SPI: Great in theory?

The current shift in education reform in the wake of No Child Left Behind is a new accountability measure called School Progress Index (SPI). A school’s SPI is determined by their Annual Measurable Objectives (AMO). Based on achievement, closing achievement gaps, and growth, schools are placed in strands—1 being the best and 5 being worst.

This new system has many pros: the SPI is growth based with goals for each individual school. It is not one size fits all policy. There is a new focus on science with a targeted focus on closing achievement gaps. At first glance, as with anything in education, it seems like a good plan—a good plan in theory, anyway.

One main problem is: How will the data be used? As we have seen in class, Booker T is a strand 2 while a KIPP is a strand 4 (I’m sure both schools are doing great things). What message does this send to parents, though? Who is meant to use this data and how? AYP was used as a mainstream way of saying what type of school you were sending your child to. Should SPI be used this way? Won’t it be? Won’t it send a very weird message to parents?

Does this individual school growth mindset create hope? A “we are improving” mentality? Or does it send false hope—that Booker T is considered “better” than KIPP? The bar was clearly set too high at 100% for NCLB and while this goal is realistic and perhaps attainable, is the bar now set too low?

While this goal may be attainable, it uses the MSA and HSA to measure achievement. Wait a sec—MSA is gone in the next few years and PARCC is in. Hmm—aren’t we doing this backwards? Shouldn’t we have the assessment when we are setting what the goal should be? What if this PARCC assessment doesn’t measure what we want it to? What if it’s ridiculously difficult? What if every school ends up a strand 4 or 5? Then in 10 years we’ll be laughing at how unattainable the goals set were. The point is—how can we tell if we are setting attainable, realistic and challenging goals if we don’t even know what the assessment will be?

When it comes to closing gaps, what about schools who aren’t particularly diverse? How will they measure this in a school say where there are 400 white students and 1 or 2 minority students? Or schools with only 1 or 2 English Language Learners? Is it really logical to put 40% of the SPI on the performance of just a few students? At some schools, this might be the case. Of course, I am all for closing achievement gaps and helping those students whether there is 1 or 50, but it seems like the data will be very skewed in some ways.

Also, isn’t this blatantly unfair to high performing schools? They don’t have as much growth to make, and they are doing perfectly fine—let’s punish them! It makes no sense. What does happen to schools in Strand 4 and 5?  Let’s look at the case of the KIPP strand 4 school. Baltimore City says strand 4 schools will have: improvement of instruction, the replacement or retraining of the leadership staff and intensified outreach to families to become involved with their child’s school. Wait—doesn’t KIPP know what it’s doing already? Shouldn’t this be for low performing schools? The school with achievement in the 30% range, not in the 80% range?

Is SPI an improvement? Definitely. Is it flawed? Definitely. Will it make for some very interesting implications? Definitely. But the real question is—will it actually help our students?