University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s education researchers doubt that standardized test scores are the best indicators of school district performance:
The statistical analysis — which will be presented today to the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators — concluded that Arkansas students are achieving slightly better than the nation as a whole. And several Arkansas districts not typically recognized for their academic excellence top the scale of high performers...“The School Performance Index in Arkansas” takes into account student demographics and the levels of affluence and education in a community. It predicts what student achievement in a school or district should be on the basis of those factors and then compares those projected achievement levels to actual standardized test results.
So, if I understand this, they're predicting how well a school should do based on various demographic and SES levels, and then comparing those predictions to the real test scores. They're concluding that raw test scores shouldn't be used to compare schools, but instead should be adjusted to show how well the school is doing given all these predictor variables, so that schools with students who are predicted to do poorly should not be considered bad schools if they produce mediocre test scores. I'm not sure I agree with that conclusion.
One interesting side finding:
The school analysis, which Greene said could be further refined by the state, showed that school performance on the Iowa Test is “partially” affected by the level of household income, educational attainment of adults, and the percentage of married families in a district. The scores are “substanially affected” by the percentages of black students and students who qualify for reduced meal prices at a school.In contrast, the study concluded that school performance is not affected by the size of a school or a district or by the amount of money spent in a district.
Gee, wonder why the headline for this article wasn't, "Schools don't need more money to perform better?"
Posted by kswygert at January 13, 2006 08:18 AM