Few education laws have generated as much controversy as Public Law 107-110, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. The law was in part designed to create measurement and accountability within our national primary and secondary education system, with funding to achieve proficiency and options for parents and students to leave schools consistently not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals. Now pending reauthorization, NCLB is the subject of intense scrutiny and reform efforts from stakeholders.

One aspect in the law’s debate is becoming clear: reliance on high stakes tests focused on grade-level status—without quality growth data—as a measure of school and student performance is not working. This sole measure of accountability and its inherent incentives ignore students who are performing either well above or well below the grade level. A teacher who enables a child to grow two years in achievement during a single year of class is still considered underperforming if that child is not yet up to grade level; a teacher who achieves no growth at all for a child already at or above grade level is deemed successful.

The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a not-for-profit educational services organization with over 30 years of experience measuring academic progress for many millions of children, rejects the notion that a focus on grade level alone is an appropriate standard for assessing success and assigning accountability. Rather, we believe each child deserves an independent measure of academic progress, with success determined by how much progress the child makes. Our view is one of differentiated education, in which we recognize the differences in children and the necessity for systems that support the need for differentiation. Further, we believe that appropriate assessment and data-informed tools enable educators to meet that challenge.

In light of these beliefs, NWEA has initiated and continues a lobbying and education effort to help shape a new perspective on how we should measure academic progress. We believe NCLB needs to be amended to permit adaptive testing that goes beyond mere grade level, though we do not oppose provisions that would retain grade-level information. We have spent considerable time advancing these ideas with members of Congress, partnering with stakeholders and policymakers alike, intent on positively impacting the debate.

Amend the Language and Meet the Intent

We have crafted the following language, to be added to Section 1111, the assessment section of NCLB, which we believe sufficient to allow effective measurements to be included as an option for states:

“States are encouraged to measure the achievement of students through adaptive means that accurately assess student achievement above and below grade-level; so long as assessment also measures grade-level performance.”

We also propose a definition of an adaptive assessment:

An adaptive assessment should be defined as an assessment that changes its difficulty according to the performance of a student but reports the outcome of the assessment on a scale that is common to all students.

 

Address Proficiency Requirements

Currently under NCLB, schools are evaluated for their progress in improving student performance by comparing successive groups of students rather than tracking the same group of students over time. In other words, to meet AYP, schools must show that each grade has improved over the previous year, not that each student or the same group of students has improved. Therefore, these yearly comparisons do not track the performance of the same students.

This approach to assessment does not provide the information needed to accurately measure what individual students know—and what educators need to know—to address their learning deficiencies and support their achievement growth.

Additionally, with the focus of NCLB on measuring proficiency rather than annual learning progress, schools that have improved substantially but have not yet reached proficiency targets are rated the same as schools that have no improvement. Achieving learning gains provides no credit to these schools.

NWEA suggests that, as an alternative to the annual testing by grade and by subject currently required, states should be allowed to meet their NCLB annual yearly progress assessment requirements by measuring the performance growth of every student.

Giving states the option of measuring student growth to meet AYP assessment requirements would provide a more accurate measure of how all students are progressing. Measuring growth across grades and over the course of each grade would provide educators a clear roadmap for elevating a student to proficiency.

Assess the Student at Their Ability

One critical assessment issue driving the reauthorization of NCLB is the recognition that all students entering their respective grade levels may or may not be at the appropriate instructional level to master that grade-level content. By encouraging assessment with grade-level only items, NCLB currently does not recognize the learning needs or progress of students above or below grade level.

The inclusion of items outside grade level would more accurately reflect the actual achievement and needs of each individual student, regardless of their designated grade. An adaptive model built to include grade-level items as well as items above and below grade level would afford the opportunity to measure grade-level mastery, in addition to accurately assessing the learning level of every student. By adding a grade-independent scale to this assessment, educators can then measure individual student growth across a continuum of learning and time, ultimately enabling more schools to bring students to proficiency.

Join us in Moving the Dialogue Forward

Members of Congress listen to their constituents and we encourage you to let them know your thoughts on this critical issue. NWEA is working diligently to partner with legislators at state and federal levels in this conversation. This is an open discussion and your participation is essential as we refine our language as an organization and as a community. We invite you to challenge our position and help ensure any update to the law best reflects the needs of kids. We believe strongly in our position, and think the changes proposed would make a positive difference in the quality of NCLB by providing states a viable option in adaptive assessment to measure each child’s academic growth.

Let your representatives on the education committee know your thoughts and join us in the dialogue.