Technical Brief
Introduction

Introduction
Across the nation, the public, legislators, and educators have become deeply concerned with finding ways to measure the effectiveness of schools and school systems.  There is statewide agreement in Rhode Island that all students need to attain high standards that signal that they are proficient in mathematics, reading, writing, and health as well as other school subjects.  The state will annually at a minimum measure student achievement in mathematics, reading, and writing and report out to the general public how many Rhode Island students are proficient in these subject areas. 

Politicians and educators have been struggling with developing useful yardsticks for school effectiveness that are honest, accurate and easily comprehended.  The initial stages of this effort have often resulted in evaluations that assess, judge and even mete out consequences to schools who’ve been measured by a small set of benchmarks that often do not reflect the context of the individual school.  Many states, including Rhode Island, have published annual state achievement results.  People have used these results to rank order districts and schools on the basis of those results as if the schools were competing on a level playing field.  While valid for certain purposes, these methods encourage the public to draw sometimes unfortunate conclusions about the value of a school or school system because the yardstick itself is not sensitive to differences in school contexts, to other information about school practices, or to achievement results which are not part of the formal state assessment program.

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