Delving Into One of the Questions Betsy DeVos Couldn't Answer
Trump’s pick for education secretary was slammed for her failure to differentiate between growth and proficiency in response to a question from Senator Al Franken. Here’s how the states currently measure achievement.
It doesn’t sound particularly sexy, but the growth-versus-proficiency debate is one of the most consequential to have shaped education policy in recent years.
The “proficiency” approach amounts to evaluating kids based on whether they arrive at a set benchmark—whether, for example, they achieve a certain math on standardized tests. (This was, controversially, pretty much .) The “growth” approach is more customized in that it involves, say, evaluating each individual student based on how much he or she has progressed from the beginning to the end of the school year; schools aren’t punished for serving consistently below-average yet improving children and they’re responsible for being attentive to those who are steadily high-performing.
