Mississippi

2004 Mississippi Elementary School Identification Criteria

Grades Included: 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Grade

Subjects Included: Language, Reading, and Mathematics

Years Included: 2002, 2003, and 2004

Performance Rate Used:

% Proficient and above in 2002 and 2003
% Advanced Proficient in 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.

Data Components	NCEA Model	Mississippi
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 were 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	Mississippi
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, and the enrollment of the school. In 2004 the number of all (not just continuously enrolled) students tested in the subject was used to weight the analysis by size, but this variable was not available for the 2002 and 2003 data so the total number of students in the grade was substituted.
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.	There were not enough schools within each of the ten groups, so four low income groups were used for rankings: schools with 0-40%, 40-60%, 60-80% and 80-100% low income students.

Criteria	NCEA Model	Mississippi
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 are no longitudinal data, so in 2004 there had to be at least 10 tested students to calculate a rank - regardless of continuous enrollment status, and in 2002 and 2003 there had to be at least 10 students in the grade to calculate a rank - regardless of continuous enrollment and tested 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 85.³	NCEA model applied - overall performance rank requirements ranged from 70 to 90 depending on how many grades were tested.
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 were available for both 2003 and 2004. For 2002, when there was no AYP legislation, no data were available on the percent of students who were tested participation rates could not be checked for that year.
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 in 2004 and the number of students in the grade was substituted in 2002 and 2003.

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 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

National Center for Educational Achievement / Just for the Kids

Mississippi Affiliate

2004 Mississippi Elementary School Identification Criteria