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What you are looking at
This graph shows three years of achievement data for
math, reading and writing – aggregated from the related
subtests – broken out by groups of students with similar
characteristics. The bar represents 100% of students
with each characteristic placed along a horizontal line
according to the percent who achieved proficiency and
the percent who did not.
What you are looking for
You are looking for the shortfalls between the 100% goal
and the actual attained proficiency of children with
certain comparable characteristics. You are also looking
for gaps between the achievement of groups of students
with different characteristics. Equipped with the
knowledge of its shortfalls, a school can begin to
target strategies and resources to close the gaps and
help all children to become fully proficient.
General school-functioning at a
glance
Field #4 examines student performance according to
groups with specific characteristics, but uses three
years of data in three broad subject areas – math,
reading, and writing. Three subtests of math are
combined; two English Language Arts (ELA) reading
subtests are combined; two ELA writing sub-tests are
merged along with the RI Writing results. Three years’
of data is generally more reliable from a statistical
point of view.
The point of this field is to paint a general portrait
of school function, with the broader stroke of three
years of data and the subtests combined. How well are
the school’s children performing in math, for example?
Could poor reading scores be responsible for keeping the
math scores depressed after the school had invested in
math? Are all three areas high? Or low? Why?
Combining data by multiple years and general subject
almost completely eliminates any datacells smaller than
5 (explained in earlier note). So, for example, those
schools who have tiny racial minority populations now
have data indicating the more general achievement of the
children with that racial characteristic.
Poverty/Non-poverty
Poverty is defined as any child who is eligible for free
or reduced-price lunch (FRL). The poverty indicator is
published at the elementary level only. The information
comes from the student header sheets for the New
Standards English Language Arts assessment, which are
completed by the test administrator. FRL data from
middle and high schools is not reliable because a large
number of eligible students do not self-identify;
therefore, we do not disaggregate by poverty/non-poverty
at these levels.
Multi-racial
On the assessments, students are asked to complete their
own demographic information with six options of specific
ethnic identifications. Students who check more than one
option are included in the “multi-racial” category, but
not in the individual racial/ethnic categories. Students
who checked no option are not included on this chart.
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