Horace Mann Elementary School 2010 Summary STAR Results

Recently California released the results of the annual STAR testing, a putative measure of the teaching effectiveness of schools in the state.

Aside: My cynical take on the STAR tests is that they are predictive of the success of a school district in keeping the Federal funds flowing into the district. They may or may not predict academic success. They are also what we have and much like having a hammer and solving problems...

The test results are segmented in a number of ways. The skills tested at the Elementary School level are 'Math' and 'Language Arts' which are presented by Year and Grade Level. The student population is further segmented by various economic and cultural metrics. One of the important segments is English Language proficiency. The particular segments used in the chart below are 'Economically Disadvantaged' and 'Not Economically Disadvantaged.' The important score level is the percentage of the student population that scores 'Proficient' or better on a particular skill.

To reduce the complexity of the problem, a simple metric was developed that allows a simple and quick comparison between schools and which can also show year to year change for each school. For each set of the 'Math' and 'Language Arts' scores in a given year, the 'Percent Proficient' score for each grade is squared, the squared scores are summed and the square root of the sum of squares is calculated. The result is that each year has two values one representing the 'Math' scores and the second the 'Language Arts' scores. These two values are plotted on a simple x-y chart with each data point representing a specific school year.

Note that for 100% proficient in each grade the resulting score will be 2. A score of (2,2) indicates that all students in all grades scored proficient or better on the examination.

Click image to enlarge

On the chart above, results for two schools located in downtown San Jose, CA, are shown, Lowell Elementary and Horace Mann Elementary. The results for Horace Mann are  presented for  the 'Entire School', 'Economically Disadvantaged' and 'Non Economically Disadvantaged' student populations. The key feature is the break in the direction for the scores at Horace Mann between 2009 and 2010. This break is particularly evident in the results for the entire school and the Economically Disadvantaged students. The Non Economically Disadvantaged students decline slightly in Math and improve slightly in Language Arts.

Lowell Elementary has a student population that is almost 100% 'Economically Disadvantaged' and demographically resembles Horace Mann. The Lowell results are included for comparison purposes.