On December 13, 2006 the KSDE released the latest building and district report cards.
The press release described the results in favorable terms. It pointed readers to links on the main page of the web site. Since that page is likely to change in time, we’ve included the links here, with some explanation.
Since the files can be a bit overwhelming, let’s break them down and talk about what is in each of them. We take this information not only from the excel files linked to above, but also the assessment file documentation, which is a Word document.In the spreadsheets, there are 15 columns, and over 59,000 rows, for over 885,000 cells(!) The rows are grade levels. Each grade in each school in each district has its own line, with “Grade 13″ meaning the school as a whole.
Each grade is broken down into various student subgroups: all students, poor students, minority students, boys, girls, etc. Public schools are included as well as many privately run schools. Remember, under NCLB, schools must make not only meet their student test score goals (”AYP,” for “annual yearly progress”) for the student body as a whole, but also for subgroups of students such as the disabled, the poor, or racial minorities.
All this means that the data files can be rather large. The spreadsheet file — simply called AYP — that contains the state data has 55 columns, making for over 100,000 cells. This file has a lot of codes, so you might need to consult the AYP file documentation (cryptically labeled merely variables) to figure it out. That document, a Word file, is 13 pages long.
The most important columns are J (made progress on reading) and K (made progress on math). Of lesser importance but still of note are columns L (met attendance standard), M (met graduation standard), and N (met all standards).
Columns O through BB look at the various subjects (reading, math) and whether the school made adequate progress and participation goals for various subgroups (all, free/reduced lunch, special ed, English learners, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Pacific Islanders, Whites, Native Americans, Multi-ethnics.The columns represent the “organizational number” (e.g., D0512 for “USD 512 Shawnee Mission”), as well as the percentage of students who fall into the 5 proficiency levels on the state assessment: academic warning, approaches standard, meets standard, exceeds standard).
Math and Reading Only
If you’d like to look at math and reading, specifically, the following spreadsheet files–Math Assessment 2005, Math Assessment 2006, Reading Assssment 2005, and Reading Assessment 2006–contain, as you might expect, the state assessments for math and reading during the relevant years.
