Pennsylvania School Report Card

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, the school’s State Report Card provides data relating to academic performance across various content areas including Mathematics, Literature, and Science/Biology. 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 performance/results. Insights from these regular assessments /tests will then be utilized to improve teaching strategies and the learning environment in order to enhance student achievement in the respective content area.
Part 2: Examining State Report Cards Over Time
Pennsylvania School Performance Profile not only provides data relating to the current performance and academic achievements of students and the school in the current school year but also provides historical information on how the school has performed in the previous years. As a result, this data can be utilized in assessment of the school’s performance over time in order to formulate strategies that would help in enhancing student achievement and learning outcomes in the subsequent years. Pennsylvania School Performance Profile provides information on how the school has performed in the past three academic years. Based on the information, enrolment of the students at Downingtown HS East Campus has increased over time from 1609 in 2013-14 to 1722 in 2015-16. However, the overall academic score of the students has declined over this period despite the increase in the number of students enrolled in the school. For instance, the academic score in 2013-14 was 97.3 which declined to 93.8 and 90.7 in 2014-15 and 2015-16 respectively (Pennsylvania School Performance Profile, 2017). However, this academic score is still significantly high, which implies that my students have maintained a high overall score in state tests over the past three academic years. The high overall performance in state scores by my students is also reflected in the fact that the Build Level Academic Score is 94.2 (Pennsylvania School Performance Profile, 2017).
While the school’s State Report Card provides insights regarding the academic performance of the school over the past three years, its does not provide information regarding the performance of the different student subgroups over this period. The report has primarily focused on providing historical information regarding the overall academic performance and performance in the various content areas. However, the report provides information regarding the performance of the different subgroups in 2016-17 academic year. As previously indicated, the various subgroups that perform well in the school include white non-Hispanic students, Hispanic students, male students, and economically disadvantaged students.
The historical information in this report card shows that students performance in different content areas over time has improved in Mathematics but remained relatively constant in Reading, English, and Science. For example, ACT Subject Scores Average for Mathematics improved from 23.68 in 2013-14 to 23.82 in 2014-15 and 24 in 2015-16 academic years (Pennsylvania School Performance Profile, 2017). On the other hand, ACT Scores for Reading has slightly declined from 24.14 to 24, English has slightly declined from 23.22 to 23, and Science from 23.18 to 23 over the same period. However, each of these three subjects increased in 2014-15 before decreasing significantly in 2015-16 based in both SAT and ACT scores.
Part 3: Data Analysis on My School’s State Report Card
The main goal of collecting and analyzing data from a school’s State Report Card is to utilize it in identifying areas relating to student achievement and to promote continuous improvement. In this regard, the identified content area for continuous improvement in my classroom is Business-related courses since I currently teach these courses. As shown in the school’s State Report Card, one of the areas relating to student achievement that needs continuous improvement is Reading. This area has experienced a slight decline in performance since 2013-14 academic year despite the slight improvement in 2014-15 school year. This area is affecting student achievement in Business-related courses and has thus been identified as an area requiring continuous improvement. One of the problems I am currently facing in my classroom is the fact that many students undertaking these courses are lower level or average students who struggle with higher level thinking and development of their ideas. My students are struggling with this because of difficulties in reading, which is an area of instructional need in Business-related courses in the school, particularly among lower level or average students.
As part of promoting continuous improvement, I believe that there is need to develop appropriate measures to respond when students experience difficulty in learning with respect to enhancing their reading skills. One of the interventions I will utilize to address this area of instructional need in my content area is providing readable, high-interest texts (Thoughtful Classroom, n.d.). This will help address the problem since enhancing access to such texts motivates struggling readers to read more and develop critical thinking skills (California Department of Education Publication, n.d.). Secondly, I will provide continued instruction in reading through increasing the amount of instruction on this area and providing more support to my students including enhancing small group and one-on-one instruction for these students.
In conclusion, States develop report cards as tools for evaluating students’ and schools’ achievement as well as promoting accountability. These report cards help in tracking the performance of schools over time relative to the various subgroups and content areas in the school. In Pennsylvania, the state has created report cards for various schools including Downingtown HS East Campus through the Pennsylvania Department of Education. As a teacher of Business-related courses in this school, the State Report Card has helped me examine the school’s performance over time and identify areas of improvement. The instructional area requiring improvement in my class is reading whose SAT and ACT score has declined over time.
References
California Department of Education Publication. (n.d.). Interventions in English Language Arts. Retrieved from California Department of Education website: https://pubs.cde.ca.gov/tcsii/ch2/intrvnelarts.aspx
Pennsylvania School Performance Profile. (2017). Downingtown HS East Campus. Retrieved from Pennsylvania Department of Education website: http://www.paschoolperformance.org/Profile/6517
PVAAS Statewide Team for PDE. (2016, December). What Should You Know about PVAAS? Retrieved from Pennsylvania Department of Education website: http://www.education.pa.gov/Documents/K-12/Assessment%20and%20Accountability/PVAAS/Communication/What%20Should%20You%20Know%20About%20PVAAS.pdf
Thoughtful Classroom. (n.d.). Styles and Strategies for Helping Struggling Learners Overcome Common Learning Difficulties. Retrieved November 24, 2017, from https://www.thoughtfulclassroom.com/PDFs/lsis-help-for-struggling-students.pdf