2012 Preliminary MCAS Release and EDW Updates

Yesterday's regularly scheduled Webinar on the Education Data Warehouse shared an excellent new feature - an EDW "Home Page" which will keep us updated about new features, data releases, and additional resources.This home page is now available, but does not currently appear automatically as a tab at the top of the screen after you log in. You can follow the steps below to add this tab as the default so that you will see the latest information when logging into EDW 3.0.

To add the EDW Home Page tab:

• In the upper left corner of the screen, under the “Data Warehouse” banner, click the “Tab Menu” button, and choose “Add Tabs.”
• Under “Available Entries,” navigate to Cognos > Public Folders > Pages.
• Click the checkbox next to “EDW Home” and then click the green arrow in the middle of the page so that “EDW Home” moves from “Available Entries” to “Selected Entries.”
• Click “OK” at the bottom of the page.

To make the EDW Home Page your default tab:

• In the upper left corner of the screen, under the “Data Warehouse” banner, click the “Tab Menu” button, and choose “Modify the Sequence of Tabs.”
• Select “EDW Home” and then click “To top.”
• Click “OK.”

One very important piece of information that was provided during the Webinar is that the preliminary 2012 MCAS data is expected to be released via the Dropbox on June 22, and then in the EDW on June 29.


The EDW Webinars are held on the first Wednesday of the month at 11 am and the third Wednesday of the month at 2 pm. Please email datawarehouse@doe.mass.edu if you would like to be placed on the notification/reminder list for these calls.

Emerging Practices in Rapid Achievement Gain Schools

The ESE recently published a study entitled, "Emerging Practices in Rapid Achievement Gain Schools: An Analysis of 2010-2011 Level 4 Schools to Identify Organizational and Instructional Practices that Accelerate Students’ Academic Achievement."

The goal of this study, undertaken by the The Institute for Strategic Leadership and Learning (INSTLL, LLC) was to identify significant common characteristics in school turnaround practices and/or structures between the Level 4 schools making rapid achievement gains in 2010-2011 versus those schools that made little if any gains. The analysis identified three such areas of significance:

• The school has an instruction- and results-oriented principal who has galvanized both individual and collective responsibility for the improved achievement of all students through a variety of deliberate improvement structures, expectations, practices, and continuous feedback.
• The school has created instruction-specific teaming and teacher-specific coaching for pursuing ongoing instructional improvement.
• The school has developed a well-orchestrated system of ongoing data collection and analysis that informs a continuously responsive and adaptive system of tiered instruction directly attentive to students’ specific academic needs.

The report is 22 pages but definitely worth the read (or at least a quick skim!) The presence of effective use of data is embedded in all three of these common characteristics. The recent NCLB waiver presentations discussed options for the use of reserved funds to help districts' lowest performing schools make their targets, and pointed to the Level 4 study as a place to identify high-leverage strategies for use in these efforts.

NCLB Waiver Materials

Additional materials regarding the Massachusetts NCLB flexibility request (as discussed in a recent blog post) are now available on the ESE Web site.

http://www.doe.mass.edu/apa/titlei/default.html?section=GI

Farewell, AYP....hello, PPI!

I had the opportunity to take part in both a webinar and a face-to-face session in the past week to learn more about the changes to the state's accountability system given the the flexibility that has been granted to Massachusetts under the NCLB waiver.

The waiver has given Massachusetts the flexibility to implement a system that unifies both federal and state accountability requirements, rather than separate systems for each. The major changes, as outlined in the presentations, are as follows:

• The NCLB goal of 100% proficiency has been replaced by a new goal: reducing proficiency gaps by half by 2017. This goal is the same for all districts, schools, and groups...but the targets are different since the starting points will be different.
• The NCLB accountability status labels (Corrective Action, Restructuring, etc.) have been eliminated. The "Level" designation will now be used to identify both federal and state accountability status (and corresponding assistance levels) for schools and districts.
• AYP will be replaced with a new performance measure, known as PPI (see below) that incorporates student growth and other indicators.
• There is an enhanced focus on subgroups, including a new "high needs" group (students who fall into one or more of the following categories: special education, low income, or English language learner/former English language learner.) While all subgroups (minimum 30 students) will be reported, only the "All Students" and "High Needs" groups will be used for classification for the majority of districts.
• SES and school choice requirements for federal funds are replaced with options for flexibility to address identified needs.

So what is PPI? It stands for Progress and Performance Index. Each district, school, and measurable subgroup will  have two different types of PPI; an annual PPI as well as a four-year PPI. For elementary and middle schools, the PPI incorporates five elements:

• Progress on CPI gap-closing in ELA
• Progress on CPI gap-closing in math
• Progress on CPI gap-closing in science
• Student Growth in ELA
• Student Growth in Math

PPI measures for high schools will include these five elements, plus graduation rates and annual drop-out rates. In addition, it is possible to improve a PPI rating through decreases in %W/F and increases in %Adv.

This is just the tip of the iceberg! The ESE presenters have indicated materials from the workshops will be available online in the near future. I will post the link here when I have it.

Update 5/9/2012: Materials now available, see blog post here.