Myth: If schools got credit for how much growth they were able
to get for children, fewer schools would be identified as needing improvement than under the current accountability system.

This idea has been circulating ever since the passage of No Child Left Behind, which requires states to keep track of whether schools are making “adequate yearly progress,” or AYP, toward all children being proficient in 2014.
            The argument is that the current AYP model, which measures students by whether or not they have met state standards, doesn’t give enough credit for whether schools are adding value and getting students to grow toward standards even if they haven’t yet met them. (To see a detailed description of how AYP works, here.)
            This argument has fueled the calls for the federal government to approve “growth models,” which would measure the growth of individual students rather than simply whether they meet standards or not.
            The U.S. Department of Education agreed to look at proposals, and is now considering eight (see What’s New for more information on that).
            The interesting thing is that in the three states that submitted the numbers, the growth model resulted in only a few additional schools making AYP. The growth model would have the biggest effect in Florida (currently 916 out of 3,109  schools make AYP – with a growth model, 1,237 would make AYP) but in North Carolina and Tennessee the effects would be minimal (40 additional schools would have made AYP in North Carolina, 47 in Tennessee). North Carolina’s submission states that if they evaluated schools exclusively on the growth model, then only 415 out of 2,202 schools would have met their accountability goals.
            For the most part, if a school doesn’t make AYP the traditional way or under the Safe Harbor option, which recognizes a certain percentage of improvement within an individual subgroup, then it probably won’t make it under a growth model, either.