Back to the Future: Growth in the Era of ESSA

Damian W Betebenner · Center for Assessment

Back to the Future: Growth in the ESSA Era

Informing Instructional Decisions in the Era of ESSA

Damian W Betebenner

Center for Assessment

CCSSO National Conference on Student Assessment

Austin, Texas - June 28th, 2017

The ESSA Era

How has student growth changed in the last 15 years?
Not much

The ESSA Era

How has student growth changed in the last 15 years?
Not much (IMHO)
Yes, uses cases for student growth are different today.
Yes, analytics have advanced.
But there is still poor understanding of what student growth is and does.

Myriad Problems

Inconsistent and contradictory terminology.
Improperly used concepts/words/phrases.
Use of the results for high stakes accountability has only increased the confusion.
It doesn't have to be this hard.

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

Albert Einstein

Solution

How can we make student growth "simple" to understand?
We need better examples/analogies from outside of education to help users understand student achievement over time.

401K Account planning and balance over time.
Weight loss plan and monitoring over time.

Growth Basics

We are governed by the rules of time:

There is a past.
There is a present.
There is a future.

Examining the past: Diagnosis
Examining the future: Prognosis

401K Planning

It's 2017 and you're 35.
You want to retire at 65 with $1,000,000 (in 2047 dollars).
You sit down with a financial adviser to map out a 401K contribution plan.
Assumptions: $0 at start, 7% return on investments, and 3% rate of inflation.
One million adjusted for inflation of 3% will be $2,427,262 in 30 years.
You will need to save $24,015 annually to reach that goal by age 65.

401K Year 1

Suppose at the end of Year 1 you saved $24,000.
You visit your adviser and she says you're "on track" to reach your financial goal.
Diagnosis (looking at the past year): OK.
Prognosis (looking forward): Adjust parameters and update annual contribution goals accordingly.

401K Year 2

Suppose at the end of Year 2 you have $35,000 and saved $15,000 in year 2.
You visit your adviser and she says you're "not on track" to reach your financial goal.
Diagnosis (looking at the past year):

Not so good when judged against long term goal (criterion-referenced).
$15,000 is still a lot more than most 36 year olds save (norm-referenced).

Prognosis (looking forward): Now have some catching up to do.

Lots of time so don't have to panic.
Adjust parameters and update annual contribution goals accordingly.
Possibly schedule a semi-annual check-up.

Associated Questions

All we've done is described the states of affairs tacking back and forth between diagnosis and prognosis.

We haven't made a prediction about whether you will reach your retirement goals.
We haven't evaluated the effectiveness of your financial adviser.

Student growth has been mostly concerned with questions analogous to whether the financial adviser is effective.
Education data can be used for much more than just the evaluation of schools and teachers.

Diagnostic Growth Uses

Diagnosis

Students with low growth can be flagged for possible remediation.

Prognosis

Students needing high growth to reach desirable outcomes should receive enrichment and more frequent monitoring.