Focus Schools are defined by the state as those schools with the largest achievement gaps in the state. That is not in dispute. What is disputed is whether these schools deserve what they perceive to be a scarlet letter.
The state Superintendent has stated that this methodology "looks solely at achievement and unmasks students who were hidden in previous accountability systems." Looked at from one perspective that may be true. This new methodology does identify schools that have large achievement gaps.
However, many of the schools in Oakland County would argue that the system may identify the schools with large achievement gaps but it then hides the schools with overall low achievement. And, these schools would argue, what is worse - an achievement gap or low overall achievement?
There are two fundamental questions in this debate that deserve an analysis:
1. Are the gaps bad?
2. Does focusing on the bottom 30% continue to mask differences in achievement?
Let's look at the answers to these questions. On the first question - are the gaps bad? - the answer is more complex than the state would lead you to believe.
First, let me state that I believe our responsibility is to ensure that every student is proficient. Our district goal states that all students will achieve at a high level. We have defined that as every student being proficient.
Having said that I would argue that gaps are inevitable. There is no possible way to ensure that all students perform at the same level. Even if every student was proficient there would still be a range - and the range could be quite large. If the bottom of the range is proficient what is the top of the range? In any group there will be some students who significantly outperform their peers.
The appropriate goal is not to eliminate gaps. A more appropriate goal is to ensure that every student moves forward every year. Our district's number one goal is to ensure that every student makes at least one year's growth in one year's time. In our district we have institutionalized a gap because we understand that the school's responsibility is to take a student where they are and move them forward. If everyone from the barely proficient to the highly proficient move forward then you will continue to have a gap.
As long as everyone is proficient the achievement gap loses its significance as an important marker.
Every district in the state has a range of performance. In my district the schools with the gap happen to be high achieving schools. We are not arguing that there is not a gap. What we would argue is that while we have a gap other schools have a more serious and systemic problem - low achievement.
Look at this chart. It compares the percent of students' proficient in math who are in the bottom 30% of students in each school in Novi with the percent of students' proficient in math who are in the bottom 30% of students in other schools in Michigan.
| In the bottom 30% how many students are proficient in math | |
| Novi School | 71.95% |
| Novi School | 64.63% |
| Novi School | 38.15% |
| Novi School | 68.75% |
| Novi School | 41.33% |
| Novi School | 50.92% |
| Novi School | 29.22% |
| Novi School | 19.04% |
| District X School | 0.72% |
| District X School | 1.56% |
| District X School | 0.98% |
| District X School | 5.08% |
The interesting part of this chart is that only one of the schools in the comparison district (District X) is classified as a Focus Schools while all but one of the Novi schools are classified as Focus Schools. To be clear, of the four schools in District X one is a Focus School. Of the eight schools from Novi seven are Focus Schools. Yet, even though Novi schools are classified as Focus Schools, Novi schools have significantly more students proficient.
Remember, this chart takes the bottom 30% at each school and shows how many are proficient. Every school will always have a bottom 30%. The clear and obvious point is that many of the schools not identified as Focus Schools have much lower achievement than many of the Focus Schools.
The state can argue all it wants that Focus Schools have gaps and I would not disagree. What I do disagree with is that the state then argues that our gaps are worse than schools with overall low achievement. If I was a parent I would much rather my child go to a school that has high achievement and a gap than go to a school with lower achievement and no gap.
Yet when the state Superintendent talks about Focus Schools he uses phrases like the following: "In
our efforts to identify Focus Schools, we feel that it is important to bring up
data-driven results that need to be addressed if we are going to close the
alarming achievement gaps in Michigan schools, so that we are truly serving ALL
of Michigan’s students – especially those who are not yet proficient."
What is alarming to me is that there are schools in Michigan that have proficiency rates of less than 1% or 2% or just over 5% that the state does not single out in an achievement classification and that can hide under the radar without having anyone draw notice to them. The data is clear to me. These schools are not serving all students and have significant numbers of students who are not proficient yet they are not publicly called out and labeled.
Here is a "data-driven result" - the schools that have a problem with students "not yet proficient" are not always the Focus Schools. The schools that have a problem with students "not yet proficient" are those schools that have embarrassingly low proficiency rates. Yet, in the state's classification system, many of these schools are not labeled as Focus Schools because they do not have an achievement gap.
The state Superintendent also uses phrases like, "The Focus School methodology looks solely at achievement and unmasks students who were hidden in previous accountability systems."
Yet, if we are looking "solely at achievement" and trying to "unmask" students hidden in accountability systems, it appears that schools that have proficiency rates in the 1%, 2%, and 5% range have a more significant achievement problem than schools that have proficiency rates significantly higher than that.
So are achievement gaps bad? I would suggest that achievement gaps are one factor that must be examined. But achievement of all students is also a critical factor. Many schools labeled Focus Schools have high achievement and a gap. Many schools not labeled have no gap but low achievement.
That leads to the second question. Does the Focus Schools metric really reveal achievement? I would argue that it does not. The state tries to argue that gaps are bad. In my mind gaps are less problematic than overall low achievement. In the schools in my district the majority of the students are proficient. In many districts in the state that is not the case.
The label Focus Schools indicates that a school has a wide gap between the highest achievers in the school and the lowest achievers. It does not reveal anything about achievement. In fact, as noted in the numbers above, many Focus Schools outperform non-Focus Schools, have fewer students who are not proficient, and have more students who are proficient.
The state Superintendent in correspondence with the media points out that Focus Schools have 0% of students in their bottom 30% proficient in social studies, science, and math.
Yet that statement is true of almost every school in the state of Michigan. Most of the students in the bottom 30% of any school in the state are not proficient. The schools in my district are not unique.
Look at another chart that summarizes performance in the state.
The bottom 30% in any school are by definition the lowest achievers in the school. Yet the performance of the lowest 30% varies widely. Additionally, just because students are in the bottom 30% in one school does not mean that they are not proficient.
In one of the schools in my district there are 27 students in the bottom 30% at 3rd grade reading. Of those 27 students 8 are considered proficient and 11 are considered provisionally proficient. So of the 27 students 19 are actually calculated as proficient.
In one non-Focus School there is no one in the bottom 30% labeled as proficient. Yet that school's low achievement is masked because it is not identified as a Focus School. How is that not having a system that hides proficiency and achievement?
The state also calculates a top 30% in each school. In one school in my district the average of the scale scores of the top 30% in math was 378.05. In this school the average of the scale scores of the bottom 30% was 317.26. Of the 80 students represented in this group of students in this school 57 were calculated as proficient by the state - that's 71.25%. Of the students not calculated as proficient 16.25% fall into achievement level 4 - the lowest performing category.
In a non-Focus school the average of the scale scores of the top 30% in math was 346.19. That is 31.86 points lower than the Focus School. The average of the scale scores of the bottom 30% was 309.03. Of the 105 students represented in this group of students in this school 53 were calculated as proficient by the state - that's 50.47%. Of the students not calculated as proficient 40.00% fall into achievement level 4 - the lowest performing category.
These two schools represent a difficult truth for the state. The school labeled a Focus School has higher average scores in the top 30% and the bottom 30% than the non-focus school. The school labeled the Focus School has more students who are proficient than the non-focus school. The Focus School has fewer students in the lowest achieving category than the non-focus school. The Focus School is a higher achieving school than the non-focus school on every measure except the achievement gap measure.
If I am a parent I want my child attending the school that has higher achievement even though it has a larger achievement gap.
The state has created an achievement classification system that points a finger at Focus Schools and says improve. Yet, there are many non-focus schools who have lower overall achievement, have fewer proficient students, and have more students performing at a lower level that receive no state sanction or classification.
This reflection is not to suggest that the state create another way to rank schools. But when the state Superintendent says that Focus Schools "leave 30% of their students behind" and that the "students in the lowest 30% subgroup deserve more" he is suggesting that those students are failing. The evidence from my district does not support such wide, general statements.
Certainly in my district there are students who are not proficient. But the evidence - the data - suggests that the number of students who are not proficient in my district is less than the number of students who are not proficient in other districts. Yet my district is saddled with the Focus School label.
There appears to be no "reward" for having high achieving students in this new system. In fact, it appears that high achieving students create a disadvantage because their high achievement makes the lower achievement of other students a negative. Even when that lower achievement is still higher than the achievement of other students throughout the state.
I do not claim to have an answer for the state as we seek to create a system for evaluating teacher/administrator/school/district performance. I know that the state received feedback from my district and from others that we had significant concerns with this new system.
Any system creates winner and losers - those that meet the standard and those that do not. It just seems to me that this system does not give a true measure of achievement no matter how loudly the state says that it does.
Maybe what the state should do is just publish the data in a way that is accessible to everyone in Michigan. Here's a sample table that the state could use for 3rd grade reading:
Number of students tested in reading
Number and percent of students proficient in reading
Average of the scale scores of the highest 30%
Average of the scale scores of the lowest 30%
Number and percent of students in the lowest achievement category
So what is the outcome of all of this brouhaha about Focus Schools?
I would argue that it is much ado about nothing except for the fact that it gives the impression that a school not labeled a Focus School is actually a better school than a school that is labeled a Focus School. That is simply and unequivocally not true.
What is alarming to me is that there are schools in Michigan that have proficiency rates of less than 1% or 2% or just over 5% that the state does not single out in an achievement classification and that can hide under the radar without having anyone draw notice to them. The data is clear to me. These schools are not serving all students and have significant numbers of students who are not proficient yet they are not publicly called out and labeled.Here is a "data-driven result" - the schools that have a problem with students "not yet proficient" are not always the Focus Schools. The schools that have a problem with students "not yet proficient" are those schools that have embarrassingly low proficiency rates. Yet, in the state's classification system, many of these schools are not labeled as Focus Schools because they do not have an achievement gap.
The state Superintendent also uses phrases like, "The Focus School methodology looks solely at achievement and unmasks students who were hidden in previous accountability systems."
Yet, if we are looking "solely at achievement" and trying to "unmask" students hidden in accountability systems, it appears that schools that have proficiency rates in the 1%, 2%, and 5% range have a more significant achievement problem than schools that have proficiency rates significantly higher than that.
So are achievement gaps bad? I would suggest that achievement gaps are one factor that must be examined. But achievement of all students is also a critical factor. Many schools labeled Focus Schools have high achievement and a gap. Many schools not labeled have no gap but low achievement.
That leads to the second question. Does the Focus Schools metric really reveal achievement? I would argue that it does not. The state tries to argue that gaps are bad. In my mind gaps are less problematic than overall low achievement. In the schools in my district the majority of the students are proficient. In many districts in the state that is not the case.
The label Focus Schools indicates that a school has a wide gap between the highest achievers in the school and the lowest achievers. It does not reveal anything about achievement. In fact, as noted in the numbers above, many Focus Schools outperform non-Focus Schools, have fewer students who are not proficient, and have more students who are proficient.
The state Superintendent in correspondence with the media points out that Focus Schools have 0% of students in their bottom 30% proficient in social studies, science, and math.
Yet that statement is true of almost every school in the state of Michigan. Most of the students in the bottom 30% of any school in the state are not proficient. The schools in my district are not unique.
Look at another chart that summarizes performance in the state.
| Subject | Percent of Michigan Schools with 0% proficient in the bottom 30% of their student test scores |
| Social Studies | 99.80% |
| Science | 99.60% |
| Math | 96.30% |
| Writing | 92.61% |
| Reading | 66.35% |
The bottom 30% in any school are by definition the lowest achievers in the school. Yet the performance of the lowest 30% varies widely. Additionally, just because students are in the bottom 30% in one school does not mean that they are not proficient.
In one of the schools in my district there are 27 students in the bottom 30% at 3rd grade reading. Of those 27 students 8 are considered proficient and 11 are considered provisionally proficient. So of the 27 students 19 are actually calculated as proficient.
In one non-Focus School there is no one in the bottom 30% labeled as proficient. Yet that school's low achievement is masked because it is not identified as a Focus School. How is that not having a system that hides proficiency and achievement?
The state also calculates a top 30% in each school. In one school in my district the average of the scale scores of the top 30% in math was 378.05. In this school the average of the scale scores of the bottom 30% was 317.26. Of the 80 students represented in this group of students in this school 57 were calculated as proficient by the state - that's 71.25%. Of the students not calculated as proficient 16.25% fall into achievement level 4 - the lowest performing category.
In a non-Focus school the average of the scale scores of the top 30% in math was 346.19. That is 31.86 points lower than the Focus School. The average of the scale scores of the bottom 30% was 309.03. Of the 105 students represented in this group of students in this school 53 were calculated as proficient by the state - that's 50.47%. Of the students not calculated as proficient 40.00% fall into achievement level 4 - the lowest performing category.
These two schools represent a difficult truth for the state. The school labeled a Focus School has higher average scores in the top 30% and the bottom 30% than the non-focus school. The school labeled the Focus School has more students who are proficient than the non-focus school. The Focus School has fewer students in the lowest achieving category than the non-focus school. The Focus School is a higher achieving school than the non-focus school on every measure except the achievement gap measure.
If I am a parent I want my child attending the school that has higher achievement even though it has a larger achievement gap.
The state has created an achievement classification system that points a finger at Focus Schools and says improve. Yet, there are many non-focus schools who have lower overall achievement, have fewer proficient students, and have more students performing at a lower level that receive no state sanction or classification.
This reflection is not to suggest that the state create another way to rank schools. But when the state Superintendent says that Focus Schools "leave 30% of their students behind" and that the "students in the lowest 30% subgroup deserve more" he is suggesting that those students are failing. The evidence from my district does not support such wide, general statements.
Certainly in my district there are students who are not proficient. But the evidence - the data - suggests that the number of students who are not proficient in my district is less than the number of students who are not proficient in other districts. Yet my district is saddled with the Focus School label.
There appears to be no "reward" for having high achieving students in this new system. In fact, it appears that high achieving students create a disadvantage because their high achievement makes the lower achievement of other students a negative. Even when that lower achievement is still higher than the achievement of other students throughout the state.
I do not claim to have an answer for the state as we seek to create a system for evaluating teacher/administrator/school/district performance. I know that the state received feedback from my district and from others that we had significant concerns with this new system.
Any system creates winner and losers - those that meet the standard and those that do not. It just seems to me that this system does not give a true measure of achievement no matter how loudly the state says that it does.
Maybe what the state should do is just publish the data in a way that is accessible to everyone in Michigan. Here's a sample table that the state could use for 3rd grade reading:
Number of students tested in reading
Number and percent of students proficient in reading
Average of the scale scores of the highest 30%
Average of the scale scores of the lowest 30%
Number and percent of students in the lowest achievement category
So what is the outcome of all of this brouhaha about Focus Schools?
I would argue that it is much ado about nothing except for the fact that it gives the impression that a school not labeled a Focus School is actually a better school than a school that is labeled a Focus School. That is simply and unequivocally not true.
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