District/School Administration Administration
The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

Proposed Changes to 2008 Accountability System: Graduation Rate and Technical Revisions

At the Board of Education meeting on January 22, 2008, I will present proposed changes to our accountability system for 2008 relating to the graduation rate standard and some technical revisions described below. In addition, I will brief the Board on our preliminary plan to include a measure of growth in individual student performance in our 2008 school and district accountability reporting. After approval by the Board, we will submit our annual "State Consolidated Accountability Workbook" to the U.S. Department of Education, which must review and approve state accountability system modifications associated with the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requirement that every state determine "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) for each of its public schools.

Graduation Rates for AYP Purposes

At its February 2007 meeting, the Board voted to establish a minimum four-year graduation rate standard of 55 percent as the "must meet" AYP target for 2007 for all student groups in the Commonwealth's public high schools. The Board also voted to establish a taskforce to work with Department staff to review additional data related to the high school graduation rate - including five-year graduation data when available - and to consider issues such as recommendations for AYP graduation rate targets and addressing capacity and resources needed to increase the percentage of students graduating from high school. At the December 18, 2007 Board meeting, I provided the Board a report from the Graduation Rate Taskforce (attached).

On January 22 I will present state-level four-year graduation rate data for the 2007 graduation cohort, as well as five-year graduation rate data for the 2006 graduation cohort. These data will provide a context for my recommendation of a revised minimum graduation rate standard that all student groups in public secondary schools in the Commonwealth must meet in order for the school to make AYP. My recommendation will be detailed in a separate memorandum that I will send to Board members on Friday, January 18.

Additional Technical Changes

The Department plans to propose to the U.S. Department of Education two additional technical changes to the State Consolidated Accountability Workbook for Massachusetts.

1. We will seek additional flexibility regarding the way certain Limited English Proficient students are included in AYP determinations. Specifically, for LEP students who are in their second year of U.S. schooling, we propose to assign English language arts/reading index points according to the students' progress toward achieving English language proficiency as measured by the Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment (MEPA). These index points would be incorporated into the Composite Performance Index (CPI), which is the basis for school and district AYP performance and improvement calculations. We sought approval for this change last year, but the U.S. Department of Education did not approve it. We will renew and reargue our case for this change in 2008.

2. We will seek to extend for an additional year currently granted flexibility regarding the way certain Special Education students are included in AYP determinations. The current flexibility allows the Department to assign 100 CPI points to up to two percent of all students with disabilities who, based on established criteria, are likely to benefit from being assessed in relation to "modified" performance and achievement standards. As a condition for approval of this extension of our current flexibility, Massachusetts must show evidence of progress toward developing an assessment based on modified academic achievement standards. We plan to do so by increasing the specificity of certain components of the MCAS Alternate Assessment to better allow the identification of students whose performance should be assessed in relation to modified achievement standards. We will implement these changes by spring 2009.

Use of Growth Measures in Accountability Reporting

We plan to include a measure of growth in individual student performance in the 2008 accountability reporting for each of the Commonwealth's public schools and districts. By doing so, the Department will for the first time provide districts, schools, and other interested parties data that describe the change in individual student performance on MCAS from one year to the next.

At the December 2007 Board meeting I informed the Board that the U.S. Department of Education recently announced it is expanding its growth model pilot project under NCLB, and that the Department was preparing to submit a proposal. We have analyzed longitudinal MCAS data and reviewed the current restrictions in measuring student growth that are associated with participation in this federal pilot project. Based on this review, we have concluded that for 2008, maintaining our current measures of school and district adequate yearly progress (AYP) is a more suitable approach. By developing an indicator of growth in student performance that is free of the limitations inherent in pilot project participation, the Department will be able to provide more robust information to schools and districts regarding the performance of students across grade levels and performance categories.

We plan to engage in discussions with district and school leaders about the use of various growth measures. After our work with the field, and after we learn what accountability system changes may be occasioned by the next reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), we will consider whether to propose including a growth measure for determining school and district AYP for 2009 and subsequent years.

Enclosure:

	Final Graduation Rate Memorandum (January 18, 2008)
	Chart of Number of High Schools Not Meeting Different Graduation Standards
	Graduation Rate Taskforce Report