DuFour’s Theory As part of promoting accountability in the education system and compliance with Common Core State Standards, the relevant state departments produce State Report Cards. The State Report Cards provide information regarding the performance of public schools within the state. State Report Cards are crucial towards evaluating student achievement and rating the overall performance in the school. In Pennsylvania, the State Report Card is developed and published by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and focuses on different aspects including academic performance. As a teacher in one of the schools in Pennsylvania, examining the State Report Card is crucial towards determining whether my students have learned what they are supposed to based on the PA Common Core Standard. Currently, I reach Business related courses that are designed to assist students prepare to compete in competitions like DECA, mock trial, and other business topic competitions.

Part 1: Examining Overall Achievement Data

As previously mentioned, Pennsylvania Department of Education publishes State Report Cards that provide significant information regarding students’ and schools’ performance. The performance data provided in these report cards help in determining student achievement, which is crucial towards formulation of appropriate teaching strategies that enhance students’ performance. Based on its State Report Card, Pennsylvania measures student achievement through state tests, which are utilized to generate academic performance scores. The insights obtained from these tests are utilized to formulate the Pennsylvania School Performance Profile. Through using these tests, Pennsylvania examines various issues that are utilized in developing academic score including indicators of academic achievement, indicators of closing the achievement gap, indicators of academic growth, and other academic indicators (Pennsylvania School Performance Profile, 2017).

One of the assessments utilized by the state to measure student achievement is Pennsylvania’s Value-Added Assessment System (PVAAS). This assessment is a statistical analysis tool that is used to measure the influence of a district, school or teacher on the academic growth rates of groups of students on an annual basis (PVAAS Statewide Team for PDE, 2016). The other assessment utilized by Pennsylvania’s Department of Education is the Educator Effectiveness System, which is designed to assess classroom teachers through classroom observations, elective data, teacher specific data, and building level data.

I currently teach Business related courses at Downingtown HS East Campus, which is included in the State’s Report Card. The school’s State Report Card provides different types of data that can be utilized in planning instruction and assessment in order to enhance student achievement and performance. The first kind of data provided by this report card is fast facts regarding the school including career and technical center programs as well as percentage of enrolment by ethnicity, student groups, and gender. Secondly,...

Third, this report card provides data on school analysis which includes school improvement data, expanding excellence across various content areas, and simulations. Lastly, the school’s State Report Card provides comparison data through which its performance can be compared to other schools in the same district or charter.
In addition to providing different types of data, the school’s State Report Card addresses various content areas. The major content areas addressed in this report card include Mathematics, Literature, Science/Biology, and SAT/ACT College and Career Readiness Benchmark. These content areas are utilized as the premise for determining the academic performance of the school and student achievement within a particular year.

Based on the school’s report card, white non-Hispanic students account for 79.62% of the school’s student population followed by Asian Non-Hispanic students, Hispanic, African American, and Multi-Racial students at 9.44%, 4.86%, 4.58%, and 1.51% respectively. Additionally, special education students account for 18.43% of the student population whereas economically disadvantaged and English learners account for 12% and 0.95% respectively (Pennsylvania School Performance Profile, 2017). The school’s State Report Card also shows that there are more male students compared to female students at 52.21% and 47.79% respectively. In this regard, white non-Hispanic students tend to perform better in the school followed by Hispanic students. Male students have also registered better academic performance in comparison to female students while economically disadvantaged students perform better academically than special education students and English learners. With regards to content areas, ELA Literature is ranked top at 91.79% and followed by Mathematics at 88.58%, and Science/Biology at 86.18% (Pennsylvania School Performance Profile, 2017).

The information provided in the school’s State Report Card is crucial for me as a teacher to plan instruction and assessment. First, I will utilize this information to examine areas where students are currently performing well and areas where they need improvement. I will then examine whether students are learning what they are supposed to in the various content areas. I will then utilize performance data to plan for instruction that focuses on reinforcing the students’ areas of strength while enhancing areas requiring improvement. In this case, the planning for instruction will entail adopting new teaching strategies to help students develop competencies in their various content areas. The teaching strategies will be accompanied by designing the curriculum in a manner that enables students to learn what they are supposed to as stipulated in the State’s Common Core Standards. I will then administer regular assessments/tests to students to evaluate their progress in learning what they are supposed to and achieving the desired academic…