A nonprofit organization has created a simple tool that it says will help states, and by extension local districts, know if they’re on track for meeting accountability targets under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
The “Student Growth Simulator” was created by the Chiefs for Change, an organization representing state-level and district officials, one that has argued for realistic-but-strong accountability systems under ESSA. The group says it designed the simulator in cooperation with Johns Hopkins University and TEMBO, a company focused on the collection of education data.
A core goal of the simulator is to help state and local officials calibrate year-to-year targets for improving the achievement of different subgroups of students, subjects, and other categories, and make that mid-stream targets are easily understood by the public, said Michael Magee, the CEO of Chiefs for Change.
