|
Education Week
States'
Accountability Systems Flawed for College Readiness, Report Finds
By Catherine Gewertz
March 14, 2016
As states press hard to ensure that all students graduate from high
school ready for college or good jobs, many are hobbled by the very
accountability systems they designed to leverage improvement, according
to a report released Monday.
The new study, by Achieve, argues that in reporting K-12 performance to
the public, states often aren't including factors that matter the most
in college readiness, such as the proportion of students who are
completing rigorous high school courses, how well students are
accumulating credits toward graduation, and whether they're earning
college credit while in high school.
Achieve, which works with states on standards and accountability, has
been tracking the 50 states' college-readiness policies in a series of
reports for a decade, but shifted its analysis this year. Instead of
focusing on what policies states adopt, it chose to examine how
students are actually performing, state to state, on key indicators
that correlate with the chance of college success.
"Policy alone is insufficient," the report says. "Implementation of
policy at all levels—state, district, school, and classroom—matters ...
how do states—and their citizens—know whether their policies are having
the intended impact?"
The report argues that states are under less pressure to monitor and
improve a robust set of student-performance indicators if they're
absent from their accountability systems. If the don't measure factors
that most affect students' chances of success in jobs or college,
states also lack the information they need to see if their policies are
working, Achieve argues. (Earlier this year, the organization designed
and released sample accountability reports that include the factors it
sees as most important.)
Not everyone will agree with Achieve's choice of indicators in this
study. For instance, the group classifies only the SAT, ACT, PARCC,
Smarter Balanced...
Read the rest of the article at Education Week
|
|
|
|
