Case Studies: Overview | Classroom | School | District
Value-added reports created by SAS® EVAAS® can provide school leaders with information on students' progress at each grade level and in each subject area. There are three types of reports that display value-added data at the school level:
School Value-Added Reports provide detailed information about the progress rates of students in an individual school.
School Diagnostic Reports allow you to identify patterns of progress among subgroups in a school within the same grade and subject.
School Performance Diagnostic Reports allow you to identify patterns of progress among subgroups of students predicted to score within different performance levels.
For more information and specific examples of each of these types of reports, see the Houston Independent School District's Resource Guide for Value-Added Reporting.
Administrators and other educators within a school can use the information provided by the various different value-added reports to:
- Assess the progress rates of individual students and subgroups of students within the school.
- Determine teacher effectiveness with different levels of students. For example, it might become clear that one teacher shows consistently high rates of growth with high-achieving students while another shows high rates of growth with low-achieving students.
- Design professional development that targets specific teacher's strengths and areas for improvement.
Below is an explanation of how one school, Maryville Middle School, effectively utilized value-added data. Maryville used the information gained by analyzing value-added reports to lead their students to impressive academic gains.
At Maryville Middle School in Tennessee, Principal Joel Giffin and school staff used value-added analysis to lead their students to impressive academic growth. Maryville used school performance diagnostic reports to gauge the progress of low, middle, and high achieving students, as well as the success of each teacher at helping students at various achievement levels to grow. The staff at Maryville used this value-added information as the cornerstone of their school improvement plan, which featured the following elements:
- Strategic placements for students and teachers. The school team used value-added data to match high, middle, and low achievers with teachers who had demonstrated success helping students at that achievement level. For example, if a teacher demonstrated that he/she was most successful helping middle-achievers grow, the school would match this teacher with a relatively homogenous group of middle-achieving students. By disaggregating data at the student level, educators could target specific student needs.
- Additional support for struggling students. Educators used value-added data to identify the appropriate placement for every student in every subject. Students who were identified as requiring additional support were placed into small classes of approximately 7-8 students. These classes were designed so that students could receive extra help from the school's most effective teachers.
- Targeted professional development. Ongoing training and professional development sessions were designed to train staff on how best to interpret and use data to inform instructional practice. In professional learning communities, educators used the data to share best practices and discuss how to improve instruction.
As a result of their sustained school improvement efforts, Maryville Middle School has been one of the most successful schools in Tennessee, with a 10-year average of 144% of the national norm growth rate in reading, math, science and social studies.
The following resources provide additional information on how value-added assessment can be used to drive school improvement efforts.
- Maryville Middle School's presentation details how value-added data was used. This tool demonstrates how to create a scatter plot graph to identify performance trends among different subgroups of students. It also discusses how to construct individual growth plans for students and develop professional development strategies for sharing value-added data with teachers.
- Battelle for Kids, an organization that partners with school districts to deliver educational services, has developed a variety of materials useful for understanding value-added at the school level. Battelle provides information about the benefits of value-added for principals, the implications of value-added for the gifted community, and the connection between value-added and teacher collaboration. Battelle's example of a school that has effectively used value-added data and instructions on how to analyze a value-added report are helpful.