It measures “success” in a peculiarly bad way

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There are many good ways to measure educational success at a school. One way is the percentage of students scoring above 600 on the SAT test. Or you could use the students’ median score, or their average score. Or you could use the ACT test instead. Or how many students got admitted to good colleges or good jobs, for example. Those are all useful ways to measure educational success.

But the new system mandates that success be measured in an especially jaundiced manner. It mandates the use a specific — and bad — measure of success, based on the performance of the worst students. The system does this by focusing, like a laser-beam, on the minimal requirements needed for graduation, the requirements that mostly affect only the worst students. Teachers will be held accountable for the performance of — not the best, nor the median, nor the average students — but for the performance of the worst students, those most disinterested, unruly, or unable. That is a peculiar statistic for measuring educational achievement.

The system also aims to blind us to other measures of success by eliminating the traditional tests, such as SAT, ACT, and Iowa Basic (which are all norm-referenced tests). These tests are an excellent way to measure academic achievement and compare schools. But few, if any schools will use them, under the new government rules.

The system instead uses criterion-referenced tests — which focus on minimum thresholds and minimum competencies. As a simple illustration, this is like judging the success of your high-school by how many students pass a sixth-grade reading test (such as Minnesota’s Basic Skills test, the only test now required in order to graduate from Minnesota high-schools.) It is as though a school is to be measured solely by its worst students. When this measure of “success” is forced upon teachers it has nasty implications for education.