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There’s more to it than just passing the TAKS test. HISD has is using value-add analysis.
What it does is, it gives us a way to look not only at the achievement levels of campuses, but the growth; are these campuses actually showing improvement?
Carla Stevens is assistant superintendent for research and accountability. She says the value-added analysis takes three years of data for each child to form an academic history.
Then compares him to other students across the state who have a similar starting point to determine what would be expected. Then we look and see what growth did occur, and was there more growth this year than was expected, about the same or less.
That information is then laid out in a colored chart; green indicates better then expect, yellow what was expected and red less then expected. The chart shows a school can be rated exemplary but not improving as expected, while another school with a low rating may be showing real progress.
In addition, Stevens says this puts schools into four categories.
We can look at schools that are high growth and high performing; ones that are high growth, but maybe low performing, which would be like Kashmere High School which is a low performing campus, but they really are showing growth; or you have campuses that are high performing but low growth, maybe they’re doing well on passing rates but the kids aren’t really improving like we would expect them to; or low growth low achievement and that’s where we really need to focus.