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The vertical axis is the performance in Year 1 and
the horizontal axis is the Year 2 performance. The
intersection represents the points awarded for growth.
A school’s or district’s growth is computed by taking
the total number of students’ growth points and
dividing them by the number of students. For this
year, the Year 1 axis will represent new performance
levels applied to last year’s scores.
The concept and the final points in the Value
Table are the result of meetings with an advisory
panel that included ISBE personnel, statisticians and
representatives from stakeholder groups such as
IASA, the Illinois Principals Association (IPA), the
Regional Offices of Education (ROE), the Illinois
Education Association (IEA), the Illinois Federation of
Teachers (IFT), and Illinois universities.
“The first meeting was kind of contentious,” said
Dr. Steve Webb, Superintendent of Goreville
Community Unit District 1 and President of IASA.
“There were lots of positive comments about the
direction ISBE was attempting to go, but very little
agreement among practitioners and statisticians.
Concerns were raised about things like the effects of
small class size and the issue of fairly representing
the growth of high-performing students and districts.”
Webb said the meeting had to be continued to
another date of which he was unable to attend, but
said the proposed Value Table that ISBE and the
panel came up with seems to have addressed those
concerns.
“We identified the need for individual progression
data decades ago and although there are many other
factors that our schools use to gauge progress than
just the ISAT, it appears we are finally going to move
a step closer to real data at the state level that we
can use to make sound educational decisions for our
students as they progress from year to year and
hopefully better informed decisions regarding the
overall performance of our schools.”
In addition to Webb, other superintendents on the
panel included Dr. Thomas Leonard of Barrington and
Brad Hutchison, who recently retired as
Superintendent of Olympia District 16 after a
distinguished career of more than 30 years in public
education.
O’Brian said the range of points (0-200) and the
values assigned to maintaining, progressing or
regressing in the eight categories were determined
collaboratively with the stakeholders on the panel.
Another factor that comes into play especially for
the coming school year is the elevation of the bar for
the ISAT test administered to students in grades 3-8.
The “meets” bar has been raised significantly and,
applying the new performance levels to last year’s
scores, could result in up to 25 percent more students
failing to meet standards statewide.
That -- and the fact that so many schools and
districts nationwide are failing to meet the unrealistic
AYP standards of NCLB (only 17.7 percent of Illinois
districts met AYP in 2012) -- is precisely the reason
for implementation of the Value Table as a Growth
Metric in Illinois.
“The Value Table was chosen as Illinois’ growth
metric because of the relative transparency of this
metric,” O’Brian said. “It provides another measure of
the effectiveness of school and district programs and
adds to the AYP picture in a way in which schools
and districts can show growth.”
(Continued from page 13)
ISBE unveils growth metric value tables——————————
