User's Guide: Field 2
Statistically Generated Performance
Range/Actual Performance

What you are looking at
This chart shows the relationship between the actual performance of students in this school - expressed as the percentage of students who met the standard on the state tests -- and the performance range of similar students statewide.

The question mark: Participation in the assessments is expected to be 100% unless a child is specifically exempted by an Individual Education Plan (IEP) or another valid, clearly defined reason such as prolonged illness or very limited use of the English language. When a school's participation rate falls below 80% of the eligible students, a question mark appears on the bar indicating that the data might be unreliable because of the large number of eligible students who did not take the test.

What you are looking for
You are hoping to see the school's students performing at or above the performance range of similar students statewide. CRITICAL NOTE: Rhode Island's goal is for all students to become proficient in all subjects. This computer-generated model is not a standard, and performing as well or even better than similar students across the state is only the beginning of a journey towards full proficiency. Over time, as the schools improve, the computer-generated ranges will rise. This model helps us understand that schools do not start on a level playing field, and some will need more time, specialists, resources or any number of things to help all of their children reach proficiency. Schools which are under-performing according to the model over multiple years are signaling the need for intervention.

Statistically generated performance models
In recent years, educational researchers have begun building statistically generated models which can calculate what results schools are likely to achieve when taking into consideration the characteristics of their student body. The point of these models is to establish an achievement benchmark that acknowledges the challenges that can affect children's readiness to learn. The public tends to compare high-performing schools with low-performing schools without considering differences in student characteristics. In fact, student composition impacts heavily on the performance of the school itself. These statistical models provide uniform and practical benchmarks against which to measure actual achievement. For over 30 years, researchers have known that the achievement results of different sets of students, such as those from different schools, vary in association with several specific key factors, including:

• poverty (the second strongest predictor of student achievement; prior achievement accounts for about half of the variation and is the overwhelmingly best predictor of performance)
• non-English-speaking background
• educational background of the parents
• having special learning needs, and
• having a minority/racial group identity

While individuals with one or more of these characteristics can and do perform well on state assessments, the majority tend to perform less well than children who do not have these characteristics. There are many reasons for these historic patterns of achievement. They include such things as school expectations, the availability of flexible grouping and different types of instruction, inadequate funding and support to the schools these children attend, and the quality of social services offered to students.

Informing the "value-added" discussion
Nationally these sorts of computer-generated models have given educators and the public a stronger sense of whether or not schools are "adding value" to a child's education. On the basis of anecdotal evidence, some schools have gained the reputation of consistently helping their children perform better than children with similar characteristics at other schools, but the computer-modeling applies consistent, research-based criteria to both the students and their achievements. That consistency provides us with a lens through which we can see the levels of value added to children's education in a particular school, at least as compared with other children in the state.

The Rhode Island model
Rhode Island researchers have created a model which considers the five characteristics mentioned above. (Unfortunately prior achievement data for individual students is not available.) Because Rhode Island is such a small state, the entire student body of approximately 154,785 students serves as a context from which the test and grade-specific ranges were derived. Thus, groups of tested students within a school are compared with similar groups of tested students statewide; schools themselves are not sorted for comparisons. The computer-generated ranges will change depending on the test because, for example, a writing assessment is strongly affected by a student's limited English proficiency. This year's model uses one year of assessment data.

The Information Works! charts compare the performance range generated by the model to the actual performance of the school's 1999 test-takers. There is always a small possibility that a school's actual performance equals, exceeds or falls below prediction due solely to chance. These models predict only for groups of students with similar characteristics; they can not predict any individual student's achievement.

**Note: Visit Technical Brief on the Statistical Model for a detailed description.

Assessment participation rate as used in the RI model.
The question mark on the charts in Field #2 indicate that the assessment participation rate was under 80%. We do not report the participation rates for all the tests. However, this year you will also find each school's participation rate for the English Language Arts assessment under "Selected School Indicators" on the right-hand side of the school-level charts.

Special to the district reports
Each district's page 2 includes tables that show the total number of schools whose students met or exceeded the standard compared with similar students statewide on selected subscales of the New Standards tests.

Special to the state report
To help the public see each school's performance in the context of one another, this year's statewide analysis includes three lists - elementary, middle and high schools - in which schools have been sorted into bands of like-performing schools. Like-performing does not refer to actual proficiency, but to the relationship of actual student proficiency against the statistically-generated model. In other words, is that school's actual performance above, the same as or below the statistical range of similar students statewide? The bands of like-performing schools are sorted from high to low, or from those whose actual achievement exceeded the prediction on all modeled subtests, to those whose achievement was below the statistically generated prediction on all modeled subtests. Within each band, schools are merely alphabetized.

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