Arkansas

2004 Arkansas Elementary School Identification Criteria

Grades Included: 4th and 6th Grade

Subjects Included: Literacy and Mathematics

Years Included: 2002, 2003, and 2004

The table below details the three areas of identification process issues:

Data Components – the types of information preferred in the analysis;
Model Specifications – the ways that schools are compared to one another, and;
Criteria – the specific goals schools must meet to be considered high-performing.

Performance Rate Used: % Proficient and above

Data Components	NCEA Model	Arkansas
Longitudinal Data	If longitudinal data are available, the analysis only evaluates students who were continuously enrolled on the campus for three or more years.¹	No longitudinal data was available, so snapshot data was used and all tested students were analyzed.
Consistent Performance	To ensure that consistently high-performing schools are identified, three years of performance data are used.	NCEA model applied.
Criterion Referenced Exams	Criterion-Referenced Tests (CRTs) are strongly preferred to Norm-Referenced Tests (NRTs).	NCEA model applied.

Model Specifications	NCEA Model	Arkansas
Similar Schools	For each tested grade and subject, and within each of the prior performance groups, schools are compared to one another based on a combination of demographic factors that include the schoolwide percentages of low income students, the school enrollment, the percent of students in the prior performance group being analyzed, and several schoolwide ethnicity percentages.² The comparisons are weighted by the number of continuously enrolled tested students on each exam. A school's relative performance is the distance between their performance rate and the average performance rate of schools similar to them.	The model used the following demographic factors to compare schools for each year, within each subject and grade: schoolwide percentages of low income, African-American, and Asian students, the school enrollment, and the grade level percent of students tested in the subject. Without longitudinal data, the number of all (not just continuously enrolled) students tested in the subject was used to weight the analysis by size.³
Rank Groups	After calculating a campus' relative performance (on a particular tested subject and grade), it is ranked within one of ten low income groups: those with 0-10% low income students on the campus, 10-20% low income students, 20-30% low income students, etc. The rank produced is called an individual performance rank.	NCEA model applied with one exception - there were not enough schools in the deciles, so quartiles (0-25%, 25-50%, etc.) were used instead.

Criteria	NCEA Model	Arkansas
Individual Performance Rank	Each individual performance rank represents one tested grade, subject and year where there were 10 or more continuously enrolled students. Each of these ranks must be at the 50th percentile or above (in the top half).	NCEA model applied with the exception that there is no longitudinal data, so there must be 10 or more tested students to calculate a rank, regardless of continuous enrollment status.
Overall Performance Rank	The overall performance rank - which is an average of all the individual performance ranks across one tested subject - must be among the top of similar schools. The actual required rank - which depends on how many tested grades are at the school - ranges between 70 and 85.⁴	NCEA model applied - overall performance ranks had to be 80 or above.
Participation Rates and AYP Status	In years and subjects where Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) ratings are available, the school must meet AYP standards. In years or subjects (i.e. Writing) where AYP data are not available, at least 85% of the enrolled students had to be tested on their state's standardized exam.	AYP data was used for the 2003 portion of the analysis, and participation rates were used for the 2002 and 2004 portions.⁵
Number of Students	There must be at least 10 continuously enrolled students in one of the two prior performance groups for each grade, subject, and year in the analysis.	There were no longitudinal data available, so the number of tested students was substituted.

¹ If a school did not have three years of continuous enrollment due to their grade span configuration, three years of continuous district enrollment was substituted.  back
² These factors may vary from state to state and based on the available data.   back
³ There were two caveats in the data; 1) no 2002 ethnicity data was available, so 2003 schoolwide rates were used in the 2002 portion of the analysis, and; 2) the percent of students tested was not available, so a calculation was made of the number tested (collected in the spring) divided by the number in the grade (collected in the fall). A small percentage of the time this number was over 100%.  back
⁴ These overall performance ranks can differ because of the various grades and subjects tested in different states - in a state where 3rd - 6th grade are tested, a K-3 campus will have only one grade with which to identify high performance, while a K-5 has three grades. Our research indicated that in such states it was considerably easier for the K-3 to appear high-performing, so we scaled the required overall performance rank based on the number of grades and subjects involved in the analysis.  back
⁵ See endnote 3 - the percent of students tested was not available, so a calculation was made of the number tested (collected in the spring) divided by the number in the grade (collected in the fall). A small percentage of the time this number was over 100%.  back

National Center for Educational Achievement / Just for the Kids

Arkansas Affiliate

2004 Arkansas Elementary School Identification Criteria