User's Guide
» Rhode Island Learns to Interpret and Use Data
» Information Works! Has Changed Since Last Year
» For More Information, Questions and Suggestions,
investigate our Web site
» Information Works! Draws From a Variety of Resources
» Most Data Are Descriptive, not Prescriptive
» Focus on Literacy and Numeracy
» Also See: http://riedx.uri.edu
Rhode Island Learns to Interpret and Use Data Until recently, most of us thought of the Information Age as the advent of e-mail and surfing the Internet. While last year schools and districts learned to collect large amounts of new information — principally through the SALT (School Accountability for Learning and Teaching) survey — this year RI’s school communities have been confronted with learning how to read new charts and reports and to make sense of results from large, unfamiliar databases. Suddenly we are making direct contact with technology’s ability to collect and analyze vast quantities of information. The experience has been daunting, exciting, humbling, fascinating, frustrating, enlightening and liberating. Information Works! Has Changed since Last Year • While districts and schools are still in alphabetical order, a “batch” numbering system has made it possible to have a table of contents and provide easier access to desired charts and information.
• Career and Technical schools are included in their own section after the state schools.
• The 1999 school charts have key SALT survey findings.
• Each school reports its achievement targets.
• Additional information will be available on the web versions of the reports. (See below)
For More Information, Questions and Suggestions, investigate our Web site (http://infoworks.ride.uri.edu) The two-page, school-level charts published on the web will include information for which there was not room in the hard cover copy of Information Works! The charts on the web will include:• Disaggregations of student achievement by students with certain characteristics that continue below the proficiency line. Non-proficient students will be disaggregated by characteristics into the three non-proficient categories.
• School goals
• Teacher grievances by type
• Student suspensions by type
The 1999 Information Works! home page also gives access to a technical paper explaining the statistical modeling which generated the graphs in Field #2, to Commissioner McWalters’ State of Education speech before the General Assembly, to Information Works for Community Stewardship, a state-level report on education in RI, and to last year’s Information Works! data and related materials.
Information Works! Draws From a Variety of Resources A number of key accountability measures were first identified by the Governor’s Comprehensive Education Strategy and then written into legislation. That legislation, Article 31, charged the Department of Education (RIDE) with measuring certain specific outcomes, scores and indicators and publicly reporting the results. However, test scores and accountability outcomes are limited in their ability to promote school improvement. For schools to become successful in their efforts to make progress, they also need sophisticated, detailed information about their own internal functioning.RIDE strongly emphasizes that no single element of information, not even test scores, has much meaning standing by itself. Only when taken together can a full array of important indicators and details begin to paint a picture comprehensive enough to approximate the complexity and uniqueness of a school.
Therefore, the principal sources of the data for Information Works! are:
The State Assessments Standardized student achievement tests The SALT SurveySchool-level data about classroom practice, school climate, expectations, and much more
Basic School-level Statistics
School enrollment, demographic make up, socio-economic status, absenteeism, suspensions, etc. are collected throughout the year through various data collection efforts by RIDE.
Tax and Income Statistics
From the State Department of Administration’s Division of Taxation
Form 31 Financial Information
Expenditures and revenue information submitted to RIDE. (More detailed information from the new statewide fiscal accountability system, In$ite, will be reported next year at both the school and district level. This year, data from selected schools and districts will be available under separate cover.)
Most Data Are Descriptive, not Prescriptive
One of the biggest frustrations is that most of our data are just data, just a description that does not imply obvious solutions or easily identifiable standards of success. Only the assessment results have clear, absolute goals of students meeting standards and schools achieving 100% proficiency. In the SALT survey data, for example, no rubric or rule exists that indicates exactly how much of anything is the right amount. Each school, with its district, must look at the whole array of information and decide what is important and what is good evidence to drive school improvement.
All of us will become more proficient in this process over time.
Focus on Literacy and Numeracy
Last year the press often referred to the SALT survey results and Information Works! as a “mountain” of data. Indeed, we now have a lot of information. The challenge to all of us is to make informed, but admittedly human choices from among the different realms of data. RIDE’s strategic plan as well as the state’s Comprehensive Education Strategy outline specific targets related to mathematics and literacy. The state-level SALT survey revealed that the classroom practices and structures to support literacy and numeracy across the curriculum could be improved in most RI schools. Improvements in achievement scores will be limited unless this support improves.
Therefore, both the RI statistical model and the reporting of the targets concentrate on two elements, each from the New Standards Reference Math and English Language Arts exams, indicators of literacy and numeracy. Similarly, literacy and numeracy drove the selection of which SALT survey data elements to display.
The goal remains the same: 100% proficiency for all kids.
Also see: http://riedx.uri.edu
This year the interactive capabilities of the Information Works! home page will take the user to the discussion page of a new RI school community web site through the Rhode Island Education Exchange at: riedx.uri.edu. There, the user can either submit questions related directly to the data in Information Works! or engage in a discussion on school reform and education-related topics. This site will be monitored at least once a week and questions will be answered within two weeks. This Education Exchange site is an ever-growing collection of resources and opportunities that has been assembled to support school communities in Rhode Island. It is made possible through a partnership of Bell Atlantic, URI’s National Center on Public Education and Social Policy and the RI Department of Education.
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