|
How Does Georgia's School Accountability Plan Compare with Others?
|
Report by UGA Professor Compares Georgia's CCRPI to Other States
Recently, a report comparing Georgia's College and Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI) school accountability system to that of other states' accountability measures was presented to a Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) committee reviewing potential changes to Georgia's CCRPI. The review of CCRPI was initiated due to passage of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The UGA report (found HERE in its entirety) was compiled by Dr. Richard Welsh at the University of Georgia's Department of Lifelong Education, Administration and Policy.
|
A Review of CCRPI is Important Now
According to GaDOE, CCRPI is a "comprehensive school improvement, accountability, and communication platform for all educational stakeholders that will promote college and career readiness for all Georgia public school students." Every Georgia school has a CCRPI score, premised in large part on student standardized test scores in addition to other factors, and the Governor's Office of Student Achievement has recently begun translating schools' CCRPI scores into
A-F school ratings.
ESSA necessitates that Georgia revisit its accountability plan, and GaDOE has convened a number of subcommittees tasked with studying Georgia's accountability system, our state's standardized testing program, and other components of CCRPI. This work occurred throughout 2016 and will continue into early 2017. Learn more about the state's timeline and access feedback submission details
HERE.
|
UGA Study Points to Flaws in Georgia's CCRPI
The timely UGA study compares Georgia's CCRPI plan to several Southeastern states as well as a handful of states with high performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
PAGE encourages educators and school stakeholders to review the report in its entirety
HERE, particularly the overall findings (p. 2) and the key takeaways (p. 25) below:
- Using nationally normed measures adjusted for student demographics, Georgia appears to rate some schools more harshly.
- Georgia's accountability system appears to identify the tails of the school performance distribution fairly accurately (A & F schools).
- The middle of the distribution (B, C & D schools) appears to be the schools most likely affected and warrants further investigation to better judge school performance for these schools.
- Other Southeastern states' accountability systems appear to also have difficulties with accurately identifying schools in the middle of the school achievement distribution.
- Overall, compared to Southeastern states, Georgia's accountability system seems to rate schools ranked B, C and D more harshly. These schools would likely be ranked a grade higher (B would be A, C would be B, D would be C) on the accountability systems of Southeastern states based on national proficiency rates and schoolgrades.org rating.
Conversely, the results suggest that Georgia schools receiving a B, C or D would be similarly ranked using the accountability system of high-performing states.
|
We Must Get Georgia's New School Accountability Plan Right - How to Help
Three consecutive failing grades on the CCRPI triggered school eligibility for state takeover under Amendment 1, a proposed constitutional amendment which was recently rejected by a strong majority of Georgia voters statewide. Other state interventions are currently triggered by low CCRPI scores, and still more school intervention models may soon be created in light of Amendment 1's failure. Any interventions are unlikely to work if Georgia's accountability system fails to tell us what we need to know about barriers to student success. Georgia must get its accountability plan right to ensure we provide effective interventions for our students, and the state's ESSA rewrite of CCRPI provides the opportunity to do so.
Curiously, though the state law creating the A-F school ranking system tied to CCRPI was contingent upon passage of Amendment 1, and Amendment 1 failed, GOSA (Governor's Office of Student Achievement) is continuing to use the letter ranking system, which does a poor job of communicating why students are struggling in high-needs schools and what interventions may help them.
Necessary changes to CCRPI include enhancing the weight given to student academic growth, particularly in elementary and middle grades, rather than an overemphasis on test scores. ESSA allows states more flexibility in their accountability plans with regard to student testing than Georgia law allows. State leaders should continue standardized testing reform, particularly with regard to Georgia's youngest students. They should also discourage the use of ranking schools by letter grades assigned by GOSA and encourage more collaboration between GaDOE and the State Board of Education.
Email House Education Chair Brooks Coleman (R-Duluth), Senate Education Chair Lindsey Tippins (R-Marietta), and the GaDOE today to share your concerns. Please remember to contact policymakers outside of instructional time and use personal electronic devices:
[email protected]
|
 |
|
