Tennessee

Tennessee Affiliate

Through the support and leadership of the Tennessee Department of Education, Tennessee State University and the Tennessee Education association are driving school improvement across the state.

Contact:
Susan Bonesteel
Director State Services, NCEA

For additional information on becoming a Just for the Kids state affiliate, click here.

2004 Tennessee Elementary School Identification Criteria

Grades Included: 3rd, 4th, 5th Grade
Subjects Included: Reading, Mathematics and Science
Years Included: 2002 and 2004

Performance Rate Used:

  • % Proficient in 2002
  • % Advanced in 2004

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

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

Data Components NCEA Model Tennessee
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. Unfortunately no data were available for 2003, so school years 2001-02 and 2003-04 were used.
Criterion Referenced Exams Criterion-Referenced Tests (CRTs) are strongly preferred to Norm-Referenced Tests (NRTs). NCEA model applied.

Model Specifications NCEA Model Tennessee
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: Percentages of low income, African-American, Hispanic, 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.
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 to split into 10 groups, so five groups were substituted (0-20% low income students, 20-40% low income students, etc.).

Criteria NCEA Model Tennessee
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). Because of difficulties finding consistency, this criterion was relaxed from 50 or above to 40 or above. Also 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 85.3 NCEA model applied - overall performance rank requirements for Reading and Mathematics ranged from 75 (for schools with three tested elementary grades in their gradespan) to 85 (for schools with just one tested elementary grade in their gradespan). The Science requirement was 75 or above regardless of gradespan.
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. The participation rate criterion was changed from 85% to 80% for 2002 and AYP data was used in 2004.
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 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