Standardized tests are outdated as the primary metric for assessing school performance. Instead, a more comprehensive measurement adds four other factors to test scores.
Many superintendents care deeply about providing sufficient resources, establishing instructional priorities and monitoring student progress. While each goal is important, some of the most high-performing schools focus heavily on promoting a positive climate, empowering strong leadership and setting high expectations for rigorous instruction.
That’s according to new research from FutureEd, an independent, solution-oriented think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. The researchers suggest that while every educational institution aims to give students a strong academic experience, national student achievement levels continue declining. This has prompted experts to question whether traditional measures of achievement data are the best way to assess school performance.
Standardized test scores would, of course, be included in any overall performance assessment but would be one of several factors in a balanced system that fully captures student outcomes and the contributors to student success, the research claims.
A new school performance measurement model would prioritize the following five metrics:
1. Access to advanced coursework
The long-standing concentration of white and Asian students in advanced programs resulted in a movement to dismantle gifted and talented programs, exam schools, and other advanced opportunities, FutureEd suggests. It argues that these opportunities promote racial and economic segregation in public education.
Leaders and their teams should work to eliminate the “scarcity mentality” in advanced education that forces students to compete for far too few seats.
The research recommends that districts adopt strategies to ensure courses are staffed with teachers equipped to promote skill-building and a sense of belonging among a more diverse student body.
2. Access to high-capacity teachers and school leaders
Other bodies of research consistently identify teacher and principal quality as the most important school-based drivers of academic achievement. Teacher surveys and analyses of how much principals contribute to their schools’ achievement growth can provide meaningful measures of a school’s leadership quality.
Additionally, studies have shown that student test scores are higher in schools where teachers rate principal instructional leadership highly.
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3. How school climate and culture relate to student success
Several states rely on chronic absenteeism rates as a proxy for student engagement and a school’s ability to ensure a positive climate and culture. However, absenteeism is a complex issue that has many causes.
Instead, measuring school climate and culture should rely on well-implemented surveys of students, parents and educators. The results can also be used to identify areas of improvement.
4. Measures of student success after high school
The researchers suggest that high school test scores cannot adequately measure whether a school is preparing students for adulthood. Additional measures—such as whether graduates enroll in college, an apprenticeship or the armed services, and whether they complete those programs—are needed.
“We often evaluate a school based on what happens in that school,” Researcher David Yaeger was quoted in the report. “But the real measure is what happens in your life after you leave that school. That’s a better way to evaluate schools.”
5. Standardized test scores
Test scores can drive high standards and rigorous instruction by telling students what they should know and be able to achieve. However, research shows that scores have played an outsized role in performance measurement.
“There’s so much about schools and what students are learning and experiencing in school that cannot be captured on a standardized test,” Elaine Allensworth of the University of Chicago consortium said in the report.
Altogether, these five metrics of school performance provide a richer, more complete picture of a school’s quality, the researchers confirm. Read the full report here.
