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Colorado has yet to determine what emphasis to put on student progress.
Colorado has been considered a national leader when it comes to assessing academic progress. Its growth model, based on student growth percentiles, has been adopted by a number of other states. The state has also applied its growth model to its English-language proficiency assessment (WiDA ACCESS for English language learners). However, Colorado has not yet determined how much of an emphasis to place on student progress in its accountability system.
Colorado’s growth model lacks the proper benchmarks.
The state’s growth model presents challenges when combined with the state’s proposed achievement measure.
The state’s growth model compares low-performing students with other low-performing students, rather than setting a benchmark that all students should aspire to.
Combined with an achievement measure that also ignores the proficiency benchmark, this system may not create a sufficient incentive for Colorado schools to pay attention to raising the performance of low-performing students. Colorado could strengthen its plan by incorporating its “adequate growth percentile” calculation, which does look at a student’s progress toward state benchmarks.
