Politics K-12 Survey on “Super Subgroups”
June 21, 2016
The Politics K-12 Team at Education Week surveyed all 50 states regarding their use of “super subgroups” in their NCLB waivers that “can no longer be used in place of individual subgroups of student for accountability purposes” under ESSA. The super subgroups combined smaller subgroups of low-performing or disadvantaged students, but Ed Week notes that “civil rights advocates argued they allowed states to mask the performance of some student subgroups.” Of the states that responded to the survey, 18 did not use super subgroups for federal purposes, 25 did, and seven didn’t respond.