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Really excited to share this new piece in @AeraOpen, co-authored by @_jmnoonan, @ImRachelWhite, Doug Gagnon, and @ashleyjcarey: "Adding 'Student Voice' to the Mix: Perception Surveys and State Accountability Systems" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2332858421990729
This piece draws on our work with @MassCIEA and -- I think -- illustrates a few really important things about our existing accountability systems in public education...
1. Existing measurement systems are too narrow. They don't capture the information that a tool as basic as a well-designed survey can capture. (To be clear: surveys are NOT a solution. It means that we need to recognize that a single measurement tile is NOT the whole mosaic.)
2. There is no such thing as a "good" or "bad" school. School quality is not uniform. Schools have strengths and weaknesses, and we need to get more precise about those -- in the way we measure, the way we talk, etc.
3. Demography is pretty predictive of proficiency rates. Growth scores are better. And perception surveys are pretty similar in not just telling us about race, poverty, etc. We need to be far more thoughtful about this, since school ratings have consequences.
4. Summative school quality ratings based on narrow data, which themselves correlate moderately-to-strongly with school demographic variables...are...well...not a good idea.
5. As long as high-stakes state accountability systems pressure educators and school leaders to improve their measured performance, those measures will be subject to corruption. So again, surveys are NOT a panacea.
So... if policymakers are truly committed to improving educational accountability systems, they must not only address the information on which such system are based, but also the broader processes that structure the relationship between states and schools.
Read the article!
Read the article!
