Education
School and Student Performance
Arizona has developed a program of student educational assessment based on academic content standards which describe what each student should know and be able to do, as measured by student performance on standardized tests. Arizona law requires all district and charter schools to test all eligible students in the grades tested, which provides a near consensus of all Arizona public school students. The tests that students take to determine their level of achievement are a mix of “criterion referenced” assessments, which measure student achievement of Arizona’s public school population against state standards, and “norm referenced” assessments, which measure Arizona student performance compared to a sample of U.S. students.
The Arizona Department of Education administers four sets of tests to eligible public school students at different grade levels:
- AIMS HS (high school) criterion referenced test taken during the spring of each year in grades 10 and offered in the fall of each school year in grades 11, or 12 for students not yet proficient in one or more subject areas. Beginning with the 2006 graduating class, all high school students must pass all three content areas of AIMS in order to graduate from high school.
- AIMS DPA (Dual Purpose Assessment) criterion and norm referenced test taken in grades 3-8 during the spring of each year.
- TerraNova norm referenced test taken in grades 2 and 9.
- AIMS-A criterion referenced taken in grades 2-12 for students with significant cognitive disabilities (approximately 1% of students, not reported in these data).
In addition, a sample of schools also takes the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, which provides measures of the performance of students in grades 4 and 8 on national standardized tests in four subjects: mathematics, reading, writing, and science. Selected high school students may also take Advanced Placement (AP) tests and/or SAT and ACT university entrance exams.
Adequate Yearly Progress is a school-level performance indicator prescribed by the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). The act aimed to improve the performance of U.S. schools by increasing the standards of accountability and providing parents more flexibility in choosing which schools their children attend based on information about performance. NCLB requires states to develop state standards and assessments to be given to all students in certain grades, if those states received federal funding for schools. Arizona participates in NCLB. This statute does not mandate national achievement standards or curricula; those are set by each individual state.
NCLB requires that every public school and district in a state, as well as the state itself, be evaluated on three measures: 1) Progress toward meeting the goal of 100% proficiency on state standards by the end of the 2013-14 school year; 2) Percentage of students assessed; 3) An additional measure of school performance. NCLB mandates that for high schools, this indicator be the graduation rate. States may select and alternative indicator for elementary schools. Arizona, along with many other states, has chosen attendance rate for the other indicator for elementary schools.
