MAY 1999
Parent's Guide to the New Report Cards

PARENT’S GUIDE TO THE NEW REPORT CARDS:

CONTENTS

State Grades School, Student Performance

Why These Tests Are Important

What Parents Can Do To Help

Elementary School Report

Middle School Report

High School Report

Student SOL Report

For More Information

By Adam Kernan-Schloss and Leslie Lawrence

All parents of Arlington students recently received a letter and two reports from their principals: the new School Performance Report from the state and an accompanying brochure prepared by Arlington Public Schools to provide a broader look at each school’s offerings.

In addition, parents of students who took the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests last spring (given at Grades 3,5 and 8 and at the end of 11 high school courses) received one or more Student Performance Reports. Students who took multiple end-of-course tests got a separate report for each.

The state reports are new and, not surprisingly, confusing. As a service to parents, SPOTLIGHT has prepared this guide to help you make sense of the information, to point out some things you should be looking for, and to suggest how you can use these reports to help improve the performance of your child and your school.

This is the only year that parents will receive all of these reports at once. Students will take the SOLs again this May, and parents will get a new Student Performance Report this summer. In the fall, parents will get the state’s new School Performance Report, and a revised Local School Report from APS.

Expect steady improvement

The most important point is that these tests—and accompanying reports—are designed to help more students do better in school, especially in the core subjects of English, math, science and social studies. In response to widespread concerns that American students aren’t doing well enough in school, virtually every state is developing more challenging academic standards for what students should know and be able to do — and then developing tests to measure student progress and publishing report cards as part of an effort to hold schools, students and communities accountable for improvements.

Arlington officials say the SOLs are helping teachers, principals, parents and students to focus instruction, curriculum and professional development.

Higher expectations

All of this is very new. Schools used to challenge only a small percentage of students, those going on to UVA, William & Mary and other tough four-year schools; the new standards are designed to give virtually all students something closer to a college-prep education. Virginia’s old statewide test — the Literacy Passport — essentially required high school students to have 6th-grade skills in reading, writing and math. Otherwise, students simply had to sit through a certain number of courses and get passing grades. By June 2004 (when this year’s 7th-graders are seniors), students will need to pass 6 of 11 SOL tests to get a standard diploma, 9 of 11 for an advanced diploma.

As in other states, Virginia’s first-year scores were very low, which isn’t surprising given that the tests are new. The challenge now is to use these scores as a starting point for teachers, administrators and parents in every school to help students strengthen their weak areas. Report cards like these let parents and others in the community see for themselves how well students are doing in each subject in each school — and where students need help. This kind of public reporting also is new.

This issue of Spotlight provides specific suggestions for how parents can help.

• Provide focus for instruction.
• Help ensure that all students know and can do "the basics" in English, math, science and social sciences — regardless of which school they attend.
• By 2003-04, when this year’s 7th-graders are seniors, they’ll have to pass at least 6 of 11 tests to graduate.
• By 2006-07, each school must have 70% of its students passing the tests (50% for Grade 3 science and history) to remain fully accredited by the state.

Test scores are only one indicator of your student’s performance. Classroom grades, teacher comments and scores on the Stanford-9 test (a national test given to students in grades 4,6 and 9) also count. Talk to your child’s teacher(s). Look particularly for any anomalies, such as your son always gets A’s in math but did very poorly on the SOL. How come? And more important, how will the teacher work with your student and you to improve his performance?

Put SOLs in perspective

These SOL scores shouldn’t be surprising. It’s only the first year of the test; students didn’t know what to expect, and schools still haven’t fully adjusted their curriculums to reflect what the test measures.

The important point is that the SOL scores set a baseline and starting point. What we should see now is steady improvement in coming years. This has been the experience in states and communities that are ahead of us. To their credit, Arlington school officials and board members have adopted a proactive and determined stance to these scores, instead of pushing the panic button as some in Fairfax seem to have done.

Assess your school

For your school, see where scores are particularly strong, celebrate good news, and commit to doing even better next year. Don’t be misled by averages. An average scaled score of 400 in Grade 3 Math could mean all students scored 400 — or that half scored 600 and half scored 200!

In areas where scores are particularly weak, have principals and teacher(s) explain how they will strengthen instruction. Have them be specific.

Keep teachers focused

Also, keep the pressure on teachers and principals to send a message to the students that these scores are important. We say this because of widespread reports that teachers last spring were telling students not to take the SOLs seriously. That’s dumb. Even if they won’t count directly for graduation for several years, scores still send a very loud message to the community about each school, its teachers and its students.

Don’t flinch

For the system, we parents need to keep pressure on the board and administration to use these test scores to help drive future improvements. Don’t flinch. Yes, it’s possible that these SOL tests are unrealistically tough and too challenging, as some are saying already. But we won’t know that until we have several years of scores. Meanwhile, let’s all push for steady progress, year by year, school by school, student by student.

This excerpt shows the percentage of students in your school who passed each test; a score of 400 on a scale of 0-600 is passing (details below).

By school year 2006-07, 70% of students in your school must get a passing score in each subject (only 50% for Grade 3 History and Science) for the school to remain fully accredited by the state. In this example, the school would not have been fully accredited because 70% of 5th-graders didn’t pass Math or History.

If your school didn’t have passing scores this year, it will need to show steady gains between now and 2003-04. If your school doesn’t improve, it will get a warning and then will have three years (until 2006-07) to improve before the state intervenes; Richmond hasn’t said what it might do.

Only ATS and Jamestown had scores good enough for accreditation this year. Several other schools came close, except in History, where scores were very low statewide.

The excerpt below and to the right shows the average scaled scores for the 3rd-grade students from this school who took the tests last spring. The elementary school report to parents includes 3rd- and 5th-grade scores for English (reading and writing), Math, Science and Social Science. The scale ranges from 0 to 600; an average of 400 or above is good.

Unfortunately, the state compares only each school’s score with the state average, not with the Arlington average. If you want to know the Arlington average in each reporting category, email SPOTLIGHT at adam@ksagroup.com, ask your principal, or call Kathy Wills at the APS Assessment Office, 228-6155.

To provide a closer look at each school’s performance, the report card subdivides each subject area into a few reporting categories, such as understand a variety of printed materials/resource materials and understand elements of literature in English; number and number sense and measurement and geometry in Math; and geography and civics in Social Science. Don’t try to figure out the relationship between these scores and the scaled scores above; there is none. For these sub-scores, the key number is 35. Any score higher than 35 is above the state average.

If you want to know the Arlington average in each reporting category, email SPOTLIGHT at adam@ksagroup.com, ask your principal, or call Kathy Wills at the APS Assessment Office, 228-6155.

Some reporting categories are more important than others

Parents also should know that not all reporting categories are equal; the tests ask many more questions about certain sub-areas than others. For example, in Grade 3 English, there were 10 questions each on use word analysis strategies and understand a variety of materials, but only 5 on understand elements of literature. To see exactly how many questions were asked about each reporting category and which Standards of Learning are covered by each sub-area, ask your principal or check out the state’s web page at www.pen.k12.va.us (SOL Test Information in the Popular section).

The key number in this excerpt is in Column 3 — the percentage of students tested. The simplest way for a school to boost its test scores is for teachers to tell the lowest-performing students to stay home on testing days. You want to make sure that virtually all non-exempt students (97% or up) in your school are being tested. Exempt students include those with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) and some special education students.

Test scores for students who are Limited English Proficient (often called ESOL/HILT students in Arlington) won’t be counted for the first two years of the SOL test. Arlington officials fear that school scores will decline, perhaps significantly in some schools, when these LEP scores are counted. State officials are considering proposals to adjust passing rates for schools with many newcomers. It’s also worth noting that LEP students did better on Algebra II this year than non-LEP students.

Fall membership (above)

This is the total number of students in each grade at your school. Again, the school information would be more useful if it were compared to the Arlington averages for each grade.

Research shows that academics suffer disproportionately for students who miss 10 or more days of school a year; this is more meaningful data than the average daily attendance.

Student Attendance	School 97.98	State 97.98
Students missing 10 or fewer days	75.71	79.8
Average Daily attendance (ADA)*	75.71	79.8
* Not available for 97-98	N/A	N/A

This is typically parents’ top concern. This table shows actual incidents in the past year, as opposed to percentages or averages. There are many disputes about these data, which are self-reported by each school. Principals who under-report incidents could "look good" in these reports — not exactly what the state had in mind.

Also, the data are not particularly meaningful because they compare the number of incidents at a particular elementary school with the total number of incidents in ALL schools (including middle and high schools) in Arlington and the state.

It would be more useful to compare the average number of elementary incidents in each school with the average number of elementary incidents across the district and state. And then compare middle school with middle school, and high school with high school.

There’s growing concern that many teachers, especially in math and science, aren’t well-qualified. Based on this measure (state licensing requirements) Arlington is doing fine. But common sense says you have to wonder about the validity of an indicator where the statewide average is 99%. The state says it’s reviewing this category.

Swanson and Williamsburg students tend to score above the state average; Gunston, Jefferson and Kenmore below.

Yorktown scores include students from H-B Woodlawn, Wakefield includes Arlington Mill and W-L includes Langston Continuation program.

This table shows the extent to which your school offers advanced academic programs such as AP courses and the International Baccalaureate (only at W-L). It’s also useful to know what percentage do well enough on the AP tests (scores of 3 or more) to earn college credit. Washington Post reporter Jay Mathews and others have been crusading to have all Arlington high schools encourage more students to take these challenging courses.

The high school report also includes data about the senior class. Again, your school’s performance is compared to the state average, but not to the Arlington average. You want to see high percentages of your students getting Advanced Diplomas, low percentages getting GED certificates or not graduating at all. As part of the SOLs, the state has raised graduation requirements, starting for students who graduate in June 2002 (this year’s 9th-graders). To earn an Advanced Diploma a student will need 25 credits (not 22 as before); to earn a Standard Diploma a student will need 23 credits (not 21). Moreover, all students must take tougher courses, such as algebra and geometry.

In Spring 1998, 3rd-graders were required to take Standards of Learning (SOL) assessments in four areas: English (which has two components, Reading and Writing), Mathematics, History and Social Science, and Science. The state report gives results in all four areas.

Reports for 5th-grade and 8th-grade students also include technology and a writing sample.

High school students (and middle school students who took high school classes) get much shorter reports — a separate report for each subject, such as Algebra I, Biology or U.S. History.

The state also sends home a separate report card for Writing.

Blanks and multiple marks

If your child answered all the questions and didn’t provide more than one answer per question, this number will be zero. So, don’t be alarmed if you see a column of all zeros! These zeroes in no way relate to your child’s scores.

 Scaled scores and Pass/Fail

Scaled scores are reported for each subject. For each subject, the scale is from 0-600.

A score of 0 to 399 is a failing score and is reported as Fail/Does Not Meet. A score of 400-499 is a passing score, and is reported as Pass/Proficient. In general, Pass/Proficient indicates that your child has a solid understanding of the material.

A score of 500-600 is also a passing score, and is reported as Proficient/Advanced.

In this particular example, the child’s total score in mathematics was below 400, and therefore this child failed the test. But he passed English with a score of 437.

 Scaled scores and raw scores

The scaled score is derived from the student’s raw score — the number of questions in each subject the student answered correctly.

For most subjects, students need to answer between 65% and 75% of the questions correctly to pass. But in some subjects, such as high school Biology and Algebra I, students need to answer only about 50% of the questions to pass the test; presumably, the state officials who set these passing rates (known as "cut scores") believe some tests are harder than others.

In this example, a 3rd-grade student needs to answer 32 of 45 English questions correctly to get a scaled score of 400 (Pass/Proficient), 42 of 45 to get a scaled score of 500 (Pass/Advanced). In 3rd-grade math, 36 of 50 is Pass/Proficient, 45 of 50 is Pass/Advanced.

Parents received their child’s raw scores last spring. Unfortunately, the new state reports for students don’t also include these raw scores.

 Reporting category scores

Think of reporting categories as the sub-areas of each subject. For example, the math test includes the categories (sub-areas) of number and number sense, computation and estimation; measurement and geometry; probability and statistics; patterns, functions and algebra. Each reporting category has a scaled score.These scores reflect how well your child did in each of the reporting categories (sub-areas) of the test, compared to other Virginia children who took the test. The statewide average score for each reporting category is 35. Thus, if your child received a score of 35, he or she did better than 50% of Virginia students in that particular category.

In the Math test, this particular student was above average only in measurement and geometry, below average in the four other reporting categories. In Reading, the student was above the state average in all reporting categories; in Writing, above average in one of two categories. Caution: Don’t try to use these averages to figure out how many questions your child answered correctly in each section.

Your principal

Kathy Wills, APS, 228-6155

Virginia’s web site, www.pen.k12.va.us, has state, district and school scores, sample test questions and more.

Back issues of SPOTLIGHT (especially Dec 98/January 1999, March 1999 and Jan./Feb. 1998). Index to Spotlight Issues