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Performance Progress
Download the illustrated 2 page guide:
Criteria
that Determine Improvement and Performance
Select a school level to view
and/or print the charts in PDF.
What you are looking at:
You are looking at a sequence of three lists. These schools have been grouped first by those
that improved in both math and ELA – see
Criteria
that Determine Improvement and Performance
for specific criteria – than those that improved in one
but not both subjects, and finally a band of schools
that did not improve, according to the criteria.
Indicated on the right of the chart, is a determination
of the school’s performance in terms of high-,
moderately- or low-performing, also explained on
previous pages. In other words, you are looking at a
judgment call as to where schools stand – as of now –
academically and in terms of momentum toward meeting
goals.
What you are looking for:
RI’s goal is to help all children to 100% proficiency.
Obviously those schools who are designated as
‘high-performing’ are closer to the 100% mark than the
others, but for now the more important factor is whether
the school is improving. An improving school has
demonstrated a plasticity, a willingness to change and
an ability to implement changes successfully. You are
hoping your school is improving.
In some cases, school not yet classed as improving have
instituted changes too recently to yet show up in
student achievement results.
‘Improvement’ is the new
watchword
Passed in 1997, RI’s education reform legislation, known
as Article 31, is already five years old. The state
administered the first few New Standards Reference Exams
the same year, and for most tests and grade levels, we
now have at least four full years of test data. The
following year, 1998, the state both began administering
the SALT survey and first published Information Works!
with its multi-faceted look at each school using
comparable data. As part of Information Works!, URI
researchers developed a “value-added” model to show
schools how their students were performing as compared
with similar students statewide and these lists,
especially useful when compared year to year, have been
published annually since. SALT visiting teams piloted
their first-hand observation techniques in 1997 and have
visited about 60 schools each year since, or about 20%
of all RI schools annually. As of June 2002, roughly 60%
of RI’s schools will have hosted SALT visits. This
wealth of information has been made public through the
RIDE website (www.ridoe.net)
as soon as it became available.
Thus, for several years school improvement teams, school
committees, principals, teachers and communities have
had access to high-quality information about the
functioning of their schools, both the good news and
areas of concern. While some schools have been working
diligently to use their school’s data to drive
improvement, others waited to see if the state and
national passion for school accountability would pass.
It did not. Indeed, the new federal legislation, the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2002 (ESEA),
called “Leave No Child Behind,” intensified the need for
all schools to be on the road to improvement or risk
sanctions.
The need to come to terms with annual judgments about
the schools
State Education Commissioner Peter McWalters has said,
“It’s not about where you land on these lists, it’s
about how you set targets and move toward targets.
Principals set targets for their schools three years
ago, and now there will be consequences.”
Whereas in the past, RI’s state charts provided an
impression of school quality from a wide variety of
information, the charts were effectively value-free.
Standards had not been set, so ‘success’ or ‘failure’
were in the eye of the beholder. Schools might have been
embarrassed to sit at the bottom of their value-added
list over the course of years, but suffered no real
consequences. All along, RIDE’s plans for “progressive
support and intervention” have been evolving as the
increasing wealth of data on individual schools and
districts shaped possible responses to schools that for
whatever reasons do not meet performance targets.
A whopping 58% of all RI schools showed ‘no
improvement’
The time had come to take a good hard look at where each
school stood in relation to helping 100% of its children
meet a proficiency standard. Based only on assessment
data this year, the determinations on these lists help
RIDE and the public draw some preliminary conclusions as
to the current health of each school. To some extent,
the lists act as triage, offering the state a way of
identifying those schools – specifically those that are
“low-performing” and “not improving” – that need the
most immediate, assertive help. All schools, through
their districts, must submit plans for closing the gaps,
even if they are “high-performing.”
Not surprisingly, most of the schools deemed
“low-performing” are in the core urban districts and
those identified as “high-performing” have children with
more affluent backgrounds. This is not a surprise, but a
principal objective of statewide school improvement
efforts is to make sure that all children have
educational opportunities that can help them achieve and
thrive beyond any socioeconomic determinism. For the
moment, the state cares less about the determination of
the over-all performance than it does about the school’s
ability to improve. With regular improvement gains, all
schools can become institutions that equip children for
bright futures.
The judgments rendered in the lists help the public see
clearly that most RI schools have not yet managed to
become fully responsive to the challenges of their
children and the demands of accountability.
The standards are high
Bear in mind that the state assessments themselves set a
standard whose demand for substance and quality is
comparable to high standards anywhere in the world. No
one imagines that the tests’ proficiency requirements
are in any way an easy mark. Furthermore, a 3% gain both
for the proficient students and those at the lowest
levels of performance is also a fairly rigorous goal to
meet. No doubt this year’s list did not pick up those
schools that have made substantial changes that have not
yet materialized into a “bump” in the text scores. Often
schools launch a number of initiatives that together
might take, say, three years to gel, become effective
and get results. Still, the 42% improving schools show that internal
changes – in curriculum, personalization, the use of
time and resources, among others efforts – affirm that
substantial gains are possible with students at every
socio economic level, in schools with widely differing
resources. Improvement was not concentrated in affluent
communities; indeed, evidence of improvement was spread
quite broadly throughout the state and occurred mainly
where the school community was serious about using data
to drive change.
The future of these lists
RIDE is already considering a number of additional
indicators that might be included in next year’s
evaluations of schools. Indicators such as a school’s
ability to improve absenteeism, the drop-out rate,
student support and other factors, demonstrate
improvement on a level deeper than assessment, without
which achievement will never budge. You can’t teach a
child who isn’t there, for example, so addressing high
absenteeism must come first since high absenteeism will
inevitably erode gains from other efforts.
Not only is RIDE considering more indicators for the
list, but over time the state will certainly raise the
bar for cut-offs for the groupings criteria. For 50% or
more of a school’s students to be performing
proficiently over three years is good, but only half way
to 100%. According to ESEA, schools should improve by a
fixed percentage each year, but how this gets
interpreted over time will unfold differently in each
state, no doubt. However, RI is one of the few states
already positioned to make data-driven judgments about
its schools, having built a system that can set and
monitor targets. As always, RI will examine its own
data, especially the Spring 2002 assessment results, to
determine its next steps in regards to these lists.
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