5.17: Help in Interpreting the Data
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As the other grade level representatives comment on and analyze their end- of-year results, Bill provides help in interpreting the data. In particular, notice how he helps the AALT representatives do two crucial things: First, connect their interpretations to the actual data in the tables; second, interpret gains for English learners at different levels of English language development (ELD levels).
Bill (GR cons) In the mid-year the one thing that gets my attention is that we had 10% N/As [not applicable, meaning "not scoreable"]. (Ts: oh; oh that's--). You know what I mean? (Ts: yeah) So that actually that's about 17%, and the same kind of thing happens when you look at conventions. If everybody would just turn the page, you see how it goes from 35 to 16 to 19. But you see the 10% N/A? (T: yeah) Which maybe teachers recorded an N/A for a kid who didn't make an attempt, you know what I mean? which would mean that those N/As are probably 1s [lowest score], so that may be what's going on there as well you're thinking well maybe we got some variations from just one time to the next in terms of the story we're asking them to write about. T Spelling, there was an increase on, there was a definite increase, a great increase on conventional, so the spelling is improving although, the trend-- Bill Stafford, can you pause just one minute? Can you give me two numbers to ice that point for me? T OK, 29% going from the mid-year to 44%. Bill and start with the beginning T 18 Bill Yeah. So when you can say that and then you can also ice it with "we went from 18 to 44% of our kids, who were evaluated as spelling conventionally," that just brings home the point, it it-- that's what the numbers help you do. T and then that might have to do why the transitional is less because maybe some of those transitional went up to conventional so Bill Absolutely, that's why you would see the number of 3s or the number of transitional, or 4s, going down because they are moving into the higher level. T And then, we went up from, on the high frequency from 53 in the beginning to 63 on the high end. So we are making progress getting the spellers to the upper end. And then, we did well on the ELD levels. We didn't even have, I don't think we had any 5s at the beginning of the year, and yet we have like 18%, oh wait a minute, we had, yeah (confers with colleague)-- Bill you had 21 fours, 21% were fours and then by the end of the year the 13% were fives and 38% were fours (T yeah) That's nice. And 3rd grade's really important for that big jump. It's not that uncommon, 1st grade teachers, you-- for the kids that were coming in ELD level two or three you would want to them to four. If they're starting out at one, at the beginning of the year, you got them in two or three by the end of the year, you've made really strong progress. But a lot of times even through 2nd grade, the kids begin to plateau and stay at level three. Level four in terms of oral English has a lot to do with more academic oral English, so that's a nice jump. T It was, I was-- When giving a test it was interesting cause you know when you get to the exit test (Bill: Yeah), it's much more difficult for them to pass the exit test to get into that five. That jump from four to five is a big jump.