Progress Towards
Targets: Elementary School
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Progress Towards
Targets: High School
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What you are looking at
The first bar in each of the three subject areas represents the school’s actual level of proficiency in each of the sub-tests, using the results of the 1998, 1999 and 2000 tests. The second bar shows the target score for 2001 which the school set two years ago, applicable to the Spring 2001 tests that will be reported in next year’s IW!.
What you are looking for
You are looking at the gap between the three-year cumulative proficiency rate for this school calculated for this year (1998,1999 and 2000 test results) and the target set for next year’s three-year cumulative proficiency rate (1999, 2000 and 2001 results).
Why are the high schools’ target sub-tests different from middle and elementary?
The 10th grade New Standards ELA exam was not administered for the first time until 1999 and, therefore, does not yet have three years’ of data.
Setting and meeting targets
Rhode Island’s educational policies are committed to helping all students reach high standards in essential areas. According to this guiding principle, state assessment results show that every school in Rhode Island needs improvement because no school has every student reaching every standard. Thus, all schools need to concentrate on improving teaching and learning. Setting achievement targets is a way of tracking a school’s efforts over time. Eventually, the relationship between actual proficiency rates and targets will provide parents and the community yet one more view or lens through which to assess the success of a school's improvement efforts.
Creating the first data points for achievement trends
Fortunately, we’re able to study other states’ experience with setting progress targets and handling rewards and sanctions that go with them. Perhaps the most important lesson is that a single year of data can woefully misrepresent the movement a school is making towards 100% proficiency. A particularly exemplary or challenged class can skew the results and either inflate or deflate the real achievements of the school as a whole. For this reason, Rhode Island intends to look at the achievement trends using three years of averaged data from related tests.
For most tests, the 2000 achievement data offers us the first actual data point which combines a full three years of comparable test scores. Henceforth, the three-year rolling averages will include the most current year’s scores and drop the oldest score of four years earlier. Over time, the three-year averaged points will show trend lines, or the progress schools are making towards achieving higher proficiency rates among their students.
The targets are the projected proficiency rates, or the intended improvement in proficiency, set three years earlier by each school. Over time, the actual proficiency trend lines will be measured against the targets schools have set for themselves.
 Special to Web page 3
Targets for the other subtests
All sub-tests not represented in the hardcopy – for which there are at least three years of data – are represented on the web page 3. For high school there is only: Math: Skills. For Elementary and Middle there are: Math: Skills, Math: Concepts, ELA Reading: Basic Understanding, ELA Writing: Conventions and RI Writing.
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