Accountability and Student Growth
A National Perspective
Damian W Betebenner
National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment
Educational Accountability:
A Plethora of Initiatives
No Child Left Behind:
Criterion Referenced Accountability/Universal Proficiency.
Institution level (i.e., school accountability), not personnel
level
Race to the Top (RttT):
Accountability as personnel evaluation
New Initiatives: Universal Career and College Readiness.
Accountability and Student Growth
Educational Accountability:
A Plethora of Initiatives
Challenge: Create a comprehensive and coherent accountability
system that includes all stakeholders in the drive to improve
educational quality for all students.
Challenge: Create a comprehensive and coherent accountability
system that weaves together:
What is.
What should be.
What is reasonable.
Accountability and Student Growth
Comprehensive Accountability
Maximizing the progress of all students toward career and college
readiness requires attention toward multiple points of influence.
Institutional – Schools, Districts
Personnel – Principals and Teacher
Programs – Curriculum and educational programs
Students
State and Federal mandates have often been piecemeal (schools or
teachers/principals). Groups feel like scapegoats.
Everyone plays a role from policy makers to parents.
Accountability and Student Growth
Coherent Accountability
Accountability initiative spread across different levels are often
incoherent
Indicators at the state, district, school, and teacher level often do
not “speak” to each other.
Goal: Create a unified indicator system that speaks to all
stakeholder goals: Comprehensive and coherent so that
participants are tied to “translatable” goals.
Accountability and Student Growth
Status Quo
The Center for Assessment is currently working with approximately 20 states on
growth and accountability.
A variety of use cases:
RttT states: Focus is on teacher evaluation
Non RttT states: Diagnostic uses of growth data, institutional evaluation
(including growth for AYP purposes), program evaluation.
Some use cases are more personal than others.
Recommendation: Be deliberate but don’t rush. Less personal use cases allow
stakeholders to become familiar with the indicators.
Accountability and Student Growth
Wisdom
Tell me and I will forget.
Show me and I will remember.
Involve me and I will understand.
Confucius
Accountability and Student Growth
About this copy
Accountability and Student Growth: A National Perspective — Wisconsin Department of Education, July 2011.
This is an image-based copy of the original PowerPoint slides; builds and animations are flattened.