 The Kentucky Department of Education's Teachers Advisory Council met on Dec. 6, discussing how best to use the Kentucky School Report Card data website. Photo by Wallace Caleb Bates, Dec. 6, 2022
(FRANKFORT, KY) – The Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE’s) Teachers Advisory Council discussed how to use the Kentucky School Report Card data website during its Dec. 6 meeting.
KDE released the annual Kentucky School Report Card data from the 2021-2022 academic year on Oct. 18, as required by statute and under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.
Assessments were fully administered to more than 383,000 students in grades 3 through 8 and 10 through 11 during the spring of 2022. Accountability and federal statuses – such as Comprehensive School Improvement and Targeted School Improvement – were reported for the first time since 2019.
DeDe Conner, division director in KDE’s Office of Education Technology, said the School Report Card is as important to communities and families as it is to districts. She mentioned that the Infinite Campus Parent Portal is part of the School Report Card suite and that tool provides families real time access to their student’s information. She said when parents use the portal, studies show they are more engaged in the school overall and students do better.
“When you think about a community and parents, what is most important is how my kid is doing,” she said. “Without teachers, the parent portal wouldn’t be what it is today. It takes teachers being engaged, teachers using the portal tools and teachers keeping grades up to date.”
In addition to assessment information, the School Report Card provides information about school safety, financial transparency, educational opportunities for students, student enrollment, attendance and student and teacher demographics. When looking at specific schools, information is compared to schools across the district and across the state.
Council members wanted to learn more about how ineffective teaching is determined, one of the measures available on the School Report Card. Conner said it is determined by the principal’s evaluation of teachers and is reported through a survey without any identifiable information. The equity data reported includes the number of teachers that are ineffective, inexperienced and out-of-field.
“With equity, the detail includes these categories of teachers and what students they serve,” she said. “They don’t want to find that there is inequity in groups of students being taught by these categories of teachers.”
Council members also were interested in tracking how student populations perform across subject areas over time. Conner said Academic Performance, Progress Towards State Goals does include trend data. This was the first year for the new Kentucky Summative Assessment; additional trend data will be available with more years of data.
Also during the meeting, teachers shared how their schools use the assessment and accountability data and what they need from KDE to make analyzing the data an easier process.
Carla Criswell, a teacher representative from Christian County, said she thinks that “will be helpful for teachers to see what skills they are missing in preparing for next steps” and “we are able to see which standards students scored well on and which ones they didn’t.”
In other business, the council:
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