State Report

Using Information for Planning and Accountability

EXPECTATIONS

1. The superintendent and school committee evaluate school progress and student performance to ensure that the district’s vision, strategic mission, and supporting goals and objectives have been implemented effectively.

2. The central office collects, analyzes, and uses data to plan instruction, to set instructional priorities, to allocate resources, and to be accountable for student performance.

3. The superintendent provides professional development and ongoing support on interpreting and using data to school staff, members of school improvement teams, and other individuals or groups responsible for school planning.

INDICATORS

• The district has information infrastructure and technology supports that facilitate accurate collection, entry, storage, and flexible retrieval of a wide range of information.

• Annual district reports include disaggregated information on all schools, state assessment results by level and subject for two years, including comparisons of projected and actual growth, disaggregated graduation rates, as well as percentage of teachers who do and do not meet qualification standards.

• Data are easily accessible to a wide range of users.

• Central office staff, principals, and teachers reference specific data in explaining instructional decisions.

• School committee members can articulate the components of success and generally can describe how students in the districts are performing on those expectations.

• The district improvement plan and school plans cite a convincing range of data as the rationale for decisions about policies, priorities, and actions.

• The data system is used to answer a wide range of district and school inquiries, increasingly including questions about the effectiveness of interventions for different types of students.