Ariz. Ranks Schools By 'Value Added' to Scores

By Darcia Harris Bowman

Arizona's Peoria United district is accustomed to doing well. The 33,000-student school system touts a fully certified teaching staff, a comprehensive K-12 curriculum, and student test scores well above state and national averages.

So when the state education department released the results of its new accountability system for schools earlier this month and not a single Peoria school appeared at the top of the list, district leaders wondered what had happened.

Arizona has joined a handful of states and some school districts that use an accountability tool called value-added assessment. Rather than simply ranking schools based on raw test scores, the education department measured academic gains this year by comparing the 1998 and 1999 standardized-test scores of about 300,000 students in 1,000 elementary and middle schools,...