“Good growth equals improved proficiency, or does it?” It seems such common language now from DPS that it is hard to remember that the term “growth” as used by them does not actually mean growth as you and I think of it. When the average person hears a statement like, “we have seen good growth”, or, “our growth outpaces the State”, we assume that more students can read, write, and do math proficiently than the previous year. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how well MGP correlates to increases in the percent of students at a school that can read, write, and do math better than last year. Since MGP over 50 is DPS’s minimum goal and MGP over 50 means that a school is at least near the top half of comparable students at that school versus others, it stands to reason that an MGP over 50 should positively correlate to increased rates of students that are proficient. The pie chart attached to this post shows 3 categories of correlation: 1. Schools with overall proficiency increase and have an MGP greater than 50 (55.6% of schools), for a positive correlation, as it should be. 2. Schools with overall proficiency increase but have an MGP less than 50 (14.4% of schools), for negative correlation. 3. Schools with overall proficiency decrease but have an MGP greater than 50 (30.0% of schools), for a negative correlation. Groups 2 and 3 show negative correlation between proficiency and MGP, meaning that the high growth number means that the school decreased in proficiency or that a low growth number means that the school increased in proficiency. This occurs in nearly half of the schools. The obvious problem is that 44.4% of all of the schools are judged by ‘growth’ incorrectly. This also is so statistically significant that MGP cannot be used as a good measure of school success if we are trying to measure whether or not student’s chances of being proficient are better than at other schools. Although I have also attached the list of schools that fall into both groups 2 and 3, a few examples follow: Please note that this data is not an indictment of individual schools or school leaders and teachers, rather an indictment of the measure itself and its misuse. • DSST: College View Middle School’s overall proficiency rates dropped from 67% to 58% but had growth (MGP) of 68. • DSST: Green Valley Ranch Middle School had zero improvement in proficiency (66%) but had growth (MGP) of 68, also. • Palmer Elementary School, overall proficiency rates dropped from 56% to 50% but had growth (MGP) of 56. Whereas, • Valdez Elementary School’s overall proficiency rates improved from 35% to 47% but their growth (MGP) was only 39. • Cole Arts And Science Academy’s overall proficiency rates improved from 33% to 41% but their growth (MGP) was only 47. As a final thought remember how DPS uses growth to spin results in their favor, and then consider the fact that of the 160 schools in DPS that administered TCAP in both 2013 and 2014, 71 of them are misrepresented by MGP. Of those 71 schools misrepresented, 48 of them (68%) show high growth and decreases in proficiency, but only 23 of them (32%) show low growth. This is significant for a district that uses growth to mean improvement in the public’s eye.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 03:22:21 +0000