OVERVIEW
Strengths
- Wyoming has an aggressive reliance on growth in its accountability system: 50 percent reliance on growth and the use of Student Growth Percentiles (SGP) will be watched by other states in terms of implementation and monitoring.
- The state has selected a small n-size of 10 and couples it with an innovative “look back” approach to expand the potential number of students and schools identified for support and intervention. Wyoming’s equity indicator for schools with grades 3-8 is of particular note as it is weighted heavily in the accountability system and is a way to encourage schools to do as well as possible with students who need the most assistance.
- In addition, Wyoming’s high school indicators are well defined and outline multiple pathways for success beyond graduation. The weighting for indicators also focuses on academic performance and meaningfully counts English learners by heavily weighting the English language proficiency indicator.
Weaknesses
- Wyoming’s plan is light on details and does not provide a framework to understand its vision for the state’s students over the long term.
- The state has low achievement goals with arbitrary percentile rankings that it does not explain with historical data and that set out a long, 15-year vision for the success of all students.
- The state has chosen to have one accountability plan for Title I schools and another for non-Title I schools. While this approach is not unprecedented, it could cause confusion for parents and other stakeholders.
- Wyoming’s system for identifying schools in need of improvement appears to meet the letter of the law, but the plan does not have enough specificity to know whether it will adequately address the needs of Wyoming’s schools and students.
- The state’s system of support for improvement schools is generic and weak, allowing low-performing schools to choose their own intervention strategies without support from the state or district, unless the school continues to struggle for several years.