User's Guide

Field 7:Various School Indicators

» What You Are Looking At / What You Are Looking For
» Indicator Measures and Definitions
» Special to the State Template

You see the frequency or percentage for this indicator at the school (or district) level, and you see the state average next to it. These selected indicators were assembled in compliance with three sets of requests:

1. Legislation passed in February 1996 and incorporated into Title 16, section 60-4 (21-22)
2. Article 31 – the State Student Investment Initiative, passed in July 1997 and revised in 1998 (Title 16, section 7.1)
3. Rhode Island’s Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education and Board of Regents.

What You Are Looking For

You are looking to get a sense of what the school feels like to its inhabitants, its tensions, its stability, its experience, its safety, etc.

Indicator Measures and Definitions

1. SALT Survey Teacher Response Rate: The percentage of the total number of eligible teachers in this school who responded to the SALT survey.
   
2. SALT Survey Student Response Rate: The percentage of the total number of students in this school who responded to the SALT survey.
   
3. Student Attendance: Law requires all Rhode Island districts to conduct 180 instructional days per year. The student attendance rate reflects the percentage of time the average student is present within that 180 day period.
   
4. Average Class Size: The average class size is the average of the figures reported by the core academic teachers on the SALT survey. The survey asks, “What is the average class size in the primary content classes that you teach at this school?” “Core” academics are math, science, language arts and social studies, the subjects on which students spend more than 50% of their learning time. Other teaching staff are not included because the number of students they can teach effectively vary widely by subject — for example, physical education classes are generally quite large. This indicator reflects the opportunity that core academic teachers have to provide individualized attention to students.
   
5. Span of Responsibility: The average span of responsibility refers to the number of students whom core academic teachers are responsible for teaching on a regular basis. “Core” academics are math, science, language arts and social studies. The number reported for ‘span of responsibility’ is the average of the figures reported by the core teachers on the SALT survey. At the elementary level, average class size is often the same as the span of responsibility, while in secondary schools the number will be the total number of students who receive instruction in the course of a teacher’s day.
   
6. Stability: This indicator shows the proportion of the total student enrollment who entered the school at the beginning of the year and stayed through the end.
   
7. Mobility: This indicator shows the rate of student turnover. The number is the percentage of students who moved into or out of the school during the school year as compared to Fall enrollments.

Please note: The stability and mobility indicators measure different phenomena and are not inverses of one another. The mobility index measures, if you will, the rate of flow through the non-stable portion of the student body. Together, the two indicators describe the degree of turnover in the school and its potential effect on the classroom environment.

Special to the State Template

Student, teacher and administrator mobility are graphically visualized, by district, in the state-level report, the first report in Information Works!

8. Teacher Attendance: The teacher attendance rate reflects the percentage of time the average full-time teacher is present within the 180 day instructional period. This number was calculated using the number of “sick days” which accounted for teacher absences.
9. Teacher Grievances: This is the number of grievances filed by teachers in the building in 1997-98 and the number of full-time teachers.

*See Web
On the web teacher grievances are broken out by type –

1. Insufficient Materials
2. Too Many Students
3. Physical Environment
4. Administrative Decisions
5. Other Grievances

10. Suspensions: The number of students who have been temporarily dismissed from school or sent to an alternative placement. The number of suspensions is followed by the total number of students in the building.

*See Web
On the web student suspensions are broken out by type –

1. Assault
2. Fighting
3. Weapons
4. Sale of controlled substance
5. Possession of controlled substance with intent to sell
6. Under the influence of a controlled substance
7. Disorderly conduct
8. Threat/Intimidation
9. Tobacco possession or use
10. Vandalism
11. Larceny/theft
12. Other

11. Drop-Out Rate: The drop-out rate is derived by subtracting the cumulative completion (see #12) rate from 100. This manner of figuring rates uses a four-year picture which takes into account key factors such as annual differences in class size and the different grades at which students drop out. The statistic reported here is based on the number of drop-outs reported annually by grade level for students who drop out between October 2 of the previous school year to October 1 of the current year.
    
12. Graduation Rate: The high school graduation rate represents the percent of the current ninth grade class that will graduate from high school after subtracting the aggregate current dropout rates at the 9th, 10th, 11th, and the 12th grade.

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