More Resources Fact Sheet Additional Fact Sheets

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today announced approval of two high-quality growth model pilots, which follow the bright-line principles of No Child Left Behind. The first two states approved and implementing their growth model pilots for the 2005-2006 school year are Tennessee and North Carolina. Early consideration will be given to the six states (Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Oregon), which applied this year, but did not receive approval.

Tennessee has received full approval to implement their growth model for this year. North Carolina is approved to implement its growth model, provided that its assessment system is fully approved by July 1, 2006.

"A growth model is a way for states that are already raising achievement and following the bright-line principles of the law to strengthen accountability," Secretary Spellings said. "North Carolina and Tennessee were recognized by our impressive group of peer reviewers to have written strong growth models that adhere to the core principles of No Child Left Behind."

"There are many different routes for states to take, but they all must begin with a commitment to annual assessment and disaggregation of data. And, they all must lead to closing the achievement gap and every student reaching grade level by 2014. We are open to new ideas, but when it comes to accountability, we are not taking our eye off the ball."

The Department plans to approve no more than 10 high-quality growth models for the pilot program.

A rigorous peer review process was used by the Department to ensure that the selection process was fair and transparent for all participating states. A panel of nationally recognized experts reviewed and made recommendations on states' proposals, choosing Tennessee and North Carolina for approval.

The Department intends to gather data to test the idea that growth models can be fair, reliable and innovative methods to measure student improvement and to hold schools accountable for results. Growth models track individual student achievement from one year to the next, giving schools credit for student improvement over time. The pilot program enables the Department to rigorously evaluate growth models and ensure their alignment with NCLB, and to share these results with other States.

The bright-line principles for high-quality growth models are:

• Ensure that all students are proficient by 2014 and set annual state goals to ensure that the achievement gap is closing for all groups of students;
• Set expectations for annual achievement based upon meeting grade-level proficiency and not upon student background or school characteristics;
• Hold schools accountable for student achievement in reading/language arts and mathematics;
• Ensure that all students in tested grades are included in the assessment and accountability system, hold schools and districts accountable for the performance of each student subgroup, and include all schools and districts;
• Include assessments, in each of grades 3 through 8 and high school, in both reading/language arts and mathematics that have been operational for more than one year and have received approval through the NCLB standards and assessment review process for the 2005-06 school year. The assessment system must also produce comparable results from grade to grade and year to year;
• Track student progress as part of the state data system; and
• Include student participation rates and student achievement as separate academic indicators in the state accountability system.

The peer reviewers, who represent academia, private organizations and state and local education agencies, reviewed each proposal based on the Peer Review Guidance (http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/growthmodelguidance.doc) issued by the U.S. Department of Education as a road map for developing the models. The reviewers are as follows:

Chair: Eric Hanushek, Stanford University

Academia:
Chris Schatschneider, Florida State University
David Francis, University of Houston
Margaret Goertz, University of Pennsylvania

State and District Practitioners:
Robert Mendro, Dallas Independent School District
Jeff Nellhaus, Deputy Commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Education
Mitchell Chester, Assistant Superintendent for Policy and Accountability, Ohio Department of Education

Education Organizations:
Kati Haycock, The Education Trust
William Taylor, Citizens Commission on Civil Rights
Sharon Lewis, Retired, Council of Great City Schools

Here is the link to information about the growth model pilot project: http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/growthmodel/index.html

###

Top

Back to May 2006