ESSA Accountability Reports for School and District Leadership Benjamin Norris March 8, 2019

Introduction For All Schools For High Schools On January 17, NYSED released the 2018-19 ESSA designations for all of the state’s public schools and districts. As a result of the change from ESEA to ESSA, more metrics were used to determine accountability designations, including: For All Schools ELA Math Science Progress for English Language Learners Chronic Absenteeism For High Schools Social Studies Graduation Rate College, Career, and Civic Readiness 6 elementary-middle metrics 7 high school metrics

Data Overload! Preliminary file sent November 30, 2018 In the preliminary file sent to districts through the NYSED Portal, the elementary-middle Excel file had 67 columns of data; the high school file had 91! How can we take this data and make it more presentable (and in turn, more actionable)?

Syracuse City School District’s Journey The 2016-17 school year was the last school accountability re- identification year under ESEA. It was during this time that the Board of Education had requested from the Office of Shared Accountability reports that could help them understand how accountability designations were determined for each of the City’s schools. Our office created 8 different reports: two for Priority Schools, two for Focus Schools, two for Good Standing Schools, one for LAP Schools, and one for the District. This is because the elementary-middle and high schools were assessed on different metrics. We did not have any LAP high schools.

Examples of Our ESEA Accountability Sheets Priority Schools Focus Schools Make sure to highlight that high schools have to meet both the academic and graduation requirements (stress that high schools met graduation requirements but not academic)

ESEA Accountability Sheets These accountability sheets were created using Microsoft Excel and are generated with a macro, which greatly reduced the time necessary to generate all of the district’s reports. These formats served the District well and were generated again for the 2017-18 school year to show if and where schools were making progress. Making progress (identified subgroups have to make progress and 95% participation rate)

Enter ESSA… When NYSED released files for ESSA training in May 2018, the Office of Shared Accountability drafted a version of what the All Students template might look like from the released 2016-17 data. However, we noticed that given the increase in the number of metrics to report on, plus the notion that we would also need to provide data on various demographic subgroups, this template would not be acceptable. It was also a perfect opportunity to see if we could reduce the number of different templates that we had to create. Stress that this was only the All Students subgroup

…Lo and Behold! With hard work and determination, we did find a way to generate ESSA reports for our entire district with only 2 Excel files (as opposed to 8 as we had done previously). One report for elementary-middle schools and one for high schools! Each school type (elementary-middle versus high school) receives the same report, regardless of whether the school is labeled as CSI, TSI, or in Good Standing. An added benefit is that CSI schools can see what subgroups may need extra support and which ones may not (which was previously not shown to Priority schools). Use in conjunction with Accountability Status Guide

Elementary-Middle Schools Let’s Take a Look! Elementary-Middle Schools High Schools Show the 4 things that need to be labeled to make macro work. Highlight the iferror vlookup command. Metrics with blanks had a “-” inserted. Create a concatenated vlookup variable. For All Students, change the Good Standing to say review the other subgroups. Column E denotes what CSI or TSI condition is met.

Moving Forward The Office of Shared Accountability, in particular the Chief Accountability Officer, has made themselves available to meet with school building leadership and provide guidance on how to make sense of their accountability data. These ESSA accountability sheets will have to be modified in the future, as eventually there will be an out-of-school suspensions metric, as well as a metric for high school readiness.

Thank You!