Proficiency or Growth? Assessing the Practical and Policy Relevance of School Ratings

• In Event: Chronicling Disparities: Harnessing Longitudinal Data to Examine Educational Inequities

Abstract

Arizona is one of 13 states to use A-F grades system to fulfill mandates in federal law to define and label school quality. We investigated the relative role of two main components - growth and proficiency – of the composite score used to award school letter grades in Arizona’s K8 schools. Growth scores are less strongly associated with school demographic characteristics than proficiency scores and composite scores. If growth scores replace by the proficiency measure in the composite score, all school grades increased considerably, especially for schools that served large shares of Hispanic and Black students and students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch. We conclude with a discussion of the practical and policy relevance of our findings.

Authors

• Jeanne M. Powers, Arizona State University

• Margarita Pivovarova, Arizona State University