Measure of Success

I believe that the alignment to standards that lies at the heart of NCLB has great value. I believe that every child deserves academic rigor in their grade-level content areas, suited to their particular strengths and weaknesses. As a teacher committed to my craft and to the mission of academic success for all students, I do not quail at the idea of student, teacher, and school accountability. As a parent of a special-needs child, I see every day an academic world available to my son that would have been unthinkable ten years ago. And yet, I also see a system that fails the individual by focusing on the group. Year after year I am frustrated by the basic statistical flaws of our standards-based accountability. We speak to our stakeholders about growth, about adequate yearly progress; yet, we base the public assessment of school success on a “snapshot” that is not only inconsistent statistically from one year to the next, but lacks the vital growth component that assesses true academic progress at a student level:

Current state accountability systems rely heavily upon performance standards to make judgments about the quality of education. Specifically, accountability systems constructed according to federal adequate yearly progress (AYP) requirements use annual “snap-shots” of student achievement relative to state performance standards to make judgments about education quality. . . Though appropriate for making judgments about the achievement level of students, they are inappropriate for judgments about educational effectiveness. (Betebrenner, 2009)

I teach fifth grade math and science, and few places feel the real-time stressors of NCLB as acutely as teachers in my position. I do worry about whether or not we sacrifice depth for breadth in content, and I do worry about reaching the many at the sacrifice of truly teaching the one: the one who needs the most pulling or the one who needs the most pushing. Mostly, however, I worry about how the accountability system might be self-defeating - for schools, teachers, students - that strive year after year against unbelievable obstacles. If a student improves 150 points on an assessment scale score, how do we in good conscience tell that child, that parent, that teacher, that it is simply not enough? Who, really, has failed?

Works Cited:
Betebrenner, D. W. (2009, April 6). Growth, Standards, and Accountability. Retrieved October 6, 2010, from The National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment: http://www.nciea.org/publications/growthandStandard_DB09.pdf