| “The Center provides technical assistance that is practical, policy-sensitive, and technically sound.” |
Projects & Clients: Case Histories:
Success Story No. 3 : Technical Assistance Around Growth Models for School Accountability
The Center provides technical assistance on timely issues to support successful implementation of assessment and accountability systems.
Success Story No. 3 : Technical Assistance
The Center helped clarify key issues around using student growth data for school accountability for state and federal audiences.
The Problem/Issue
Accountability systems will be more valid if they consider student growth, cohort improvement, and school achievement status. How to do so in valid and reliable ways is a current issue of great interest.
What the Center Did
The Center worked with the states, CCSSO, the U.S. Department of Education, and others to clarify and make more practical good designs for using student growth data for school accountability decisions.
- Articulated taxonomy of school performance of status, improvement, and growth (with Carlson, 2001)
- Developed “value table” approach to growth (2004-06)
- Provided training through CCSSO, NCME, and RILS conferences (2004-06)
- Clarified growth approaches for evaluation vs. accountability (2005)
- Helped write U.S. DOE Peer Review Guidance for Growth Model Pilot (2005)
- Analyzing factors contributing to reliability of school decisions based on growth (2006)
Successful Outcomes
• State and other agencies understand better the factors involved in designing growth models for school accountability.
• Multiple states are developing and implementing different growth models, both within and outside of the USDOE-sponsored pilot study.
• States are working towards more comprehensive and valid accountability systems. | 
