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POSITION STATEMENT ON MEASURING SUCCESS
Adopted by the Connecticut State Board of Education on September 13, 2000
The State Board of Education defines successful students as those who can
read, write, compute, think creatively, solve problems and use technology.
All students should also enjoy and perform in the arts and athletics and
understand history, science and other cultures and languages. Each student
must be responsible for his or her learning and behavior, work well with and
be helpful to others, and contribute to the community. Every student must
graduate from high school and be prepared to move on to productive work
and further study and to function in the global economy. Ultimately,
students must become active citizens and lifelong learners who lead healthy lives.
We can meet our responsibility of providing an educational experience that
achieves these goals only if we regularly and consistently assess how well
our students are doing and make the changes that are necessary in order to
improve all facets of our schools.
The most critical set of responsibilities for a local board of education is
to articulate clearly what success means in its district; establish
standards of performance; measure performance against those standards;
regularly make this information available to the public; and ensure that
this information is used to make good decisions which support student
success. Defining standards for success and continually monitoring progress
enable schools and school districts to make informed decisions about
allocation of resources, curricular priorities and new initiatives that will
directly enhance the success of all their students. Schools must constantly
build on their accomplishments, while also addressing areas in need of
improvement.
Measuring Success
Because success is multifaceted, it must be assessed using multiple
measures: academic achievement over an extended period of time; student
achievements that are other than academic; unique local indicators that
represent community values; and the extent to which the performance gaps
between various groups of students (by gender, race, economic status, etc.)
are being reduced. The responsibility of measuring success is one shared by
local boards of education and the State Board of Education.
There are several sources of data that a local board of education may use to
measure the success of its students. The Connecticut State Department of
Education (SDE) provides statewide, district and regional data on the
critical aspects of education that contribute to and measure student
performance. These include student test scores; dropout rates; graduate
follow-up data; student participation in various courses and programs;
expenditures; class size; and number of academic computers per student.
This information is published on the SDE web page and in publications such
as the Strategic School Profiles (SSP), Condition of Education, Special
Education in Connecticut, and CMT and CAPT Interpretive Guides.
Each district should also use local data such as local assessments and
teacher observations; measures of opportunities for students to learn with
students from diverse backgrounds; community service work;
participation in extracurricular activities; professional development
acquired by teachers;parent involvement; and other indicators unique to the
environment of the school and community.
Cautions
Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and Connecticut Academic Performance Test
(CAPT) results provide important information about student performance on a
selected set of skills and competencies in mathematics, reading and writing
in Grades 4, 6 and 8, and also science in Grade 10. However, these results
do not provide a comprehensive picture of student accomplishments. There is
a danger that overemphasizing state test scores to evaluate a student's, a
school's or a district's performance can result in an inappropriate
narrowing of the curriculum and inappropriate classroom instructional
practices. Focused preparation for state tests should be a small fraction of
a year-long comprehensive curriculum that balances the competencies assessed
on the state tests with other critical skills and objectives. Teaching
isolated skills for test preparation or using repetitive tasks that go far
beyond reasonable practice do not represent good instruction. In addition,
no one assessment (state or local) should be the sole basis for promotion,
graduation or other important decisions in the education of a student.
Reporting Results
Each local board of education is required by law to annually hold a public
discussion with the community on relevant student-related information from
its Strategic School Profile. There should also be ongoing communication
with the community on the successes and needs of its schools. This can
include additional information about students, curriculum, staff, new
initiatives and programs, and evaluations of programs' effectiveness. When
and where appropriate, the use of technology (e.g., e-mail, school and
district web pages, closed-circuit broadcasting) should be used to provide
the community with greater access to critical information on and
understanding of the district's performance. We encourage local boards of
education to communicate frequently and openly with the communities they
serve, using every effective means available.
Improving Instruction
Defining standards, measuring success and reporting the results are
important steps in the process of improving education. However, the most
important step is using this information to make good decisions about
adjusting curriculums, improving teaching, designing new programs and
providing more specific and more effective instruction for each student.
SBE-Measuring Success 9/13/00