Giving Compass' Take:

• Chris Minnich, writing for Education Next, argues that schools should evaluate students on growth rather than proficiency standards. Fortunately, the ESSA standards assess growth as well as proficiency when rating schools. 

• Why is it important to take student growth and learning gains into account rather than solely proficiency? 

• Read about a tool that can help evaluate schools using growth measures. 

Imagine how it might feel to be an educator at a school deemed “failing,” despite raising students’ performance dramatically. Unfortunately, that’s a reality for some of the nation’s most dedicated educators, especially those serving in historically marginalized communities.

That’s because many states and districts evaluate schools on the basis of how many students achieve proficiency standards on standardized tests rather than how far schools move students, regardless of where they start on the achievement spectrum. Schools serving students from disadvantaged backgrounds often come up short on proficiency metrics, even when they move their students further over the course of a school year than do schools serving students from more advantaged families.

But school rating systems that consider both proficiency and student growth are far fairer to these schools. We can, and should, differentiate between a school with low achievement scores but high rates of growth and a school with low achievement and little growth.

The good news is that the federal Every Student Succeeds Act enables states to include growth in new school rating systems—and all 50 states and the District of Columbia have pledged to do so. But to truly serve students and close opportunity gaps, growth can’t just be added to the mix.  It must be weighted heavily.

Read the full article about student learning gains by Chris Minnich at Education Next