Measuring student achievement

Although money is an easy measure of the costs of the education, measuring the product — that is, how much students are learning — is tricky. District administrators were wary of defining district success and of naming a single measure of that success. However, many could quickly tick off several measures including, at the specific end, student achievement on academic success and, at the broad end, the state of the Columbia community.

Jack Jensen, who oversees secondary education, put it this way: “You look at the individual growth of each individual child. ... Every child comes from a different place with different background and different knowledge and what you have to do is look at the growth of each child.”

District administrators' lists also included a series of standardized tests and graduation rates — though none of those tests could measure everything about students, administrators said quickly.

Even Hanushek, the K-12 educational policy analyst, was ambiguous. District success is student performance, he said. But there the problem begins. Not only is it hard to measure school districts’ success, but it’s also difficult to figure out if the district is actually what’s helping students learn, he said.

“The tricky part is to distinguish between what the district itself is doing and what other things are contributing to education,” Hanushek said.

“Highly motivated parents contribute a lot to the education of their kids,” something for which school districts are often given credit, he said. Similarly, he said, if a district has parents who aren’t doing a good job for their kids, school districts should not be penalized but rather should be given credit for the extra learning gains of those children.

Regardless of what administrators, teachers and experts think, school districts are officially measured with a single score: the Missouri Assessment Program tests. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, in compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, sets standards for student achievement using those tests. If everything goes as the federal government has planned, 100 percent of United States students will be “proficient” on those tests by 2014.

“Everyone complains about test scores, but how else are you going to measure progress against state standards?” said Ludwig, the former school board member. When it comes to measuring district progress, he said, “You can’t just do it on a feel-good basis.”

But, he added, “the MAP is the wrong way to do it.”

Measuring student success is difficult, so we’ve taken the practical approach. These scores are how Missouri school districts are evaluated by the state, so we’ll use them here.

(Clarification: In 2006, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education changed its method for evaluating school districts, which contributed to the spike in the number of students who scored “proficient” or higher on the Missouri Assessment Program.)

AUDREY SPALDING | news@columbiamissourian.com