By Christopher S. Sefcheck, Acting Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment

Each school is“ graded” on the percentage of students proficient in Language Arts / Literature, Math, and Science / Biology. High school scores in this area also include the percentage of students that have passed Industry Standards-Based Competency Assessments, such as the NOCTI Tests administered to Career and Technical Education students. Additionally, at the high school, SAT / ACT College Ready Benchmarks are added. The combination of all of these scores combined equals 30 % to 40 % of the first domain.

Schools are required to show each year that they are working to get the percentage of proficient students closer to 100 %. This score is calculated towards“ Closing the Achievement Gap.” Every school has two groups of students that impact this score: all students and a small group of students that are historically underperforming. This domain accounts for a total of 10 % of the overall score.

The domain with the highest impact on the School Performance Profile relates to student growth. Essentially, prior to taking PSSA / Keystone Exams, every student has a predicted score they are expected to reach. When adding all of these predicted scores together and dividing by the number of students taking the assessments, we get a“ Growth” score. Accounting for 50 % of the overall score, the“ Growth” score can fluctuate based on how far from the predicted score the outcome lays in either direction, up or down.

Other Academic Indicators account for the last grouping of scores and include Graduation Rate( HS), Promotion Rate, Attendance Rate, Advanced Placement Scores( HS), and PSAT participation. This domain accounts for up to 10 % of scoring. Extra Credit can be given for calculations of the percentage of students in each school that have scored Advanced on PSSA / Keystone Assessments, as well as the number of HS students that have received a score of 3 or higher on Advanced Placement Exams.

Information for all schools in the district and commonwealth are available to the public if you visit www. paschoolperformance. org. All you have to do is select what role you fill in the community or school. After choosing the search criteria, you can look at the scores of any school in the commonwealth. Helpful explanations are also found within the website as well. For fast checks, our scores are posted below. Please feel free to call me at West Jefferson Hills at any time if you would like a deeper look at what the SPP means for your school and the district.

WEST JEFFERSON HILLS SCHOOL DISTRICT NEWS

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