Value-Added Assessment is the Only Way To Go

There are a lot of politically motivated claims and counterclaims made about whether or not charter schools are helping kids achieve. In recent months charters have been under attack by the NEA, who commissioned a study that used NAEP data to "show" that students in charters aren't doing as well as students in traditional public schools.

I wrote a response that that study, published in the Oregonian, that pointed out it is meaningless to measure snapshot academic levels of students in charters. What matters is academic GAINS.

That is, assume charter schools disproportionately draw students who are behind academically. (Which they do.) Why would we be surprised, then, if we give them a test and find they tend to be behind the other students? DUH!

Of course this doesn't prevent groups with a dog in the fight from commissioning studies that use this data to "prove" charters are failing. But it's just advocacy research. The NEA isn't interested in actually answering the question "How are charters performing relative to the tradional schools?" They want to create the impression that charters are not working for the students in them.

The question we should be asking is how much each student gains academically from any given year spent in a charter school (or any school.) Let's say a fifth grader enters a charter school in the poorest part of northeast Portland, reading at a second grade level. After one year, his reading ability grows to fourth grade level, and at that point he is given the Oregon reading test, upon which he of course will fail to "meet standard."

Has the school succeeded with that child? Not by Oregon's measure. He is below standard, even though his reading ability grew two academic years in a single year. It's a false negative.

On the other hand, take a child in Riverdale School District, an affluent enclave near Lake Oswego. She enters the fifth grade reading at a seventh grade level, and by the end of the year is still reading at the same level.

She takes the Oregon test, and meets the standard. Has that school succeeded with her? Yes, according to Oregon's assessment system. The school gets to take bows for their success. It's a false positive.

The problem is, Oregon's testing system is not geared to reveal academic gains, and until it does, it will continue to be of little value for the purpose it was designed: school accountability. We need an assessment system designed to reveal "Academic Value Added."

The fact that socioeconomic status is highly correlated to academic performance is perhaps the least contested research result in public education. Why would we have an assessment system, then, that fails to account for it? Without a "value added" measure, Oregon will forever be tagging schools in poorer neighborhoods as failures and schools in affluent neighborhoods as successes, even if the academic gains are precisely the opposite.

Guess who opposes changing Oregon's assessment system so it can measure gains? The teachers union. Why would they oppose it? For starters, if we could measure the academic gains of each student, we could also track the data back to the teacher. We would know which teachers were effective at raising every students' academic levels and which were not - something the unions cannot abide.

Tennessee has had such a system in place for several years. Oregon could have one, too, if the education establishment weren't so threatened by it.

My bill to replace Oregon's testing system, HB3162, would enable the state to measure annual academic gains of every student. We would know which teachers were effective and which were not. We would finally be able to separate the effects of socioeconomic status from our measure of school accountability, which has been unfairly categorizing some schools as failures (and others as successes) for years. You'd finally have an honest answer to the question: "How is my kid's school doing?"

The bill has powerful opposition: The Oregon Department of Education, the Oregon Education Association, the Oregon Business Council, the Oregon Business Association, and the Associated Oregon Industries.

I understand why the ODE and the OEA can't abide accurate measures of academic gains, but why would the supposed business advocates oppose it? Hard to say, other than the fact that they have been cheerleading the existing system of deeply flawed assessments for so long that they would lose face if they admitted its failure.

I think they have fallen victim to a medical condition that unfortunately has run rampant through Oregon's poilitical establishment:

Cranial Rectumitis.