A RESOURCE GUIDE FOR APPLYING NCLB IN HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOMS
COMPONENT: Assessment Data to Improve Instruction
DEFINITION: Assessment Data to Improve Instruction is the component of the No Child Left Behind Act that supports teachers and principals as professionals to make data-driven decisions to improve teaching and student achievement.
SUMMARY OF NCLB REQUIREMENTS

The No Child Left Behind Act requires States, school districts, and schools to use assessment data to determine the degree to which all students are meeting the States’ challenging academic content standards in reading or language arts, mathematics, and science and student academic achievement standards in reading or language arts and mathematics. To support instructional improvement for all students, the academic assessments must focus on the following selected requirements:
  1. Generate academic assessment data for individual students.

  2. Assess challenging academic content standards and higher order thinking skills and understanding in appropriate grade levels in at least reading or language arts mathematics, and science.

  3. Provide reasonable adaptations and accommodations on academic assessments for students with disabilities and with limited English proficiency.

  4. Produce individual student interpretive, descriptive, and diagnostic reports that help parents, teachers, and principals to understand and address the specific academic needs of students.

  5. Report information about achievement on academic assessments in a user-friendly format to parents, teachers, and principals before the start of each school year.

  6. Disaggregate results within each State, school district, and school by gender, by each major racial and ethnic group, by English proficiency status, by migrant status, by students with disabilities as compared to non-disabled students, and by economically disadvantaged students as compared to students who are not economically disadvantaged.

  7. Produce and report itemized score analyses to school districts and schools so that parents, teachers, and principals can interpret them and differentiate instruction to meet the specific academic needs of all students.
SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION

Introduction: These suggestions focus on a method for analyzing the results of State and classroom assessment programs to improve instruction delivered to all high school students. The method involves four data sources typically generated by State assessment programs to gauge student academic performance. The steps in this method may be applied to any assessment that generates data based on specific academic content standards. This is a significant departure from using assessment data that compare students against each other, rely on grade level scores without backup information to describe what grade level performance means, and promote composite scores without references to the areas assessed in the composite.

Who Uses Data? Professionals use data to improve the quality of their products and services and to satisfy their customers. For example, stockbrokers track the Dow Jones Averages; baseball players focus on statistics about batting, fielding, pitching, winning, and losing; and physicians keep a close watch on their patients' vital signs. The general public uses data to guide decision-making about lifestyles and personal choices. People consider data related to savings, checkbook, and credit card balances; weight gain and loss; investment portfolio performance; employment resumes; and income taxes.

In both professional and personal cases, data are compared to some standard such as an expected profit, a credit card spending limit, or a vision of a quality life. The data have great meaning for professionals and the public to make decisions that help them to reach their goals.

In this method teachers analyze four data sources that move from the big picture of school performance to specific details about individual students and content standards. An emphasis is placed on how standards-based data sources represent indicators of progress toward annual, measurable objectives for adequate yearly progress and the vision of student learning in the No Child left Behind Act. Moreover, teachers are encouraged to use this type of data on a daily basis to guide classroom lesson planning, test development, and teaching strategies. The method helps teachers to use any State assessment program and classroom student achievement data to set priorities for developing standards-based instruction to meet targeted student needs.

Step One: Determine school progress toward meeting State academic content standards.

Teachers start this Step by analyzing line graphs over time for reading or language arts, mathematics, and science for the grade assessed in their high school. Then, they describe the high school's performance from the starting date to the current school year for adequate yearly progress. This indicates whether the high school is improving, flat, declining, or ebbing and flowing on the academic content standards for each subject area. This Step tells parents, teachers, and principals the overall general improvement trend of their high school on these measures.

Step Two: Determine how close students are to meeting the proficient student academic achievement standard.

In this Step teachers identify the number and percentage of students in the aggregate and in demographic subgroups needed to meet the proficient student academic achievement standard for reading or language arts and mathematics assessed in the grade range 10-12. This Step reveals to teachers the scope and magnitude of the instructional tasks that need to be completed, e.g., high numbers mean many students will need targeted, differentiated instruction to progress to the proficient achievement level. At the school level this Step is very personal because teachers will know the students from past experiences and will be able to address needs and build on interests and talents to improve their instruction.

Step Three: Determine how student performance compares across specific academic content standards in a subject area.

First, teachers analyze assessment data for each academic content standard in reading or language arts, mathematics, and science. This means teachers will analyze data to learn how well each student performed on each content standard. For example, mathematics may have 10 content standards for the high school assessment in grades 10-12. At this stage, if the overall mathematics assessment score is low, teachers will need to determine which specific content standards of the 10 are contributing to that overall low performance trend. From this analysis teachers can select a reasonable number of content standards as priorities for improving instruction. Then, the priority content standards serve as targets for developing standards-based instruction and assessment activities. This Step applies to each content standard so that students, teachers, principals, and parents are aware of specific strengths and weaknesses.

Step Four: Determine if there are disparities in demographic subgroup student performance.

In this Step teachers analyze assessment data for each academic content standard by grade level and by gender, race, or other subgroups. Here teachers identify, if any, disparities in performance among subgroup members, e.g., females are outperforming males in reading or language arts academic content standards related to ready fluency. Based on this type of analysis, teachers follow-up by making adjustments in instructional activities to address the needs of the students in the subgroups. An extension of Steps 1-4 occurs when teachers compare findings for each Step independently and later in an instructional team setting within and across grade levels to find commonalities and differences in student performance across the high school.

Step Five: Gain Insights from State and Classroom Assessment Data

This Step focuses on insights that teachers may discover by analyzing State standards-based assessment data sources together with their classroom assessment data sources for the same academic content standards. These insights guide teachers to make improvements in teaching and student achievement.

In a teacher's world, the best data analysis is one that results in the needed insights for improving instruction for their students. When State assessment data are analyzed along with classroom data, it is possible to obtain from the data those insights that will remain hidden from teachers who continue to use traditional analyses. For example, what insights can be discovered to improve the content standard "reading for information" when relying solely on a percentage increase or decrease of a composite score of several content area standards? Or by looking at comparisons of scores about grade level average performance without reference to specific standards and individual students? Those analyses do not allow teachers to determine what might be causing improvements or failures in "reading for information" or any other content standard or indicator. However, by analyzing data about specific academic content standards and indicators teachers will gain insights and improvements that are aligned with the No Child Left Behind Act, State, and school visions and standards for student achievement.

In this Step teachers build on Steps 1-4 by identifying insights from standards-based assessment and classroom data for developing standards-based lessons for each month of the school year. First, teachers consider information gained from analyzing a school's State assessment program data in Steps 1-4. Then, they compare data about the performance of their students on classroom standards-based assessments currently and in recent years. Now they can compare how their classroom results compare with annual State assessment results and trends over time on individual academic content standards. This leads to discussions among teachers on school-based teams to determine how to support specific standards in all classrooms.

Step Six: Benchmarking Teaching Methods that Work

In Steps 1-5, teachers analyzed data about the performance of their students on specific academic content standards. That process helps teachers to focus on what to teach but not on how to teach. In this Step, teachers analyze data about the teaching process in order to select a method with the best track record of success for helping all students to achieve their priority academic content standards. This is where the findings of scientifically based research on teaching and the results of benchmarking successful schools can be correlated with the appropriate academic content standards. A valuable contribution can be made by high schools during this Step by videotaping the selected teaching method during instruction and correlating the results of State and classroom assessments with the method. For example, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) correlated the results of student achievement with teaching methods used in three countries to account for student performance. Over time this process would lead to an action research knowledge base about the quality of teaching in a high school on the path of continuous improvement.
SOURCES FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

Improving Student Achievement Through Quality Teaching - Excerpts authorized from an online professional development program for planning, teaching, checking, and acting on the results of standards-based instruction and assessment.
http://www.elearningteacher.com/eLTISATQT.html

Analyzing and Using State Assessment Data
http://www.mdk12.org/data/default.cfm

Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study - Includes information about correlating the results of student assessments with video data about effective teaching methods.
http://nces.ed.gov/timss/video.asp