Overall Statewide Assessments Results
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here to view and/or print this chart in PDF
format.
What you are looking at:
You are looking at a graphic representation of all eligible test-takers’ assessment scores on the Spring 2000 state tests. The 100-point scale indicates 100% of the children who were assessed at this grade level. The dark band at the top of the bar represents the percentage of the highest scoring students. The dark
gray band near the bottom represents the percentage of the lowest scorers. The black band at the bottom represents those students eligible to take the tests who, for whatever reason, did not receive a score (e.g., absence, unwillingness to attempt the test). The two bands above the white are the percentage of students who have achieved or exceeded the Regents’ standards. The triangle shows the percentage of all children’s proficiency including those not eligible to take the test
(see below).
What you are looking for:
You are hoping to see that all children have met or exceeded the standard and are represented only in the top two blocks.
The All Kids agenda – Turning up the heat on improved accountability for every single child
The 2001 school templates account for every single child in the tested grades. The children eligible to take the tests but who, for whatever reason, don’t are this year represented in the “no score” band of the assessment graphs. Schools with a great number of “no score” children will see their over-all proficiency rates drop significantly.
This year, roughly 17% of the eligible high school test-takers, 12% of the middle-schoolers and 9% of the elementary test-takers did not receive a score.
Schools need to make special efforts to test even those children who have poor attendance, just as they need to understand and address why students are persistently absent or tardy. In the event that schools encourage weak test-takers to be absent or unengaged in the testing, the practice must stop.
Students exempt from the state exams
Two categories of children are not eligible to take the standard state exams. One category is those children in special education whose Individual Education Plan (IEP) requires that an alternate assessment be developed for them. Many special education children take the state tests with accommodations, but the state’s Office of Special Needs estimates that about 1 to 1˝% of the total tested population – the most severely/profoundly handicapped students – are not capable of participating in the standard testing process. Starting in the spring of 2001, RI schools will administer alternate assessments to these children. In the future, students who achieve proficiency on the alternate assessments will be included as proficient in the overall proficiency count, this year represented in the triangle below the assessment sub-test bars.
The second category is those children who are so recently arrived in this country that their English is too limited to be included, as yet, in the testing mainstream – called Limited English Proficient Level One (LEP I) students.
Information Works! is taking more careful account of these beginning English language learners to help insure that their instruction prepares them for the mainstream as soon as possible. In the past, some of these children have languished overly long in non-mainstream programs.
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