Many state accountability plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act don’t do a great job of incorporating the performance of vulnerable subgroups of students, finds an analysis by the Alliance for Excellent Education, a research and advocacy organization in Washington.
The group reviewed every state plan, plus the District of Columbia’s and Puerto Rico’s, for both how states incorporate subgroup performance into school ratings and how they flag low-performing schools where subgroups of students are struggling.
A dozen states don’t factor subgroup performance into school ratings at all, and eight other states either don’t include all the subgroups identified under ESSA in their ratings (English-language learners, students in special education, disadvantaged students, and racial minorities), or they give two ratings, one for the school as a whole and the other taking some or all subgroup performance into consideration.
The alliance found just 17 states factor the performance of student subgroups into all school ratings, or might lower a school’s overall rating because of poor subgroup performance.
