A Value-Added Look at RI Schools
Using the Statistical Model
Even a "Value-added" Leveling of the Academic Playing Field
Does Not Strengthen the Single Snapshot Quality of a Set of AssessmentsRather innocently, the public tends to compare high performing schools with low performing schools without considering differences in student characteristics. The point of using statistical modeling is to establish an achievement benchmark that acknowledges the challenges that can affect children's readiness to learn.
However, any performance assessment -- or academic test -- measures only how well a child performs on a particular test, on a particular day. Circumstances having nothing to do with the testing can have profound effects on how children perform. A classmate's illness or car accident can affect the scores of that grade's test-takers, just as the news of an impending divorce can affect the scores of an individual test-taker. Similarly, one year's class of students might be unusually challenged while the following year's happens to be especially talented, which will also create swings in the scores. Only over time, with a good deal more data, will we be able to see how an individual school "usually" performs in relation to its counterparts.
The lists accessible by the buttons above are, therefore, indications of how groups of students (and by extension, schools) perform as compared to other students like themselves in the rest of the state, at a very particular moment in time. The value-added exercise attempts to account for some of the uneven playing field on which children and schools are measured, but can not possibly account for all unevenness. Only over the course of time will the statistically generated model be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of a given school.
Still, we recommend visiting the consistently high-performing schools to determine why they tend to get superior results.
RI Elementary Schools
View in HTML || View or Download in PDF format (57KB)RI Middle Schools
View in HTML || View or Download in PDF format (47KB)RI High Schools
View in HTML || View or Download in PDF format (50KB)
(Please note: These charts are available in both HTML and PDF format. For on-screen viewing, we recommend using the HTML version. For printing, however, the PDF files are the best choice in order to keep the look and feel of the documents we created intact.)
Statistically Generated Performance Models - A brief layperson's explanation
Technical Brief on the RI Statistically Generated Model
Some Resource Materials on "Value-Added":
National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing
University of Tennessee Institute of Assessment and Evaluation