Giving Compass' Take:

• Michael Burke discusses the Los Angeles Unified school district's plans to evaluate student data using CORE districts' growth model to improve equity in education.

• How can data be used to drive equity? What are other ways that schools can support students of diverse backgrounds?

• Learn comprehensive strategies for promoting educational equity.

Los Angeles Unified on Wednesday is expected to become the latest California school district to publicly share data showing how its students improve year to year, a move the district expects will provide deeper insights into how individual schools are helping students progress academically.

The CORE districts’ growth model uses a formula that predicts a student’s test score and then compares that to the actual score. When calculating the predicted score, the formula considers a student’s previous test scores and whether the student is an English learner, has a disability or is low-income, foster or homeless youth. A school is considered to have high growth if its students are beating their expected scores, even if they are not meeting standards.

Beutner, the district superintendent, said in a statement last month that “providing more information to educators in our schools, as well as the families and communities we serve, is a step in the right direction.”

Administrators at those districts say the data is another piece of information parents can use when they are deciding where to enroll their children. District leaders also say the data can help inform their decisions regarding how to allocate money and resources within the district.

At Fresno Unified, growth data “fills a huge gap in our understanding of how we’re performing,” said David Jansen, executive officer of equity and access at the district.

“Primarily, it’s understanding where the outliers are. So without that growth data, there could be some key things happening at schools that goes undetected,” Jansen said. “You could have a school that on a proficiency basis looks to be a low performer, but is actually growing significantly year-to-year. And we want to know who those schools are so we can understand what they’re doing,”

Read the full article about how a California school district is changing how it measures success by Michael Burke at Ed Source.