Local Assessment Data Analysis

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On Tuesday, February 17, 2009, not even a month after being sworn in, President

Barak Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 into law.

This bill was enacted to help stimulate the United States economy after a crisis not seen

since the Great Depression. In its entirety, the bill is four hundred and seven pages long

and has many inclusions. Summarized by recovery.gov, the bill includes taking action to

save and create millions of jobs in two years, computerizing health records while

reducing medical errors and saving billions in health care costs, and reviving the

renewable energy industry to help the US produce double the renewable energy capacity.

The bill goes on to weatherize millions of federal buildings and homes, increase the

affordability of college for millions of students, revitalize the nations roads, bridges, and

mass transit systems, provide tax credits for working households, expand the Child Tax

credit and all while insuring huge levels of accountability on the part of those agencies

given money (recovery.gov, 2009).

While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides billions of

dollars to many facets of the US economy, it also provides approximately $100 billion

dollars to the public education system. With a president who is quoted as saying In a

global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good

education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity it is a pre-requisite. The countries

that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow, it is clear that the focus placed on

education is clearly necessary. The act provides money to reform and improve the

education system while creating job and stimulating the economy. In many cases, these

funds are one-time resources that have specific uses. The resources given to each school

district should be used in ways that will lead to greater results for students and large gains


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increase teachers ability to improve results for the long-term, not simply for the two

years that this money is available. Will the program using American Recovery and

Reinvestment Act funds accelerate reform? Programs need to advance state, district, and

school improvement plans. Can using these funds avoid the cliff and improve

productivity? This question looks to insure that when the funding is gone, the schools

will not go unprepared to assume responsibility of the project. The government wants the

uses to serve as funding to bridge the gap to more effective and efficient approaches in

learning. Lastly, the government wants decision makers to question if the program they

want to fund will foster continuous improvement. This question insists that the use of

funding includes ways to measure and track the implementation and results created by

projects using the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds (The American

Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: Saving and Creating Jobs and Reforming

Education, 2009).

The real work of this educational problem begins when the states are issued funds

from the government. Virginia has been issued $806 million dollars to improve our

school systems. When this money becomes available, how could one committee

undertake the process of disseminating these funds to districts that most need the funds?

While the meetings and process is most likely long and arduous, the Virginia Department

of Educations website offers numerous types of assessment and descriptive data that can

be filtered from state results to district results and in some cases, even school results.

With School Report Cards that include information such as student achievement levels,

accreditation standards, safety measures, and attendance records for every school in the

state, there is more than enough information to sift through to make these decisions.


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While the School Report Card page includes school specific information, the

Virginia Assessment Result page may include more detailed information that could be of

use to decision makers. Available at

https://p1pe.doe.virginia.gov/datareports/assess_test_result.do, the Virginia Assessment

Results includes Standards of Learning test results as well as other assessments that the

Board of Education uses to measure learning and achievement. These results focus

mostly on English, mathematics, history, and science. This page allows the user to

generate specific reports on student performance by school division, school, subgroup

(male, female, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, Hawaiian, Students with

Disabilities, students labeled disadvantaged, limited English language proficiency,

migrant, non-migrant, and grade levels), test the user is interested in seeing assessment

results for, and in what form the statistics should be returned (number passing, number

taking, pass rate, proficient pass rate, advanced pass rate, and failure rate).

When the State of Virginias Department of Education looked at the American

Recovery and Reinvestment Act and what the act specifically wanted funds to go to in the

way of education, a list of key elements were generated (Key Elements for Education in

Virginia, 2009). The Department wanted to use funds from this act to help fund schools

with higher concentrations of disadvantaged students who were most at risk of failing the

achievement tests. Using the School Report Cards and the Assessment Results page

would allow a user to see with a 48% fail rate, the schools in Covington City, Virginia,

are most disadvantaged and at higher risk of failing to meet standards in Reading, one of

the most telling subjects in school. The State also identified the need for schools that

were the lowest-achieving to be given more funds to help meet the goals under school


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Abrevaya, S. (2009). $806 Million in Recovery Funds Now Available for Virginia to

Save Teaching Jobs and Drive Education Reform

Application for Part 1 of Virginia's State Stabilization Funds Approved Today.

Retrieved June 7, 2009, from

http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2009/05/05262009a.html.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: ARRA Overview. (2009).

Retrived June 7, 2009, from

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/funding_grants/arra/info_alerts/2009/03_06_used_ov

erview.pdf.

Key Elements for Education in Virginia. (2009). Retrieved June 7, 2009, from

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/funding_grants/arra/index.shtml.

Virginia Assessment Results. (2009). Retrieved June 7, 2009, from

https://p1pe.doe.virginia.gov/datareports/assess_test_result.do.

The Virginia School Report Card. (2009). Retrieved June 7, 2009, from

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/VDOE/src/index.shtml.

Local Assessment Data Analysis

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