Breakfast and networking

8:00 - 9:00 am Eastern
MIT Building E52-324

Arrive early to grab breakfast and chat with other attendees. Breakfast will not be streamed via Zoom.

Welcome remarks

9:00 - 9:10 am Eastern
Zoom and MIT Building E52-324

Parag Pathak, Professor of Economics at MIT and Director at Blueprint Labs will open the conference with welcome remarks.

Introductions

9:10 - 9:40 am Eastern
Zoom and MIT Building E52-324

Constructing bias-free school quality measures

9:40 - 10:20 am Eastern
Zoom and MIT Building E52-324

How effectively do different measures of school quality capture a school’s causal impact on student achievement? What are the tradeoffs among different measures? In this session, Brown University Assistant Professor Peter Hull will share takeaways from his recent work with Josh Angrist, Parag Pathak, and Chris Walters developing estimates of school quality using the randomness embedded in matching algorithms that assign students to schools. Hull will also discuss his recent study studying the relationship between school ratings, school causal effects, and race. The research presentation will be about 25 minutes and the rest of the time will be dedicated to Q&A.

Equity and School Quality

10:20 am - 10:55 am Eastern
Zoom and MIT Building E52-324

How might we use publicly available data to create a rich picture of how well a school serves its students? How can we continue to refine our equity lens based on the evolving research, data, and policy landscape? In this session, Orville Jackson (VP, Data Strategy) and Jon Deane (CEO) from the popular school ratings website GreatSchools.org will present the evolution of their ratings and their process for ensuring an equity lens is applied to ratings. They will lead a conversation about how families, particularly families from traditionally marginalized backgrounds, can use equitable measures of school quality, how new measures may impact school leaders, and what’s next given the limitations of public data.

Case study: measuring school quality at Boston Public Schools (BPS) and Chicago Public Schools (CPS)

11:10 am - 11:30 am Eastern
Zoom and MIT Building E52-324

In this session, BPS and CPS will each present a short overview of their current approach to measuring school quality. This will include the underlying data that feeds into their school quality measure(s) and how each measure is explained and communicated to families. This will set the stage for the conference by sampling various approaches and allowing the two districts to highlight any areas of their measures that they are considering refining.

Small group discussions

11:30 am - 12:00 pm Eastern
Zoom and MIT Building E52-324

Conference participants will split into small groups to talk through discussion questions and reflect on the morning sessions.

Lunch

12:00 - 12:45 pm Eastern
MIT Building E52-324 or Outside

Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees.

Developing and communicating multiple measures of school quality

12:45 - 1:15 pm Eastern
Zoom and MIT Building E52-324

Some school districts and school rating organizations provide multiple measures of school quality. What are the benefits to multiple measures? What are the challenges of having multiple measures that sometimes disagree? How can multiple measures be aggregated and communicated in an understandable fashion? In this session, Eric Ashton, the Executive Director for School Performance at the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), will discuss the NYCDOE’s approach to constructing and communicating multiple measures, including those based on student achievement, surveys of families, students, and teachers, and expert visits. Eric will present for 15 minutes, and there will be 15 minutes for Q&A.

Measuring school quality beyond test scores

1:15 - 2:10 pm Eastern
Zoom and MIT Building E52-324

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused most recent test score data to be unavailable or unreliable. Beyond the pandemic, school quality measures that solely rely on test scores may miss a school’s impact on other critical outcomes, incentivize overemphasis on test preparation, and fail to provide diagnostic information to inform school improvement. Brian Gill, a Senior Fellow at Mathematica, and Martin West, a Professor and Dean at Harvard, will jointly lead a session on measuring school quality with non-test-score measures. They will discuss the use of surveys, measuring social-emotional learning, and ratings based on long-term outcomes, such as college-going. Gill and West will each present for 20 minutes. The session will conclude with a 15-minute Q&A.

Involving the community in developing school quality

2:15 - 2:45 pm
Zoom and MIT Building E52-324

How can a district or organization best solicit input from the community when refining measures of school quality? In this session, Ericka Burns, a Policy Manager at Denver Public Schools, will discuss takeaways from developing a School Performance Framework Committee. Burns will be joined by Nivan Khosravi, a Principal at Denver Public Schools, who served on the committee. The committee, which consists of teachers, school leaders, parents, central office staff, and advocacy group members, was tasked with evaluating the current system for measuring school quality and recommending changes. Burns will discuss the process of creating the committee and the committee’s recommendations, including a shift towards using ratings for continuous improvement. Khosravi will share reflections and perspectives from serving on the committee. This session will conclude with a Q&A.

Small group discussions

2:45 - 3:00 pm Eastern
Zoom and MIT Building E52-324

Conference participants will split into small groups to talk through discussion questions and reflect on the full day.

Reception

3:00 - 4:30 pm Eastern
MIT Building E52-6th Floor

For attendees joining in-person, we welcome you to enjoy a reception on the 6th floor of MIT Building E52 to continue the day's conversation. Refreshments will be served.