User's Guide: Reading the Reports
School Report – Page 1
Field 4: Achievement over the past three years, by student
characteristics
WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT
This graph shows three years of achievement data for mathematics,
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 – mathematics, reading, and writing. Three
subtests of mathematics are combined; two English language arts (ELA)
reading subtests are combined; two ELA writing subtests are merged
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 mathematics, for example?
Could poor reading scores be responsible for keeping the mathematics
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 data cells
smaller than 10 (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 each student’s
test booklett, which is 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 racial/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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