Colorado education officials are reconsidering the data privacy rules that for three years in a row have hidden large amounts of student achievement data from public view.
With Thursday’s release of state test results, the public has greater ability to see how well certain groups of students perform on state tests compared with their peers than they’ve had since 2015, when the state adopted a much more stringent approach.
The main change this year is that the public can see results separated by race and ethnicity, disability status, English language learner status, and economic status at the school level, rather than only by grade levels within schools. Combining results across grades creates larger sample sizes, so that in some cases they no longer had to be redacted. The practice of obscuring results for small groups of students had led to large amounts of missing information and vexed advocates for school improvement.
And state education officials are considering additional changes for 2019 that should make more information available – though just how much remains to be seen.
“In this latest release, we were very pleased to be able to see how kids are making progress,” said Van Schoales, executive director of A Plus Colorado, an education reform advocacy group that focuses on research. “We can now see if they met or exceeded standards for groups of 16 or more. We thank the Colorado Department of Education for figuring out some methods for showing that.” (Read more…)