Heather M. Buzick

Using Growth for Accountability Measurement Challenges for Students With Disabilities and Recommendations for Research

Growth-based approaches to federal accountability are receiving considerable attention because they have the potential to reward schools and teachers for improving student performance over time by measuring student progress at all levels of the performance spectrum, including progress by students who have not reached proficiency on state accountability assessments. The use of growth in accountability holds promise for students with disabilities, but measuring changes over time in academic performance with large-scale annual assessments is complex. The authors discuss practical challenges in measuring and modeling growth for students with disabilities. In addition, they identify and describe three areas in need of research on the measurement of growth: the impact of testing accommodations, the impact of test difficulty, and the longitudinal characteristics of the population of students with disabilities.Growth-based approaches to federal accountability are receiving considerable attention because they have the potential to reward schools and teachers for improving student performance over time by measuring student progress at all levels of the performance spectrum, including progress by students who have not reached proficiency on state accountability assessments. The use of growth in accountability holds promise for students with disabilities, but measuring changes over time in academic performance with large-scale annual assessments is complex. The authors discuss practical challenges in measuring and modeling growth for students with disabilities. In addition, they identify and describe three areas in need of research on the measurement of growth: the impact of testing accommodations, the impact of test difficulty, and the longitudinal characteristics of the population of students with disabilities.

Including Students With Disabilities and English Learners in Measures of Educator Effectiveness

The purpose of this essay is to provide an overview of the challenges of accounting for students with disabilities (SWDs) and English learners (ELs) in the evaluation of mainstream teachers. We focus on the two prominent indicators of teaching quality—classroom observations and value-added scores. We begin by describing each indicator and outlining the specific challenges related to the inclusion of SWDs and ELs in mainstream teacher evaluation. We then suggest recommendations for states and districts to ensure that teacher evaluation systems adequately and fairly account for these students. Finally, we provide researchers with a set of recommendations for improving the evidence base surrounding the validity of teacher evaluation measures with regard to SWDs and ELs.

Complexities and Issues to Consider in the Evaluation of Content Teachers of English Language Learners.

The current interest in evaluating teachers and teacher education programs provides an opportunity to consider the education of diverse learners in K-12 schools in the United States. We address teaching English language learners (ELLs), a rapidly growing population. Challenges lie in holding content teachers of ELLs accountable as they are not adequately prepared to teach ELLs. In this article, we outline complexities surrounding the definition of the quality of teaching content to ELLs, provide an overview of existing teacher evaluation instruments, and discuss the difficulties in using ELL test scores to estimate the teacher contributions to academic growth of ELLs.