The Department of Education has announced that it will permit two more states—Alaska and Arizona—to use “growth models” to measure student progress for the 2006-07 school year.
Six other states—Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, and Tennessee—have already been fully approved to participate in the department’s growth-model pilot project. Beyond Ohio, which has received conditional approval, no additional states will be considered to participate in the pilot project, department spokeswoman Rebecca Neale said on July 3.
Growth models allow states to receive credit under the 5½-year-old No Child Left Behind Act for improving individual students’ academic performance over time.
By contrast, states adhering to the standard accountability requirements under the federal law compare test scores of groups of students with those of students in the same grade during the previous year, to gauge whether the states are making progress toward bringing all students to proficiency by the 2013-14 school year.
