What Are the Best Measures of School Quality? Educators Speak Out
The National Education Association (NEA) recently hosted an online poll that asked more than 1,200 educators to specify which of NEA’s “Opportunity Dashboard” indicators they cared about the most. The two highest ranking indicators fell under the umbrella of widening the school curriculum, which came in at 85 percent, and health and wellness programs at 73 percent.
Surprised? You shouldn’t be—not if you’re an educator who for more than a decade lived under the heavy rule of No Child Left Behind that stripped schools of rich curricula to focus on reading and math, and has seen the number of public school students living in poverty skyrocket to more than 50 percent.
Last December, President Barack Obama signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which give states the opportunity to realign how testing will be used in measuring schools and educators. Since its passing, many implementation plans have been well underway. These plans will be submitted to the U.S. Department of Education starting in the spring of next year, and will outline how states will meet the letter of the law.Educators and Association leaders across the country have used the state-implementation process to inject their expertise into decisions that impact teaching and learning in the classroom, and along the way, they’ve pushed for their state’s accountability systems to include at least one indicator of school quality or student success, which can be found in NEA’s “Opportunity Dashboard.”
These indicators include student engagement; educator engagement; student access to and completion of advanced coursework; postsecondary readiness; school climate and safety; and any other state-chosen indicator that allows for meaningful differentiation of school performance, and is valid, reliable, comparable, and statewide.
Early this month, Stephanie M. Johnson, a second grade elementary certified What Are the Best Measures of School Quality? Educators Speak Out: