The Great Proficiency Debate
A couple of weeks ago, Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute made the case that absolute proficiency rates should not be used as measures of school effectiveness, as they are heavily dependent on where students “start out” upon entry to the school. A few days later, Fordham president Checker Finn offered a defense of proficiency rates, noting that how much students know is substantively important, and associated with meaningful outcomes later in life.
They’re both correct. This is not a debate about whether proficiency rates are at all useful (by the way, I don’t read Petrilli as saying that). It’s about how they should be used and how they should not.
Let’s keep this simple. Here is a quick, highly simplified list of how I would recommend interpreting and using absolute proficiency rates, and how I would avoid using them.
Before proceeding, however, a quick clarification: Much of this debate is less about proficiency rates than about absolute performance measures in general – that is, how highly students score (as opposed to growth-oriented measures, which are focused on progress over time). Proficiency rates are a very common example of absolute performance measure, but most of the points below — basically, all but the last bullet — might also apply to other status measures, such as average scale scores. In addition, for the purposes of this discussion, let’s put aside the issue of the choice of “proficient” cutoff score, and how it is to some degree arbitrary (though that is indeed an important issue in any discussion about cutpoint-based rates).
How to use proficiency rates:
- To (carefully) summarize or compare, in an accessible manner, the performance of a group or groups ofstudents, such as those attending the same grade, school, or district, in any given year;
- To target resources, such as additional funding or a tutoring program, at entities (e.g., schools, districts) with