Pennsylvania’s new Federal accountability system reflects the same principle underlying the Future Ready PA Index—meaningful evaluation of school progress should consider a wide array of evidence including academic achievement, academic progress, graduation rate, English learner proficiency, and school success conditions. Pennsylvania’s ESSA State Plan replaces an accountability system that relied on a single year of data for a single measure, and instead examines multiple years of academic and non-academic evidence. Termed “Annual Meaningful Differentiation” by the Federal statute, accountability procedures will be implemented annually to provide stakeholders with important information on both whole school and student group progress; every three years, Pennsylvania will designate schools for improvement targets based on school-level (Comprehensive Support and Improvement) and student group (Additional Targeted Support and Improvement) performance.
Pennsylvania Guiding Principles
- Equity: Pennsylvania's approach to Annual Meaningful Differentiation will designate and focus resources on the schools and students in greatest need of support, with particular attention to historically underserved communities.
- Transparency: Pennsylvania's accountability systems and school progress reporting will provide educators, parents and families, and other stakeholders with clear and meaningful reporting on both school and student group performance, as well as the ability to identify and act on opportunity gaps.
- Innovation: Pennsylvania will leverage the flexibility offered by ESSA to broaden conceptions of school progress to include academic growth, non-academic measures, and opportunity to learn factors.
Pennsylvania created a three-step system for designating Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) schools that will apply to all schools receiving funds under Title I, Part A. This process gradually narrows the number of eligible schools until the state designates five percent of Title I buildings statewide, consistent with ESSA requirements; for Pennsylvania, this is approximately 100 schools statewide. The steps are as follows:
Step 1. Preliminary designation based on academic achievement and academic growth Pennsylvania will initially categorize schools as eligible for designation based on performance in two domains:
- The percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on state assessments in English language arts and mathematics combined over two or more years; AND
- Academic growth as expressed by PVAAS-reported Average Growth Index, indicating if the school met the PA Standard for Academic Growth over two years.
To determine the subset of schools exhibiting both achievement and growth challenges, Pennsylvania will categorize the performance of schools with low rates of proficiency based on the level of evidence of academic growth for that same school; the lower a school's proficiency rate, the more evidence of academic growth is needed to exempt the school from further evaluation for CSI designation.
Example:
| Student group's Proficiency rate | For each Proficiency rate band described in left-hand column, any of the following growth values for the same student group move a school to Step 2: | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profile 1 | Less than 50 but greater than or equal to 36.7 | Moderate evidence of not meeting growth standard; or | Significant evidence of not meeting growth standard | ||
| Profile 2 | Less than 36.7 but greater than or equal to 23.3 | Evidence of meeting the growth standard; or | Moderate evidence of not meeting growth standard; or | Significant evidence of not meeting growth standard | |
| Profile 3 | Less than 23.3 but greater than or equal to 10 | Moderate evidence of meeting growth standard; or | Evidence of meeting the growth standard; or | Moderate evidence of not meeting growth standard; or | Significant evidence of not meeting growth standard |
| Profile 4 | Less than 10 | Any student group, regardless of growth value | |||
Step 2. Final designation based on additional academic and non-academic indicators. Next, Pennsylvania will examine the performance of schools designated in Step 1 on remaining accountability indicators. Schools designated in Step 1 will be designated for CSI if they:
- Fall below state-designated performance levels on high school graduation rate or English learner proficiency; OR
- Fall below state-designated performance levels on both regular attendance and career readiness indicators. See Appendix C for examples of the interplay among Step 2 indicators for purposes of CSI designation.
Step 3. Designation of additional high schools with low graduation rates. In addition to steps 1 and 2, ESSA requires that states designate "all public high schools in the state failing to graduate one third or more of their students." Pennsylvania will designate any such schools, regardless of Title I status, through evaluation of the four- and five-year adjusted cohort graduation rates.
Beginning in 2024: Title I Schools Designated Additional Targeted and Support Improvement ( A-TSI) that do not meet the exit criteria within 4 years are designated for Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) to provide additional supports to the Schools.
Consistent with ESSA requirements, Pennsylvania will use the same, basic three-step approach to designate schools in which one or more student groups face both academic and student success challenges (see above).
Like Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) schools, Additional Targeted Support and Improvement (A-TSI) schools will be designated every three years, when one or more student groups in a school perform below the CSI thresholds for academic proficiency, academic growth, and at least one additional indicator. Also consistent with CSI determinations, any school in which the combined four- and five-year adjusted cohort graduation rate for one or more student groups is 67 percent or below will be designated for A-TSI.
TSI designations will function as an annual warning system for at-risk student groups and as a signal to schools that may be at future risk for more intensive accountability cycles. Accordingly, the cut points that drive a TSI determination are considerably more rigorous than the cut points associated with CSI determinations that relate to the lowest performing 5 percent of schools, as well as A-TSI designations that result from one or more student groups in a school performing below CSI thresholds. Another important distinction between the cyclical (i.e., every three years) CSI and A-TSI determinations and annual TSI determinations is that TSI procedures necessarily draw on the most recent single year of performance data, while higher-stakes CSI and A-TSI procedures draw on multiple years of data from each three-year cycle.
Specifically, TSI designation will occur for a school in which one or more student groups are identified through the following process:
- Exhibits achievement at or below an annually determined level within one standard deviation of the statewide average achievement rate. This annual cut score will be determined in consultation with the state's Technical Advisory Committee.
- Shows risk for less than expected academic growth as described in CSI designation procedures. Specifically, the lower a school's proficiency rate, the more evidence of academic growth is needed to exempt the school from further evaluation for TSI designation.
- Falls below statewide average performance on one or more substantially weighted academic or school quality/student success indicators.
As all of these performance levels are higher than thresholds for CSI or Additional Targeted Support and Improvement, TSI designation serves as a precursor for more intensive accountability cycles.
School Improvement Plans and Implementation
Schools designated as TSI are required to develop building level School Improvement Plans and secure local education agency (LEA) approval from the Board of School Directors or Charter School. Unlike schools designated for CSI or A-TSI, schools designated as TSI can determine the duration of their improvement plan.
PDE has maintained a focus on ensuring that the supports for identified schools are grounded in evidence, differentiated based on specific school needs, and deployed in a collaborative and coherent manner alongside local educators. TSI supports and activities will be supported at the LEA level. State-supported, locally-deployed TSI supports may include interdisciplinary teams of general and special education personnel to support Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, and other activities—along with technical assistance provided by local intermediate units, and PaTTANs.
| Indicator | Reported for grades | Multiple years of Data used in calculation |
|---|---|---|
Academic Achievement: Percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on state assessments in English language arts and math
| PSSAs: Grades 3-8 Keystones: Grade 11 PASA: Grades 3-8 and 11 | Yes |
| Academic Growth: Utilizing state assessment data, a school's Average Growth Index reflects the level of evidence that a school's students achieved the expected level of growth over the academic year | PSSAs: Grades 4-8 Keystones: Grade 11 | Yes |
| Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate: Percentage of students graduating in four- and five-year cohorts | 12 | Yes |
| English Learner Growth and Attainment: Percentage of English Learners meeting individual attainment targets as measured by the ACCESS for ELLs | K-12 | Year over year growth measure |
| Regular Attendance: Percentage of students, enrolled for 90 or more school days, present 90 percent or more of school days | K-12 | Yes |
| Career Standards Benchmark: Percentage of students demonstrating meaningful engagement in career exploration and preparation aligned to the Career Education and Work standards. | Grades 5, 8 and 11 | 2017-18 is first year of reporting; multiple years of data will be utilized in future designation cycles. |
ESSA requires states to specify a standard for the number of students, or minimum “n-size,” that trigger the reporting of academic and other data at the school and student group levels. Pennsylvania’s ESSA Plan lowers the state’s n-size from 30 to 20 to ensure additional transparency around school and student group performance while protecting student privacy and attending to the need for measurement stability.
Schools designated for CSI will have four years to satisfy certain standards—what ESSA calls "exit criteria"—before additional interventions apply. This provision also applies to Title 1 schools designated as A-TSI.
Pennsylvania's exit criteria include:
- Show continued improvement on at least the academic achievement indicator and, in the case of high schools, the adjusted cohort graduation rate, such that the school contributes to the state's progress toward both interim and long-term goals.
- Show continued improvement on any school quality or student success indicator(s) for which the school was designated.
- Partner in agency-provided technical assistance activities through the Statewide System of District and School Improvement.