III.  Meeting the Other Indicators of School Performance:

 

NCLB requires that schools be evaluated on a third performance indicator as well as percentage of students assessed and percentage of students proficient in the standard. To make AYP an elementary school must have an attendance rate of 90 percent; a high school must have a graduation rate of 71 percent.

 

Attendance:

The formula used to calculate the attendance rate is:

 

Schoolwide Attendance Rate =       Average Daily Attendance

                                                                        Average Daily Membership

 

Data used. The average daily attendance (ADA) and average daily membership (ADM) for the 100-day counts for all grades offered by a school, except for pre-school and kindergarten, are used in the calculation.

 

Safe Harbor. If a school demonstrates a one-percentage point improvement in its attendance rate from the previous year, it is deemed to have met the performance standard. The growth rate is rounded to the nearest hundredth of a point.

 

            Example. Gila  Monster Elementary had an attendance rate in the current year of 88 percent, less than the standard of 90 percent. However, its attendance rate for the previous year was 86 percent. Gila Monster Elementary demonstrated an improvement of two percentage points over the previous year, and so is deemed to have met the requirements for attendance rate.

 

Special rules.  A school’s attendance rate is not evaluated if it had an ADM of less than 40.

 

Graduation Rate:

 

The Graduation Rate is a four-year longitudinal measure of how many students graduate from high school. The formula used to calculate the graduation rate is:

 

 

            Graduation Rate =    Number of cohort that graduated within four years

                                                Original cohort + transfers in –transfers out

 

 

Data Used.  Federal requirements mandate that Arizona use the four-year graduation rate rather than the five-year rate used for Arizona Learns. The threshold graduation rate was for the cohort class of 2006, which represents the most recent graduation rate statistics. The graduation rate for the cohort class of 2005 was used for the determination of safe harbor.

 

Safe Harbor. If a school demonstrates a one percentage point improvement in its graduation rate from the previous year, it is deemed to have met the performance standard.

 

            Example.  Gila Monster High School had a graduation rate in 2006 of 69 percent, less than the standard of 71 percent. However, its 2005 graduation rate was 67 percent. Gila Monster High demonstrated an improvement of two percentage points over the previous year, and so is deemed to have met the requirements for graduation rate.

 

Special rules. A school’s graduation rate is not evaluated if it had a cohort of less than 40.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference: Arizona’s School Accountability System 2007 Technical Manual, Arizona Department of Education, January 2008.