again, no – COE pass rates, as shown in the chart below, range from 60% – 85% in Reading and Writing.  And although gaps still exist, particularly in Writing, they don’t follow the same conventional pattern as those revealed in the traditional

standardized tests.   American Indian students, for example, go from one of the lowest performing subgroups in Writing on the standard HSPE, to one of the highest performing on the COE.   And the overall picture on COEs is a racial mish-mash.  The type of mish-mash we hope for – where your performance does not appear in any way to be influenced by the racial group you belong to.

Whether we could expect similar results for Math and Science COEs, and whether it justified the additional cost for the legislature, remains to be seen.

I look forward to your comments.