We are witnessing a relatively unprecedented moment, at least in recent history, as the U.S. Department of Education and the philanthropic community work together in new ways to advance a common vision of education reform.
The vision for reform being codified through programs like Race to the Top (for which applicants are receiving considerable philanthropic support) includes widespread usage of student academic performance data to evaluate teacher performance.
This vision for reform raises a variety of interesting questions about the types of data that education practitioners and funders use to measure teacher performance and the impact of school improvement efforts. Put simply, are test scores enough?
This moment provides a unique opportunity to elevate the role that alternative measures such as student and parent feedback can have for assessing whether educational interventions have achieved their goals. Reforms have positioned student test data as the critical performance indicator, but shouldn’t there be a broader effort to diversify the type of data used to track and measure progress to round out the picture? One place to start would be student perceptions.
In 2008, in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we launched the YouthTruth project, our first foray into gathering comparative feedback from those whose lives philanthropy is trying to impact.
YouthTruth gathers comparative feedback from high school students about their experiences – what’s working well and not so well across America’s high schools. This feedback is then shared with school, district and network leaders, and funders to help inform their decision-making.
CEP and the Gates Foundation piloted YouthTruth during the 2008-2009 school year with 20 high schools and more than 5,000 students. This year, we have expanded the project to reach approximately 80 high schools and an estimated 35,000 students. In a subset of our schools, we are exploring the link between student perceptions and academic performance data in order to better understand whether student feedback can predict changes in test scores.
Constituent feedback mechanisms like YouthTruth cannot provide all the answers. But they can provide valuable feedback to inform school improvement efforts.