User's Guide
INFORMATION WORKS! evolves:
This year, for the first time Information Works! will not be
published in book format. It will exist online only, and it will be
kept up to date and corrected as necessary. As in the past,
Information Works! 2003 consists of this
User’s Guide, a State Section, and a
section that contains District
and School Reports. The State
Section, or State Report Card, will be published separately in book
format. The District and School Reports will each be published
separately by the local school districts and distributed within each
district. Appendices on special topics may later be added to the
on-line edition of Information Works! 2003.
Please note the following changes from Information Works! 2002:
Changes in the School Reports:
The field called “In their own Words” has been eliminated. The
field called “Progress Summary” now explains each school’s
performance category and improvement status. The “Performance
Progress” field now includes assessment data on all subtests
administered in each school. (In 2002, that information was
available in the on-line edition only.) Information on teacher
quality (percentage of teachers with emergency or special
provisional certification) has been added to the “Selected School
Indicators” field; the dropout and graduation rates have been
moved to a new field, “Learning Support Indicators.” The third
page of the school report concerns “learning-support indicators.”
The first field on this page contains information on each of the
indicators relevant to each school. The next three fields on the
third page present selected information about student, parent, and
teacher responses to the SALT Survey. This information was part of
the calculation of the learning-support indicators. The fourth
page of the school report contains a field listing suspensions,
broken into 40 categories. Last year, this information was
available on line only, and the field contained only 12
categories. The bottom field on the fourth page, “Selected
School Indicators,” contains data on teacher attendance and
grievances. This information was reported on line only in 2002;
grievances are no longer reported by category, and “span of
responsibility” is no longer reported. “School Goals,” which was
reported on line in 2002, is no longer reported.
Changes in the District Reports:
A field has been added—“School performance and improvement”—which
shows the percent of schools in each performance category, the
percent of schools showing improvement, and the percent (and number)
of schools identified as “schools in need of improvement.” The
“Selected district indicators” includes the SALT Survey teacher
response rate and the percent of teachers with emergency or
special provisional certification.
Changes in the State Report:
The report on students with special educational needs has been
expanded. It now includes graphs that show how students with
disabilities perform in each state assessment and on the SATs.
Another set of graphs disaggregates the students with disabilities,
comparing those who have IEPs with those who have 504 plans, for
example. A third set of graphs shows the dropout rates for students
with disabilities. The state report includes a table that show the
Learning Support Indicators for each school. Another table
presents SALT Survey information on school climate.
Statewide data on suspensions, broken down by type of suspension,
is also included.
When data could compromise confidentiality
When the number of test-takers drops below 10, the results are
considered statistically unreliable and are not reported because
they could compromise confidentiality. Very small sample numbers
make it possible to identify or to invite guessing as to the test
results of individual children. Information Works! is about the
functioning of schools and districts, not about individual children.
Thus, very small classes of test-takers such as those in New
Shoreham and the RI School for the Deaf are also not reported. (Note
that Field #4 concerns “Achievement over the past three years.” Some
schools that have fewer than 10 test-takers per year may more than
10 over the three-year span and may therefore have data reported in
this field.)
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