HOW ED TRUST CEO/PRES. DR. JOHN KING'S EDUCATORS WILL HAVE OPPORTUNITY TO CONVENE THIS SUMMER!! (1708 hits)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FROM ED TRUST CEO/PRESIDENT APOSTLE DR. JOHN KING, JR.!
Excellent PD Opportunity for Educators and Leaders This Summer!
Our first convening on assignments — looking for rigor, alignment, and quality — was such a success that we’ve pulled together a second convening. This one will feature more learning from assignments in English language arts, social studies, science, and a new focus on mathematics! Attendees will be among the first to see our latest assignment analysis, and we’re excited to share frameworks and tools that you can take back to your schools or districts to assess assignments on your own and with colleagues. Join us! Early-bird pricing has been extended through July 1st.
Trends in State ESSA Plans: The Problem With Supergroups
Jun 1, 2017 by Lynn Jennings
Among the most important questions to ask to understand whether a state accountability system is designed to promote opportunity and achievement for all groups of students are:
Do all groups of students matter in the ratings given to individual schools? How does the state identify schools that need to improve for any individual group of students?
In answering those questions about submitted state ESSA plans, we previously explored how some states are defining away low performance among groups of students rather than honestly acknowledging it.
Another trend among state plans that will undermine attention and action to improve outcomes for individual groups of students is the use of “supergroups.” A supergroup includes students from two or more of the individual groups of students that ESSA requires states to hold schools accountable for: students from major racial/ethnic groups, low-income students, students with disabilities, and English learners.
There are two kinds of supergroups that are dominating state plans so far: 1) “high-need” groups, which lump together students who have been historically underserved, including students of color, low-income students, students with disabilities, and English learners; and 2) “lowest performing” groups, which include students in the bottom 25 percent or 30 percent of achievement within their school, regardless of demographics, English language proficiency, or disability status.
These supergroups are being used in place of individual groups of students for the purposes of rating schools and identifying schools that need to improve. There are serious problems with both.
A high-need supergroup counts different groups of students together, while ignoring meaningful distinctions between the needs of (and civil rights protections afforded to) each group. A high-need supergroup also allows one group’s performance to mask the performance of another. For example, if Latino students and low-income students within a school are making progress but students with disabilities are not, students with disabilities may not get the attention they need and deserve because their performance is overshadowed by the other groups in the high-need supergroup.
