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ISBE unveils growth metric value tables
By Michael Chamness
IASA Director of Communications
In an attempt to go deeper and provide a more
nuanced look than No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the
Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) is unveiling
Value Tables as a Growth Metric to provide schools
and school districts another way of demonstrating
progress.
“We wanted something that could help measure
growth instead of just the pass/fail standards used in
the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) reports,” said
Mary O’Brian, ISBE’s Director of Assessment. “We
wanted to try to create something that was valid,
reliable and fair from the standpoint that results do
not favor one type of school district over another.
AYP does not provide a nuanced look at the
performance of schools or districts.”
The Value Tables (see table below) award points
based on a student’s growth from one year to the
next. Some of the features used to go deeper than
AYP’s measurements include:
Dividing the AYP categories of “Exceeds
Standards,” “Meets Standards,” “Below Standards,”
and “Academic Warning” into “A” and “B” categories,
in effect creating eight categories instead of just four,
and awarding growth points for moving from the lower
to higher subdivision within a category.
Recognizing that it is more difficult to show growth
for high-performing students and awarding significant
points for maintaining the performance of top
students.
“The goal is to show growth even among the
highest-performing students, and the Value Table
acknowledges that the room for growth is less among
top performing schools and districts,” O’Brian
explained.
The accompanying Value Table uses color coding
to help interpret the results. The gray cells represent
students who have maintained their performance
from year to year, while the green cells represent
students who have achieved a higher level of
proficiency and the red cells represent students
whose performance has declined.
(Continued on page 14)
