| Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools. |
The Problem With "Proficiency": Limitations of Statistics and Policy Under No Child Left BehindANDREW DEAN HO is an assistant professor in Psychological and Quantitative Foundations at the University of Iowa, 316 Lindquist Center, Iowa City, IA 52242; andrew-ho{at}uiowa.edu. His research interests are in statistical methods and conceptual frameworks for validating test-score gains under high-stakes accountability systems. The Percentage of Proficient Students (PPS) has become a ubiquitous statistic under the No Child Left Behind Act. This focus on proficiency has statistical and substantive costs. The author demonstrates that the PPS metric offers only limited and unrepresentative depictions of large-scale test score trends, gaps, and gap trends. The limitations are unpredictable, dramatic, and difficult to correct in the absence of other data. Interpretation of these depictions generally leads to incorrect or incomplete inferences about distributional change. The author shows how the statistical shortcomings of these depictions extend to shortcomings of policy, from exclusively encouraging score gains near the proficiency cut score to shortsighted comparisons of state and national testing results. The author proposes alternatives for large-scale score reporting and argues that a distribution-wide perspective on results is required for any serious analysis of test score data, including "growth"-related results under the recent Growth Model Pilot Program.
Key Words: accountability • high-stakes testing • statistics
Educational Researcher, Vol. 37, No. 6,
351-360 (2008) 
 |
|||
 |
|
|
 |
|
Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
