Laws & Guidance ELEMENTARY & SECONDARY EDUCATION
Guidance on Standards, Assessments, and Accountability
Archived Information


Example: Procedures for Identifying Schools for Improvement Under Transitional Assessments

A State has been using a published standardized norm-referenced test and a writing sample assessment in its State assessment system for the past several years. The State has set the advanced performance standard at the 90th percentile, the proficient standard at the 70th percentile, and a basic (partially proficient) standard at the 50th percentile. Similar standards,using a holistic scoring system, have been proposed for the writing assessment.

This State's procedure for identifying schools in need of improvement is based on thepercentages of students at various performance levels on these measures. The goal is to increasethe percentage of students at or above the proficient level of 70th percentile on the norm-referenced test and at or above a score of 70 on the writing sample to 100 percent. The amount of increase in the percentage required of schools and districts in order to make progress would depend on how low their baseline percentage was. The lower the baseline percentage, the greater the increase required each year. The State set 10 years as its time line to achieve this goal.For example, if a school had 30 percent of its students achieve the proficient level, then the gap between the baseline and 100 percent is 70 percent of its students. Since this gap should beclosed in 10 years, on average an additional 7 percent of its students in that school must reach theproficient level each year to achieve adequate yearly progress.

[Return to Transitional Assessments]


 
Print this page Printable view Send this page Share this page
Last Modified: 10/10/2003