| Vol.
I, No. 2 | Thanksgiving | Nov.
17th, 2000 |
Links
to Learning & Education On-Line
The amount of info on the web is enormous, as anyone who's ever tried to run a
search can attest to. And, to put it all in context, best estimates say
that only a fraction, maybe 20 - 40 % of what's out there is actually making its
way to the search engines.
Well ...
Here at DownStreet, we'd like to try to help. So each issue, we
post a few links in House & Home to sites that might interest you.
Sometimes the links will be related to one another ... sometimes
we'll just offer up a somewhat random sampling. In either case, we think
we might be able to help you find the kind of site you've been looking for.
Of course, while we can't vouch for the fact that every link we provide will be
of interest to everyone, we do our best to filter out the noise and the
bustle. ... A Few
Links to Info on School Performance ...
The following links will take
you to info about education and school performance, primarily reports and
statistical data, for both Vermont and the nation. ... National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES), part of U.S. Dept. of Ed. The
NCES has everything statistical you ever wanted to know about education ...
and more.
The site is fairly well organized, with both reports and
summaries available for download on a host of school facts. These
include the NAEP "Nation's Report Card," the IPEDS Post-Secondary
Education Data, the Encyclopaedia of Educational Statistics, and even a K-12
Practitioners area. Be prepared, however, since the NCES data is so
vast that the options branch out into numerous others. Even so, if
it's 'the facts' you're after, it would be hard to find a better site.
There are also a couple of links from the home page to Quick Tables &
Figures and NCES Fast Facts, and they'd probably be a good place to start if
you new to the site.
The last election has shown us how easy it is to
bandy about sound bites. But if you're not sure what all those sound
bites were supposed to be pointing to, this is the place to look.
Rating:
****1/2 [4-1/2 stars]
. VT
Department of Education School Report [searchable by town]
VT
Dept of Education School Report: Complete Report Last
month we pointed you to the Vermont
Education Clearinghouse. This
month, with the election behind us, you might want to take a look at
Vermont's School Report -- a fairly comprehensive overview of what's going
in in our schools. There are two links: The
first takes you to an overview of the School Report, where you can choose to
focus on reports for individual towns {the corresponding Union District
report is also included in the subsequent links}. Each town report
begins with links to the Complete School Report, Complete Vermont Report,
Complete Definitions, and Answers to Frequently Asked Questions. These
are followed by a Report By Section, with General School Information,
Program Information, Staff Information, Community Social Indicators,
Financial Resources, Financial Expenditures, and the Student Performance
sections, which include the VT Comprehensive Assessment System - Grades
2,4,6,8,10,11, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (High School Only), Advanced
Placement (AP) Results (High School Only), and the Post-Secondary
Aspirations data. The Complete Report link takes you
directly to the State-wide info, which begins, like the Complete School
Reports, with general info and lots of tables of data. if you're
genuinely interested in your local schools, this is must reading.
Rating
****1/2 [4-1/2 stars].
. Action
Planning Guide: Vermont Department of Education The
Action Planning Guide may be something of a misnomer. When you first
get to the home page, which loads rather slowly, Action Planning is one of
the choices, but it's grayed out. On the other hand, what is here is
the Graphing Area link, a useful tool if you're one of those folks who
believe a statistical picture is worth a lot of words.
The Graphing
Area link takes you to a Welcome page that provides an overview of what this
site is all about -- providing graphs in response to questions you may have
about student or school performance. When you continue, you are next
provided with an overview called Analysing, a quick overview of how and why
the data of the School Reports can help. But it's the next link that's
the winner -- "Select Question." Here, you get to choose
{currently} from eight of a dozen questions you want to know the graphical
answers to. These include: 1) What percentage of students met or
exceeded the standards on state assessments this year? 2) What
percentage of students scored in the lowest two performance levels on state
assessments this year? 3) What is the distribution of scores across
all performance levels? 4) Are there gender differences in
performance? ... 6) How does our performance compare to that of the
Supervisory Union, State, and other schools' results this year? 7) How
did we do compared to similar schools on the state assessments this
year? 8) Are we making progress toward all students meeting or
exceeding state standards? and 9) Are we reducing the percentage of students
in the bottom two performance levels?
.
Question 5) How
did our students do in mathematics and science content areas this year? ...
as well as questions 10-12 {about student participation rates in state
assessments, progress toward participation, and, what might have been the
clincher, 12) Did our school make Adequate Yearly Progress this year?) were
grayed out and not currently available. Nonetheless, pick your
question and watch the answer.
Rating: **** [4 stars] {A
sample chart and accompanying table are shown below for MAUHS, Grade 10,
Reading Analysis & Interpretation.
| Distribution
Across All Performance Levels |
|---|
| | | Performance
Levels | | Grade | (N)
Students
Tested | Little
Evidence
of
Achievement | Below
the
Standard | Nearly
Achieved
the Standard | Achieved
the
Standard | Achieved
the
Standard
with Honors | | 10 | 135 | 0
% | 14 % | 45
% | 41 % | 0
% |
.*******
*******
If you know of any
links that you think are worthwhile, why not send them along to ...
links@downstreetmagazine.com
... If we agree, we'll be happy to include
them in an upcoming issue to pass the word along. ...
Thanks. *******
******* .
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