Sophisticated Growth

Over at Swift and Changeable, Charles Barone writes about his new Education Sector report on growth models:

All growth models have strengths relative to the status and safe harbor models laid out in the ESEA statute, and Tennessee's model is no exception. But, as the paper points out, the Tennessee model (variations of which are also being employed in Ohio and Pennsylvania and are under debate in Texas) also has some serious shortcomings.

The Tennessee model is highly technical, using multivariate, inferential statistics. And therein lies a good deal of the problem. More statistical sophistication means less transparency. And it's not clear to me that all that sophistication actually buys you much relative to other, simpler methods of measuring growth.

Some of the methodology and most of the data are proprietary, meaning they are privately owned, i.e., no public access. This all makes it very difficult for even Ph.D. and J.D.-level policy experts to get a handle on what is going on (which I found as a peer-reviewer last year), let alone teachers, parents, and the general public.

Read the full report here.