King Amendment Attempted to Leave the Data Behind

Most people’s eyes glaze over when they hear terms like “disaggregated data.” Wonk, wonk. But advocates should take note. Disaggregated data is crucial to measuring progress for girls and a battleground issue in the school reform debate.

When schools disaggregate data, it means that they keep track of test scores for specific subgroups of students. When you don’t break down the numbers you can’t measure the success of different populations. If you don’t disaggregate – then researchers and journalists (and wonks) can’t tell how kids of color or girls are doing in school because they get lumped in with everybody else. Robert Reich, who is 4’ 10”, once quipped that he and Shaquille O’Neal have an average height of six feet. Disaggregating that data is pretty crucial to evaluating their respective dunking prospects. It’s also a key component in demonstrating student achievement and in making schools accountable for the success of their entire student population.

That theory – that we should break down the numbers – was incorporated into the Charter School bill the House of Representatives voted on earlier this week. The provision defined a “high-quality charter school” as one that “has demonstrated success in increasing student academic achievement” for low-income and minority students, students with disabilities, and students with limited English proficiency.

Apparently Representative Steve King (R-IA) thought that particular measure of success wasn’t important and introduced an amendment that would have suspended the requirement that charter schools disaggregate their data. Thankfully, the amendment was defeated by a vote of 374 to 43.

Charter schools only make up on a sliver of public schools nationwide, but their numbers are growing. And King’s amendment might be a harbinger of the fight to come; Congress is way past due in reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

The thing about the King Amendment is that Congress should be enhancing disaggregation – not reducing it. Under the current system, states have to report test results by group (including sex) but don’t have to break down graduation rates by sex and don’t have to cross-tabulate data so that communities know what is happening for key subgroups like African American boys and Latina girls. When the numbers aren’t segmented in this way, policymakers tend to rely on overgeneralizations about gender. The assumption becomes that girls are doing well or sometimes even better than boys. That kind of “averaging” masks problem for both males and females, but particularly for students of color where the intersection of race, ethnicity, and gender can be critical. In fact, girls at risk – particularly girls of color – have alarmingly low graduation rates. Only 49% of Native American female students graduate on time, if at all; the same is true for 41% of African American female students and 41% of Latina female students. Congress should require schools to measure how well they serve these at-risk groups – not leave the data behind.