User's Guide: School Report – Page 2

Learning Support Indicators

What you are looking at

Each learning-support indicator is a numeric score (0 – 100) that provides information about a school and how it operates. The bar graphs show the indicator for each school and the statewide average for each indicator, based on school level (elementary school, middle school, high school).

These learning-support indicators are reported for each school:

• Attendance
• Health Education Assessment (health knowledge and skills)
• School Climate
• Parental Involvement (and parent engagement)
• Instruction
  
  
• High schools receive a 6th indicator: Graduation rate.

Three of the indicators are reported as percentages. Attendance shows how many days children in each school are present, that is, not absent because of illness, suspensions, truancy, or other situations such as family emergencies. The Health Education Assessment shows what percentage of the children in each school achieved proficiency on the state health-education assessment, over the past three years, and what percentage failed to do so. (The assessment is administered only grades 5 and 9, so not all schools will have this indicator.) The Graduation rate shows the percentage of students in the class of 2003 who have graduated from of school, based on the number of students in that class who entered the school four years ago.

The three other learning-support indicators are index scores derived by the 2003 SALT Survey. Each score is based on responses to numerous questions on the surveys. The school-climate indicator is based on parent, student, and teachers surveys; the parental-involvement indicator is based on the parent and teacher surveys; the instruction indicator is based on the teacher surveys.

A “technical bulletin” that includes an explanation of the learning-support indicators and how they are calculated is available from RIDE or on the RIDE Web site, www.ridoe.net.

What you are looking for

Test scores are useful for telling us what students have learned and which students have learned, but the scores do not tell us about the conditions in a school that contribute to improved student learning. The learning-support indicators give us information that helps educators, their school-improvement teams, and the school communities decide what teaching practices, school structures, and cultures should change in order to improve learning. The learning-support indicators are meant to begin discussions in schools and districts about what should be done to provide the conditions in which students will be able to learn better.

The goal for the other three indicators—School Climate, Parental Involvement, and Instruction—is a score of 100.

School Climate
This indicator is based on student and teacher responses to the SALT Survey; the graphs show the score for each school and for the state at this school’s level (elementary, middle, high school).

The School Climate Indicator concerns such aspects of school life as school safety, expectations that students have for themselves and that teachers have for their students, and respectful relationships between teachers and students. This indicator also denotes whether student behavior is disruptive, whether teachers are invested in the success of their students, and whether students know that they can approach someone in their school to discuss both academic and personal problems.

Parental Involvement
This indicator is based on parent and teacher responses to the SALT Survey; the graphs show the score for each school and for the state at this school’s level (elementary, middle, high school).

The Parental Involvement Indicator denotes whether families are comfortable in school environments and are fully engaged in supporting their child’s learning by helping with homework, attending conferences, participating in school-improvement activities, and communicating with teachers. It also show whether the schools provide ongoing opportunities to communicate with parents and whether they are creative in their approaches to help reluctant families feel comfortable working with teachers.

Instruction
This indicator is based on teacher responses to the SALT Survey; the graphs show the score for each school and for the state at this school’s level (elementary, middle, high school).

This indicator shows whether standards-based and research-based instruction takes place in the school. It also shows whether teachers are well prepared to implement standards- and research-based instruction, and it denotes the barriers that teachers face or the support that they receive as they implement good instructional practices.

Other Indicators
For attendance, the long-term goal is 95%, meaning that no more than 5% of the school year should be lost because of illness, suspensions, truancy, and other absences. The goal for the current year is 90%.

The current goal for the Health Education Assessment is 50% — half the students in each school meeting or exceeding the standard of the across the past three years of testing data. Students are more likely to make healthy decisions and to avoid risky behavior when they are equipped with the knowledge and skills to do so.

For the graduation-rate indicator, the ultimate goal for each school is 95%, matching the goal established by the R.I. Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education that no more than 5% of all students will drop out of any high school. The goal for the current year is 71.4%.