Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment NCLB and MAP

A random idea came to me after reading about our state's new testing system. In the future it's supposed to include nationally normed tests to provide parents and students a measure of individual student performance. I was also thinking about NCLB and how to take into account influences outside the school ( a la "No Dentist Left Behind"). http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/no-dentist.html

I like the idea of using MAP or something similar for the nationally normed test because it shows growth and is not limited to grade level testing. So here's my random idea:

For accountability purposes compare relative student growth (or regression as is the norm) over the summer to growth over the school year. This would help account for the differences between a child who has strong support outside of school and a child who doesn't.

What do you think? A reasonable approach or am I missing a critical piece? Don't hold back on pros or cons...I'm interested in hearing both.

Bueller?� Bueller?� Bueller?

Maybe I didn't do a good job explaining or relating this to gifted children, so I'll try again. Test results based on grade level state standards don't seem to provide much information for parents of gifted children. MAP allows for growth assessment which can be much more informative.

Would comparing growth that a child shows in school to the growth that child shows outside of school (positive or negative) provide better school accountability than the current system?

I thought of a couple possible cons:
1) Some bad teachers could encourage children not to learn over the summer so the scores will look better. (probably over pessimistic)
2) For children that attend year round school, the time period that children are out of school may not be long enough for comparison.

OUr district is supposed to be moving to a growth model. One question I've not seen addressed is what will they use for the assessment. It has to be an out of level to show growth for the high end. The letter did say they wanted to see growth in the highend as well as the low end. Also, what is reasonable growth for the highend? Would you expect the same rate of change compared to the middle? I think someone alluded to that here under another thread.

That's what I've been trying to figure out. Glad I'm not the only one! I was pleased to see DD6's growth using MAP results was steeper from F08 to W09 (in school) than S08 to F08 (summer break).

There is information in this report for growth by RIT level for different grades (see page 42). This doesn't take into account support outside the school like comparing growth during the school year to summer growth (or regression) could.
http://pickens.it.schoolfusion.us/m...ssionid=14d1e9266e4482d198ebc39c6e6bc9c3

P.S. Thanks for using the term growth model. I was able to find more information when I searched using that term. This helped me sum up some of my thoughts:
http://www.nwea.org/assets/weblinked/DLReport%202007_11.pdf