User's Guide: Introduction

Welcome to the 2004 User's Guide

For those of you new to Information Works!, please remember that the data is from school year 2002-2003. Each year of Infoworks displays a wealth of data gathered in the year prior to its publication.

The User's Guide presents three kinds of information:

• What you are looking at and What you are looking for offer brief, user-friendly explanations for the data in each field, along with a notion of what we consider to be the information's utility.
  
  
• When relevant, the Guide provides the source of the numbers presented and, in some cases, how they were calculated.
  
  
• In some sections, the Guide notes the changes that have resulted from state and federal policy refinements, with short explanations of or references to the policy itself.

Information Works! evolves

Please note the following changes from Information Works! 2003:

Format
This year, Information Works! is being posted on this Web site, in several stages, as pages are ready. The project began with the publication of the 2003 School, District, and State Report Cards on the R.I. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Web site. Page One of Information Works! 2004, which is based on data from those report cards, will be the first section of Information Works! to be published. The complete Information Works! 2004 should be posted by April 2004.

Beginning this year, Information Works will no longer report assessment and accountability results for the seven Area Career & Technical Schools, nor will these schools receive a school-performance classification. The assessment results of students attending these schools are counted within the high school where they take their core academic courses. The Career & Technical Schools continue to have school reports, however, including information about finances, demographics, suspensions, attendance, teacher qualifications, and other matters.

Changes in the School and District Reports:

Assessment Results
As there is no longer a distinction between "all students" and "eligible students," the numbers in the bar graphs represent achievement levels for all students in each school. The numbers below the bar show percent proficient in each school and in the state as a whole at that school's level.

Proficiency by student characteristics
Based on one year of data only. Multiracial is no longer listed as a category; poverty and nonpoverty are calculated for all three school levels for the first time; the category "migrant" has been added.

School Classification Indicators and Performance Progress
2003 marked the first time that RIDE classified schools under the provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act; Information Works! for the first time shows annual targets for English language arts, mathematics, participation rates, and graduation or attendance rates. For the first time, Information Works! reports the school, district, and state index-proficiency scores, computed based on three years of testing data. Information Works! for the first time notes which targets each school met or missed, and it tracks progress based on the index scores. Index scores are reported for the school as a whole and for eight groups of students within the school; this replaces "achievement over the past three years" from previous editions of Information Works!.

Learning Support Indicators
Data on the SALT Survey questions that form the basis for three of the Learning Support Indicators (School Climate, Parental Involvement, Instruction) are reported on statewide tables only; that is, there are no longer individual school reports on the various SALT Survey questions.

Additional Indicators
A SALT Survey Parent Response Rate indicator has been added to the table of school indicators. The Dropout Rate is reported as an indicator on the high-school reports. Students exempted from state testing is no longer an indicator, as students are no longer exempted for any reason.

In$ite
In$ite tables on the District Reports include a section on Professional Development expenditures.

School-to-Career
Each high-school report includes a page on school-to-career programs.

Changes in the State Report

Learning Support Indicators
The high-school report is now sorted by the graduation rate.

SALT Survey
A elementary-school table has been added to the School Climate findings.

In$ite
A table on professional-development expenditures by district has been added.

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.

For charts and tables based on three years of assessment data — that is, tables that use the "index proficiency score" — data are not reported unless the minimum number of test-takers is more than 45 students over the three-year span.