Analysis

• Definition: (1) The examination of something in detail in order to understand it better or draw conclusions from it. (2 )The separation of something into its constituents in order to find out what it contains, to examine individual parts, or to study the structure of the whole

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This is NOT an Analysis

• “We did not make AYP in 7th grade reading, 8th grade math. We did not make AYP in 3rd grade reading with our low income and students with disabilities groups”

• Instead, this is a description of your ISAT learning results. An analysis of your data would break down the description into smaller parts to give details as to WHY those grade levels and AYP groups did not make AYP.

This Is Data Analysis

• Looking at 7th grade reading, for example, you could break it down into each AYP subgroup to see which of those were underachieving with the result that even the “ALL” group did not make AYP. The next step in the analysis would be to look at the content strands as shown on the IIRC for the ISAT to discover those areas that were weak both for the grade level and among the AYP subgroups that did not make AYP.

Local Assessment Data

• Local assessment data may be any assessment of learning used by the school that is not the ISAT or PSAE. Local assessment data may be a summative assessment such as the Terra Nova, formative assessment such as Thinklink, or teacher made criterion referenced assessments that are also used in a formative manner.

Local Assessments to Validate State Assessment Data Analysis

• Local assessment data is best used to support or validate the learning deficiencies identified as a result of the analyzing ISAT/PSAE results.

• When local assessment data is used in this manner it makes a stronger case for the school improvement team to focus their improvement efforts to the identified areas of underachievement.

Longitudinal Trends

• Your data analysis, using both state and local assessment data will be stronger if you analyze both data sets over the course of several years (data from the current and at least the two previous years). While this analysis is not a compliance issue, it does make a stronger case for identifying consistent areas of underachievement that have been resistant to improvement. Identifying such resistant areas are the key to continuous school improvement.