Assessment Project 1

Data Analysis
Kala Smith 10/17/2013

With the completion of this assignment one can determine whether or not a district or grade level, or even teachers and their students are meeting the set standard. The projections are based off of standards collected by the schools and teachers, and broken down into Below Basic & Basic, and Proficient & Advanced. These scores were used in order to determine if they are meeting the set standard. The standard for this project was set at 50%, but could be raised or lowered to any percentage with only changed the 50%. The graph provided within the excel spread sheet are representations of how teams grades, teachers and cohorts are represented as a whole. In the first portion of the district final, it was easy to determine whether or not students met the standard or not. For example, if the group of Below Basic & Basic students met the standard than the Proficient & Advanced students did not meet the standard, and vice versa. Once the calculations were made and the grades and years were determined as meeting the standard or not, the data was then put into cohorts to show if groups of students traveling together increased or decreased in their academic standings. From the calculations done in the district final, it can be seen that throughout the years studied, most cohorts standings, Below Basic & Basic and Proficient & Advanced fluctuated both up and down. There are some though that had their grades decrease as they travel from one grade to the next. Yet, there are cohorts that have their grades standings go up rather than down. From the findings one can still see that if one group Below Basic & Basic or Proficient & Advanced met the standard then the other did not. With that being said, there has been at least one category meeting the standard for each year. In the chart provided, from one of the cohorts, years 2008-11, you can see that the students do fluctuate up and down in their categories, but it is not by a large margin. The Below Basic & Basic standard, do rise and then drop down a little bit,

but it is not at a catastrophic rate. This leads one to believe that the students are learning and moving between the groups. With that being said, it is shown, that the Proficient & Advanced did drop down by a larger portion, but then rises a little bit at the end. Through these findings, it can be seen that the standards are being met but for the first year, the groups of Proficient & Advanced met the standards, but the following two years they did not meet the standard. For the two years that the Proficient & Advanced students did not meet the standards, the Below Basic & Basic students group did meet the standard. Though this is just one representation of the findings, it represents that how both groups go up and down from one year to the next, while one group meets the standards and another does not.
140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 2008-09 (n=233) 2009-10 (n=218) 2010-11 (n=224) Below Basic & Basic Totals Proficient & Advanced Total

In the next data collection, I decided to look at the grade as a whole, and then separate them into classes with their perspective teacher. At a glance, it is important to know how the grade level is doing as a whole and then break it down into specifics of demographics and teachers. From the finding at grade level shown in the graph, it can be seen that there are more students performing at Below Basic & Basic than students at Proficient & Advanced. After finding this statistic, it was important to take a deeper look and see if there were any other factors that could play into the performance of the students.

70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Total Students Below Basic & Basic Grades Proficient & Advanced Grades

In this next part, I took the grade level and broke it down using Teacher A and Teacher B and Below Basic & Basic, Proficient & Advanced. With this first step, the findings were very close with very little discrepancy between the two teachers. To find out more about the grade level and what may or may not play a part in the students academic performance. I decided to look into the ethnicity of students. From this it could be seen that students who were LEP/EL had a large discrepancy at a grade level as a whole when it came to Below Basic & Basic and Proficient & Advanced. Even though there was a discrepancy between LEP/EL, there was very small with EL students. At this point, I broke it down further and compared the students standing grade to their ethnicity and the teacher. I did this because I believe that these two factors play an important part in the success in the classroom. A students ethnicity often plays a huge part in the success in their schooling, because their culture and way could be different. From the calculations, students with the ethnicity LEP/EL, seems to have the most struggles within school. With that being said, Teacher B had the most LEP/El students with a standing of Proficient & Advanced in their classroom than Teacher A. From this one could see that even though there is a slight difference shown in the graph, which shows Teacher B is more successful at reaching those students where they are. On the other hand, Teacher A reaches most EL students where they are, than Teacher B does. Taking all of these steps helps a teacher, a school, or even a grade

level pod of teachers see where they stand with their teaching effectively as well as where their students are standing academically. Looking at the findings of both teachers and both ethnicities at one time, shows that each teacher has a strength at teaching to one ethnicity as another, but it also shows that both teachers need to work on reaching all students and improving the scores of students. The graph below sums the data up and best represents where the students stand with their ethnicity and their teacher, and the graph provides a visual on teacher performance with different ethnicities.
45% 40% 35% 30% 25% Below Basic & Basic LEP/EL 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Teacher A Teacher B Proficient & Advanced LEP/EL Below Basic & Basic EL Proficient & Advanced EL

While it is important for the district and grade level to know where their students and teachers are standing to meet a certain standard or not, it is just important to know how other factors such as ethnicity play a part in the success of a students and or teacher. From the data shown here, one can see that there is always one group of students meeting the standard while there is one group that is not meeting it. From this data, districts and teachers can sit down and

figure out better ways to reach the students who struggle the most because they will be able to see at a glance where their strengths are and where their weaknesses are as well.