CONTACT: Lindsey Mask (McKeon)
 (202) 225-4527

Tom Kiley (Miller)

(202) 225-3725

McKeon, Miller Comment on GAO Report on Measuring Student Achievement under

No Child Left Behind

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Reps. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and George Miller (D-CA) said today that a new government study offers important insights into how different methods for measuring students’ academic achievement can provide states with additional help in meeting the goals of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law when those methods are carefully employed.

Signed into law in 2002, NCLB requires states to meet two key goals by 2014: they must ensure that all students are proficient in math, reading, and science; and they must close the academic achievement gap between white and minority students and between poor students and their peers.  Proficiency is defined as reading and doing math and science at grade level.

States must evaluate the progress they are making towards achieving NCLB’s goals by testing students every year in grades three through eight and once during high school.  For schools and school districts to make adequate progress under the law each year, a set percentage of students in each grade must be proficient in reading and math.  That percentage must rise each year until 100 percent of students are proficient by 2014.  Schools and districts that do not reach their targets in consecutive years must provide extra academic opportunities for their students, like tutoring or the ability to transfer to another better performing school.

The new report, prepared by the Government Accountability Office at the lawmakers’ request and available here, is significant because it shows that alternative methods for measuring adequate yearly progress – known among educators as “growth models” – may also help states reach the goals of the law.  McKeon and Miller said the report offers important new insights that will help inform Congress next year when it reauthorizes No Child Left Behind.

“In the months ahead, we will continue to lay the foundation for next year’s reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, and this report offers important research into concepts of measurement and accountability,” said McKeon, the Chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.  “I’ve often said that next year’s reauthorization will be the most important the law will ever see, and gathering this kind of information is essential to ensuring we approach it in a thorough and responsible way.”

“This report shows that growth models can be a part of the mix that Congress considers when it reauthorizes the No Child Left Behind law next year,” said Miller, the senior Democrat on the committee.  “We still have to learn more, but it appears that growth models that are exceptionally well designed and rigorous in how they hold schools and states accountable could prove to be an important new option for making the law a success.  Congress should examine how the federal government can help states design such models.”

With growth models, schools generally measure progress by assessing how much their students have improved in one school year when compared with the previous school year.  This contrasts with the current method states use (known as the “status model”), which assesses student performance at a single point in time to determine if schools have met their proficiency targets under the law.

McKeon and Miller have expressed concerns with growth models in the past because they allowed states to show continuous improvement without ever actually reaching the law’s goals of proficiency for every student.  But the GAO report shows that more sophisticated types of growth models, when carefully designed and implemented, have the potential to satisfy the law’s goals. 

In November 2005, the Department of Education began a pilot program with two states in which it allowed them to create growth models that they could use to measure student progress alongside the status models already in use.  Other states are expected to soon join the program. McKeon and Miller praised U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings for the Department's work on the pilot program and said it would yield helpful information for NCLB’s reauthorization.

McKeon, Miller, and Reps. John Boehner (R-OH), Mike Castle (R-DE), and Sam Graves (R-MO) requested the study from GAO.

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