True colors: School Dashboards reveal needs, progress

Goodbye potatoes. Hello onions. The single school score from a mash-up of state test results is history. The new era of educational evaluation comes with colors and complexity – layers of information to peel back.

A pilot version of the California School Dashboard Report rolled out Wednesday, giving a better rounded look at how schools are doing. Find it at www.caschooldashboard.org.

“It has all the things a school has to deal with on a daily basis,” said Ginger Johnson, Modesto City Schools associate superintendent. “We have to plan and meet the needs of all these (student) groups. And where does all that start? Transparency. All these data points, and behind every big data point is a bunch of other data points.”

Sitting in her office beside a stack of easel sheets scribbled with key indicators, Johnson flipped through binders of Modesto’s data points and color charts for its schools.

As a district, Modesto is fairly yellow. It has some blues (best), greens (high average) and a smattering of oranges (low). But its English learners and special education kids get more than their fair share of red (worst).

Red, and to a lesser extent orange, call out areas that need more attention, and probably more funding. Here is where the Dashboard fits in the big California picture as the third leg of the state’s local control process.

Districts get extra money to better serve poor kids, English learners and foster children under the state’s updated funding formula. The community is meant to have a hand in budgeting those dollars in district Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs). Now they have standardized information to guide them.

“I applaud the state, and how they have really triangulated this to (funding) with (budgeting) with accountability plans,” Johnson said. “It makes a lot of sense.”

The Dashboard is aligned to the same eight priorities used in the budget plans, explained Ilene Straus, vice chair of the State Board of Education. Speaking at the California State PTA 2017 Legislation Conference Monday, Straus laid out the indicators that will eventually fill out the Dashboard.

First in that priority list are the basics – does every class have a credentialed teacher, up-to-date textbooks and safe facilities? Still being debated are numerical ways to measure more subjective things, like parent participation, college readiness and school climate, Straus said, predicting a September roll out for those.

“We’re going to take our time to do this right,” she said.

Included in those negotiations is a key controversy around the new system: the plan to fold state test scores for juniors into the college readiness measure, which will also have things like number of kids passing AP classes. Critics say eliminating test scores as a standalone indicator leaves no clear academic marker for high schools.

Here are some key points to know about the Dashboard going in.

1. The data is not current and in some cases still being developed. State discipline statistics are from 2013-14. Graduation data comes from 2015. Chronic absentee numbers have not been released. Updated numbers are expected in November.

Local indicators, including parent engagement and school climate, have not yet been spelled out for districts to provide. What to include in those pending statistics is expected in September.

High schools have no academic indicators for now, but the blank college/career label includes a link to Grade 11 state test scores, and full results can be found at http://caaspp.cde.ca.gov.

2. This is being called a field test of the system, and will not count in state requirements that struggling districts get help. County office of education will be the administrative hand tasked to step in when reds remain red.

“We are going forward, while we are writing it – knowing we didn’t want to wait,” said Jill Polhemus, head of assessment and accountability for the Stanislaus County Office of Education.

Polhemus adds a third caveat for the new system: It was never meant to rank districts like the single numbers did.

“We are not comparing district to district. We are comparing districts to themselves,” she said. “The focus is on moving all kids in a positive direction.”

Layered into her comment are problems the old system ran into with districts devoting their attention to the lowest achievers, who in the state mash-up got the greatest weight. That system, called the Academic Performance Index (API), ended in 2014.

“Every time you give us a math formula, we’re going to find a way to work it,” Johnson said with a wry grin. “What I love about this is that every single child matters.”

The old way of compiling scores essentially how many kids got each letter grade, with Fs given extra weight. The system made the strugglers the focus. Once kids got over the minimum meets-standards bar, going higher made no difference to a school’s score.

The new system counts all scores as separate numbers, but with a wonky twist. Picture a number line where zero is the pass point to be at grade level (meets standards). Every student’s score is calculated as points above that zero or points below. Lower achieving schools will have a negative score.

What this means in practice is, while very low students still drag the overall score down, very high students pull it up. For the first time since 2001, needs of gifted students matter, too.

Here is what the Dashboard lays out, using Modesto City Elementary Schools as an example. The district also has a more current data display on its website.

Equity Report: This front page is missing five of its nine indicators. Modesto’s suspension rate, English and math test scores are all yellow. Its English learner progress is orange. The page has basic statistics. Enrollment is 15,272 students, 87 percent of them low-income, 39 percent are English learners. The district has 11 student groups, four of them are in the red or orange zone in English.

Status and Change Report: This gives the numbers behind the colors. Modesto’s suspension rate was high, 4.6 percent, but declined significantly from the previous year. Its English learners’ progress was low, and dropping. Its English and math scores were rated low, and stayed basically flat compared to the year before.

Student Group Report: This pages splits the same basic information by student groups. Suspension rates are all mostly yellow except for Asian students (green), Filipino and Pacific Islander (blue) and American Indian (orange). In test scores, students with disabilities and African Americans were in the red. English learners did poorly on the English test. Only Filipino students excelled.

School pages: Schools have four indicators, for now. Enslen Elementary, for example, fell in the green zone for suspension rate and math scores, and into the yellow on English tests. The school has an enrollment of 413, nearly half of whom are low-income. It has too few (less than 30) English learners to get a color, but their progress is listed as at medium level and improving on the data page.

This story was originally published March 15, 2017 at 11:07 AM with the headline "True colors: School Dashboards reveal needs, progress."