CRCT Data A Closer Look at Comparing LaBelle, Cobb County School District, and State Data LaBelle Elementary July 17, 2014 Intended use for LaBelle Elementary staff

A Closer Look at CRCT Data

Comparing LaBelle, Cobb County School District, and State Data

LaBelle Elementary (544 students enrolled)

Intended use for LaBelle Elementary staff, specifically the 4th Grade TeamKennesaw State UniversityJuly 15, 2014Amber Genzink

PurposesExamine Data for Strengths, Weaknesses, and Achievement GapsThis data will be used to identify student learning problems at LaBelle Elementary. These problems can be used to develop an action plan to assist LaBelle staff and stakeholders in implementing strategies to solve the existing problems.

2Grade Level Meets or Exceeds Percentages

As I discuss these graphs, I will refer to students meeting or exceeding proficiency simply as proficient students, so when you hear me discussing proficient students, unless I state otherwise, I am talking about the combined percentage of students that met OR exceeded proficiency. Looking at this slide, you see ------. A definite strength at the school looks to be 5th grad ELA, with 94% o f students meeting or exceeding proficiency, as opposed to 80 and 78% of 3rd and 4th graders meeting or exceeding proficiency. Next, notice the drastic difference in proficiency between Reading and LA and Math, Sci, and SS. While R and ELA was 78% prof or above, Math, Sci, and SS average around the 60% range, and go as low as 44% proficient in 3rd grade sci to 72% prof in 4th grade. Math, Sci, and SS look to be areas that we will with to improve. 3Strengths and Weaknesses: 3rd GradeSchool, District, State Comparison

Lets look a little closer at each grade level to idenfity the strengths and weaknesses. We can learn a lot from sharing strategies that are working in other grade levels and other classrooms. This graph compares 3rd grade proficiency between the school, district, and state. You can see in reading, LaBelles 3rd graders are within 9%age points from the county proficiency percentage, and only 7 from the state. However, if we continue to look further down the graph, we see LaBelles percent of prof. trails more greatly behind when we look at math, sci, and ss, with the greatest difference being in science. 36% percentage points separates labelles 3rd grader performance with that of the school district in science. This is definitely an area to work on. Unfortunately we also see that math and ss are also trailing behind the district with a slightly smaller gap of 21%age points in math and 26%age points in ss.4Strengths and Weaknesses: 4th GradeSchool, District, State Comparison

When we move up a grade level to make some comparisons amount Labelles 4th graders, the district, and the state, we see that the gaps in reading, lang arts, and math appear similar. However, The gap in science achievement has shrunk 10%age points from the 36%age point difference between labelle and district we saw in 3rd grade to a 26%age point difference in 4th grade. We also see that the Labelles students are also closing the gap in SS, performing 10 %age points higher in SS in 4th grade than 3rd grade, thus narrowing the gap between the school and district to a 14%age points, rather than 26%age points. So, this far, it seems that reading and lang arts are the relative strengths among these CRCT content area tests for labelle. 5Strengths and Weaknesses: 5th GradeSchool, District, State Comparison

The same strengths continue here in 5th grade. You see that labelles 5th graders continue to have the smallest distance in percentage of proficient students in reading and lang arts when compared to district and state averages of proficient students. Whats really exciting here is that the gap has nearly been closed in the area of language arts, where only 1 and 2 percentage points separartes labelle from the state and district averages. The less exciting news, is that the gaps in sci and ss are considerably wider than weve seen with the rest of the school. The percentage of students proficient in sci at labelle trails behind the district average by 27 percentage points, and the percentage of labelle students proficient in ss trails behind the the district by 44 percentage points. It appears that across the board, Science and ss are definitely two areas worthy of deeper investigation of students learning problems and solution generation. 6Strengths and Weaknesses: 4th GradeSchool, District, State Comparison

Now, were going to return back to 4th grade and dig a little deeper into some disagrreated data. As you may recall, the 4th grade was consistent with the rest of the school, in that their areas of highest achievement were reading and lang arts, while their areas for improvement were math, science, and ss. We will look for achievement gaps occurring in the areas of race, Eng Lang Proficiency, and gender. If achievemet gaps are found, these will be areas to include on a future action plan. 7Race/Ethnicity

This graph shows the most current disaggregated data by race/ethnicity and content area proficiency at labelle ele. The purple represents our black population, while the pink represents our Hispanic population. The GA dept of education does not collect and publish data on less that 10 students, because the population samples are too small. No classes 3rd through 5th grade at labelle had enough white or Asian students to register in the data. That is why you see only black and Hispanic students graphed. Youll notice an achievement gap exisits beteweet these two races at our school. African American students are out performing Hispanic students In all content areas, except language arts. The differences range from 2 percentage points in sci to 8 percentage points in ss. While the differences in percentages are not extremely drastic, they do raise concerns, since the data shows the Hispanic students are achieving at a lower percentage in 4 out of the 5 content areas. 8English Language Proficiency

CRCT Results for 2011-12 for Limited English Proficient 4th Grade Students at LaBelle Elementary

CRCT Results for 2011-12 for English Proficient 4th Grade Students at LaBelle Elementary

The next set of disaggregated data well analyze compares proficiency between labelles 4th grade students identified as Limited Eng profcificent, seen on the left, and English proficient, seen on the right. If you compare the red, does not meet sections of the two graphs, an achievement gap is noticed. In all content areas, English proficient students are meeting or exciting standards at higher percentages than limited eng proficient students. This gap is smallest in the schools previously idenfited areas of strength, which were reading and language arts, and widens in the areas we have deteremined as school areas for improvementmath, sci, and ss. Specifically, 28% limited eng proficient students did not meet standards in science, whichi is 10%age points higher than English proficient students. The most significant gap is see in social studies. 25% of limited eng prof students didnt meet standards, which was 16%age points higher than the 9% of eng prof students that did not meet the standard. Another area to note on the graphs are the blue, exceeds sections. Youll notice that 50% of the eng proficient students exceeded standards on the science test, while only 11% of limited eng proficient students exceeded. We will definitely need to implement some strategies to improve our limited English proficient students achievement in all content areas, and also implement strategies to challenge them to exceed the standards, as their eng proficient peers are. 9Gender

CRCT Results for 2011-12 for Female 4th Grade Students at LaBelle ElementaryCRCT Results for 2011-12 for Male 4th Grade Students at LaBelle Elementary

Finally, lets take a look at the differences in achievement between 4th grade females, shown on the left, and males, shown on the right. When we look at the red, does not meet sections of each graph, we dont see the overall underachieving a specific population, as we did on the last graphs. Between males and females, the differences are noticed based on subject area. The two areas in which the achievement differeces are significant are in math and ss. In math, the female students are not meeting or exceeding standards as consistently as males. 81% of the males met or exceeded standards, while only 71% of females met or exceeded. In social studies, the gap is also significant, but this time, females are outperforming the males. 87% of females met or exceeded ss proficiency, while only 79% of males met or exceeded proficiency.10Content Area 5 Year Trends

So, weve looked at school achievement compared to the district and state, grade level achievement by content, and disaggregated data by race, English proficiency, and gender. Lets look at one more graph, a line graph this time, which shows 4th grades content area proficiency trends over the last 5 years to see where weve come from and if past data could possibly provide relevant information about how to improve future student achievement. Here youll see the % meeting or ex in each content areas over the last 5 years. Youll see immediately there is a lot of movement happening with Math, Sci, and SSthe bottom 3 lines in red, orange, and light purple. Youll notice that 4 years ago, on the 2010-2011 CRCT our sci and ss proficiency was at its lowest point. However, the following year we see there was a VERY strong recovery of 36%age points in sci and 33%age points in SS. This data could be very useful when we later meet to discuss possible strategies for improving our Sci and SS in the coming year. It would be very interesting to know what strategies were put in place the year that those those large gains were made, and determine if those strategies would again be possible. Youll also notice that R and ELA has remained fairly steady, fluctuating only slightly with a dip in 2011/12 and moving back up those few percentage points during this most recent 2013/14 CRCT. Reading and ELA are definitely our most consistent areas. Math is another area that took a dip in 2011, but recovered in 2012. Unfortunately, scores dropped 24%age points from 84% to only 60% passing on this 2013/14 CRCT.11Strengths and WeaknessesStrengths5th grade ELA proficiency Consistency in Reading and ELA proficiency WeaknessesSchool: Low Science, Social Studies, and Math proficiency 4th GradeAchievement gap identified between the African American and Hispanic populationAchievement gap identified between Limited English Proficient students and English Proficient studentsFemales underperforming in MathMales underperforming in Social Studies

We have a couple areas of strength to celebrate at Labelle. The ELA proficiency for 5th grade is within 2%age points of the county average and only 1%age point from the state average. The strength could possibley be tapped to improve overall school improvement if the strategies responsible for student success in this area could be determined and implemented school wide. Consistently higher scores across the school in reading and ELA.

The schools Science, SS, and m proficiency is drastically lower than the district and state averages. In 4th grade, several achievement gaps were noted.

12QuestionsOverall Student AchievementWhat is causing our Science, Social Studies, and Math scores to be so significantly below the state and district averages?What strategies were successful to raise these scores in the past? Are we still using them with fidelity?How can we share and use the current successful strategies, particularly used in 5th grade ELA, vertically across grade levels and in each content area to improve student achievement as a school?What types of additional, research based support do our students need to be successful in each content area? How can we secure these supports?

Achievement GapsWhat we do to create meaningful learning experiences for our diverse student population and close the achievement gaps between African Americans and Hispanics, English Proficient and Limited English Proficient students, and males and females?

To end this presentation, Id like to leave you with a few questions to ponder, which would be great discussion points for future data teams. First, in the area of overall student achievement13