Student growth & accountability policies
A majority of states include student growth estimates in accountability measures. Research suggests that policies holding schools accountable for growth, rather than achievement alone, are likely to support efforts around college readiness and other important long-term student outcomes. Our research provides insight to help inform measurement of academic achievement and growth for students and schools.
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is gaining prominence in education practice and policy. Research shows that SEL can be improved by short-term, targeted interventions and longer-term strategies to improve school contextual factors. The present study examines the stability of academic achievement relative to four SEL domains (growth mindset, self-efficacy, social awareness, and self-management).
Topics: Measurement & scaling, Social-emotional learning, Student growth & accountability policies
The changing landscape of assessment and accommodation policies
Educational assessments must include accommodations in the pursuit of accessibility for all, but the development and drive for accommodations on assessments is everchanging. This paper looks to review the accommodations landscape— discovering the past, highlighting our present progress, and uncovering new areas to explore.
Topics: Equity, Accessibility, Student growth & accountability policies
Student test engagement and its impact on achievement gap estimates
In this Brookings Institute Chalkboard blog, James Soland shares his work investigating how student test engagement may shape achievement gaps.
Topics: School & test engagement, Student growth & accountability policies
Achievement gaps are a metric of fundamental importance to U.S. practice and policy. Gap estimates are often used to measure the effectiveness and fairness of the education system at a given point in time, over the course of decades, and as children progress through school.
Topics: Equity, School & test engagement, Student growth & accountability policies
In this article, we examined the prevalence of rapid guessing to determine if this behavior varied by grade, subject, and teacher, and evaluated if rapid guessing influenced teacher value-added estimates. We observed differences in rapid guessing across grades, subjects, and teachers; however, this behavior did not appear to have a substantive effect on teacher value-added estimates.
Topics: School & test engagement, Student growth & accountability policies
A general approach to measuring test-taking effort on computer-based tests
The current study outlines a general process for measuring item-level effort that can be applied to an expanded set of item types and test-taking behaviors (such as omitted or constructed responses). This process, which is illustrated with data from a large-scale assessment program, should improve our ability to detect non-effortful test taking and perform individual score validation.
Topics: Measurement & scaling, Innovations in reporting & assessment, Student growth & accountability policies
This article addresses the issue by estimating teacher value added, then applying extremely mild nonlinear transformations to the original scale and re-estimating the value added. Although by definition at most one of these scales can be equal-interval, all are treated as if interval-scaled when estimating value added.
Topics: Measurement & scaling, Student growth & accountability policies
