User's Guide: Introduction

Welcome to the third annual publication of Information Works!

Information Works!was developed and is now published annually in response to the Rhode Island General Assembly’s desire for comprehensive and comparable information about RI public schools and school districts.

Information Works! has grown considerably from its first year, 1998, when it published roughly 12,600 individual bits of information to its current 22,600 data elements, and that’s not counting the elements used more than once such as certain proficiency scores. Some of the indicators that were originally published in the hardcopy edition have been moved to the Web to free up space on the two pages devoted to charts on each school in Rhode Island. RI has an impressive amount of information about its schools.

Thus, Information Works! is a selection of comparable data elements which have been chosen to summarize the increasingly large sources of information about Rhode Island’s schools and districts. The Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) has been building an information system over recent years to serve the legislative demand for accountability, the public’s desire to know and understand their schools better, and the schools’ need for information that will drive well-informed decisions. Information Works! is the biggest and most comprehensive of the reports from this system of continuous information feedback; other smaller reports, each with a specific focus, will appear on an on-going basis during the course of the coming year.

We’re pleased to see that in general schools and districts are beginning to feel more comfortable working with data and starting to put this information to good use.

Information Works! continues to evolve.

Please note the following changes from last year’s book to this year’s:

Policy statements are now in the state section. The User's Guide contains only information which explains the specifics of how to use the Information Works! charts, without policy-oriented explanation, discussion or illumination. The guide outlines what you are looking at and what you are looking for in each of the fields in the school and district charts. It also identifies how certain numbers were calculated. The RI Department of Education’s policy conclusions can be found in the expanded state section.

All assessment results, including the RI Writing, are now reported using the same five achievement levels and descriptors.

In an effort to move away from using tables – which experience reveals to be unattractive and thus uninviting – the SALT survey results at both the school and district level are now represented in three-dimensional charts.

The following selected school indicators have been moved to the Web site to free up precious space in the hardcopy edition:

• average class size
• span of responsibility
• teacher attendance
• teacher grievances

The following indicator has been added to the hardcopy:

• English Language Arts assessment participation rate

In$ite financial data is being reported for the first time at the school, district and state levels. These data are new to all of us; we strongly recommend reading about it in the State Analysis to get a fuller understanding of what it offers.

Performance targets have been moved to the Web site for one year. The information on performance targets – which are projected for the year 2001 -- remains the same as last year. However, schools may have chosen to make revisions. Changes will be noted on the Web. This year we are also reporting the targets set by the K-3 schools for the RI Writing Assessment.

The state section has been re-designed to be a stand-alone document, although it is included, in its entirety, within the pages of "the big book." New graphs include:

• Regional comparative assessment data, using the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP) scores
• Property value per student shown against the district’s tax rate
• "Value-added" charts for elementary, middle and high schools, which show every school’s student performance as compared with similar students statewide. (Note: The explanation of the statistical modeling that generates these charts can be found in the technical brief.)
• In$ite financial data charts, which compare district costs on a number of per pupil measures.

The following resources are available on this website:

• Commissioner McWalters’ 2000 State of Education Address to the General Assembly
• The User’s Guide (this document)
• School and District Reports
• 2000 Statewide Analysis
• Technical Paper on the RI Statistically Generated Model
• SALT Survey Results for 2000, 1999, 1998
• 1999 Information Works!
• 1998 Information Works!

The school charts on the Web also include:

• Disaggregations of student achievement by students with certain characteristics that continue below the proficiency line. Non-proficient students are disaggregated by characteristics into the three non-proficient categories.
• Each school’s goals
• Student suspensions by reason and disciplinary action
• Targets for adequate yearly progress
• Teacher grievances by reason
• Average class size (elementary schools)
• Span of responsibility (secondary schools)
• Teacher attendance rate

The Principal Sources of the Data for Information Works!

• State assessments – student achievement tests administered by the state assessment program
• SALT Surveys – school-level data about classroom practice, school climate, expectations, and much more
• Basic school-level statistics – data such as school enrollment, demographic make up, socio-economic status, absenteeism, suspensions, collected throughout the year by RIDE
• Tax and income statistics – from the RI Department of Administration, Office of Municipal Affairs
• In$ite financial data – expenditure data at school, district and state levels
• Form 31 financial information – district information submitted to the state through Form 31 provide this year’s source of revenue information at the district level.

When data is statistically unreliable

When the number of test-takers drops below 10, the results are considered statistically unreliable and are not reported. Also, these very small numbers could make it possible to identify or to invite guessing as to the achievement results of individual children. Information Works! is about the functioning of schools and districts not about individual children. Therefore, in Field #4, which shows "gaps" using disaggregated data, any group with certain characteristics consisting of fewer than 10 children -- scoring high, low or indifferent -- was dropped. Patterned boxes just below the proficiency line indicate instances when there were too few test-takers in that category to report, when no test-takers achieved proficiency or when there were no test-takers. Very small classes of test-takers such as those in New Shoreham and the RI School for the Deaf also require leaving a number of fields empty.

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