Under ESSA, states are required to have a 5th school quality or student success indicator. While many rejoiced in this requirement initially, it quickly became a challenge to figure out what type of indicators meet the proposed federal regulations, what type of indicator actually demonstrates school quality or success, and what data states already collect that could be used. One of the most challenging requirements is that the indicator must be able to be disaggregated by subgroups of students – so while teacher effectiveness might be a useful indicator, it would be difficult to disaggregate a teacher’s effectiveness by subgroup for middle or high schools – since students attend many different classrooms with different teachers each day. Such an indicator could be used for elementary school grades, since students often stay with one teacher for most of the day. The proposed regulations do allow different indicators to be selected for different grade levels – as long as it’s consistent across the state. The other major issue that states are running into is what data do they already have? And, is that data reliable and indicative of school quality or student success? Many districts collect additional data, but the same data may not be collected in the same way across the state.
This recent EdWeek article explains some of these issues, while also providing some initial thinking from a few states as they think through the implications of this 5th or “other” indicator. An important note is that states must use at least one “other” indicator, but they may use more than one as well. From what I’ve heard from states, many are leaning towards including chronic absenteeism, college or career readiness, and other school climate indicators as their “other” indicators. While states think through this new data source, it’s also uncertain if the Department of Education will make any modifications to the proposed rules/regulations. The final rules should be released in late August or September.
This 5th or “other” provides states an amazing opportunity to redefine what a successful school is, but the implementation requirements may make it difficult to actually implement the intention in the timeframe states have to do so.
Strategy • Implementation • Transformation 
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