And I’m not talking about winning sports teams. Well, maybe a little bit, but I digress.

In case you missed it last week, Massachusetts education leaders announced a plan to inject a reality check this fall into the "good class vs. bad class" debate by tracking the performance of individual students as they advance from one grade to the next. The new measurement could shed light on who is falling short -- teacher or pupil -- and lead to fundamental changes in the way students are taught.

According to the Boston Globe:
Under the current system, the state judges a school's success by comparing its MCAS scores at each particular grade level to the scores posted by that grade the year before. The English and math MCAS tests are given in grades 3 through 8 and in grade 10. (Just like Washington)
Using the new tool, the state will augment that analysis by examining the performance of individual students or classes of students over the period of several years, starting in the third-grade. (Not at all like Washington)

Why is this a good idea? Let us count the ways. Tracking individual student performance over time:

• Leads to earlier interventions for students who appear to be lagging behind;
• Allows the state to monitor the growth of students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds;
• Helps education leaders identify schools making huge leaps in student performance, even if a certain school is performing below the state average; and
• Reports on whether or not a student is truly on track to reaching proficiency by predicting future scores.

While we’ve played around the edges of this sort assessment reform in Washington, we simply haven’t gotten our acts together—wow, guess the sports metaphor really does work—to create system which delivers this kind of invaluable information. One hopes that as OSPI explores how best to improve Washington’s assessment system, they’ll consider the incredible potential systems like Massachusetts is creating, hold for our state’s students and teachers.