District Report Cards:District Report Cards:A Useful Tool for Parents?A Useful Tool for Parents?

May 12, 2014Arkansas General

AssemblyJoint Committee on

Education

Objectives of PresentationObjectives of Presentation1. Introduction to OEP2. Today’s Topic: District RCs– Can we improve on existing information?

3. What do other states do?4. What other indicators should we consider?5. Prototype Report Card6. Feedback/Questions

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TodayToday’’s Topic: District Report Cards?s Topic: District Report Cards?

• ACT 35 from 2003-04 special session legislated a school rating system

• NCLB system not currently helpful• Districts across state are either rated as Achieving (~ 4%) or Needs

Improvement (~96%)

• AR has published school performance reports for years

• Report cards with a lot of important and helpful information currently produced by Arkansas Research Center (but PDF’s of 20+ pages).

• How could we do a better job of quickly sharing the most important information with parents and district stakeholders?

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Room for ImprovementRoom for Improvement

• Current ADE School Report Cards• Demographic & funding background indicators

• Grade by grade test scores; categorized by subgroup

• Additional data on AP, ACT, SAT

• Graduation Rates & Attendance Rates

• Disciplinary incidents

• Student retention rates

• Teacher quality indicators

• Very Detailed PDF on ADE Web – Would it be helpful to have a 1 page hardcopy for all parents?

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1 Pager 1 Pager 2 Sources of Data 2 Sources of Data

• Quantitative Data on Student Achievement

• Benchmark (or PARCC) Assessments for Grades 3-8

• HS End of Course Exams

• Graduation Rates

• Survey Data from School Community

• Teachers

• Parents

• Students

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Precedent for Such a Report CardPrecedent for Such a Report Card

• Example report cards from other states

• What to look for?

• Letter grades (and clarity of calculations)

• Graphics

• Indicators other than test scores

• Visual appeal

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+ Visual graphics of test scores+ Includes: performance, attendance, promotion, dropout and graduation rates-Does not include growth measure-Overall grading system unclear

ArizonaArizona

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Summary of Report CardsSummary of Report Cards

• Perhaps too “busy”

• Examples of how “not to present” information to a public that is not fully engaged in this type of information

• The example on the next slide might be a bit better

• Colors & Clarity

• Simplicity

• Definitions

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Other ComponentsOther Components• Current legislative interim study on district wide surveys

(Looking at “360” evaluations)• NM – Opportunity to learn student survey

• HI – School Quality Survey (SQS) targets teachers, students, parents, admin staff, and support staff

• Goal is to provide context, not to be high-stakes or part of letter grade (if high-stakes, responses might be guarded)

• Many different constituencies to consider (teachers, students, parents, etc.)

• These surveys could deal with parental involvement, school safety, work environment for teachers, student engagement, etc.

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OEP Prototype Report CardsOEP Prototype Report Cards• Not clear if this should be produced by ADE or outside entity (or

at all!)

• Goal – with a one pager, – Easier to read and digest…

– Share overview level school information to a public who may:

• Stop here .. This is enough information

• Dig further .. Surf to comprehensive ADE performance reports on web

• Key components:• Page 1: test proficiency rates, test score growth, HS measures, and overall

letter grade (goal of summary letter grade is to help public make sense of individual components of report card)

• Page 2: important contextual data from surveys and subgroups

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Proposed Proposed Report Card Report Card

DraftDraft•Includes District / State Includes District / State infoinfo

• DemographicsDemographics• Spending per PupilSpending per Pupil

•Includes measures:Includes measures:

• BenchmarkBenchmark• ProficiencyProficiency• GrowthGrowth

• High SchoolHigh School• Gr. 11 LiteracyGr. 11 Literacy• Alg. + Geo.Alg. + Geo.• Graduation RateGraduation Rate

•Overall GradeOverall Grade

•State averages for a State averages for a comparison point comparison point

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Proposed Proposed Report Card Report Card

DraftDraft•Includes survey data:Includes survey data:

• Parent Parent perceptionsperceptions

• Teacher Teacher perceptionsperceptions

•Based on survey Based on survey distributed to parents distributed to parents and teachersand teachers

•Includes subgroup Includes subgroup academic performance academic performance on all measureson all measures

Questions?Questions?

Thank you for your time and invitation!