For schools, what does progress mean? Nevada has one idea, the feds another

Thursday, July 26, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

It makes all the sense in the world that poorly performing students should be rewarded when they start doing better. But let's say a good student also improves. What kind of reward should he get?

That question goes to the heart of a philosophical debate between the state's school bosses and the federal government.

Nevada says: Give kudos to a school where all the students score higher than last year's crop, even if last year's test results were satisfactory.

The feds say: Credit for "adequate yearly progress" should go just to those schools where the lowest-performing students do better and start closing in on the higher achievers.

That's the basic law as it stands. Nevada wants to get an exception but hasn't had any luck. And now it is about to take matters into its own hands.

"The goal for Nevada's educators is to take every student, regardless of their current level of achievement, and move them forward," said Paul LaMarca, the state education department's top administrator for research and accountability. "It's important to move a student who is struggling for proficiency. At the same time it's very important to move a student who is proficient beyond that point, to exceeding our standards."

The federal education department is allowing eight states to do what Nevada wants - to use alternative assessments to measure student progress, known as a "growth model." But none is going as far as Nevada is proposing: to add points for schools where already-proficient students improve.

Schools would receive credit for making substantial progress, even if minimum test score requirements were not met. But the U.S. Education Department said no.

"The feds apparently felt that we would be enabling schools to compensate for students that did not meet standards by giving those schools credit for the higher achievers," LaMarca said. "That's just a difference of opinion."

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says the states being allowed to join the growth model pilot program were still meeting "the bright-line principles of the law to strengthen accountability."

Nevada educators, resigned to the federal government's refusal to cut the state any slack, have come up with a solution that, if nothing else, could boost morale. It will measure student progress two ways - the feds' way and Nevada's way.

At issue is the Bush administration's education reform law, which took effect in 2002 - the No Child Left Behind Act.

Its underlying goal is to close the achievement gap dividing the nation's poor and minority students from their more affluent white peers.

No Child Left Behind requires public schools to show adequate yearly progress on standardized tests, with 100 percent of students demonstrating proficiency in reading, writing and math by the 2013-14 academic year.

Schools must show gains overall and by subgroups of students, including those in special education, those with limited English proficiency, and those in particular ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Nevada educators have long argued that the goals, though admirable, are unrealistic in a state with a fast-growing student population that includes thousands of English language learners.

The switch to the growth model has been approved for just eight states - Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia.

Although "there are many different routes for states to take ... all must lead to closing the achievement gap and every student reaching grade level by 2014," Spellings said. "We are open to new ideas, but when it comes to accountability, we are not taking our eye off the ball."

This year, Nevada's public schools will still be measured the way they don't like. And next time around, schools will have to show even better performance, because the achievement benchmarks are set to increase.

Individual states were given some leeway in figuring out how to get all their students to meet the benchmarks.

Some states opted for raising the bar in small annual increases. Others, including Nevada, gave schools several years to adjust to the new standards - and will demand big improvements down the road.

For example, next summer, the percentage of elementary school students in Nevada who must be proficient in reading and writing will move to about 52 percent, up from nearly 40 percent this year. And 56 percent of those students will have to be proficient in math, up from 45 percent.

Results from the most recent round of testing in Clark County, and the resulting school rankings, will be released today. Charlene Green, associate superintendent of student support services for the School District, said she fully supports the switch to a growth model for assessment, the one the feds won't allow for Nevada.

"We should get credits for all of our students who succeed," Green said. "Kids at the top who are striving to be exemplary are working just as hard as the kids who are trying to move out of the bottom quartile."

No Child Left Behind has resulted in a stigma of sorts for schools that continually fail to meet the objectives. After two years of low test scores a school is designated as "needs improvement." The same label is assigned whether the performance shortfall was in all areas, or solely because a handful of students were absent on test day and a statistical requirement for student participation was not met.

State education officials know that such labels have become a source of consternation. And to compensate, or at least provide another assessment of performance, Nevada plans to hand out two sets of results for the 2007-08 academic year.

The first set will be based on the requirements set down under No Child Left Behind. The second set will use a more flexible growth model that takes into account a variety of factors, such as changes in student population.

"Measuring growth is probably a better reflection of school effectiveness than just measuring status," LaMarca said.

That's not to say that the list of needs improvement schools will be dramatically shorter using the growth model, LaMarca said.

"The growth model is not a panacea for schools," LaMarca said. "If anything, it's more rigorous. Moving kids forward is hard to do."

The federal education department's rejection is the latest blow to Nevada's public schools. In June the state learned it would receive $2 million less in funding for its English language learners, based on the feds' calculations that fewer students qualified than in prior years. That decision attracted the attention of Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who said he is asking for a meeting with state and federal education officials to get the money back - and get the feds to reexamine how they make such decisions.

As for Nevada's desire to revise how it assesses student progress, Porter noted that "now is the perfect time to look into that," because the federal education law is up for reauthorization.