N.Y.C. Schools to Measure Gains, Not Just Raw Test Scores

New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced plans last week to measure schools based on how much their students gain from one year to the next, in addition to the proportion who score at particular cutoffs on state tests.

With that change, the nation’s largest school district, enrolling more than 1 million students, will embrace what are known as “value added” analyses. Such models focus on improvements in student learning over time, rather than on the percent of students who score at an absolute achievement level in any given year. Proponents argue that those measures provide a fairer picture of how much schools actually contribute to student learning.

Earlier this spring, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said she might be willing to consider using such models to measure progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and a number of states and districts are exploring such approaches. ( "States Hoping to ‘Grow’ Into AYP Success," ...