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 statistically generated performance range of similar students statewide. This chart uses only one year of assessment data.

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. 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 100% proficiency of all students. Over time, as the schools improve, the computer-generated ranges will themselves 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 supports to help all of their children reach proficiency.

Statistically generated performance models level the playing field

Schools with high concentrations of low-income or special needs children have always complained about being unfairly compared to schools whose less challenged children perform at higher levels on standardized tests. So, for example, the achievement demonstrated by schools on this year’s Performance Progress charts roughly reflects their average socio-economic background. The schools designated as high-performing tend to have children who come from more affluent backgrounds; the reverse is also true.

For example: while Providence’s Asa Messer School is deemed ‘low-performing,’ its students – nearly all of whom are eligible for subsidized lunch (a poverty indicator) – have out-performed their counterparts statewide for the last three years running. The modeling reveals that the school adds more value to their children’s education than schools with similar student bodies and has valuable lessons for those schools. Conversely, a ‘high-performing’ school in western RI appears at the bottom of the value-added lists signaling to its school community that much more can and should be expected of the school and its students.

In general, the public tends to compare high-performing schools with low-performing schools without considering differences in student characteristics. In fact, poverty is the strongest predictor of student achievement, except for that student’s prior achievement. (Without a Universal Student Identifier system in place that would enable RIDE to know students’ grade point averages, RI is not able to factor prior achievement into its research.)

The rationale

Increasingly, education researchers are using these models (see the Technical Brief), often called “value-added,” to calculate what results schools are likely to achieve when taking into consideration the characteristics of their student body. “Value-added” means that as compared with similar students statewide, does the individual school add more value, or improve the child’s skill set more effectively, than other schools in the comparison? For over 40 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 (by far the strongest predictor of student achievement, with the exception of prior achievement)

• 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. The many reasons for these historic patterns of achievement 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, individual and family health, and the quality of social services offered to students.

Statistical models allow the public and those evaluating school performance to look at the achievement data through a lens that factors in some of the students’ challenges. This lens provides a different, but newly uniform and, in some ways, more realistic benchmark against which to measure actual performance. With the introduction of the Performance Progress designations, which are determined by absolute performance alone, the value-added perspective helps us to see to what extent the challenges facing each school influence performance.

These models predict only for groups of students with similar characteristics; they can not predict any individual student’s performance. As always, the unit of accountability in RI’s school reform agenda – as well as the new federal initiative – is the school and not the individual student.

The Rhode Island model

Rhode Island researchers created a model which considers the five characteristics mentioned above. Because Rhode Island is such a small state, the entire body of 157,347 students enrolled in public schools serves as the context from which the test and grade-specific ranges were derived. Thus, students within a school are compared with similar groups of 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 more strongly affected by language minority status than a math test. The model uses only one year of assessment data.

This is the fifth year RI will have run these statistical models on each school. Summary lists of prior years’ modeling are available at the home page of each year’s IW! under the title “a value-added perspective of RI schools.”

Please note: The inclusion of the ‘no score’ performances in this and last year’s models confounds straightforward comparisons between the results of those years’ lists with the prior years.

A technical description of the model is available under Technical Brief or upon request from the RIDE Office of Research, High School Reform and Adult Education.

* 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 subtests of the New Standards tests.

* Special to the state section

The results of each school’s modeling into summary lists consisting of bands of schools which perform similar to one another – by elementary, middle and high school levels. These are called the “value-added” lists. All the lists are available on the appropriate year’s Infoworks! web site under “RI Schools: A Value-added Perspective.”

Colored dots and black diamonds

Those schools who last year performed consistently above the statistical projection across all subtests – the top band of all three lists – and those schools who performed consistently below on all modeled subtests – the bottom band – are noted with a mark to the left. The pumpkin-colored dot indicates the schools whose students performed above their counterparts statewide and the bold black diamond indicates those schools whose students performed below similar students statewide.