69传媒

Opinion Blog

Classroom Q&A

With Larry Ferlazzo

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers鈥 questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to lferlazzo@epe.org. Read more from this blog.

School & District Management Opinion

How Can You Measure a School鈥檚 Success? It鈥檚 Not Just Through Test Scores

By Larry Ferlazzo 鈥 March 01, 2022 13 min read
Images shows colorful speech bubbles that say "Q," "&," and "A."
  • Save to favorites
  • Print
Email Copy URL

(This is the first post in a four-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What are other ways than standardized-test scores to evaluate the effectiveness of schools?

Standardized-test scores are often viewed as the primary way to evaluate a student, a teacher, or a school鈥檚 success. But are those scores really the best way to measure school quality?

This series will examine alternative or additional criteria to use to determine if a school is a successful one.

You might also be interested in .

Today, Holly Spinelli, Tameka Porter, Ph.D., Mary K. Tedrow, and Meghann Seril share their responses. Holly, Tameka, and Mary were also guests on . You can also find a list of, and links to,

鈥極ne-Size-Fits-All鈥 Doesn鈥檛 Work

Holly Spinelli is a students鈥 rights activist with specific focuses in alternative, strengths-based pedagogies in which students鈥 voices are the catalyst for their education. She is a New York public high school teacher, an adjunct instructor at SUNY Orange County Community College, and an active member of the National Council of Teachers of English鈥檚 Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English:

Evaluation is nothing new in the educational realm. 69传媒 are anything but standard, yet most evaluation systems treat them as such. Unfortunately, the nuance required to properly assess schools鈥 effectiveness is plagued by excessive reliance upon students鈥 standardized-test scores. This method of evaluation is an outdated tool that fails to properly assess the various roles schools serve in the 21st-century. A balanced, holistic evaluation system to determine schools鈥 effectiveness should address a variety of factors including, but not limited to:

  • 69传媒鈥 curricula and relationships with the communities in which they reside
  • The effectiveness of the academic, professional, mental, and emotional support for students and staff alike
  • Their commitments and actions to being and creating racially, culturally, socially, and professionally inclusive spaces

Here are additional areas that more accurate evaluations of schools鈥 effectiveness can include:

Community partnerships

69传媒 are typically members of larger communities that their schools serve. As such, evaluations should include segments that carefully assess the relationships schools forge within their local communities. This relationship must extend beyond the elected school board members, because all voices in the community matter. This is not to diminish a school board鈥檚 role; instead, it includes historically marginalized voices like those of immigrants, folks whose first language is not English, folks who are not from the community鈥檚 dominant groups, disabled folks, and community members whose jobs and careers do not fall within standard time slots, to name a few.

69传媒 do not attend school in a bubble. Their lives outside of school affect their social, emotional, and physical health, which in turn impacts their academic performance. 69传媒 are community members, too. Their voices matter. Effective schools forge safe, strong partnerships with their students and local community members to actively work together to address their needs.

Cultural Relevance and Post-High-School Planning

Culturally relevant curriculum is much more than education鈥檚 latest craze. Effective schools take this seriously within and beyond the academic realm when they offer curricular choices that reflect the student populations they serve, while also providing what Rudine Sims Bishop calls 鈥渨indows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors鈥 to give students opportunities to learn about themselves and others in the world.

69传媒鈥 and community members鈥 ideas, voices, and lived experiences should be included in a school鈥檚 plans and approaches to providing appropriate educational experiences. For instance, despite the popular 鈥渃ollege for all鈥 post-high-school plan, not all students wish to attend college right away, or even at all, and effective schools are equipped to support these students鈥 journeys toward success, too.

Faculty and Staff Support

A school鈥檚 effectiveness also includes staff and faculty morale. It is important to avoid the blame game here, but an appropriate evaluation would consider what kind of relationships are forged and what sense of community is cultivated in schools. While it is imperative to include overall community indicators like mutual respect, safety, and inclusiveness among staff, faculty, and students, evaluations must incorporate a sharp focus on faculty experience. Do faculty and staff enjoy working in these spaces? Do people have strong professional bonds with one another? Are people鈥檚 professional goals taken seriously and supported? How so? Are teachers encouraged to use their professional discretion and expertise in planning and implementing curriculum or are they required to 鈥渢each to the test鈥 and tailor their curriculum to only prepare students for standardized tests?

Effective schools recognize and foster the strengths and talents their faculty and staff possess. For instance, they offer differentiated professional-development opportunities to meet the various levels of familiarity and expertise their faculty and staff have with the presented topics. Much like students鈥 classroom learning, professional development should not be a one-size-fits-all experience. Effective schools encourage and support their own faculty and staff experts to lead these endeavors. When faculty and staff are valued and supported, students and communities can flourish, too.

No school community perfectly matches another, and an evaluation system must acknowledge and evaluate each schools鈥 strengths, plans, and actionable steps toward improvement. 69传媒 deserve holistic evaluations that no longer rely so heavily on standardized-test results, because one-size-fits-all evaluation practices are a detriment to cultivating effective schools.

schoolsdeserveholly

鈥楩ormative Assessments鈥

Tameka Porter, Ph.D., is a managing consultant at McREL International and affiliate faculty at George Mason University. She works with teachers and leaders to build and sustain equitable learning systems:

There is no question that high-stakes standardized testing has a prime role in measuring school effectiveness. Legislation like the Every Student Succeeds Act has prioritized annual test-based student outcomes as the most predictive method of evaluating a school鈥檚 ability to provide a quality education to its students. Indeed, most schools in the U.S. use student performance on standardized-test scores on state content assessments, English-language-proficiency assessments, and other annual summative evaluations to determine school success, with successful schools having most of their students performing at or above the average score on an achievement test or having a large percentage of students reaching a certain proficiency threshold.

Though achievement-based evaluation is an important and influential way of measuring school effectiveness, treating test scores as the singular variable that predicts or determines school quality may make teachers and leaders overlook other factors that may paint a more complete picture of how well schools educate and serve their students. No two schools are alike, so setting raw achievement levels as the uniform standard for school performance tells us nothing about who students are and what their learning environments are like. 69传媒 have a variety of social identities and academic backgrounds that they bring into schools and classrooms, and those learning spaces may or not be reflective or supportive of the students they serve.

The question at the heart of evaluation is: What are schools striving for when they want to be considered successful? If schools are not ready to pivot away from achievement-based evaluations of school performance, they can build more robust profiles of what students can achieve by including daily, weekly, or monthly formative assessments in their student-success evaluations to capture what students are learning on an ongoing basis. 69传媒 could also consider introducing quarterly or semi-annual interim checks for learning growth between each test. Measuring progress over time rather than through a once-a-year snapshot of performance can be a sustainable approach to identifying the key concepts that students may be acquiring (or missing), which can provide opportunities for teachers to tailor their instructional practices to target the content areas in which students may need additional support.

One strategy鈥攂eyond student performance on standardized tests鈥攖hat schools can apply to measure school effectiveness is to examine how well they meet the academic-development needs of individual students inside each classroom. Do students have opportunities to engage in learning experiences that are applicable and relevant to their backgrounds? Are students offered access to personalized projects that are tailored to their interests, abilities, and passions? 69传媒 that encourage teachers and leaders to adopt personalized approaches to student learning display a value-added view of what students can achieve that honors their social identities. Moreover, adopting a more holistic view of school success allows educators to engage in continuous school improvement processes through evaluating the courses and programs available to students that are within the school鈥檚 locus of control.

Another way school effectiveness can be evaluated is by examining how safe, nurturing, and culturally responsive teachers and students perceive their schools to be. Reimagining schools as cultural hubs or gathering places for students, teachers, and leaders to share their cultural assets with one another can transform schools into more dynamic learning environments in which teachers can be innovative with their instructional practices and students can feel academically and culturally nurtured and enriched.

Adopting individualized and culturally responsive approaches to assessing school quality requires schools to shift their perspectives on the characteristics that define effective learning environments. By moving beyond surface observations of school effectiveness to examine targeted culturally responsive interventions that support the academic achievement and social-emotional development of the whole child, schools can lay the foundation for educators to establish, develop, and sustain caring and respectful relationships between teachers and students, which, in turn, can lead to higher student achievement and more effective schools.

treatingtesttameka

Sparking 鈥楯oy鈥

taught in the high school English classroom beginning in 1978, ending her K-12 career as the Porterfield Endowed English Chair at John Handley High School in 2016. She currently directs the Shenandoah Valley Writing Project at Shenandoah University in Winchester Va. Tedrow is also a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and is the author of :

Below is my list of other ways to evaluate school impact without resorting to high-stakes, curriculum-narrowing standardized tests:

1. Climate: To paraphrase Marie Kondo, 鈥淒oes the school spark joy?鈥 Are diverse student interests represented in activities across the board? Is there diversity in instructors, reading material, art and other cultural features of the school?

2. Attendance: If students feel welcome and excited about school, high attendance would provide confirmation.

3. The overall health variables of students. Data should include ease of access to healthy food, access to resources for mental health, and access to ongoing medical, dental, and vision care. Regular instruction in maintaining a healthy lifestyle and providing regular opportunities for movement.

4. Numbers of creative performances (choir programs, art shows, band events, plays, musicals).

5. Numbers of academic opportunities beyond the classroom to support interests (science fairs, internships, social-justice activities, media-production outlets: newspaper, video, radio, magazines).

6. Numbers of graduates who can articulate their next step upon graduation. This would include work placement, college placement, or plans for enhanced technical training. In a visit to Finnish schools, leaders emphasized that the Finnish schooling system is based on building competencies. In other words, helping students find what they are good at. That is very different from measuring everyone with the same standard measuring stick.

7. Teacher satisfaction with their core mission and workplace. Surveys of teachers should include questions on whether they have the necessary supplies and an inviting, well-resourced building to provide instruction.

8. Presence of job-embedded opportunities for teachers to improve instruction, gain specific credentialing, and participate in building leadership.

toparaphrasetedrow

鈥楽chool Climate鈥

Meghann Seril teaches 3rd grade in Los Angeles. She is a national-board-certified teacher and Teach Plus fellowship alum:

One thing we have learned from these past two years of pandemic learning is that schools must prioritize the needs of the whole child. School is about more than just preparing for a standardized test. 69传媒 can give students the support to develop their identities and connections with others. This means that schools must be culturally affirming spaces that meet the academic, social, and emotional needs of students.

For schools to be considered effective, we must not only rely on standardized-test scores but also on school climate surveys to evaluate the conditions of learning. School climate influences students鈥 motivation to learn and improves academic achievement. When students feel connected, cared for, and engaged they have a stronger foundation for academic success.

Tools such as the collect student responses in areas including student connectedness, school climate, school safety, physical and mental well-being, and student supports. Additional surveys of staff and parents would help schools and districts to have a fuller picture of the ways in which they can meet the needs of the whole school community. This data should be used to support schools and districts in improving school climate and providing meaningful support and professional development for educators to meet the needs of the students they serve. We must also celebrate and learn from schools that are doing the work to create a space that is supportive and engaging for students.

forschoolsmeghann

Thanks to Holly, Tameka, Mary, and Meghann for contributing their thoughts!

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it鈥檚 selected or if you鈥檇 prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It鈥檚 titled .

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign鈥攏ew ones are not yet available). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 10 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below.

I am also creating a .

The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

Events

School & District Management Webinar Crafting Outcomes-Based Contracts That Work for Everyone
Discover the power of outcomes-based contracts and how they can drive student achievement.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School & District Management Webinar
Harnessing AI to Address Chronic Absenteeism in 69传媒
Learn how AI can help your district improve student attendance and boost academic outcomes.
Content provided by 
School & District Management Webinar EdMarketer Quick Hit: What鈥檚 Trending among K-12 Leaders?
What issues are keeping K-12 leaders up at night? Join us for EdMarketer Quick Hit: What鈥檚 Trending among K-12 Leaders?

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide 鈥 elementary, middle, high school and more.
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.

Read Next

School & District Management Reports Strategic Resourcing for K-12 Education: A Work in Progress
This report highlights key findings from surveys of K-12 administrators and product/service providers to shed light on the alignment of purchasing with instructional goals.
School & District Management Download Shhhh!!! It's Underground Spirit Week, Don't Tell the 69传媒
Try this fun twist on the Spirit Week tradition.
Illustration of shushing emoji.
iStock/Getty
School & District Management Opinion How My Experience With Linda McMahon Can Help You Navigate the Trump Ed. Agenda
I have a lesson for district leaders from my (limited) interactions with Trump鈥檚 pick for ed. secretary, writes a former superintendent.
Joshua P. Starr
4 min read
Vector illustration of people walking on upward arrows, symbolizing growth, progress, and teamwork towards success.
iStock/Getty Images
School & District Management Opinion How Social-Emotional Learning Can Unify Your School Community: 7 Timely Tips
It鈥檚 a stressful political season. These SEL best practices can help school leaders weather the unpredictable transitions.
Maurice J. Elias
4 min read
Modern digital collage of caring leader surrounded by positivity. Social Emotional learning leadership.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva