Parkland School Performance Profile Released

Parkland School District's School Performance Profile was released late Friday afternoon by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

The SPP replaces the state's Adequate Yearly Progress scores previously mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The results, which were to be released last Monday, are available at http://www.paschoolperformance.org/.

Parkland School District released the following press release:

"The SPP system rates each school building in the state on a 100-point scale. The new grading system takes into account attendance, participation in standardized tests, standardized test results in science, math, reading and writing, and graduation rates as well as each school’s ability to close achievement gaps. 

"Closing the gap means raising the scores for struggling learners with the goal of ensuring academic gains are being made for each and every child. As an online public portal, the Pennsylvania School Performance Profile provides demographic data, academic data, and an academic performance score for 3,200 traditional, cyber, charter and technical public schools in the state.

"The School Performance Profile academic performance score is based not only on test scores but many other factors that signal student achievement. Forty percent of the score comes from state standardized test results, and another 40 percent will be based on progress made by students from year-to-year.

"Standardized exam scores that are included in the results include PSSA reading, writing, science and math tests and secondary Keystone exams in Algebra I, Literature and Biology. Five percent of the score comes from progress made in closing the achievement gap in math, reading, writing and science for all students and five percent is tallied for closing the gap of historically underperforming students. The final 10 percent takes other academic indicators into account including the senior class graduation rate, promotion/drop-out rate, attendance rates, degree of rigorous course offerings and PSAT participation.

"Schools may earn up to seven points of extra credit for advanced achievement on various tests, and scores are adjusted proportionally for buildings that do not have data for a given category such as a graduation rate at an elementary school. A student growth factor measures how well students are progressing toward proficiency on each state assessment.

"Title 1 schools will also earn a federal designation based on performance. This applies to all Parkland elementary schools as they receive federal funds in support of their reading and math remediation programs. A designation of “reward, priority, or focus” will be given to high performing and underperforming schools. The remaining schools will receive “no designation” status. Underperforming schools will receive intervention and support while reward schools could be eligible for extra funding.

"Parkland is particularly proud to announce that one of our Title 1 schools received a designation and it was a “reward” designation for high progress. The prestigious honor went to the Fred J. Jaindl Elementary School which earned 100 pecent of possible points for demonstrating significant progress for students at every grade level.

"'Unlike AYP in No Child Left Behind, the School Performance Profile utilizes many data points to measure our schools’ academic strengths,' said Richard Sniscak, Superintendent of Schools. 

“'This tool helps us analyze our strengths and hone in on any weaknesses across the core curricular areas of math, reading, science and writing. However, our teachers and principals take many more measures into account than just standardized test scores when assessing a child’s performance and these numbers are by no means the only data that we look at in creating individualized learning paths for each and every child in Parkland. 

"'The SPP scores do not take into account the quality of instruction or the quality of our curriculum when comparing us to other schools. For instance, Parkland students typically take Algebra I in middle school which means that our more able students are taking the Algebra Keystone exam prior to starting high school.'”

Access to the Pennsylvania School Performance Profile is available at http://www.paschoolperformance.org/.